BASIC LAW CHANGES, BASIC REALITIES DON'T

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    On the face of it, the 18^th Constitutional Amendment is a remarkable political achievement of the PPP-led coalition government in Pakistan. Forging a national consensus on amending over a 100 articles of the constitution, including making some very far-reaching and extremely contentious changes in the much abused and much misused constitution of Pakistan, was never going to be easy. The accolades being heaped on the head of the Constitutional Reforms Committee, Senator Raza Rabbani, for skilfully shepherding the bill through the committee and through parliament are well deserved. But the real credit for the sheer scope and scale of the amendments made should go to Asif Zardari who, from the very beginning, had insisted on making the bill an omnibus amendment rather than merely repealing the distortions introduced in the constitution by Gen. Pervez Musharraf through the 17^th Amendment.

    While the PPP and other political parties in Pakistan can pat themselves on the back for undoing Musharraf's mutilation of the constitution and correcting some of the imbalances that had over the years crept into the basic law, it is as yet still not quite clear whether the constitutional changes will have any impact on the basic realities of power and politics in Pakistan. There is actually a very real possibility that the amendment could lead to another round of political instability in the country with political players repositioning themselves and reorienting their politics either because they have got some of what they wanted or because they have not got what they wanted, or even because they haven't got what was promised to them.

     One simple, immutable reality that hasn't altered with the 'revenge of democracy' is the domination of the Pakistan army. Although Pakistani politicians cannot stop proclaiming that the doors have been shut on another extra-constitutional intervention by the Pakistan army, they are perhaps being a little too hasty in reaching such a conclusion. Even today, when it comes to issues like relations with India and US, the policy on Afghanistan, the nuclear program and Pakistan's cooperation (or lack of it) with the international community on the issue of clamping down jihadist infrastructure, it is the Pakistan army and not the parliament or political government that calls the shots.

No one understands this better than Asif Zardari, who after signing on the 18^th Amendment bill quite candidly told Pakistani journalists that while the doors had been shut on dictatorship, "you never know what might happen tomorrow". The fact of the matter is that when the time is ripe for a military intervention, neither the courts nor the constitution, and certainly not the media, can do anything about it. The amendment forbidding judges from sanctifying a military takeover sounds nice on paper but in real terms is as worthless as the long standing provision in the constitution that mandates the death penalty for any act of high treason.

    The powers that had been arrogated to the Presidency during the Musharraf era have now been taken away and the president has been reduced to a virtual figurehead. While the president still enjoys some powers, especially during periods when the government's numbers in the National Assembly are shaky, he no longer has the power to dismiss the government or the national assembly. Nor can the President use his discretion in making certain crucial appointments, including those of the armed forces chiefs. The constitutional castration of the presidency however doesn't really affect Zardari.

All those constitutional powers that he appears to have lost because of the 18^th Amendment, he continues to retain by virtue of being the head of the PPP. The power to dismiss the government and the national assembly had already become redundant in the case of Zardari. Any such action by the President had to be endorsed by the Supreme Court within 15 days. The current judiciary which is rabidly opposed to Zardari would have struck down any such move. In any case, Zardari had absolutely no reason to ever want to dismiss his own party's government.

If anything, after the 18^th Amendment it has become easier for Zardari to remove the Prime Minister if he ever wanted to take such a drastic step. The law now gives party heads the power to disqualify any party member from parliament for violating party discipline. Similarly, while the appointment of services chiefs will have to be made on the 'advice' of the prime minister, in the current political scenario, the prime minister will almost certainly take his orders from the party chief, who is also the president, on these appointments. Therefore, it is not for nothing that Zardari continues to maintain that he does not find himself powerless. And with the de jure power being with the prime minister, it will now be easier for Zardari to pass the blame for failures on the 'empowered' PM and take the credit for successes in the account of the party which he heads.

Just as politically Zardari's position remains unchanged, similarly the greater devolution of powers to the provinces is more on paper than real. No doubt that by abolishing the concurrent list, a long standing demand of ethnic and provincial nationalists and a major grievance of the smaller provinces has been addressed. The provinces have also been given a greater share in the natural resources found there. But the concessions conceded to the provinces are probably a case of 'the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting it'.

All the extra resources that would flow to the provinces courtesy the NFC award are now going to get absorbed by the extra responsibilities that have devolved on the provinces leaving them once again short of funds. There are also questions being raised about capacity of the provinces to handle the additional tasks. While the administrative and financial problems will hobble the provinces' ability to efficiently discharge their duties and keep them dependent on the centre, this will have its fallout on the politics with nationalist and separatist elements raising the demands for complete autonomy and control over resources. In other words, nothing will really change on the ground on the issue of provincial autonomy.

Among the most contentious issues in the 18^th Amendment was the renaming of NWFP and giving the majority Pashtun population in the province a sense of identity. The compromise name, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, has however raised a storm of protest in the Hazara division of the province which has a majority non-Pashtun population. The demand for carving a new province out of the Hazara division has in turn resurrected demands for creating other new provinces by reorganising existing provinces in South Punjab, Pashtun belt of Balochistan, giving the troubled FATA region a provincial status etc.

In order to present a more liberal face to rest of the world, the 18^th Amendment has made changes in composition of Senate to give minorities a representation in the upper House of parliament. But this cosmetic gesture has been balanced by closing the doors of the Prime Minister's office for non-Muslim forever. Not that the religious minorities ever had a hope in hell to aspire for that post in a country that shunned it's the only Nobel prize winner because he was a Ahmedi. The state of minorities is worse than pathetic as they are fair game for being killed, kidnapped, robbed, their women abducted and forcibly converted, the places of worship desecrated, demolished. And representation in the Senate is hardly going to make any difference to the lot of the minorities in the Islamic republic.

On its own, the 18^th Amendment is unlikely to effect a paradigm change in the power equations or for that matter the political culture of Pakistan. After all, the constitution is "nothing more than a piece of paper" (to quote the former Pakistani military dictator, Gen. Ziaul Haq). Whether this piece of paper will be torn up and thrown into the dustbin, as it has so often in the past, or the 18^th Amendment will end up being remembered more for what it achieved rather than for what it has failed to address will depend entirely on the behaviour of the political players. The manner in which the political players in Pakistan belied the hopes and expectations of the people after the 2008 General Elections doesn't inspire too much confidence in their ability to stabilise the political system and usher in a political culture that speaks for the janata rather than the junta or judges.

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    <1420 Words>                    24^th April, 2010

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IDENTIFY FRIEND OR FOE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    'Identification, Friend or Foe' is a command and control system that helps armies to prevent casualties from 'friendly fire' in the fog of war. Perhaps diplomacy and foreign policy too needs a similar system to clearly identify and distinguish between friend and foe. There is often greater 'fog' in diplomacy than there is in war, something which makes the task of identifying friend and foe far more complicated than it appears to be. For any country, 'friendly fire' from an unreliable ally is often far more devastating and destructive than anything that an identifiable foe can throw. Indeed, India today is facing exactly such a situation from its 'natural ally', the US, which is increasingly tilting in favour of Pakistan and pulling out all stops in appeasing the Pakistanis even if this is at the expense of India.

The pressure that the Obama administration was putting on India in order to appease the Pakistan army and get its assistance for an honourable exit from Afghanistan was always one of the worst kept secrets. The Sharm-el-Sheikh fiasco, where the Indian Prime Minister signed on the dotted line without getting any quid pro quo from the Pakistani side, followed by the equally disastrous invitation to the Pakistani foreign secretary for talks in New Delhi, were just two manifestations of India buckling under US pressure. The Foreign Secretary level talks, which surprised even the Indian foreign office, were so badly timed (coming as they did after the exclusion of India from the Istanbul conference on Afghanistan and the deliberate marginalisation, if not slight, of India by the US and UK in the London conference) that it only fuelled the sense of triumphalism inside Pakistan. The behaviour of the Pakistani foreign secretary in New Delhi was therefore true to form and nothing better should or could have been expected of him.

If despite Sharm-el-Sheikh and the New Delhi parleys between the two foreign secretaries, there was still any doubt over American intentions then this was cleared by a report in the Wall Street Journal that mentions a secret directive that Obama has issued "to intensify American diplomacy" to ensure that "India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on U.S. goals in the region". The tone and tenor of this secret directive clearly indicates that the US has put the onus on India for resolving matters with Pakistan. After all, according to Obama, it is India, and not Pakistan, that must make it a priority to sort issues out. Even more galling, if not demeaning, is the proposition that India must do the needful, not because it is in India's interest (which it clearly is not), but because it will allow "progress on US goals in the region".

It goes without saying that implicit in the entire US policy formulation is the expectation that India must sacrifice its core national interests in order to satisfy Pakistan. What is being expected of India is that India should reduce its presence and involvement in Afghanistan, leave its borders with Pakistan unguarded so that Pakistan can divert troops to the Western border, satisfy Pakistan's irredentist, if illegal, claims on Jammu and Kashmir, stop all hydro-power projects on the Western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – and their tributaries even though India is within its rights under the Indus Waters treaty to build these projects, and do whatever else Pakistan demands of India.

Pakistan, emboldened by the increasing US dependence on it in Afghanistan, will of course continue to merrily sponsor jihad against India, and murder Indian citizens with complete impunity. This is something that will become crystal clear when the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, certifies that Pakistan qualifies for aid under the Kerry-Lugar bill because it has taken measures to close down activities of terror groups like LeT. Appallingly, she will do this in the face of hate-filled public speeches and TV interviews of the Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed and the threat of jihad that the Lashkar commander, Abdul Wahid Kashmiri, held out in a public rally in Kotli, PoK.

Quite aside the fact that the Americans are rewarding Pakistan for having successfully played a double-game – acting as a 'frontline' ally of the US in the War on Terror even as they continued to support, sponsor and provide sanctuary to the Taliban leadership – for eight long years, there is as yet no cogent explanation as to why India must sacrifice its national interests for the sake of Pakistan, or for that matter, for the sake of the US. The Taliban are either a strategic ally of Pakistan or they are a threat to Pakistan. If it is the former, then no matter what India does, Pakistan will continue with its double-game and never forsake the Taliban. On the other hand, if Pakistan considers the Taliban a threat, then Pakistan must eliminate them in its own interest. However, the fact that Pakistan has used various excuses to desist from acting against the Taliban, leads to the inference that the Taliban are not a threat but a strategic ally of Pakistan. In any case, if Pakistan is in trouble because of the activities of the Islamists then shouldn't it be a priority for Pakistan to resolve issues with India rather than the other way round?

Even otherwise, there is really no incentive for India in dancing to the American tune just so that Pakistan is able to gain its strategic objectives in the region, in a word 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan. Regardless of the public statements of US officials, the US regional game-plan, or lack of it, hinges on giving primacy to Pakistan in Afghanistan. And, the Pakistanis will use this to bring their proxies, the Taliban, back in power in Kabul. Given the dialectics of the situation, it is utterly unrealistic for anyone to think that India will agree to roll over and play dead and allow Pakistan to walk all over it only because this will allow the US an honourable exit from Afghanistan.

The US has been always notorious for taking an extremely short-term view of things, something it is doing once again in South Asia. In the process, it is building up a country – Pakistan – in which an overwhelming majority of people are implacably opposed to and harbour a visceral hatred for America, and alienating the public opinion of the one country – India – in which the public opinion is extremely well-disposed towards America. The Indian prime minister has already expended a lot of his political capital – in the public as well as within his party – in trying to reach out to Pakistan. Pushing him any further along this path will only isolate him further. What is worse, the reaction that is building up in India to US policy of flooding the Pakistan army with modern weapons is going to create a deep schism in Indo-US relations, something that will come to haunt the US in the not too distant a future when it needs to fall-back on Indian support to contain the fallout of an imploding, Jihadist Pakistan.

India too is not entirely blameless as far as the emerging cleavage in its relations with the US is concerned. The problem with India was that despite the caution sounded by many people that the US was an 'unreliable' partner and ally, the Indian leadership took the US at face value, and imagined that the interests of the two biggest democracies converged on the issue of terrorism. It is time for India to take off its rose-tinted glasses, as also many of the eggs it has placed in the US basket, and start dealing with the US and other countries like Iran, Russia and China, on terms that advance India's and not the US' interests. Otherwise, India will be left holding the can for American follies in the region.

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    <1317 Words>                    12^th April, 2010

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