An unstable power triangle

President, army chief and PM was the distribution of power supposed to preclude imposition of martial law in the 90s.

According to the latest batch of WikiLeaks cables, the triangle of power in Pakistan remains unstable because the man who actually runs the country, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, trusts Asif Ali Zardari and dislikes Nawaz Sharif. The writer of the cable, Ambassador Anne Patterson — who must be happy she is no longer posted in Islamabad — also notes that the general cannot afford to be seen being too cosy with Zardari because of his unpopularity (20 per cent public approval as against 80 per cent for Nawaz Sharif) and that Zardari fears he could be ousted by the army.

There was a time when Pakistan — wrongly — thought that a triangle of power in Islamabad ensured stability. The president under Article 58(2)(b), plus the army chief on one side and the prime minister on the other, was the three-way distribution of power that was supposed to preclude the imposition of martial law in the 1990s. What happened was a sad series of topplings in which the president repeatedly ganged up with the army chief to dismiss elected governments under the dreaded article. The decade turned out to be the most disastrous in the country’s history, a truth that was realised by two repentant mainstream parties when they wrote up the Charter of Democracy in 2006.

The Pavlovian reflex, however, is at work again, but this time the triangle is: the PPP in power at the centre, the PML-N in Punjab and the army chief in GHQ in Rawalpindi. What has the army experienced at the hands of the two parties? The GHQ has always thought that the PPP was too liberal and therefore not sincere to the country’s religious ideology; it was also not outspokenly against India and therefore not sincere to its anti-India strategy. It had to live down the memory of its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, humiliating an already defeated army in 1971 when he arrested its top brass. On the other hand, the GHQ, formerly affectionate towards General Zia’s protégé politician Nawaz Sharif, had to bear the shock of the rightwing leader’s firing of two army chiefs, Jahangir Karamat and Pervez Musharraf, one after the other.

Can one say that the GHQ has learned to fear Nawaz Sharif and that the PPP has learned to fear the GHQ? Actually, that is what the triangle looks like, which the WikiLeaks have confirmed. Nawaz Sharif is not properly a ‘national leader’ because his party has a weak showing in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; but he is the unquestioned leader of Punjab, which is over two-thirds of the population of the country, and the guardian of Pakistan’s India-centric nationalism. The paradox is that his worldview is closer to that of the army and his view of the war against terrorism affirms the scepticism with which the army views a pro-India American strategy in the region. His party thinks that the war against terrorism is not Pakistan’s war; and the army should normally go along with this posture because of its relationship with the Haqqani Group in North Waziristan.

General Kayani has interpreted the political situation right from the point of his force. He finds comfort in Nawaz Sharif’s views on foreign policy but would prefer to work with a PPP government which is weak at the centre and scared of the army. Yet, by increasingly distancing himself from the Charter of Democracy and talking of a mid-term change of government, Nawaz Sharif may be firming up his position within an increasingly outspoken second rung leadership in his party. But by so doing he is strengthening the clout of the army vis-à-vis the PPP government. The army chief indicates his approval of this strategy by allowing Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to meet him. It is normally accepted in Pakistan that Nawaz Sharif is popular in the Punjabi-dominated army while Zardari is not. The army watches TV channels and knows how unpopular Zardari is among the people; hence, General Kayani’s intervention in the judicial crisis in 2009 and his rejection of the Kerry-Lugar Bill later on.

That the army chief actually sought to strengthen his position further in Islamabad is proved by the WikiLeaks revelation that he thought of having ANP chief Asfandyar Wali as president of Pakistan. Had that happened, Mr Wali would have been presiding impotently over a government formed by another party with a majority in the National Assembly. He must have sensed that a figurehead president holding the post of the chief of the majority party would actually be dictatorial, despite the removal of chief executive powers from him. Since this did not happen, the chief had to fall back on the ‘fear’ that characterises the triangle: the PPP has been putty in his hands in the realm of foreign policy and has no interest in asserting itself, vis-à-vis India at the cost of getting toppled before its term. That he consorts with an unpopular and perceived corrupt party cannot but give him moments of anxiety.

The triangle of power in Pakistan remains essentially unstable simply because it is unnatural for a democracy to sustain this kind of arrangement. One may ask whose fault is that, and here the answer would have to be the army, with its multiple interventions and violations of the constitution in taking over power. A ‘pragmatic’ Zardari can get America to support Pakistan economically more willingly by expressing his hatred of the Taliban and al Qaeda in lockstep with the MQM and the ANP; he can normalise relations with India, rapidly ignoring the slow progress made by the dialogue process started by General Musharraf. On the other hand, a ‘principled’ Nawaz Sharif will move slowly on both these fronts despite his undimmed memory of inviting Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore for a patch-up that the then army chief did not like. That is why the UAE ruler has had to define the two by saying that whereas Nawaz Sharif is clean, he remains “dangerous” (for America) Zardari is not clean but he is “good” (for America).

What is needed is for the army to abide by its constitutionally-defined role, and that should be to guard the country’s borders and not get into the business of determining who will win the next election and become prime minister or president. As for civilian leaders, they must learn to be pragmatic and develop the kind of suppleness of approach needed to avoid being internationally isolated.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2010.