It’s time we had a true leader

Arriving on the heels of 70^th Independence Day of Pakistan the judgment by the Supreme Court on the Panama Papers scandal has hopefully changed and turned the ways politics will now be conducted in this country. The judgment is most likely not only to infuse order in a society that remained ‘autocratically manipulated’ and ‘democratically corrupted’ but also change the most important aspect of the state — power.

Those that have for long believed that it’s not the process or the system but the end result that matters will have to change the ways of their politics to attune to the new post-Panama judgment; the political landscape in this country will now be such in which institutions would now matter more than the individual leaders. Democracy was always inclined to serve the people but entitling and servicing people was never possible through ‘chartering democracy’ — an agreement signed between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in 2006 — that literally wiped out democratic accountability from the political system in this country making those in government not only powerful but unchallenged and corrupt to the core. If the idea was to put up a united front against the other competing power — the military — it worked. The generals were kept at a distance from parliament but parliament also distanced itself from the people. Governed under the principle of ‘democracy is the best revenge’ Pakistan witnessed allegedly the most corrupt government complete its constitutional tenure (2008-2013). It became most corrupt because it was allowed to become so by the ‘charter of democracy signed and restrained opposition’ in parliament. Those that didn’t act and check the ‘looters and plunderers’ of the national wealth during their tenure in the opposition were reciprocally given the same treatment when they came to power in 2013. And then Panama happened. Stopped in its tracks by the judgment of the Supreme Court, the PML-N government has now not only to bear the indignity of seeing their thrice-elected prime minister being disqualified on the charges of corruption but also the embarrassment of witnessing the trial of family members of their leader and tainted leadership in the party — all to be tried by the National Accountability Bureau.



With the end of the PML-N government in 2017 the ‘charter of democracy’ would have turned a full circle and come to its beginning. Democracy in Pakistan emerged from the ashes of dictatorship, evolved in a corrupt system only to be stopped in its tracks by a judiciary that has now held the corrupt accountable. By doing this the judiciary has ensured that the charter of democracy that signed and designed corrupt political system would no more prevail.

One million people died and 15 million were uprooted from their homes when Pakistan came into being. If this country was led and governed by able men and women would seven decades of political instability be the cost we would be paying? Military dictators opened their arms to embrace American patronage –$78 billion received as military and economic aid from them since independence — and thus gave them the right not only to infringe our sovereignty but also act as our masters to ask us to ‘do more’ and continue doing more. If this was not enough we opened ourselves to the Arab world as well. The superpower patronage and the sectarian Islamism, which together with endless weaponry and limitless funds that were showered on us as blessings, created this intolerant Pakistan that we have today. The two very relevant questions that one may ask are: is Pakistan in this state because of the military dictatorship and military rules? Does the military keep politicians under check in Pakistan? These questions are important to be asked, debated and answered because these very questions will be the civilian electioneering slogans in the run-up to the 2018 elections. Spiked by the Supreme Court decision, democracy is most likely to jump on the ‘revenge bandwagon’ to challenge the only other stakeholder and competitor for power — the military. Seen in the context of the post-General Musharraf military standpoint and view that democracy must be allowed to flourish, the military cannot be entirely blamed for failing to keep politicians in check. Politicians themselves have demonstrated that they lack the political will to thoroughly deliberate important issues that are related to our national interests in parliament. In fact, both the Zardari and Nawaz Sharif governments have demonstrated a keen desire to unilaterally spearhead policymaking and taking actions that are not preceded by thoroughly debated and deliberated political and military estimates, and without considering the long-term effects of such actions on national security.

Pakistan was conveniently photoshopped to look like a deep state being run by military generals in both the democratic tenures of Zardari and Nawaz. Unlike the military, the civilians have a leadership that is answerable to the voters. All pending actions against the specific extremist groups in Punjab are not because the military does not want to rein them in but only because the civilian government is reluctant to undertake such an action as it will eat into its electoral votes. A Dawn-leak was made to give an impression that the deep state was entwined with the Islamist radical groups. Managing to portray themselves as victims at the height of their political power, the civilian leadership chose not to join hands with the military because it believed that Pakistan is in such a sorry state because of the military dictators’ (mis)rules. So it chose to lead and confront the military by dictating what it considered was best for Pakistan. Making the matters worst, the military also recoiled and given the unilateral deep state impressions that the civilian leadership continued to give to the world (sometimes from their diplomatic outposts like the one headed by Hussain Haqqani as a Pakistani ambassador in Washigton) the military was also forced to ask a question — ‘can the civilian leadership be trusted with state secrets?’



The ‘charter of democracy’ gifted us a polarised Pakistan. Its two poles the democracy and the military unfortunately worked at cross-purpose, not because the military did not want to submit to the civilian authority but only because it resented the civilian leadership involved in corrupt practices, in the absence of democratic opposition, and which had removed all the constitutional ways of remaining accountable to anybody in the state. All that the military needed was a sincere and ‘people servicing’ democracy and not a democracy that took to taking its revenge on the military.

A true leader can sense this civil-military imbalance. Only a true leader can understand the importance of joint civil-military huddle — a national security council — with the military entirely and totally willing to submit to the civilian authority. For seven decades Pakistan has been deprived of such a true visionary leadership. Isn’t it time that we had one?

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2017.

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