Pakistan: The General’s Tragic Flaw

Men in high places are remembered for their tragic flaw. A personality trait that explains why someone went a particular way compelled, as he was, to act on account of this inherent weakness. Such men are remembered because their elevated position gives them power over people’s destiny. Since both good and evil can flow from the actions of men in power, they are remembered in history long after they are gone. More often for the evil that lives after them than the good that is interred with the bones.

General Pervez Musharraf would perhaps be remembered for a particular trait—impatience—that may nearly cost him what he pockets so easily in the first place. The General’s impatience with the Press in Pakistan highlights the weakness in reference. It might cost him any number of sympathisers and friends. A free Press in Pakistan, even if in opposition to the referendum, should be the General’s reliable mirror and guide as he tinkers with democracy in that country.

Those disillusioned with the misrule of politicians in the past had reason to be optimistic as they hoped the General would take the necessary corrective measures to bring back a new generation of politicians to steer Pakistan’s ailing democracy back to health. This under the watchful supervision of the Press—a constant that cannot be wished away. Attitude of highhandedness towards journalists and attempts to instigate the mob against one of the pillars of the state does not augur well for the health of a system already riven apart by violence. The Press in Pakistan is the single voice of reason and sanity that gives the tattered democracy in Pakistan a reasonable hope of survival. Even if there was alleged misreporting on the numbers that attended the Musharraf rally (a rent-a-crowd affair as the rallies are beginning to be called) the benefit of the doubt should be with the Press. Not that the authorities act the way they did. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) said it had shocked the entire journalist community. The union urged the PFUJ, the APNS, the CPNE and the Amnesty International and other bodies of print and electronic media to take immediate note of the event. At least 23 among the protesting journalists were injured in police attack. They had walked out after Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool led slogans against the media. The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) condemned as unwarranted the assault on journalists by the Punjab police at the venue of Musharraf’s referendum speech in Faisalabad April 14. The CPNE said it was shocked to learn that Governor Maqbool had threatened that “if the newspapers did not behave, the public would take them to task.” The All Pakistan Newspapers Society criticized the outburst of the Punjab governor against the national press. APNS president and secretary general called April 14 a black day in the history of the press.

It is interesting to note that the incident took place a day after reports emerged of the proposed Police Ordinance 2002 fuelling fears of the coming into being of a police state in Pakistan.

At a public rally in Abbottabad, Musharraf said “some people in some newspapers” were playing down the size of the rallies he has been addressing. “They are spreading negative thinking, spreading lies,” Musharraf said.

Commented THE NATION (April 17): “The President again took up the theme that the Press was not fair to him…The President is within his rights to criticise the Press. But as he is campaigning for the highest office in the land, he would be well advised to concentrate on issues of national importance and leave complaints about newspaper reports to lesser functionaries. At Abbottabad he accused the Press of spreading negative thinking, hypocrisy and lies. One expects a more decorous choice of words from the head of state. The Faisalabad incident was papered over with difficulty, and there is no need to create more needless problems.”

Summed up THE NATION (April 16): There have been serious government-Press problems under elected governments, but the confrontations have come over reporting and comment about the personal integrity of the PM, or about major policy issues. Such a minor issue as the reporting of a rally’s attendance never became a bone of contention. Is this an indication of political immaturity? Are the President’s media managers really such fossils as not to know that attendance is unimportant, when the rallies are being telecast live, to a potential audience of billions?. This cracking under strain is not just disturbing in itself, but may indicate even more troubled times ahead.”

An edit in NYT assessed the General thus:  “In a surreal spectacle, General Musharraf has been barnstorming around Pakistan holding rent-a-crowd rallies while barring anti-referendum demonstrations. His heavy-handed tactics can only undermine the nation and weaken its ability to fight terrorism…He is wrong, in principle and in practice. He has, until now, won broad support for his anti-terrorism campaign within Pakistan, especially among the nation’s educated elite…His recent blunt tactics to promote the referendum risk alienating the very supporters who stood by him…”

Impatience may lead to more mistakes like the arrest of Jamaat-i-Islami chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed upsetting plans for his participation in an anti-referendum rally. The Qazi was later released. The Jamaat-i-Islami as per its recent announcement has plans to mobilize public opinion against the April 30 referendum. The Qazi told a news conference in Islamabad that “All means to reach out the public to persuade them to boycott the unconstitutional presidential referendum will be utilized.”

There are reports of the Government’s intention to block the Lahore anti-referendum rally. (THE DAILY TIMES of April 15). Top leaders, workers and office bearers of opposition parties to be arrested unless the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) does not change its decision to hold a public rally (opposing the referendum) at the Minar-e- Pakistan, Lahore, close to the date of the referendum.

An edit in THE NATION of April 15, had the following comment. It said inter alia “The government’s firm refusal to provide a level playing field to the opposition is clearly going to deepen polarisation, which the country cannot afford, given its internal and external situation. Refusal to allow rallies at the same time and venue can be defended in law and order terms, but disallowing them on different dates is indefensible.”

Intended constitutional changes may reflect the same impatience that could be the General’s undoing by his own actions. Said THE DAWN (April 14) in an editorial:  “One fails to understand why the president is in a hurry to amend the Constitution. If certain articles do need changes, then certainly those amendments could still be effected after the general election. Done in Ziaul Haq’s fashion, the amendments would be discarded by a future government just as Ziaul Haq’s own protégé, Nawaz Sharif, ditched his mentor’s amendments in a matter of half an hour.”

The General would do well to remember that his mistakes could be profitably cashed in by his bete-noire Miss Bhutto waiting in the wings and who might storm the political scene during the October polls accompanied by a large posse of foreign press. The General’s mistakes bring her back centre-stage again despite the ban on her political activity. Her party the PPP is still the largest political party in Pakistan.

And who knows that Nawaz Sharif may spring a similar surprise? There is talk already to this effect by his party officials. The party’s central information secretary Siddiqul Farooq endorsed these reports when he declared at a news conference that “Nawaz Sharif will return home, come what may, and his homecoming will give a surprise to his followers as well as detractors.” (A report in THE DAWN of April 19).

Meanwhile, all main political parties that are opposed to the referendum have told their representatives in local bodies not to extend cooperation to General Musharraf’s campaign. The parties include PML (N), the JI and the PPP.

There is a remote possibility, on paper at least, that the opposition could muster enough ‘no’ votes to frustrate Musharraf’s hopes. “In theory, however, this free-for-all voting gives the opposition an equal opportunity to cast multiple no-votes,” said the edit in THE NEWS of April 11.

An opinion piece in THE NEWS (April 12) uses words like “amazing” and “bizarre” while referring to the General’s campaign for presidency at Minar-e-Pakistan. The speech was “full of contradictions and self-deception”. And we are told “To match the contradictions in his appearance, his speech was full of self-congratulatory remarks and twisted facts…Though moving in purely authoritarian style…the General claimed that he is doing all of this to establish real democracy in the country..”

In another opinion piece in THE NATION (April 12) we are told:

There is a weird kind of reverse logic to this: the COAS takes power by a coup, then obtains legitimacy, then while in office renews that legitimacy by a referendum. Those obtained legitimacy first, by winning an election, and then obtained office, have to be in harmony with him, rather than the other way round. The collective popular will must bend to that of a single man. One relishes the irony of this same man castigating previous PMs for having tried to concentrate power into their own hands.”

And thus the General’s impatience with democracy itself in whose name he is likely to throttle democracy itself. What paradox and what a pity?

New Delhi, April 26,2002