Musharraf treason trial: not-so-brilliant diversion

Ayaz Amir

Brilliant, sayeth anyone? This is downright pathetic and we are supposed to take it seriously. When other problems cry for attention, when the Taliban vow vengeance and the government (stricken by fear) knows not what to do, when breathtaking administrative incompetence leads to a complete breakdown of law and order in Rawalpindi on the 10th of Muharram and the army has to be called in and curfew imposed to restore order, what is the government’s answer to all this? With a straight face the interior minister announces the decision to prosecute Gen Pervez Musharraf for treason – for imposing emergency on Nov 3, 2007. Do we laugh or cry? If this is all the leadership we get, we might as well give up and entrust our fate to the stars. The former interior minister, Rehman Malik, was also given to saying pretty funny things, most of which required a generous sprinkling of salt before anyone could swallow them. But at least he had a sense of humour which, even under the most trying circumstances, he never lost. Nisar, his successor, has no sense of humour, at least none in public. He is solemn and expects you to take him seriously, even as he drones on and on, putting everyone’s intelligence and patience to a severe test. If he were only interior minister, it wouldn’t matter so much. But he’s a key figure in this government. If there was any politburo ranking here, like in the old Soviet Union or present-day China, he would be third in the PML-N’s pecking order, after the PM and talented brother Shahbaz. In George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby, Svengali is a character with great powers of hypnosis. From the book the name has entered the English language to signify someone who manipulates and exerts excessive control over another. Who is the PML-N’s Svengali? When Bhutto chose Gen Zia as his chief of staff, and lived to rue his decision, he had no one to blame except himself. The decision was his. Gen Yahya was Ayub’s decision. But Musharraf was a choice sold to the Sharifs by Nisar. Was this the reason why after the coup and later exile to Saudi Arabia, Nawaz Sharif’s attitude towards his bright acolyte was a bit distant? After the 2013 elections Nisar was again under a bit of a cloud because of the PML-N’s relatively poor showing in Rawalpindi district and because Nisar himself lost two out of the four seats he was contesting. But he’s been in politics for a long time. The art of the comeback at least he seems to have mastered. His great political skills are evident even in the way he has tried to handle the aftermath of the recent flare-up in Rawalpindi. This was administrative bungling at its worst, the Pindi administration, from top to bottom, unable to control events, one thing leading to another before the situation went completely out of hand and the army had to be called in. Who was to blame? Primarily, the administration. But who was behind the administration? Musharraf was responsible for the ’99 coup but there was somebody responsible for his elevation to the position of army chief. Similarly, somebody is responsible for all the top appointments in the Pindi administration. I am not spinning a yarn; this is common knowledge. No top appointment or transfer in Pindi can be made without Nisar’s approval: commissioner, RPO, etc, etc, all his hand-picked choices, because Pindi district is his bailiwick, or at least he thinks it is. To be fair to Nisar, this happens not just in Pindi. Ministers and even influential MNAs/MPAs try to influence appointments and transfers everywhere, one reason why we’ve managed to wreck our administrative services. But in Pindi this practice is more pronounced. Other stalwarts have to lobby, or even abjectly entreat, the chief minister. Not Nisar whose closeness to the CM puts him above that necessity. So the standard excuse that law and order is a provincial subject does not really apply in this case. In Rawalpindi law and order is a provincial subject, making the CM ultimately responsible for it, but it is also, for reasons cited above, an interior ministry subject. Where does the buck stop then? Who’s really responsible? We have to hand it to Nisar, however, for playing his cards deftly by trying to deflect attention from the real issue on the table, the trouble in Pindi, to the bogey of Musharraf’s trial. Not that everyone is falling for his ploy. The morning after his hurriedly-called press conference there was no shortage of scepticism in the media about the motives behind this move. But if not the media’s attention, the government’s attention will be deflected. As if there was not enough on his plate already, when Nawaz Sharif returns from his foreign tour, in the form of Musharraf’s treason case he will have another mess to deal with. Who knows, he may welcome this distraction. After all, it is so much nicer and more comfortable thundering about treason and the sanctity of the constitution instead of figuring out how to deal with terrorism and the Taliban. So Nisar could well end up being congratulated for another smart move. But since we are on this subject consider for a moment the amazing selectivity we are bringing to this treason affair. So focused are we on November 3, 2007 that it almost seems as if the Musharraf era began on that date and not eight years before, on Oct 12, 1999. November 3 was a minor affair compared to the original sin of 1999 but the government doesn’t want to talk about it, the judiciary doesn’t want to talk about it, because the original sin was validated by the Supreme Court in 2000, in the so-called Zafar Ali Shah case. Irshad Hasan Khan was CJ, and on the bench, among others, sat My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry. Not only did the SC give Musharraf’s action a clean chit it also empowered him to amend the constitution. This means the army and the judiciary were hand-in-glove, which has been the regular pattern of all our coups, Ayub Khan onwards. We cannot run away from our past, but shouldn’t a recognition of the past inculcate in us some modesty and humility? If we ourselves have sinned should we not pause a bit before casting stones at others? “Mein ne majnoon pe larak mein Asad, sang uthaya toh sar yaad aaya.” Kuch Ghalib se hee seekh lein. (By the way, Saigal singing this ghazal, it’s incomparable.) The restoration of the judiciary should have brought with it some humility. It has had just the opposite effect, leading to an explosion of self-righteousness. The judicial wheel is about to turn. Let us see what awaits us when that is done. Nisar also had another trick up his sleeve. He said a commission was to be set up to investigate the Asghar Khan case – relating to ISI money distributed to a long line of politicians in order to influence and steal the 1990 elections – elections which saw Benazir Bhutto comprehensively defeated. In that treasured list figure the names, among others, of Nawaz Sharif and talented brother Shahbaz. Only certified fools can think that the brothers or any of the others will be indicted. This is just the first step in another cover-up that will take care of the Asghar Khan case once and for all, consigning it to that limbo where dwell forgotten things. And there are 20-year-old bank loans of which not a penny has been returned. No one will ever ask what’s happened to them. But we’ll continue to talk of justice and accountability. But look at the sunny side of things. What if our problems are many and great? At least we have our talent for low and small cunning, and who one can take away that from us?