No country for democracy

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In a move that clearly showed that Pakistan’s democracy experiment of the last three years has changed little in that country, its Prime Minister and President on Saturday made peace with its Army Chief. Gen. Kayani has let the Gilani-Zardari duo be, for now. But while the gun has been withdrawn, the gavel hangs over them. A change of
leadership has been deferred but it is not far off, says Neena Gopal.

The people of Pakistan have now learned a lesson from our own history, that democracy is not easy but it is the only viable option. Democracies are noisy, reflect power tussles and highlight internal conflicts. But it is only through democracy that we can work together to forge national unity.” – Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani
Misplaced sentiments? Or clever ploy to whip up public sympathy?

Barely, 24 hours later, Mr Gilani had this to say: “The armed forces are a pillar of nation’s resilience and strength. It has been my government’s policy to allow and enable all state institutions to play their role in their respective domains for the common good of the people.”
Once again, in a country where any perceived questioning of the military’s super-eminence and hold over the polity is seen as a diminishing of its machismo, a flawed civilian dispensation, led by Prime Minister Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari, finds itself with its back to the proverbial wall.
In this struggle, essentially between two US proxies, one civilian, the other military, the battle is not for the heart and soul of this embattled nation, but a jockeying for power between a deeply unpopular civilian government that must turn adversity to its advantage for its own survival, and an entrenched self-styled guardian, unwilling to cede control.
As Pakistan rushes towards its moment of reckoning, it remains to be seen whether its latest experiment in democracy will be consigned to the dustbin of histories past, or whether it will be back to business as usual, where we see another purported civilian government with the military as puppeteer; or whether the balance of power, shifts, critically, once and for all into the hands of a truly democratic polity?
Pakistan, where the masses have little say, may not be ready for the last, just yet. Mr Zardari has met Gen. Kayani and the climbdown is underway. A coup, no longer seems inevitable. The Rawalpindi 111 Corps not quite mobilized against Islamabad’s high profile politicos. The judicial coup where the courts move to disqualify the president and the prime minister, leading to a collapse of government and the entry of yet another interim president and another round of managed elections has not yet been called off.
As in 1958, 1977 and again in 1999, when then General Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif who had sought to impose his writ on the Supreme Court and the military, and was outflanked and outmanouevred, both arms of the establishment are in play. Military chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who took the matter of the Mansoor Ijaz-Husain Haqqani memo (which asks Washington to intervene and stop a coup after the Abbotabad attack) to the Supreme Court, fuelled rumours that the judiciary was working at the army’s behest to remove a government neither could countenance or do business with, when the generals let it be known that they would let the apex court’s decision prevail.
Kayani’s current disinclination to deploy his tanks in Parliament square is informed by Washington’s deep unease over backing another coup, and the populist PPP’s ability to unleash street power. Neither ‘Pindi nor State want an Arab Spring, a backdoor entry for the Islamists, or a repeat of the anti-Musharraf judicial protests that brought the country to a halt.
The fact that the SC is not only chairing an inquiry commission to probe the “treasonous” Ijaz-Haqqani memo, which Ijaz insists was crafted at the behest of the ‘boss’ i.e. Zardari, but on Monday, begins hearings on the rejection of the government’s review petition of the court’s verdict on the National Reconciliation Ordinance — the deal brokered by the US between then President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, by which Mr Zardari and Ms Bhutto were allowed to re-enter Pakistan without getting arrested for corruption charges — is the real giveaway.
It could well be, as some say, an activist judiciary deciding to call a halt to corruption. But an NRO, and Swiss bank accounts, long buried, conveniently brought to life, are meant to run these men out of office. An anti-military Nawaz Sharif, seeking to embarrass the PPP, may have unwittingly played into the military’s hands by taking the memo to court.
The Zardari-Gilani stratagem so far was to fall back on public sympathy seeking to embellish the myth of the martyrdom at the hands of the army of yet another leader from the Sindh-Seraikhi heartland. Zardari’s inner circle believed that a confrontational approach where a do-or-die battle that pits the supremacy of parliament against the army-judiciary is the need of the hour, in the belief that the military was working with the Supreme Court to seek a “constitutional” dismissal of the government.
Saturday night’s Zardari-Kayani parley has seen the power pendulum swing back towards the army with the civilian leadership forced to back down from its previously hectoring tone. The PPP, may be the only party with a pan-Pakistan footprint but headed in the last three years by the unpopular Zardari-led clique it may not be able to call on the ‘jialas’ who swear allegiance to the slain Bhuttos but have little loyalty to the new bloodline. The sole reason for the rise – managed or real – of the cricketer-politician Imran Khan is to break the hold of popular parties - Nawaz Sharif’s over Punjab, the PPP’s in Sindh, the Punjab-Sindh border and Pakhtunkhwa, before the PPP managed to gain control of the Senate, getting far more powers than any civilian government that went before. That was a challenge the army would have found difficult to counter.
While the controversial memo was the catalyst that unraveled the uneasy arrangement between the PPP government and the military, Washington insiders also say the US administration’s inability to influence an intractable Pakistan on Afghanistan as the drawdown nears, and Iran’s nuclear sabre-rattling, was why the memo was made public.
It did two things — it exposed the fragility of the Pakistan polity and gave the military the perfect tool to discredit the Zardari-Gilani dispensation, and set in motion a chain of events that would lead to a more malleable man in president’s house.
The Zardari-Kayani meet may have only put off the inevitable. “Change is coming,” said a Washington insider. If Pakistan follows this script, it could emerge under a new fig leaf of democracy where the army continues as sole protector, President Zardari negotiates for an honourable exit, and Prime Minister Gilani makes way in due course for the PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan, darling of the judiciary.
Imran Khan, with his ability to tap into the anger of the people against US drone attacks, will gradually grow into the credible leader that Pakistan needs. Overseeing this ‘managed democracy’ will be old hand Pervez Musharraf, readying for his triumphal return to President’s house.
In Pakistan, the more things change, the more they stay the same.