Gen. Musharraf's
Telling-off to Elected Parliament
By
Tarique Niazi
GENERAL
Pervez Musharraf has finally and publicly nixed Parliament’s
sovereign right to legislate.
His insistence, in the April 21 press talk in Lahore, that Parliament
must swallow Legal Framework Order (LFO) is a subversive attempt
to enslave the legislative branch to his destructive will. His
daring has only confirmed what opposition has known all along:
Parliament’s subservience to him.
Even under Gen. Musharraf’s own scheme of things, Parliament
has the right to amend the constitution. It can accept LFO or
toss it out in its entirety. Then, how does it become his business,
even if he fancies himself as President, to tell parliament what
it can or cannot do?
And he is not just telling Parliament; he is telling it off. This
behavior of his goes to show one of the two things: First, Parliament
cannot function, as opposition has repeatedly submitted to the
nation, unless LFO is dropped altogether, or allowed to make its
way through Parliament. In the absence of such options, the two
cannot coexist; one has to die for the other to live. Second,
Parliament is just a democratic garb to deck out a dictator as
President. The October elections have accomplished just that:
cross-dressing.
Despite
these stark realities, those who counsel the government and opposition
to stake out a middle ground on LFO live in a make-believe world.
Gen. Musharraf has not stabbed 29 amendments in the constitution,
just days before the elections, to gulp them down in a compromise.
On the contrary, his life in power hangs on the survival of these
amendments. The moment the plug is pulled on LFO, he will be the
first to fall from the plinth of dictatorship.
Simply
put, whether or not he continues in power depends on whether or
not LFO remains part of the constitution. When so much is at stake,
it is no more than a servile habit of ours to beg him for “magnanimity,”
or even a “give and take” on LFO.
This
is a moment of truth for all of us. The general has, indeed, placed
obvious curbs on what, when, where, how, and how much we can or
cannot say. Yet we are not forced to lie to ourselves. We know
that there is no middle ground on LFO to which the government
or opposition can steer.
Instead,
the choice is between the constitution and LFO, or between democracy
and dictatorship. We cannot blend the two into a confection of
“dictatorship-plus,” or “democracy-minus.”
We have to choose one or the other. The overwhelming majority
of Pakistanis have already rejected LFO. Its only interested taker
in the country is the one who has it written for him: Gen. Musharraf.
From
the very outset, he had nothing but contempt for the constitution.
His audacity to bulk it up with no fewer than 73 amendments that
were later slimmed to 29 is a stealth attack on Pakistan’s
sovereignty. Even Indians – against whom media frenzy is
being whipped up to deflect attention from the unconstitutionality
of LFO – have never scorned Pakistan with a sneak attack
on its independence. They would love to stab us in the chest,
but not in the back. Some of them even want us vanished from this
planet. But they do not want us to be “slaves” of
our own, as we are now, or slaves of theirs.
This
feat owes itself to dictators who make worse enemies of their
own citizens. Need evidence? Remember what is now Bangladesh?
Yet
pleas after pleas are entered in the “independent press”
for saving the “system,” saving the “democracy.”
The subliminal message of all these pleadings is lump LFO and
keep shut. Is it the system, let alone worth saving, that a general
elects himself President, amends the constitution, fires anyone
on the Supreme Court who refuses to go along, and above all who
has no idea when his retirement comes due, or when and how he
will be re-elected or replaced?
Is
it democracy that has been built with the muscles of Gen. Ehtesham
Zamir? Is it democracy whose leader, Zafrullah Jamali, has no
qualms in publicly owning a dictator as his “boss,”
while heaping scorn on his supposed employer -- Parliament? Is
it democracy whose majority party was birthed out of keeping the
defection clause in the constitution dead? Is it democracy in
which Shaukat Aziz, Hafeez Sheikh, Nisar Memon, Jehangir Ashraf,
Mian Soomro, all president’s men, troop together in the
Senate, while Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, Akbar Bugti, Benazir Bhutto,
Nawaz Sharif, Gauhar Ayub sit out as “ineligibles”?
Is
it democracy whose leader is constantly minded by Sharifuddin
Pirzada and Shaukat Aziz to keep him in lockstep with his boss
-- Gen. Musharraf? Yes, we do have Parliament. We do have a prime
minister. We do have a cabinet of ministers. Do these trappings
make us a democracy? Saddam Hussein, if this name still rings
the bell, has had a parliament, a prime minister, a cabinet of
ministers. Would all that make his Iraq a democracy? Just as Iraq
under Saddam Hussein was not a democracy, so is Pakistan under
Gen. Musharraf.
We
can save only one: Pakistan or Gen. Musharraf? Opposition has
sided with Pakistan. Its members, both inside and outside Parliament,
have put Gen. Musharraf on notice: Change from the Khakis and
get yourself new clothes that must be tailored to the constitution.
This is a polite way of saying: Vamoose. You don’t belong
here.
Over
the past three years, he has done everything to keep him in power.
Nothing worked. He now wants himself propped up with all the artillery,
armor, and air power he can muster. He is indeed at war with his
own people. Will he win? No dictator has ever. Nor will he.
Yet
each day that he stays in power, a chunk of Pakistan falls away.
If we let him chip away at the country like that and do nothing
to stop him if we can, we are guilty of treason. How can we stop
him? One way is to line up behind opposition and encourage it
to stay focused on its one-item agenda: the scrapping of LFO.
Even if it takes opposition five years to tear it up, and by extension
bring down dictatorship, it must stay its course.
There
is nothing in the world today that is more dangerous to Pakistan’s
existence than its dictator -- Gen. Musharraf. We must rid ourselves
of him even if it costs us half of Parliament or the whole of
it, which in present scheme of things is of no account, anyway.
Can
this Parliament legislate on foreign policy? Economic policy?
Fiscal policy? Defense policy? Strategic policy? Pakistan-India
relations? Human rights? Women’s rights? Minorities’
rights?
Make
no mistake this Parliament was of questionable legitimacy, to
begin with. It was conceived of as an instrument to legitimize
an illegitimate ruler. Opposition will wash it of the illegitimacy
by giving a public burial to LFO, and with it the illegitimate
power of its sole beneficiary, for good.
If
opposition’s “uncivilized conduct” (read: its
demand for full-scale democracy) leads to an early wrap up of
Parliament, so much the better. Opposition itself must be willing
to pull the prop from under Parliament by offering en masse resignations,
should the need arise. Remember, if Mr Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the
founding father of Pakistan, did not have the right to amend the
constitution, much less should a dictator.
The
writer is a Professor at the Wisconsin University
