The Hindu Business Line : All eyes on Asia’s sick man

So, Pakistan is in for turmoil brought on by the declaration of Emergency and promulgation of the Provisional Constitutional Order by President Pervez Musharraf on November 3.

The whole world — and that must include the General’s handlers in Washington — knows that the arguments such as the rising tide of terrorism and the ‘paralysis’ of the government machinery caused by judicial ‘interf erence’ by which the General sought to justify the atavistic throwback to naked dictatorship, were actually intended to mask the real purpose which was to perpetuate himself in power by striking at the Supreme Court before it delivered any adverse verdict arising out of a petition to set aside his election as the President.

Reportedly, the General has dismissed and arrested not only eight of the Justices, including the Chief Justice Iftikar Mohammad Chaudhry, who were bold enough to take suo motu cognisance of the General’s orders and pronounce them illegal, but also the President of the Supreme Court Bar Council who successfully spearheaded the agitation against the removal of the Chief Justice some months earlier and challenged the legality of the election before the Court.

From crisis to crisis

There is something in the make-up of Pakistan that seems to work against its continuing within a democratic framework for any length of time.

Of the 60 years of its existence as a free nation, it has had civilian rule under the trappings of a democratic setup only for 25 years in three spells (1947-56; 1972-77 and 1988-99); even during this brief period, the fear a military take over was never far from public consciousness.

To a greater or lesser degree, Pakistan has been a sick man of Asia, lurching from crisis to crisis.

By now, the world has got so inured to Pakistan’s waywardness that the latest blow to the body politic delivered by the General has evoked at best only a mild rebuke. Other than merely regretting the difficult times Pakistan is passing through, India has brushed it all off as an internal matter. Its sense of delicacy stemming from the ugly memory of the cruelties perpetrated during the Emergency of 1975-77 has left it with no other option.

While being ‘gravely concerned’, and proclaiming that Pakistan’s ‘future rests on harnessing the power of democracy and the rule of law to achieve the goals of stability, development and countering terrorism’, Britain provides the General an escape latch by conceding ‘the threat to peace and security faced by the country’.

It also promises to take up ‘at the highest level’ the question of the commitment to hold free and fair elections on schedule.

The EU, too, regrets the imposition of Emergency and condemns any provisions that are unconstitutional.

It wants the rule of law to be respected, and elections to be held on the promised date and adds curiously that ‘the democratic process should not be interrupted any further’ as if the interruption so far was all right!

At the same time, it sweetens the reproach by recognising ‘Pakistan’s current difficult political and security situation’ and extends support for its struggle against extremism.

The US is ‘deeply disturbed’ at the setback for Pakistani democracy and urges all parties to work together to complete the transition to democracy and civilian rule without violence or delay.

It will be noticed that none of them has explicitly demanded immediate restoration of the status quo and condemned in categorical terms the most outrageous action of sacking and arresting of Supreme Court Justices.

Of all countries, the US has the greatest leverage over Pakistan and the next few weeks will be the litmus test as much for the credibility of Pakistan’s civil society and political parties as for the US Administration.

B. S. RAGHAVAN