Is sun freezing on Pakistan’s democracy again?

By Muhammad Akram
Daily Times
LAHORE: Is sun freezing on Pakistan’s democracy again? Or will it spurn out of the hovering black and chilly clouds of another military coup? Rests largely on how the democratic forces correct the move they made in haste over ‘memogate’ matter by shifting weight behind parliament that can offer a sea of solutions to a political problem instead of relying on the ‘independent lordships’ who are confined in the hallowed halls of the courtroom and laws and procedures of operational domain.

A rather late development, yet more significant and treasonous from the mouth of same Mansoor Ijaz on whose testimony the military establishment is seeking numerous heads on plate, can be of some help to be rational at least for one more year than staying aloof and pursuing an advice that would lead the nascent democracy nowhere.

The reported reaching out to Arab world by ISI Director General Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, whose satisfaction about the evidence on offer from Mansoor Ijaz had brought the country to the current impasse, requires to be looked into rather more urgently since the person in this case still holding the all-powerful office and the person implicated has already relinquished the charge.

The demand that ISI DG be made to resign on the similar grounds on which Husain Haqqani was forced to resign is not out of place. It would rather help defuse the persisting tension between the elected government and power military establishment besides allowing the extended bench of Supreme Court to reach a just decision, if it sees the petitions are maintainable and required to look deep into a matter parliament had already taken cognisance of.

The mainstream opposition PML-N, the petitioner in the memogate case and whose parliamentary party leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has endorsed rather reluctantly the call of ISI DG’s resignation required to agitate this matter too as ferociously as it was pursuing the memogate case. Any selection on its part as to which matter should be pressed with how much intensity and which should be avoided would further make its political credentials doubtful. Coming out clean from the farce it has indulged in would be important for its left out political credential largely been tainted in the face of the allegation that the party approached the SC on memogate on the behest of the establishment for the sake of a working relationship with establishment whom it had abandoned and vice-versa since 1999 Gen Musharraf-led coup.

The PML-N is reportedly under a lot of stress following the emergence of Imran Khan’s PTI in its bastion, Punjab. Hence, the memogate petition in the Supreme Court to let the military establishment off the hook it was seeing itself over the May 2 Abbottabad fiasco, the following PNS Mehran shame and more recently the NATO attack on Salala border post which added another 24 numbers to the casualties the military faced at the hand of its ally in the war on terror.

However, the PML-N leadership had miscalculated the gains it was eyeing out of memogate case against the blunder it committed by letting the military off the hook and putting in place the PPP-led coalition government. Unfortunately, and this to the belated understanding in certain political circles of the PML-N, is allowing to sit on the driving seat those who had time and again proven themselves not just incapable but dangerous too for the job of proverbial repeated mantra of steering the country out of dangers.

For the PML-N, the party has already pulled the trigger by moving the court and it cannot take back the bullet it has fired so enthusiastically yet childishly without looking into the consequences the matter bore not just for the PPP but for itself too apparently in the run-up to appease the establishment.

The resilience the PPP-led coalition government is showing in the face of a manoeuvered ‘memogate’ scandal, with establishment pulling the strings from behind, suggests that it believes it can win the battle yet again. The steadfastness of its allies, particularly the PML-Q and the MQM, was remarkable so far since both were largely been dubbed as establishment embedded parties. They had to choose between the PPP and the establishment the time has already approached with the filing of replies to the apex court but their staying on the other side of the fence and not crossing it over yet suggests that either a defeat to their friend’s (PPP’s) enemy or perhaps the situation has not reached the boiling point where there need is felt by their real old mentors.

The knowledgeable political observers, however, see not so dark a scenario for the PPP believing the threat it can pose to the polity in case not allowed to come clean out of the fiasco would be disastrous for its detractors too. The PPP does not have the option to bow down before the might of the establishment this time round as its ranks and files are intact and contain the potential to wreck a matching blow to the foe since the memogate scandal could turn the tables on the conspirators who stand isolated on the war on terror against the regional as well as international diplomatic and security blocks.

Any effort to introduce the Bangladesh model of governance or a government of technocrats would fail as the establishment, the real forces behind such scheme of things, lacks resources and credibility to face the wrath of a PPP-PML-N combine besides the rest of political forces it has to left at bay to appease the political orphans it has to bring forth to run the state of affairs.

The Supreme Court too might sound uncertain to buy the argument of the establishment keeping in view of the pledges made by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from time to time in recent past and the agony he and his brother judges faced at the hands of a military dictator.

The observers believe that the forces hell bent to destroy what the country had in shape of a struggling democracy had to see reasons sooner than later or they will be inviting more trouble for the institution they jealously guarding despite the act of omissions and commissions by their leaders since the day they decide to put their hand on the political system developed on lines of democracy and democracy alone.