A shout in the mountains .....

Time to wake up ROEDAD KHAN I was born in slavery. On August 14, 1947, I was a free man, proud citizen of a free, independent, and sovereign country which I could call my own, a country I could live for and die for. I was young - 24 to be precise - full of joie de vive, idealism, hope and ambition. For me and, like me, for all those who belonged to my generation, Pakistan symbolized all our hopes, wishes and expectations. It was like a dream come true, and carried with it a sense of pride, of excitement and of jubilation. All this turned into dust in October 1958, when Ayub Khan plunged the army into politics and stabbed our fledgling democracy in the back. He set a bad precedent. Others merely followed his example.  47 years after the first military coup, we are back to square one. The country is under military rule for the fourth time and is going down the tubes. The euphoria following the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif’s government soon gave way to the sobriety of the morning after. Unrealistically high expectations were awakened on October 12 and when these expectations were disappointed and remained unfulfilled, frustration set in. The revolution we all expected and which seemed so certain at the time, did not take place.  Today, Pakistan is a ghost of its former self. If it were to look into a mirror, it won’t recognize itself. Today say: “Pakistan” and what comes to mind: sham democracy, fraudulent referendum, rigged elections, a President in uniform, a rubber stamp parliament, a pliant judiciary and a figurehead PM. Democracy in the west means a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by Rule of Law, a strong, independent judiciary and an independent Election Commission. All these institutions are non-existent in Pakistan. Since the days of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and foremost, rule of the people. In Pakistan, the people do not rule. The sovereign power of the State resides elsewhere. Five years ago, ruthless accountability of corrupt holders of public office was on top of General Musharraf’s agenda. What prevented him from making good on his promise to arrange for the expeditious accountability of all those who bartered away the nation’s trust and plundered the country’s wealth? Why are so many known corrupt holders of public office still at large? Why have so many got away? Why were they sworn in as Ministers? And why were judiciary and army exempted from accountability?  The contrast between the current tide of public disillusionment with President Musharraf and the grassroot support for him five years ago is stark. Five years ago, he was being widely heralded as a people’s champion. Today, he risks being dismissed as the latest in a long line of easily forgotten rulers. To paraphrase Churchill, the last five years of his rule were the years that locusts have eaten. His prospects of changing Pakistan are dimming fast although he continues to mouth the rhetoric of reform. The electorate feels betrayed. People are asking; is Musharraf really up to the job? Does he know where he wants to go? Do we want to go there? Does he have a central focus? In short, do we like what we see or suffer from buyer’s remorse?  “Ruin comes”, Plato said in 347 BC, “when the General uses his army to establish a military dictatorship”. Five years after he captured political power, General Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, far from being temporary, is acquiring the mantle of permanence. Unless checked, the country will settle into a form of government with a democratic façade and a hard inner core of authoritarianism – an iron hand with a velvet glove. When that happens, there will be no need for the imposition of martial law. If anybody in this country or abroad thinks that General Musharraf will hold free and fair elections in this country in 2007 and retire; that a genuine transfer of power to a civilian government will follow the election and army will return to the barracks, he must have his head examined. Today power is concentrated at the tip of the Executive pyramid. The lesson of history is that a person who possesses supreme power, seldom gives it away voluntarily.  Today Pakistan is a shadow of what it used to be. What is there to celebrate? The Federation is united only by a ‘Rope of Sand’. The constitution is prostrate. 58 years after independence, Pakistan is torn between its past and present and dangerously at war with itself. A general languor has seized the nation. As we look back at all the squandered decades, it is sad to think that for Pakistan it has been a period of unrelieved decline and the dream has turned sour.  Pakistan is drifting away from the democratic path and sliding into darkness. It is like a nightmare in which you foresee all the horrible things which are going to happen and can’t stretch out your hand to prevent them. Such is the feeling conjured up by army rule in Pakistan. The irony is that Musharraf calls it the Renaissance, the rebirth, the renewal of Pakistan. “Pakistan”, he said recently, “Has woken up”. How I wish it were true. Unfortunately, Musharraf has an unparalled ability to insulate himself from inconvenient facts and reality. A President directing the State from a seat in the crater of a volcano can hardly be expected to think clearly. Time and again history invited Musharraf to play a democratic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. “I must remain in uniform”, General Musharraf said recently, “for the sake of democracy in Pakistan”. Butt the irony is that, today General Musharraf’s uniform is the greatest impediment and the biggest roadblock to democracy in Pakistan. Heavens won’t fall if he were to retire as COAS and take off his uniform. The Pakistan Army is quite capable of producing an equally competent and patriotic army chief. Nobody is indispensable. The graves of the world are filled with the bones of indispensable people.  The Pakistan army is a people’s army, in the sense that it belongs to the people of Pakistan who take a jealous and proprietary interest in it. It is not so much an arm of the Executive branch as it is an arm of the people of Pakistan. It is the only shield we have against foreign aggression. Why politicize it?Why expose it to the rough and tumble of politics? Why use it as an instrument for grabbing and retaining political power?  The military has cast a long shadow over politics in Pakistan even during the period of civilian rule. Repeated army intervention in the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe for disaster. It has thwarted the growth and development of parliamentary democracy and destroyed whatever little faith people had in their political institutions. What is worse, it has eroded people’s faith in themselves as citizens of a sovereign, independent, democratic country. Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.  Will our military rulers ever learn from history? Will they ever learn that military rule sows the seeds of its own downfall? Will they ever learn that today there is no respectable alternative to democracy, that military rule, direct or indirect, veiled or unveiled, is passé and is a recipe for disaster, that Pakistan cannot survive unless the army is taken out of the arena of political conflict and supremacy of civil power is accepted in letter and in spirit? Today the core issue facing the nation is freedom from army rule. Without demilitarization, Pakistan risks revolution.  We have come to a critical fork in the road. The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Pakistan is to be ruled by the constitution or the whim and caprice of an individual. Do we wish to remain citizens of a Republic, or do we prefer some form of autocracy in which a General in uniform assures us that things were never as good as they are today and that authoritarianism is good for Pakistan?  It is time to wakeup. Let Pakistan be Pakistan again. Let it be the dream it used to be – a dream that is almost dead today. All those who see the perils of the future must draw together and take resolute measures to put Pakistan back on the democratic path before Tsunami catches up and hits us all. Needless to say, the walls of autocracy will not crumble with just one good push. The present order will not go quietly. It will be an uphill struggle to redeem our democracy and fashion it once again into a vessel to be proud of. A shout in the mountains has been known to start an avalanche. ‘The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity’. An evil spirit hangs over Pakistan. Is it our destiny that there must always be darkness at high noon, there must always be a line of shadow against the sun? Why is the better sort of the nation so silent today? Why have the intellectuals adopted ‘the genre of silence’? Why is there no outrage? Why is there no loud protest? Because, there is virtually no civil society in Pakistan. The creative intellectuals, barring some blissful exceptions, have been driven to ramshackle ivory towers or bought off. The legal profession has nothing left of its former power but its rhetoric.  From my perspective, this is a dark moment in our history. I know that an unusual agitation is pervading the people, but what it will exactly result in, I am unable to say. “I can detect the near approach of the storm. I can hear the moaning of the hurricane, but I can’t say when or where it will break forth”.