Mosharraf Zaidi

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=132027

The risk of demonising Zardari

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Mosharraf Zaidi

It is not difficult to understand why there is a thick tension in the air as Pakistan prepares for a Zardari presidency. For two decades now Asif Ali Zardari has been the object of establishment, middle class and educated elite contempt. Just because the educated liberals and urban conservatives in Pakistan don’t like Mr Zardari, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be president. Pakistanis have a habit of personifying national failure in the shape of individuals. It is time to ditch old habits, and embrace democracy.

Within the tradition of personifying national failure, General Ziaul Haq is perhaps the favourite of the English-language babus. It is amazing how Zia single handedly created religious fanaticism, turned the country into Ronald Reagan’s hand-maiden and gave rise to all the evil that lurks in Tora Bora and straddles the Durand Line. If Zia is at the top of the list, Zulfi Bhutto is a not too distant second. The most recent addition to the arsenal of both liberals and conservatives is of course the recently retired and resigned Pervez Musharraf. In many ways he trumps both Bhutto and Zia in villainous magnitude – combining the supposed institutional appetite for fanaticism, with his personal appetite for the finer things in life. Now, the knives are sharpening and September 6 is almost upon us. If and when Mr Zardari finally does take office, many Pakistanis will cringe, and weep and turn off the television in disgust.

Before Mr Zardari is tagged with the label of national villain however, it would be useful for Pakistanis to take a long, hard look at where the country is today, and how it got here. The nervous ticks that a Zardari presidency is inspiring are rooted in three issues. First, presidential power to dissolve the assemblies, second, Mr Zardari’s alleged corruption, and third, the symbolism of Mr Zardari as a non-traditional political figure, occupying the Aiwan-e-Sadr. Examining these in further detail reveals little to justify any logically consistent argument against a Zardari presidency.

The issue of the potential role of the president of Pakistan as a destabilising force that can dissolve assemblies is a legitimate fear. How that is Mr Zardari’s fault however, is a mystery. Before being deposed, Nawaz Sharif had successfully restored the presidency to its figurehead role, without executive powers over parliament. That restoration had been over a decade in the making, given the horrible mutilation of institutions that occurred during General Zia’s era. The presidency was not a powerful position in Pakistan again until December 2003, when the 17th Amendment was passed, restoring the lost lustre of dictatorship back to the presidency. Who gave the presidency these powers? It couldn’t have been Mr Zardari himself, given that he was locked up in jail at the time. In fact, it was the parliament at the time, a parliament that was loaded with two parties of note, the so-called PML – Q and the right-coalition of the MMA. Simply put, any trepidation about the powers of the presidency has nothing to do with Mr Zardari. The credit or blame for any anxiety caused by the president’s powers can be placed squarely at the feet of those two parties, and their task master at the time, the former president himself. At least on the count of draconian presidential powers then, we can be certain that Mr Asif Ali Zardari is not the one who enabled a presidency that has the power to interrupt the democratic process and facilitate dictatorship.

The second issue of concern in a Zardari presidency is of course the issue of his alleged corruption. This is not a complex issue at all. From a technical, legal standpoint Mr Zardari is innocent until proven guilty. At least three different governments over a span of almost twenty years have spent millions of dollars pursuing the cases against him. They have failed to deliver a guilty verdict. It is not Mr Zardari’s fault that the system of justice in Pakistan is broken, and that the prosecutors of the agenda of accountability are incompetent. This is an issue on which clarity is of vital national importance. The simple perception of wrong doing is not good enough to prosecute someone. This is a principle upon which the national outrage over Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s incarceration and extradition is based. It is also the principal upon which the legitimate Chief Justice, Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry based his observations about missing persons. Pakistanis need to be consistent. If Dr Afia and a generation of bearded Pakistanis are innocent until proven guilty, then so is Mr Asif Ali Zardari. Moreover, it is hard to take the entire anti-corruption, transparency and accountability agenda seriously, when those that are responsible for delivering transparency and accountability have sullied reputations themselves. No matter who the next president is, sooner or later, the government will reinitiate the accountability agenda. The country has tried this little game several times. First was the Ehtesaab Bureau under the leadership of Saifur Rehman — himself a target of allegations of corruption. Then it was the National Accountability Bureau — which practiced selective morality on the issue of corruption, indemnifying some categories of the corrupt and not others. Finally of course, it was General Musharraf that signed the NRO, not Mr Zardari. In a country where the moral boundaries are so widely and liberally defined, how can one man be held accountable for unproven sins, while everyone else is allowed fiscal impunity?

Finally, there is the issue of perception, the question of what a Zardari presidency would symbolise. Perception is a funny thing, because it is driven by our own biases and our own psychoses. What did a president in uniform symbolise? Where was middle class disgust and outrage when Ayub, Zia or Musharraf took over? What did a president who had no achievements of substance to his record other than to steadily and stealthily climb the ladders of power over a forty-year career represent? Where were the bureaucratic babus and their outrage when Ghulam Ishaq Khan not only became president, but proceeded to dissolve the assemblies not once, or twice, but three times? Where was English-language elite outrage or conservative self-righteous outrage when career sycophants like Wasim Sajjad, and Rafiq Tarrar became president? Or when a banker who was plucked from nowhere to not only become chairman of the Senate, governor of Sindh, but also caretaker prime minister, and then seamlessly back to chairman of the Senate? Where is the outrage at the conflict of interest that was invariably a part of Mohammedmian Soomro’s back and forths between top positions in the government – without ever being elected to any office, by any citizen of Pakistan? In each case of course, there was always a smattering of boos, and some discomfort, but nothing like the wide-scale self-pity that Pakistanis are about to dive into.

One needn’t be Rehman Malik, Salman Taseer or Hussain Haqqani to recognise and acknowledge one simple fact. A democratically elected, parliamentary powerful party has the right to elect a president of its choosing. No matter how much Mr Zardari is disliked by both liberal and conservative Pakistanis, his candidature is no worse than any of the other presidents Pakistan has had over the last two decades. At least in Mr Zardari’s case, there is an element of democratic redemption that perhaps among his predecessors, only Rafiq Tarrar possessed.

The truth is that Pakistan’s institutions are constantly being bludgeoned by the self-righteousness of the urban educated. It is they who provide the military with the legitimacy that allows well-meaning but illegitimate dictatorships to take root. Pakistan can begin its latest journey in democratic discovery the same way in which all previous journeys have begun. By stacking the deck against political parties, and by rejecting their electoral, legal and moral legitimacy. This is simply preparing the ground for the next coup against democracy. It is ok to dislike Mr Zardari, and to oppose his presidency. Liking something does not make it right, and disliking something, does not make it wrong — Pakistanis confuse the two at their own risk. Demonising Zardari today will have grave consequences for Pakistan’s democratic future.

http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=131070

Judging Musharraf by his own criteria

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Mosharraf Zaidi

Celebrating Pervez Musharraf’s resignation should be no more than a fleeting indulgence for people who are seriously interested in Pakistan’s future. In October of 1999, Musharraf stole Pakistan from the people, ostensibly for the people. It is not that long ago that the punditry of Pakistan was in love with the dog-owning, mullah-bashing, straight-talking chocolaty hero. It took five flawed elections (referendum ‘01, local ‘01, general ‘02, local ‘05, general ‘08), the uprooting of the social order of the tribal areas, the systematic defacement of the judiciary, and the unprecedentedly self-worshipping book that he wrote before Musharraf-Hero turned into Musharraf-Villain.

In his strategic blindness, Musharraf was a Miandad-esque political figure, never able to see past the next quick single. Tactically, however, Musharraf was brilliant to the bitter end. Nothing anyone else did mattered. Musharraf has retired hurt. He has resigned. He has not been impeached, not bowled out, not caught out, or run out, or even stumped. The jubilance should be tempered by that fact alone. Musharraf has given Pakistan back to the people on his own terms. To be fair to him, there is no doubt that his love for Pakistan is deep and sincere. To be fair to the people of Pakistan though, there should be no doubt that patriotism is no qualification to play Russian roulette with a poor country. He will probably get away with the laws he broke. But nothing can repair the hearts he broke.

It was his flirtations with the law that eventually did him in. The lawyers movement is the most credible and powerful nail in the Musharraf presidency’s coffin. It would be unrealistically romantic to think that it was political parties that managed to squeeze Musharraf out of power. Though Nawaz Sharif should be feted for his growth as a politician and his maturity as an emerging statesman, before the lawyers’ movement, the PML (N) had been reduced to a shadow of itself. And while the Shaheed Mohtarma is a martyr in the truest sense of the word, the tragedy suffered by the Zardari-Bhutto clan does not neutralise the depressing fact that Pakistan’s largest party is co-chaired by a teenager who’s hardly ever lived in Pakistan.

The truth is that if he wanted to, Musharraf could have dragged this out further. That fact is the true legacy of his eight years in the saddle. That one man’s tunnel-vision and exaggerated sense of purpose can drive a country so deeply out of whack that even a genuine people’s movement had no chance of succeeding. That is how badly the Musharraf era has damaged Pakistani institutions. Pakistanis should prepare for a long and painful period of rehabilitation.

The severity of the challenge is best measured by Musharraf’s own megalomaniacal rhetoric. In his meandering and pathetic resignation speech, Musharraf expressed pride over his achievements. The definition of an achievement is doing what one sets out to do. Pervez Musharraf began his coup with a seven-point agenda, announced on October 17, 1999. Exactly eight years and ten months later, let’s take a quick look at what exactly has been “achieved”.

The seven point agenda included, “Rebuild national confidence and morale”, “Strengthen the federation, remove inter-provincial disharmony and restore national cohesion”, “Devolution of power to the grass roots level”, “Revive the economy and restore investor confidence”, “Ensure law and order and dispense speedy justice”, “Depoliticise state institutions”, and “Ensure swift and across the board accountability”.

Only the most audaciously ill-informed can claim that these agenda items have been achieved. On devolution, supporters of the former General would say that he indeed was able to create local governments. Unfortunately, although local governments seem to have been established for good, the manner in which they were shoved down the throats of the provinces was counter-productive. Perhaps even more importantly, by stripping the bureaucracy of its regulatory role at the grassroots level, devolution made a mortal enemy from day one, the District Management Group (DMG). Not only has the DMG suffered as a result, but Pakistan has too, losing hundreds of its brightest civil servants to foreign universities, donor agencies and multilateral organisations. In the end, the elite bureaucracy always wins. The DMG will have their day and their way with the Local Government Ordinances, weakening an already fragile local government setup and reinforcing its own powers.

The other area in which Musharraf might think he has a case to make for success is the reviving of the economy. For certain, all the bankers in shiny suits from whom he took advice seem convinced about the brilliance of their economic model. Since Musharraf’s emergency, the stock market lost over $30 billion in market cap, the foreign reserves shrunk by about half, inflation is now flirting with the 20% threshold and investor confidence is in tatters. Those advisers then have some audacity then to suggest that the fundamentals are strong. The truth is that while the middle class did indeed expand during the Musharraf era, this had more to do with capital injections after 9/11, than it did with good policy. Most crucially, since 9/11 Pakistan grew not because of the paltry $10 billion that Congress sneezed into Pakistan, but rather the consistently growing remittances from hardworking Pakistanis all over the world. At last count, since 2001 cumulative remittances are at least double what the Americans have provided in aid. Those remittances drove a real estate explosion, and helped banks fuel unprecedented consumption for Pakistanis who grew up on Fauji cornflakes and Pakistan Steel widgets. Of course they would consume their way into a serious current account imbalance. Managing all of this would have been a real achievement for Musharraf. Instead, his advisers have deserted him, and gone back to their real jobs: selling used cars to the next gullible “investor”.

The rest of the items on the seven point agenda have not only not been achieved, they have actually regressed. National confidence is bruised by unprecedented terrorism and deprivation. The military brand, once the blue-chip jewel of the Pakistani ethos, has been politicised and monetised. National cohesion has gone to the dogs, with terrorists having a field day while progressive Pakistanis are under siege for being bold and beautiful, and practicing Muslims in Pakistan under siege for being bearded and veiled. The provinces are sick of being treated like children, with a federal government constantly expanding and crowding out the provinces. Pakhtun children wonder why their land is an acronym, while Baluch children wonder why only the warlords get a share of the gas royalties. Punjabi children grow up wondering why everybody outside the Punjab has a chip on their shoulder and Sindhi children don’t grow up as Sindhis, but rather as members of the rural or urban quota. The tenuous link between the tribes of FATA and the federation has been fatally wounded. Accountability has become a punch line, with Musharraf mocking his agenda by forcing the incorruptible General Amjad to resign as NAB Chairman in 2001, and capping the mockery with promulgating the National Reconciliation Ordinance in 2007.

Did some good things happen during Musharraf’s era? Sure, they did, but good things happen in every era. Most of the time, its not the state establishment that makes them happen, it is the incomparably resilient people of Pakistan. Indians that come to Pakistan don’t go back singing the praises of Customs officers or the PIA, they go back singing the praises of the people. Afghans who were once refugees here don’t speak warmly of the Pakistani state, but they cry tears of love in remembering their real hosts, their Pakistani brothers. The resilient and generous Pakistani people deserve something better than what they keep getting from both the dictators that select themselves and the politicians that get elected.

The current ruling politicians can prove they mean business and that they will never allow another dictator the grounds to delegitimise them again. To do so, they have to restore the judiciary, scrap the NRO, tear up the concurrent list, give the provinces their constitutional rights, and rename the NWFP. They must do so quickly. Time is a wasting.