Tremors on the fault line
Iqbal Mustafa
Printed in NEWS October 21, 2004

In March this year, I had written a column 'Living on the fault lines', which began by stating that, "Pakistan is perched precariously on the global fault line between the US lead alliance to root out terrorism as a creed, and the ethos in pockets of the Muslim world that nurtures irreconcilable rejection of the domination of Western civilization. Pakistan is trying to walk on the knife-edge of the global divide…." The column went on add that, "While the establishment prides itself for waltzing on the global divide, it is also oblivious of the internal fault lines in the country that are more treacherous than external adventures."

After the passing (or rather bulldozing) of the 'The President to Hold Another Office Bill 2004" on Thursday, 15th. October, serious tremors are appearing on internal fault lines but this time it is not only the Establishment but the whole political span that is suffering oblivion to the fault lines. A partisan view can easily lose sight of the forest for the trees. The combined opposition to the controversial Bill is a strange potpourri of diverse interests and ambitions - unfortunately ideology is conspicuous by its absence, otherwise there are irreconcilable differences amongst them. They are joined by their common howling on one tree - the President's uniform. For independent, rational thinkers it is a Gordian knot, intellectually and emotively. Most of the common people don't really care; their senses are numbed with scepticism and economic uncertainties of their personal lives.

According a poll conducted in urban areas, 75 percent of the people did not understand what the issue was all about. In the rural areas this percentage would rise well into the nineties. The comment of a small newspaper reporter from Kot Addu, near Multan, sums up the situation aptly. When asked what the people feel about the issue, he told me that it is an issue with only 5 percent of people who dabble in politics directly and they endorse the views of their political hierarchy; for the 95 percent it is irrelevant to their lives.
I may be sounding callous and rather insensitive to the lofty ideals of democratic values and civic rights but my views are a different matter from the ground reality that the masses have had enough of political dissonance. Personal interests' aside, the self-image of an educated and well-informed person demands that one should hold clear, certain and morally correct view in any given situation. Acknowledging uncertainty is a prerogative of highly evolved minds and culture; and extremely rare in our part of the world.

However, I am concerned that the 'uniform issue' is going to pitch two diametrically opposite sub-cultures of our society in a duel. I am afraid too that most politically aware people are not going to be able to see the underlying war for supremacy of 'thought' - one school of thought against another. They perceive this as a battle for supremacy of power between a proxy military alignment against those who cherish democratic values or at least democratic optics.

Many other complexities belie the simplicity of this conflict that is arising today. And we must visualise the chessboard clearly before we throw in our support for one side or the other, lest we end up supporting the wrong side inadvertently. Let us begin by identifying the pieces on the board. On the face value there is a combined opposition - MMA, Benazir's PPP, independents and PML-N against the military backed coalition parties. The opposition is claiming that the Bill is unconstitutional because 1) It was passed in violation of constitutional parliamentary procedures and 2) It violates other provisions of the constitution whereby the COAS has taken an oath not to take part in politics and 3) He had promised to give up the office and now is reneging on a pledge he made to the nation.

The coalition government is claiming that since Pakistan is facing extremely serious external and internal threats - of security and resolution of conflicts with hostile forces - the President holds the key to political stability that is desperately required for meeting the challenges. A change of guard at GHQ would dilute the powers and the influence of the President to navigate the dire straits that the country is negotiating. The pro-government elements regard the 'essence' of threats to be paramount to constitutional technicalities, which they claim they have complied with, at least in the letter of the law. The opposition claims that external and internal threats can best be tackled through compliance with fidelity to the 'spirit' of the 1973 constitution.

All that is on face value. The non-MMA component of the opposition wants to push a wedge in the tacit understanding between the coalition government and MMA that was built upon the 17th. amendment. By pitching MMA against the government on the issue of the uniform (that was part of the 17th. Amendment) the non-MMA opposition wants to dislodge the military-backed alliance. MMA holds the key to the success of a street movement against the 'Dual Office Bill'. The other parties are fairly impotent in this regard, as it was witnessed when Shahbaz Shareef wanted to return. The religious parties in MMA are capable of amassing enough dissent on the street to pose a real challenge to the government. They have history on their side: Starting from leveraging Mr. Bhutto's appeasement strategy against him, through Zia-ul-Haq's catastrophic shift to a theological state and by coercing Mian Nawaz Shareef into pandering to their ideology, they are ready to claim more ground for the sovereignty of their theological ideology.

The military establishment has been through a 'Baptism of fire' after 9/11 and turned a new leaf. Old habits die hard; so initially the military establishment continued with the policy of 'mullah appeasement' but the recent turn of events where the Jihadi forces have gone amok all over the world, and are now devouring the civic sanity in Pakistan, have put the military establishment in a do or die situation. "Nothing clears the mind like the sight of the gallows" it is said; General Musharraf is a reformed rationalist and has locked horns with extremist thinking of the religious parties. The nexus between terrorist elements and religious parties is complex and amorphous; never the less it is there! At least as a creed that fuels the die-hard struggle of suicide bombers.

MMA will die as a political force if it submits to Musharraf retaining the uniform, while Musharraf's government (and consequently the country) will be devoured by the extremist elements if it concedes the uniform issue. It is battle of survival between two formal allies whose ways have parted due to global developments. One will survive at the cost of the other. The uniform issue has become symbolic of this war of ideologies within our society. It is a difficult choice for any well-meaning Pakistani! The Politicians in the opposition have to make an enlightened choice - there is no perfect choice left. Do we compromise to live with a military hegemony that is moderate and ready to take on the extremists or try to knock out the only force that can do so. The hard and intellectually unpalatable truth is that the politicians can neither harness the military nor diffuse the fanatical creeds in the country that are gaining strength from the sermons of the religious parties.

Only if the opposition were to take Machiavelli's advice on which ally to choose in a crisis, they would be making a wiser choice.

Iqbal Mustafa
1260 words
16 October 2004