Musharraf makes a farce of democracy
By Husain Haqqani
Gulf News, January 24, 2007
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General Pervez Musharraf's well wishers had expected him to legitimise his rule and put Pakistan firmly on the road to constitutional democracy by holding free and fair elections in 2007.
Instead, Musharraf has decided not to risk his position and power at a free
poll. He will be "elected" president by the parliament and provincial
legislatures that were elected in the tainted 2002 elections just as their term
enters its last days.
Some observers see Musharraf's decision as reflecting his total hold on power
in Pakistan. In fact it indicates the weakness of a military ruler embattled
at home and abroad.
The Pakistani constitution envisions a parliamentary system of government, with
directly elected legislatures at the federal and provincial levels. The president,
under the constitution, is head of state and the symbol of the unity of the
federation.
He is, therefore, elected by an electoral college comprised of the National
Assembly, the Senate and the four provincial assemblies. Under the constitutional
scheme, the president derives his mandate from the mandate given by the people
to their elected representatives.
The four presidents elected under the constitution since its adoption in 1973
(Chaudhry Fazal Elahi, Gulam Ishaq Khan, Farooq Leghari and Rafiq Tarar) were
elected by newly elected assemblies at the beginning of their five-year terms.
Musharraf, on the other hand, is seeking election from assemblies whose own
flawed mandate is about to come to an end. Legal experts known for facilitating
military rule in Pakistan have said that the manoeuvre is legal. But such technical
legality is not a substitute for legitimacy.
Waiver from charter ban
As of now Musharraf is "president" because he decreed himself so as
a result of a referendum held before the legislative elections of 2002, which
were deemed by international observers and Musharraf's friends in the US State
Department as "flawed".
Then, too, Musharraf did not seek election under the terms of the constitution
and gave himself a waiver from the constitutional bar on employees of the state
(a concept that includes serving military officers) holding elective office.
Musharraf's term of office, if it can be called that given that he secured the
position by fiat and not by election, ends on November 16, 2007. His manoeuvre
is an attempt to ensure that he remains president without having to seek election
from legislatures elected by the people.
Official spokesmen claim that Musharraf's "term as president" would
end a week before the completion of the five-year term of the present assemblies
on November 16.
Therefore, if the next presidential election is held between September and October
2007 then the outgoing assemblies can rubber-stamp Musharraf as president without
risking a proper election.
Such quasi-legal manoeuvres have been used by Pakistan's military rulers since
the country's first coup in 1958. But legitimacy is a political, not a technical,
matter. Even after the rubber stamping by an emasculated parliament and weakened
provincial legislatures it is doubtful whether Musharraf can overcome his regime's
crisis of legitimacy.
In fact, if history is any guide, Pakistan's coup makers have always become
politically weaker after manipulating themselves into a second term.
Rigged referendum
The pattern of Pakistan's coup makers has been that the general seizing power
rules for a few years with the help of a Supreme Court judgment approving his
military takeover followed by a first presidential term based on a rigged referendum.
This is followed by a presidential election of some sort, with minimal pretense
of genuine democracy and political contestation, and it is at this stage that
the absence of legitimacy of the ruler comes to the fore.
Field Marshal Ayoub Khan sought "re-election' through Basic Democrats,
an electoral college of 80,000 local council members. He had hoped for a walkover
but had to rig even that poll when the sister of Pakistan's founder, the late
Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, challenged Ayoub Khan as the combined opposition candidate
and showed her popular support at huge public rallies.
General Zia-ul Haq ruled from 1977 to 1984 on the strength of his coup d'etat
and gave himself a 5-year term through a referendum that hardly anybody bothered
to vote in.
But a relatively free election, albeit on non-party basis, returned a parliament
in 1985 that did cramp Zia's style, leading to its premature dissolution three
years later.
Popular support for Fatima Jinnah and the refusal of Zia-ul Haq's protege Mohammad
Khan Junejo to be his puppet showed that Pakistan's politicians might be too
weak to remove military rulers from power but they can withhold legitimacy from
the rulers.
Like Ayoub Khan and Zia-ul Haq before him, Musharraf remains fearful that once
he becomes a civilian and takes off his general's uniform, he will be susceptible
to coups d'etat like all civilian rulers of Pakistan.
But by failing to chart a new course Musharraf is setting himself for the same
failures that were faced by his military predecessors.
