Lethal perceptions

The people who really matter in the country are firm about holding this year’s election as scheduled. Most of the doubts regarding possible diversion and foul play were attributed to the off-and-on confusion in the corridors of power. However, with all the stakeholders having stood up to having elections on the completion of the present government’s tenure, there should not be any doubts about them any more except of course the unavoidable act of God.

Now with both the Army Chief and the CJP on the same page, the Election Commission of Pakistan too has dispelled the impression that issues such as delimitation of constituencies would come in the way of the polls on technical grounds.

In this background — with all the stakeholders on the same page — blitzkrieg announcement of the Bajwa Doctrine was shockingly just out of the blue. It seemed out of tune when read in the light of his recent pro-democratic statements. And when one heard the reported attribution that he considers the 18^th Amendment as or more damaging than Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s six points to secession and creation of Bangladesh — shock was double whammy!

The Bajwa Doctrine and its timing plunged the country in a fiery debate casting its future once again in doubt. While most of the journalists who attended General Bajwa’s talk at the GHQ, rushed to their computers to churn out their interpretative stories. I smelled something rotten. Long articles, one after the other, interpreting the ‘Bajwa Doctrine’ in different ways they individually could think of, it seems to be a bugled announcement of knocking on the door of the coming ‘Messiah’ who would save the country from going to the ‘dogs’. I won’t test your memory to ask who used that word and for whom. Though General Bajwa does not seem to be the man who would bend to foreign diktat and perhaps, his flesh is not so weak to fall for temptation to be masqueraded in the Western capitals as an Asian De Gaulle or to be exactly, the emperor with new clothes.

Director General of ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor’s remarks on the ‘Bajwa Doctrine’ in a press conference were much relieving. They dispelled the misperception created by the pen pushers that the Army Chief is anti-18^th Amendment. Pakistan is lucky to have in General Bajwa a man in uniform who thinks without its nature of absolute arbitrariness. It was his sagacity and timely ‘retreat’ of a tweet that saved the country from a political disaster at the hands of now deposed prime minister and his team who were hell-bent on seeking vendetta under the cover of Dawn leaks.

His second retreat on misinterpretation of the Bajwa Doctrine shows his wisdom and a quick retrieve from the hornets’ nest. As a supporter of 18^th Amendment, one would appreciate the DG ISPR’s categorical assertion that the army chief was not opposed to 18^th Amendment and wants provinces to be truly empowered.

Most certainly no two views. Rather, it is a fact that 18^th Amendment has further consolidated the federation, the evolutionary process for devolution to the grassroots level has to continue vigorously to nurture and nourish a strong democratic society and culture of tolerance in the real spirit of the Quaid’s vision of a Pakistan in which religion shall have to be a private affair and Benazir Bhutto’s Charter of Democracy co-signed by Mian Nawaz Sharif as blueprint for a populist and egalitarian Pakistan.

The misconstrued Bajwa Doctrine generating the impression that the army as an institution is opposed to 18^th Amendment have been allayed by the ISPR chief. His quick clarification punctured the suddenly revived aspirations of the fissiparous forces and irredentist ambitions that had been buried by the resolution of the tricky issue of provincial autonomy in the 1973 Constitution and 18^th Amendment.

God willing, the nation will soon be completing a full decade of democracy notwithstanding confusion getting worst confounded by the powers that be and other manipulative players who perhaps need bell, book and candle treatment to exorcise them of their hideous doctrinarian ambitions.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s statement that there would be no judicial martial law, elections would be held as scheduled and power transferred to the next elected government following his half an hour meeting with American Vice-President Pence in Washington means something more than meets the eye and is definitely reassuring. So is the firm snub by CJP Mr Justice Saqib Nisar to the suggestion by MNA Sheikh Rasheed.

Though the clarification on Bajwa Doctrine by the DG ISPR should be enough to bury the controversy, the debate so ignited nationwide would take time to die. One should have read the doctrine along with General Bajwa’s repeated reiterations that the army does not pose any threat to democracy — notwithstanding one’s lurking fears in the current atmosphere of eerie lull before the storm, dispelling of doom and gloom when elections are around the corner — is just the need of the hour.

One must remember that perceptions are more lethal than reality. I consider the Army Chief’s pledge as credible that no harm would come to democracy from the army. In democracy, elections are a means to an end for the dispensation of good governance within the parameters of the Constitution, rule of law and the exercise of sovereignty through parliament.

Not only General Bajwa’s assurance that the army as an institution would stand by the judiciary and that it would ensure its decisions are implemented are timely to blunt the vicious volleys of ongoing attacks on the apex judiciary and judges by the PML-N zealots masquerading as ministers who have a notorious reputation of ransacking the Supreme Court in 1998, manhandling the late chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah and bankrolling a judicial coup by the Sharif brothers.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2018.

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