Pakistan's generals, judges and clerics

AFP

Pakistan's fragility, as a state and as a tenuous democracy, has been made manifest yet once again. In bizarre fashion, its military and its judiciary, aided not a little by a rabid cleric, have now joined hands to send an elected government packing. No one has any argument with the notion of the Zardari-led government being corrupt as well as incompetent. Whether it ought to go into a spell in opposition, or whether it needs to take that path at all, is for the people of Pakistan to decide at the next election. And the election is not too far off. If the government manages to finish its five-year term in line with the constitution, Pakistan's people can take justified pride in their determination to promote political pluralism in the country.
The Pakistan army, always a dangerous beast in Pakistan's politics, does not appear willing to have a peaceful transition to a new democratic experience take place. Its ratcheting up of tension with India at the border, leading to the death of soldiers on both sides and the gruesome beheading of an Indian soldier, is a sign of the brazen impunity it continues to enjoy outside the pale of civilian authority.
Given the long tradition of the army's insubordination to elected authority, it is quite possible that President Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf knew nothing of what was happening on the border. Back in the late 1990s, Premier Nawaz Sharif did not know that his army chief Pervez Musharraf was crafting trouble in Kargil. In 1988, Benazir Bhutto was unaware of the army's desperate bid to keep her out of power even though her Pakistan People's Party had won the election. In 1990, it was the army which forced her out.
Asma Jahangir has got it right, as most other people in Pakistan and outside it have. The boots, she says, are back. The evidence is all over the place. A fanatical cleric who has made his home in Canada suddenly decides to return to Pakistan and lead a crusade against a corrupt government. And he does it in queer fashion. He gives the government a deadline to step down from office. And he demands that the scheduled general election be postponed. It is not hard to spot the dark shadows behind Tahirul Quadri, elements who would like nothing better than for democracy to collapse yet once again. Quadri denies he is playing the army's game. There is no reason to believe a man who swoops down on a restive country and tries to organise a march to the presidential home.
And then there is Pakistan's hyper-active judiciary, epitomised by Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The shine has come off the Supreme Court. Where Iftikhar Chaudhry was once looked upon as a heroic figure, and rightly too, because of his refusal to cave in before the Musharraf military regime, today he has turned into a threat to democracy even as he pretends he is doing it a service. His determination to get President Zardari out of office, his success in pushing Yusuf Raza Gilani from prime ministerial authority and now his efforts to have Raja Pervez Ashraf arrested on charges of corruption charmingly complement the efforts of the army and Quadri to push the government over the cliff.
Pakistan's democracy needs to be saved from its soldiers and its judges and its noisy clerics. Already a volatile country -- notice the recent murder of Shias in Quetta, the regular explosions in mosques, the persecution of religious minorities, the provocations of the army on the frontier with India, the turbulence created by the Taliban, the imposition of governor's rule in Baluchistan -- Pakistan will, if its anti-democratic forces are not repulsed or defeated, become symptomatic of absolute instability and could in turn cause turmoil in its immediate vicinity as well as beyond.
Moulana Abul A'la Moududi and his fellow religious fanatics caused mayhem in Lahore in 1953. They did the same in Bangladesh in 1971. In 1977, as part of the Pakistan National Alliance, Moududi's Jamaat-e-Islami helped the army dislodge the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with disastrous consequences. Tahirul Quadri must not be allowed to repeat all that sordid history.
In 1958, the Pakistan army seized the state only months before the first general election slated for early 1959. In 1969, political negotiations on a solution to the crisis engendered by anti-Ayub agitation collapsed when the army took over once again. The Pakistan army scuttled the results of the 1970 election when it refused to hand over power to the majority Awami League. And then it lost East Pakistan in a war with Bengali guerrillas. Ziaul Haq brought medieval barbarism into Pakistan. And Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 only because he was unhappy at being replaced as army chief.
Pakistan's judiciary has largely been a pliant body of often ingratiating legal luminaries, as exemplified by Justice Munir. Men like Justice A.R. Cornelius ended up serving military regimes. And now Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry dictates, to people's horror, when prime ministers should be thrown out and who should replace them.
Once upon a time, there was Justice M.R. Kayani. Martial Law could not intimidate him into silence. Democracy and decency were ideals he upheld, even in those dreadful Ayub Khan times. But far from his mind was any thought of ordering governments around and spreading judicial terror in Pakistan.
Generals, judges and clerics, when they try to run an elected government out of town, are an explosive mix. Pakistan's citizens must beat back these predators if their country is to be their own.

The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.
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