General Musharraf’s Roadmap: A Khaki Constitution?

The much-awaited 'roadmap' regarding a timeframe for general elections announced by General Pervez Musharraf, tucked away almost as an aside in his long speech of 14 August, actually clarifies only two things. First, like his military predecessors, General Musharraf intends to be around for a long time, an intention apparent in the pronouncement regarding a 10-year schedule of development projects that he launched in the same speech. The symbolism of the occasion was captured in a somewhat graphic manner by the only chair in the centre of the large stage at the Convention Centre in Islamabad from where the President rose to make his address. Second, by the last day of the expiry of the Supreme Court mandate, i.e., 11 October 2002, the military regime plans to hold six different election exercises in a 10-day period beginning 1 October 2002, to the National Assembly, Senate and four provincial assemblies.

Some hardened cynics have likened the roadmap to that famous description of a bikini: "What it reveals is suggestive, but what it conceals is vital".

1. The roadmap did not mention what type of elections are being planned, party or non-party, and only later was it officially clarified that the polls would be on party basis. The confusion arose because the local elections were also non-party, while General Zia-ul-Haq's 1985 general elections had precluded participation by political parties;
2. The roadmap 'conceals' what kind of constitutional amendments are being envisaged, whether they will end up defacing the 1973 Constitution's parliamentary character;
3. The roadmap 'conceals' the precise date and mode of transfer of power, relegating this key aspect to what is termed as 'Phase 1V';
4. The roadmap 'conceals' when political activities will be permitted to be active, as they were outlawed after the ban imposed ostensibly as a "temporary law and order" measure prior to then US president Bill Clinton's five-hour stopover in March 2000. (Officially it was later clarified that these would be permitted 90 days before the polls.)

However, the most inexplicable part of the roadmap is the inordinately long time in the run-up to the general elections. There are 14 long months from the present to D-Day in October 2002. When president Clinton had pressed General Musharraf to give a roadmap in March 2000, the latter had declined on the plea that if a timeframe was provided that early on, "the bureaucracy will wait me Out and nothing will get done in the meantime". But now, that is precisely what's going to happen, between August 2001 and October 2002.

Why do military regimes take so long to do the obvious, in the process adding to their problems and creating new headaches for the country?

1. General Ziaul Haq announced a roadmap spread over 18 months beginning on 14 August 1983, and ending with the elections in March 1985, with a similar infatuation with phases starting with local polls followed by a non-party election with a mass agitation thrown in between;
2. General Yahya Khan allowed almost a year for an election campaign through his roadmap, the Legal Framework Order (LEO), whose ambiguity contributed to the country's undoing;
3. General Ayub Khan started his re-election campaign two years in advance under the garb of a year-long 'Decade of Development' meant to "educate the people about achievements" in that period, followed by presidential elections in the fall of 1969.

Meanwhile, General Musharraf's military regime laments the economy's refusal to revive, and wonder why the educated and the professionals continue to flee the country or why the bureaucracy is sitting pretty. The answer in the latter case is simple: they are trying to 'wait out' this interregnum in probably the officialdom's longest 'go-slow' period in Pakistan's history, which has even necessitated an unprecedented personal presidential 'love letter' to all serving civil servants of the DMG. Basically, a "we still need you. please cooperate with us" appeal; it has fallen on deaf ears.

The most critical question is what kind of democracy will emerge as a result of the October 2002 polls:genuine parliamentary democracy, French-style dominant Presidency with a fairly-strong prime minister, a variation of the Turkish and Indonesian models, or a return to the Pakistani 1985 Ziaist model?

If indicators are anything to go by, Pakistan could end up with a structure that was originally envisaged in General Zia's March 1985 Restoration of Constitution Order (Rc0) but which was shot down by the National Assembly after an intense 45-day debate. A khaki president, a khaki-tinted Constitution, a khaki-dominated National Security Council, a khaki-run accountability process that would also 'vet' politicians before they are permitted into the political arena, and a khakibacked local government structure where the Army Monitoring Team will 'assist' each Nazim under a new more politically-correct nomenclature, i.e., District Support Team.

If this were to come to pass, with the clock being turned back to March 1985, if not to earlier times, then this would not be a new system of 'checks and balances', but rather a new experiment of quasi-democracy with an intrusive military and shades of Indonesia under General Suharto. In that case, not only would Pakistan's 1973 Constitution undergo radical 'reconstruction' but, equally importantly, the Mission Statement of the Pakistan Armed Forces would have to be altered, from "defending the country" to "governing the country", with both being full-time occupations.

In this context, it is instructive to examine the experience of Turkey, and Suharto's Indonesia. In both, the Army has had an intrusive presence in the political system and in neither, has the army been able to provide political and economic stability. After Suharto's Ayub Khan-style exit, stability there turned out to be a smokescreen, and the unravelling of the 'New Order' leaving in its wake a ruined economy, a polarised polity, a fractured state which was forced to concede independence to East Timor, and, from the military's point of view, the unkindest cut of all—the failure to destroy the political legacy of the person it had reviled the most for three decades, President Soekarno, whose daughter returned to office with popular support and the military's backing.

Turkey is another good example of failure in political engineering by the khaki. After three and a half coups, hanging of a prime minister, installation of a khaki-dominated National Security Council and the banning, three times over, of the Islamist Party under khaki prodding, what is the net result? The Islamist Party has now resurfaced under a new title, the Justice and Development Party, and its leader, Tayyab Erdogan, is by far Turkey's most popular leader according to opinion polls. He had been mayor of Istanbul where he ran an efficient and honest administration. As Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, Masut Yilmaz, a Kemalist, has said, "in all democratic countries, politics determines national security, but in Turkey, national security determines politics". Moves are already afoot in Turkey to clip the military's political wings.

Indonesia and Turkey aside, Pakistan's own political past should be a good guide for the military regime. In 1985, General Zia was at the peak of his power, certainly more 'powerful' than General Musharraf is today. He had pulled off the hanging of Bhutto, he had survived the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy agitation, he had managed a successful and credible non-party election through a 52 percent turnout, he presided over a booming economy courtesy the Afghan war, law and order was pretty much under control, and, above all, within the context of the dependency mindset of our ruling elite, he had enjoyed absolute, unwavering American support. Even when so comfortably placed, General Zia too was unable to impose decisions by diktat: within 48 hours of the National Assembly's convening, through a secret ballot, it rejected his choice of Speaker and forced him to alter his constitutional amendments, relating to the National Security Council.

Given such illuminating and relevant examples, the military regime of today's Pakistan has no alternative but to read history and learn from it. The goal should not be to enhance an individual or institution's unlimited power or accord it a status of permanent political primacy in the power structure. That will neither work nor will it last. General Pervez Musharraf should extend the offer that he repeatedly made to the Indian prime minister, to the political forces at home as well, to talk to him at "any time, anywhere and on any issue". This will help the military regime to reach out to the political forces, so that consultation leads to consensus on new 'rules of the game' that are vital for political stability. Only then will a 'new beginning' have really been made for a movement towards Pakistan's democratic destination, without detours.