Is Pakistan unmanageable?

On Pakistan’s current political drift

The post-judgment politics has shown that the Supreme Court may not succeed in initiating corruption-related proceedings against President Asif Ali Zardari in Switzerland but political conflict has intensified between the PPP and the opposition, especially the PML(N). The political parties are viewing the judgment from their partisan interests.

The PML(N) was bound to champion the cause of the judgment with an emphasis on its quick implementation and removal of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani from his office because this serves its partisan interests. The PML(N) leadership held an entirely different view of the role of the Supreme Court in 1997 when it was in power at the federal level and in the Punjab. At that time, its interests clashed with the Supreme Court and it adopted a hostile posture towards the Supreme Court. The then Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah has described in his book entitled “Law Courts in a Glass House” (2001) the abrasiveness in the PML(N) disposition and his removal from the office.

The PPP-led federal government is on the defensive and engaged in yet another struggle for survival. The PML(N) may not succeed in knocking out the PPP-led federal government in the near future but tension has escalated in the political system due to unrestrained war of words between the PPP and the PML(N). Other political parties like the PTI and the Jamaat-i-Islami are attempting to project themselves as the third alternative and target both the PPP and the PML(N) for their criticism, blaming them for all the current problems in Pakistan.

The intensified political wrangling threatens the long term prospects of stable civilian rule. If this confrontation persists, the non-elected state institutions like the military and the superior judiciary are expected to expand their respective domains. Each may come to the conclusion that it needs to rectify the warring civilian political leaders and thus increase their interference in executive and administrative domains which will further reduce the capacity of the executive to perform its job.

The expansion of the role of non-elected state institutions will be supported by the leaders whose political interests are served in their competition with their political rivals. This type of political and institutional role expansion will go on without any consideration of its implications for Pakistan’s faltering economy and increased external pressure with reference to terrorism and internal turmoil.

For each political party its partisan interest appears to be the main consideration. The military’s worldview is shaped by its professional and corporate interests and how it can pursue counter terrorism on its terms. The Supreme Court is concerned about the non-implementation of its orders by the federal government and how it can ensure constitutionalism and the rule of law as it interprets these concepts. These are sectional issues that are important in their own way and with reference to the role and position of state institutions and political entities.

What is at stake is more than the individual concern of each institution and organization. It is the future of Pakistan as a legal and constitutional entity to perform its obligations towards citizenry and stay positively connected with the international. The state of Pakistan is gradually losing its capacity to function effectively all over its territory and its positive relevance is likely to decline at the international level if it cannot put its political and economic house in order and dispassionately analyze why the international community appears so “uncomfortable” about the present and future of Pakistan.

Pakistan’s internal and external problems have become so acute that the change of the PPP-led government does not necessarily guarantee any improvement. The major political parties will have to work together for coping with the troubled economy and gradual erosion of the state authority. If Pakistan’s downward slide is not checked by joint civilian effort it will become irrelevant in a couple of years who rules Islamabad or provincial capitals because their effective authority will be limited to major cities and even that may be challenged by defiant religious, ethnic groups, criminal gangs and local bosses. The governments will negotiate with these mini power brokers for exercise of its authority.

Pakistan’s growing unmanageability deters the military from replacing the current civilian order. In addition to the fall out of the ‘loosening’ of the state the military is faced with religious extremist and violent groups that periodically challenge the military’s primacy in security matters. As the worldview shaped essentially by religious orthodoxy and anti-Americanism pervades the Pakistani society and the military that has strong connections with the society, it will have problems in sustaining unanimity within itself and securing sustained civilian ownership for countering terrorism.

The current impasse in the US-Pakistan relations is essentially the product of the inability of Pakistan’s civilian-military leadership to make up their mind as to what do they actually want and how to turn their preferred policy options that into policy measures. They want to resume NATO supplies and normalise relations with the US but they do not want to stand up and tell the people why normalisation of relations with the US and the West is important for Pakistan. Until recently, they actively subscribed to Islamist perspective of Pakistan’s disposition towards the West. Now, it appears that it is beyond their political capacity to reverse this line of argument.

It is high time that the key players in Pakistan’s governance, political management and administration of foreign and security policies move beyond their sectional worldview and recognise that they need to develop consensus on addressing the key challenges, i.e. the economy, internal harmony and stability and avoidance of international isolation.

Pakistan’s salvation does not lie in one state institution establishing its primacy over others, one political party knocking out the other or adopting an unrealistic foreign policy approach of demanding that the rest of the world should fit its foreign policy into Pakistan’s parliamentary resolution.

The next budget is expected offer economic concessions to the people because the PPP wants to cash on it in the forthcoming elections. Given Pakistan’s troubled economic situation and internal political and security turmoil, such a budget cannot last for full one year. It is therefore important that the elections are held before the end of the year and new leadership shows vision for working with all state institutions and the international community to control Pakistan’s current drift towards increased unmanageability.

The writer is an independent political and defence analyst.