Before the polls

Many a slip between the lip and the cup

The PPP core committee jointly chaired by the president and the prime minister has ostensibly struck a defiant note on the legal front. It has decided not to write to the Swiss authorities for reopening cases against Zardari. The committee declaring that everyone had the right to criticise court verdicts also decided not to yield to the apex court’ s notices of contempt of court to the government’s legal eagle, Babar Awan.

On the political front, however, the PPP has struck a conciliatory note by accepting the opposition’s demand of an early election. Although Nawaz Sharif has ruled out a meeting with Zardari, if media speculations are to be believed, a back channel between the PPP and the PML(N) has already been reactivated.

An understanding on the holding of Senate elections in February and general elections in October would mean that the PML(N) has been accommodated more than half way. Both the PPP and the PML(N) stand to gain seats in the upper house as a result of these elections. However, the ruling coalition stands to gain more by eking out a majority as well as having its own chairman.

But as they say, there is a many a slip between the lip and the cup. The PML(N) had felt let down in the presidential elections. It will be hard to salvage a deal without iron-clad guarantees from the PPP.

Presently, multifaceted challenges are beleaguering the government. Rightly or wrongly, it perceives a nexus between the higher judiciary and the military against it. Instead of putting a strong legal defence on the memo issue and the NRO, it seems to have decided to strike a note of defiance. Babar Awan’s diatribes can only be explained in this context.

None other than the president himself while addressing the public rally on Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary at Naudero last week singled out the judiciary for targeting the PPP. But apart from legal challenges with a time frame attached to them, the government faces acute economic challenges as well.

Notwithstanding the prime minister’s tall claims at the core committee meeting that the economy is stable and inflation is under control, endemic energy shortages and collapsing infrastructure is taking the country towards a near anarchic situation.

In this situation, it suits the PPP government to reach out to the opposition. But why should the opposition play ball? For starters, the political opposition in the parliament has a stake in preserving the status quo. Nawaz Sharif would not like the PPP-led government to be ousted or more correctly hounded out at this late stage and be made into a martyr.

Despite the failure of the Bangladesh model in Bangladesh itself, the war gamers and their cohorts in the political minefield are still clamouring for “a government of technocrats”, expecting a little help from the higher judiciary. The conventional wisdom (or lack of it in this case) is to form a military-backed caretaker government of technocrats initially for at least a year to sort out the economic mess.

Of course, the idea can only work sans Zardari and Gilani. And if such an option has to be given legal cover, no matter how dubious, it has to be sanctioned by the courts. Whether the apex court will give such a carte blanche is debatable.

It is certain, however, that such a dispensation will have a very fragile political base and will have the usual turncoats joining it. It will naturally be unacceptable to the PPP and, for that matter, to Nawaz Sharif.

Even Imran Khan, who is branded as the establishment’s new kid on the block, cannot support a government of technocrats. After his public support has increased by leaps and bounds since his rallies in Lahore and Karachi, it will be tantamount to committing political hara-kiri to be associated with such a dubious arrangement.

After Nawaz Sharif’s consistent refusal to play ball, the ubiquitous establishment not willing to learn from its past mistakes decided to put its eggs in the newly created basket of Imran Khan. Now it will have to deal with three political forces instead of two, not to speak of MQM, the ANP and the maulanas.

Nawaz feels challenged by the tsunami of the PTI in the PML(N)’s heartland. He genuinely believes that Imran has been launched by the ISI to dislodge him. Imran is poaching electable candidates from the mainstream political parties with the exception of the MQM. That is not a good sign for either the PPP or the PML(N), who till now had assumed that, despite their rivalry, they could take turns to rule.

The adverse reaction across the political spectrum to Sharif’s recent remarks about the possibility of re-introducing military courts in Karachi amply demonstrates the distaste for anything to do with the army. Apart from the revulsion in the media, the independent but highly politicised apex court had to declare such a possibility as unconstitutional.

The PML(N) supremo has been criticised in some quarters for petitioning the Supreme Court on Memogate. Whether he did it without thinking it through or to corner Zardari, only time will tell. Some critics accuse him of doing the military’s bidding while according to some legal experts he preempted the army by taking the matter to the apex court.

The end result has been an ample demonstration of the fact that the military and the civilian government are not on the same page. This is nothing new where a meddlesome military in the past has never left the civilians alone. No matter how much things change, they remain the same. Memogate was the traditional last straw for the top brass.

Without his passport and being put on the notorious exit control list (ECL), Husain Haqqani is being treated as being guilty as charged. He has gone to the extent of alleging that he would be killed like Salmaan Taseer if he stepped out of the PM house where he is ensconced for the past month. These are serious allegations worthy of a probe by the Commission determining his guilt in the memo case.

Despite the multifarious challenges, it will not be easy to wrap up the system. The military being challenged by the Taliban, not to mention due to its spat with the US, neither has the stomach nor the capacity for an overt intervention.

It should resist the temptation (if any) of trying to engineer the political system. There have been calls to bring the ISI under civilian control. An idea perhaps still not practicable, but whose time has come!

The writer is Editor, Pakistan Today