Source/Credit: Daily Dawn | Pakistan
By Kunwar Idris | September 26, 2010
One can readily agree with the president and the prime minister, and even with their far more garrulous law minister, that democracy is under no threat in the country. The only problem is that when they speak of democracy in abstract terms they, in fact, mean their coalition government.
It would also be safe to say that their government, however faltering, is not threatened by a coup. The army high command is discerning enough to know that despite its image being burnished by rescue and relief services during the floods, the people would not welcome its intervention in politics, nor does it have a ready solution for the many and serious problems besetting the country.
The Punjab chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, who has observed the magnitude of the flood disaster more closely than other political leaders, and also has seen the army at work, seemed to have guessed right when he said the threat was particularly non-existent so long as Gen Kayani headed the army.
The real threat to democracy, more imminently to the government, arises from the growing discontent of the people over the conduct of the political parties and their leaders. The global economic recession has only compounded the failure of the political system on every front. The floods have added to the hardships of the people but, in a way, also provided a convenient peg to political leaders on which to hang the blame.
In the current situation if a military takeover is unlikely, Altaf Hussain’s revolution against the feudals, capitalists and parasites backed by ‘patriotic generals’ is even more unlikely. But it also needs to be realised that the present chaotic, gung-ho system cannot last for another 30 months.
Mid-term polls would have been an ideal solution but the floods have ruled that out for the present. Now hardly any other course is left open to political parties, more particularly the PPP, than to let each organ of the state function as envisaged in the constitution and parliamentary conventions.
The alternatives being mentioned are to the contrary. President Zardari would like ‘all political forces to unite’. But why and against whom when there is no threat to democracy nor, as Babar Awan insists, even to the government?
Nawaz Sharif is looking for a change but only through constitutional means which in plain terms means he is waiting for the PPP-led coalition to lose majority in parliament through defections.
The life-blood to parliamentary democracy is supplied by a vigorous opposition and not a unity government artificially cobbled together. The line separating the treasury benches from the opposition in parliament has always been hazy in Pakistan. It was never hazier than now.
Elements within the government are also among its worst detractors and some others opposing it are, in fact, in cahoots. The coalitions at the centre and in the provinces are large, divided and costly because every partner wants a share in the perks of power without pursuing a common purpose.
The first requirement for any parliamentary system to survive and deliver is to draw a clear line between the government and the opposition. The two must not merge to become a behemoth which indeed this government would if PML-Q were also to join its newfound partner PML-F in government.
If all moderate political forces were to strut about in the corridors of power, it would be left to the extremists of the madrassahs and the militants of the mountains to bring down every government and ultimately the democratic system itself.
In a parliamentary democracy while the official opposition goes by conventions, the role of each organ of the state is defined in the constitution. The executive authority vests in the prime minister and his cabinet. The president is ceremonial head of state and also the symbol of national unity. So it should have been in Pakistan after the 18th Amendment. But the overwhelming emotions flowing from Benazir Bhutto’s murder and her husband’s total control over the party machine have all but negated that principle.
It would be difficult for Mr Zardari to reconcile to being a ceremonial head of state, nor can parliament, as presently constituted, shake his hold on power. The common man’s utter lack of faith in the supremacy of parliament was recently demonstrated in the less than 19 per cent turnout in a hotly contested by-election in Rawalpindi city. The parliamentary system would get a chance to work only if Asif Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani were to swap positions which can be made possible through a by-election.
The head of state being a neutral and a national figure must be recognised as a basic feature of the constitution that is put beyond the amending jurisdiction of parliament (the presidency must not become a party office). The other two features should be the fundamental rights of the citizens and independence of the judiciary. Both will be in jeopardy if the appointment of judges were to be made subject to the approval of a parliamentary committee.
From the judges, in return, the citizens should expect speed, sympathy and total freedom from every kind of prejudice whenever a breach of fundamental rights comes to their notice. The aggrieved people now have to make interminable rounds of the courts till the right they seek to assert is all but extinguished.
The independence of the judiciary, in the final analysis, will be sustained not by the procedure of appointments but by the protection the judges provide to ordinary citizens against unjust laws and arbitrary actions by the executive arm of the government. For that, it appears, one has to wait for the constitutional wrangle at the top to come to an end.
kunwaridris@hotmail.com
Read original post here: A threatened government
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