Analysis: Fragile, handle with care!
Present govt only had 150-200 days left for its tenure, when SC held Gilani guilty of contempt of court.
Transitions are normally prone to accidents.
The present government only had 150-200 days left for the completion of its constitutional tenure, when the Supreme Court verdict held the first-ever unanimously-elected prime minister of Pakistan guilty of contempt of court.
Despite the best of efforts by all the relevant players over the last 50 months or so, the country finds itself on the verge of another journey into the unknown.
In the immediate run, it would be almost impossible for the opposing camps not to indulge in blame games and political point-scoring. In the longer run, however, all those who matter in this high wire political game would find it in their own interests not to let the political bolt from the judicial blue turn into a full blown crisis leading to reversal of the ongoing transition process.
A transition process from a military rule to a truly democratic dispensation cannot be switched on and off at will. Once begun, forced invariably by compelling historic developments, the process takes its own usually long, and characteristically raucous, time to reach its goal.
Pakistan has been transitioning since the 2008 elections to a seemingly democratic dispensation from a nine-year-long overt military dictatorship. And, as usual, the unavoidable institutional confusion and organisational disorder, which march in-step with such transitions, had been testing the patience of the nation all along. The possibility, therefore, of the transition mode coming to an abrupt halt, to degenerate once again into an undemocratic dispensation, had never really dimmed these four-plus years.
Pakistan has suffered such disruptions at least three times in its short 65-year history. The first phase of transition lasted for almost 11 years during which a new nation trying to transition from a British colony to an independent republic found the associated chaos paving the way to the its first military takeover – which, in turn, led to the dismemberment of the country in December 1971.
The next transition lasted for just about five years, once again ending in a military takeover. By the time it ended in a plane crash in 1988, religious hypocrisy had taken over the ideological moorings of the nation.
The third one, which was not a transition in the genuine sense, as the military had remained covertly in-charge of the government all through, lasted for 11 years, ending again in an overt military takeover.
During these 11 years of covert military rule and the following nine years of overt military dictatorship, Pakistan had become a well-entrenched security state.
By the time the 2008 elections were held, the country had become diametrically opposed to what the founding fathers had wanted Pakistan to be and what the unanimously-approved 1973 Constitution of the country had envisaged.
What is happening today is seemingly Pakistan’s fourth transition. It was a totally disfigured constitution which the departing military regime had left behind and there were no institutions left on the ground which could be called democratic even in name.
However, notwithstanding the unavoidable bedlam of rebuilding democratic institutions ground up, for the first time in Pakistan’s history the country seems today to have succeeded in attaining a relatively independent judiciary, a relatively free media, a relatively strong Parliament, a relatively less dictatorial executive and a relatively less predatory establishment.
It should be a matter of some satisfaction all around that today the judiciary and the media, without any seeming let or hindrance, are keeping the executive under a close watch and making it constantly accountable in the court of law and the bar of public opinion respectively. And, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, the establishment appears to be willingly conceding control over the levers of power to the elected representatives.
The chances are, in their own respective vested interests, all these players – the judiciary, the media, political parties and the establishment – would hopefully join hands and cooperate in keeping the ongoing transition process on course and help it on to its final destination.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2012.