Azadi Square on Revolution Avenue

No resignation, no solution, only confusion

I wrote this two days earlier when one still didn’t know the outcome of the massive standoff in Islamabad’s D-Chowk in front of the houses of government that Imran Khan has renamed ‘Azadi Square’ after his Azadi or Freedom march. Either freedom or Azadi are not bad names for Pakistan’s most important square that actually is a circle. Dr Tahirul Qadri should rename Constitution Avenue that has Azadi Square ‘Inqilab Avenue’ after his ‘Inqilab or Revolution march. ‘Freedom Square on Revolution Avenue’ sounds great, what?

July and August have been difficult months, first with the long Eid holidays and then because of the two sit-ins that are now physically, though not ideologically, merged into one. There’s no gainsaying that this will never happen again, not unless we get our ideological compass right.

This is not the time to discuss mistakes because we are still in a stalemate. Talks between government and the two antagonists and the rest of the opposition and the two antagonists started and stalled within hours. For one, the composition of the government’s and opposition’s teams seemed to lack seriousness. Then neither antagonist is ready to accept Imran and Qadri’s primary demand, the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They say, quite rightly, that any inquiry on election rigging or reforming the electoral system in the presence of the Sharif governments in Islamabad and Lahore will be bootless as evidence will be destroyed, hidden or withheld. With Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation there can be no solution, only paralysis. So we have a standoff that the ‘third force’, as the army is ubiquitously called, and ‘establishment’ sometimes too, may only be able to break. It has, perforce, become the umpire. In the unwelcome but not unlikely event if that were to happen, don’t blame the army for ‘derailing democracy’. Recall what I have been saying for years: the misrule, illegality, corruption and the monarchical style of rulers cause army takeovers. If politics fails it is the fault of its practitioners the politicians, not this or that.

That is being simplistic though. After all, politicians don’t come from Mars and Venus but from amongst us. They are the product of one’s constitution and the political system it gives birth to. It are these two that are to blame and if Pakistan is to improve and become a proper, prospering democracy, both the constitution and its political-electoral system have to be amended drastically and the colonial hangover removed. Only then will we make it. Young Imran doesn’t realise that still. Younger Qadri (surprised?) does, that is why his solutions are so substantive even if you don’t like some of them. They can be discussed later too.

A country like Pakistan, nuclear laced and on the brink of official bankruptcy with some 230 million people, cannot remain in turmoil for long. Truth to tell there is no government in Pakistan, only the fiction of it. Something will have to give, and soon, hopefully by the time you read this. In truth, it is our mish-mash political system with many fathers that produces poor governments that soon fail, often leading to military intervention – the inevitable but worst outcome. The failure and paralysis of the three branches of government – parliament-legislature, the executive and the judiciary – is on exhibition now for all to see free of charge. Not one is delivering. Parliament is slavishly against its dissolution and re-elections after improving the electoral system and accountability because they are its beneficiaries. Be fair: they spent a lot of money a year ago to get elected, many of them illegally. How can they let it go without recovering their costs at the very least? The executive is a fiction, a pantomime, a charade. As to the judiciary, if they had insisted on Imran’s demand in checking only four constituencies for fraud, we would not have come to this. But how can you expect anything better from a judiciary politicised by it former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, a judiciary that is being accused of being hand in glove with election rigging and with some three million cases pending, some for years, some for lifetimes? In other words, it is the failure of the constitution. I cannot stress this enough. Mistakes can be discussed later when it comes to amending the constitution, removing contradictions and the hypocrisy in it, and revamping and rebooting the system.

A country like Pakistan, nuclear laced and on the brink of official bankruptcy with some 230 million people, cannot remain in turmoil for long.

The wise would realise that we are trapped in the vortex of global historical forces, with the Middle East in turmoil, the European Union in meltdown, the fundamentals of the US (and thus the global economy) in the illogical zone with US public debt outstripping GDP and the dollar at the mercy of China, the standoff between Ukraine and allies versus Russia that is damaging the Russian and Ukrainian economies, and the faster rise of China that is being thrown into a role of greater primacy than it was yet prepared for. Immature US foreign policies have thrown the world into a spin with a ‘Made in America’ mess everywhere, including in America, and the global centre of gravity shifting to China. There is direct military rule in Egypt and Thailand and indirect military influence on vital decision-making in many more countries, the US not excluded. Not good for business or national or global economies. Political uncertainty makes business skittish throwing certainty of continuity of policies in doubt. The slightest hint of trouble sends stock markets tumbling. Trade and fiscal deficits increase (or surpluses decrease) amongst many other deleterious effects on economies.

At the very least, if not the executive, then the judiciary and/or parliament should insist on respecting the judgment of a sessions court and register cases against the prime minister, Punjab chief minister and others named in the wanton murder by police and party goons of innocent men and women in Tahirul Qadri’s secretariat in Lahore on the night between June 17-18 this year. That should cool tempers somewhat and show us that some justice at least prevails in this land.

Ah! The third force, our great army. You can be certain that it is not contemplating its navel. But what may have delayed an outcome or even thrown spanner in the works is the not unexpected US meddling that their blonde spokeswoman cannot make look innocent. We will not accept any unconstitutional step, they proclaimed. Really? Then why did you force the terrible NRO down our throats throwing corrupt and inept politicians back into our political fray? Forgiving politicians wholesale who have corruption and murder cases against them or are convicts is highly extra-constitutional and illegal, what? Why did the US get Saudi Arabia to force us to pardon Nawaz Sharif and his brother and send them to Jeddah? The Bhutto-Zardari Combine and Sharif Inc returned with a vengeance and instead of learning lessons picked up from where they had left off. In six years after 2008 they have brought Pakistan to its knees. Unforgivable.

If America doesn’t approve of anything outside the ambit of the constitution, why did they not only approve of but also aided and abetted the removal of Egypt’s elected President Mohammad Morsi and an army takeover? Wasn’t that unconstitutional? They didn’t even call it a coup for God’s sake. Why have they accepted Thailand’s coup, removing its elected prime minister? Why have you heaved a sigh of relief over the departure of Iraq’s elected Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki? Because he resigned? Well, that is exactly what our marchers want, the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and proper re-elections? Why the double standards? Because unconstitutional steps are good if they remove rulers with spine or failed stooges and deliver new stooges. America cannot be sure that Nawaz’s replacement would be a stooge, certainly not Imran Khan. Nor would Qadri were he to contest. With such double standards how can America run itself, forget the world? That’s why the world is in such a mess.

Why don’t we ask America how it is any of its business what we do? You know the answer. We are heavily indebted to them and perpetually begging for more. Why, our finance minister was in Dubai recently, asking the IMF for more. That is why.

Why don’t we ask America how it is any of its business what we do? You know the answer. We are heavily indebted to them and perpetually begging for more.

Someone who might not like to be named told me of the concept of Odious Debt, but I will share it with you. Perhaps we should take recourse in the concept of Odious Debt that was first formalised by a Russian legal theorist named Alexander Nahum Sack. In international law, Odious Debt or illegitimate debt is national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation. According to international law such a debt is not enforceable upon the State and is considered the personal debt of the governments that took it. In some respects, the concept is same as the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.

I would add that those who knowingly gave it to illegal and corrupt governments should suffer the loss too. Perhaps over-indebted Third World countries should form a ‘Debt Repudiation Group’ and add to it reparations for losses incurred because of other countries, like the over hundred billion dollars loss we have incurred due to America and NATO’s quixotic adventure in Afghanistan.

Says my correspondent: “The basis of Sack’s legal formalisation were precedents such as the repudiation of Mexican debts incurred by Emperor Maximillian’s regime and the denial by the United States of Cuban liability for debts incurred by the Spanish Colonial regime.”

I quote from my correspondent. Sack says that “when a despotic or dictatorial regime” [or an illegal and illegitimate one that is the product of rigged elections for that matter] “contracts a debt, not for the needs or in the interests of the state, but rather to strengthen itself, to suppress a popular insurrection etcetera, this debt is odious for the people of the entire state. This debt does not bind the nation; it is a debt of the regime, a personal debt contracted by the ruler, and consequently it falls with the demise of the regime. The reason why these odious debts cannot attach to the territory of the state is that they do not fulfil one of the conditions determining the lawfulness of state debts, namely that state debts must be incurred, and the proceeds used, for the needs and in the interests of the state. Odious debts, contracted and utilised for purposes that, to the lenders’ knowledge, are contrary to the needs and the interests of the nation, are not binding on the nation – when it succeeds in overthrowing the government that contracted them – unless the debt is within the limits of real advantages that these debts might have afforded. The lenders have committed a hostile act against the people [and] cannot expect a nation which has freed itself of a despotic regime to assume these odious debts, which are the personal debts of the ruler.

“In 2008 Rafael Correa, President of the Republic of Ecuador, declared that much of Ecuador’s $3.9 billion in foreign debt was illegitimate odious debt that was contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. Ecuador managed to successfully reduce the price of foreign debt letters significantly before it paid off the remaining debt.”

Imran Khan, this is for you, for I see no other with the gumption to proclaim our debt ‘Odious Debt’.