It won’t do dissing one another
The hullabaloo over the IB having allegedly prepared a list of 37 legislators suspected of having links with terrorist outfits had hardly subsided when another issue started to rock the boat. Some of Gen Bajwa’s remarks on the state of the national economy set alarm bells ringing in Islamabad. In two separate addresses on Friday and Saturday Prime Minister Abbasi underlined the importance of democracy for progress and prosperity, maintaining that technocrat and undemocratic forms of governance had failed to deliver in the past. He also said the flaws in democracy will be eliminated only if the process moves forward. The statements led the ISPR to reject rumours about plans to install a government of technocrats or to impose a de facto martial law.
The verbal duel between the ISPR chief and Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal indicates the need for the government and the army to act strictly in accordance with the rules of business. For the army the best forum to express its reservations on any aspect of governance is the National Security Committee. With the country’s peculiar history of civil-military relations, taking the issue to a public forum can only create misunderstandings about the motives. Failure to expand the tax net has charcterised both the civilian governments and the set ups headed by all powerful military rulers. A little patience would have saved the resulting confrontation. The Interior Minister too acted rashly by issuing a strongly worded statement instead of letting the Prime Minister seek explanation from the ISPR chief.
The government has to ponder over why no opposition party came to its support during the verbal confrontation. Leader of opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Shah in fact justified the Army chief. The argument of democracy being the best available system will sound hollow if the government continues to maintain a cavalier like approach to Parliament, with the Prime Minister and his cabinet members absenting themselves most of the time from the sittings and passing the bills not through consensus but by steamrollering the opposition.
