ON MUSHARRAF'S PLANNED IMPEACHMENT





Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (the first Prime Minister of India) practiced yoga by standing on his head. Perhaps that was the only way he could make sense of our sub-continental politics.


Had he been alive today, blood would have rushed uncontrollably down to his head as he witnessed his beloved Congress Party cohabiting in an unlikely Congress-led United Progressive Alliance coalition first with the Communist Party of India to come into power, and then with the Samajwadi Party to remain in power. After watching angry members of the Opposition BJP throw bundles of soiled notes into the floor of the Lok Sabha as evidence of corruption by the UPA to win over their supporters, Nehru might have found it as difficult, as his Congress will do in the future, to walk upright again.


For the first time since the mid-1970s, there is a direct parallel between the political scenarios prevailing in his India and in our Pakistan. Then, two democratically elected and (give or take a few slaps) popular leaders ruled – Mrs Indira Gandhi in New Dehli and Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Islamabad. Both had a sufficient majority not to be held hostage to the caprices of coalition politics. Today, both in the Lok Sabha and in our National Assembly, coalitions between unlikely partners prevail.


Compared to us, a three-legged India would seem to be home and dry, at least until the next general elections which have to be held before May 2009. We in Pakistan however are rapidly sinking into a political quicksand of our own making.


The most recent cavity has been the announcement on 5th August by the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) that, casting aside their differences on a common approach to the economy, inflation, power and food shortages, our shrinking foreign exchange reserves, flight of capital, population indiscipline, and the timing for the restoration of the judiciary, they stand united in a joint determination to remove President Pervez Musharraf.


Parliamentarians and lawyers from both sides of the fray are searching in our Constitution for those Satanic Verses, those darker provisions that, if invoked, could remove an already disrobed and disarmed president. Newspapers and TV channels have become cemeteries of short-lived analyses on which is the best way of removing Musharraf.


Should he be impeached, and if so, on what constitutionally unassailable grounds? Should those grounds be confined to alleged misdemeanors during his current term of office (i.e. since November last), or can the charge-sheet against him, like the Chinese scroll used as a theme at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, be uncurled to reveal misdemeanors stretching over the whole span of his period of self-authorised governance?


Had Musharraf ever been inclined to go, October 1999 would have been the month, for that was when he had been dismissed as the Chief of Army Staff by the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Once Musharraf had survived that attempt to dislodge him, the date of his final departure has always remained in his own hands. It would appear that he is as determined today as he was in 1999 to fight back, to contest an impeachment under the shield of the 1973 Constitution.


His opponents hope however that, frightened by the spectre of impeachment, he will 'chicken out' and resign. That would save them the bother of having to amass sufficient votes in each of the four Provincial Assemblies for resolutions requesting the National Assembly and the Senate to institute formal impeachment proceedings against him. The race to oust him has begun, and with it the bidding. Who will vote against him, and at what price? Who will vote for him, and what cost?


Meanwhile, the parliamentary proceedings at the provincial and the national levels are moving at a pace that parallels the tempo of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary. The more ardent proponents of both causes are irked at the slowness in achieving either. It is almost as if the hare and the tortoise seem now to be running at the same speed.


Centuries ago, citizens of Rome stood on a day in March 44 BC outside the Senate and watched their elected senators assemble for a session that ended with the assassination of Julius Caesar. Their modern equivalents - the citizens of Pakistan - are being made to witness the slow execution of a former Chief of Army Staff-cum-President by a firing squad consisting of elected parliamentarians, using ballots instead of bullets.


At this juncture, it surely no longer matters whether one is for Musharraf or against him, for any political party opposing him or against it. What matters to every citizen of Pakistan today is the State of Pakistan and the office that symbolises the unity of our Republic – i.e. the Presidency. We have allowed it to be debased and reviled. It is time, all the more so after the recent Independence celebrations on 14 August, to heed Quaid-i-Azam's tearless laments from the silence of his grave.


President Musharraf must be receiving a barrage of advice from those close to him, and those who now wish they were never close to him. While he is a man who prides himself on making his own mistakes, he might like to take consolation from the words of another similarly besieged Army general many years ago. US General Douglas MacArthur was relieved by President Harry S. Truman in 1951 for insubordination.


MacArthur had written almost as if addressing his fellow Pakistani general: 'The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on the one side -- and the voice of your conscience on the other.' And for Musharraf's opponents who have declared war on him, a separate phrase of advice: 'War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.'


Can any country, especially one that is at war within itself, afford the price of such prolonged indecision?





[DAWN, 16.8.08]