Opinion Trouble comes in threes

The army termed the PM’s allegation as serious and warned of grave consequences; the prime minister fired the defence secretary soon thereafter,while the army replaced the head of the infamous 111 Brigade that is instrumental in securing Islamabad while a coup is in progress. A thriller and a media circus rolled into one. Then,amidst,all this,as parliament hurriedly met on Thursday to deliberate on the situation,President Zardari conveniently boarded a plane to Dubai on a “scheduled” trip — and returned. What’s next,you may ask.

The belligerent posturing by all three sides — the government,the army and the judiciary — betrays that none has the will to rise above the mess of their own creation. The government will not comply with court orders as it suspects a judiciary-army nexus against it (even if the two may have different,selfish reasons); the army will not let go of the habit of setting policy prerogatives,and fearing resistance from the government,threatens to punish it; the judiciary is hell-bent on bringing the errant government to book but does not want to see martial law imposed. It is a dysfunctional troika by all accounts.

Where do the people stand in this whole gambit? Cheered on by the media,they occupy the spectators’ seats,uncomfortably shifting sides. They’ve been here before,and each time,the same plot has shown the ability to spring a last-minute surprise.

The Pakistan Peoples Party,under the circumstances,is holding on to power by the skin of its teeth. Its coalition partner Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s right-wing JUI has long abandoned it; the Pashtun nationalist ANP will only support it so far and no farther (the party has for the first time come to power in its home base of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and shares power at the Centre,and has long been suspected of pursuing a politics of secession to create Pakhtunistan); the ethnocentric MQM has strong ties with the army and cannot be counted on to buoy a sinking PPP ship; ditto for the power-hungry PML-Q. So what are the options available to the government if its deck of cards starts falling?

The only honourable and sane option before Zardari and Gilani is to call fresh elections,swear in a consensus caretaker government and go home. Zardari can go into self-imposed exile again if he wishes to avoid being tried by the SC after he loses presidential immunity; the party can go to the polls,with or without his son and heir Bilawal Bhutto Zardari returning to lead the election campaign that will focus on the tragic plank of another Sindhi-led government made to go home by a powerful Punjabi-dominated civil-military establishment.

But this post-Benazir Peoples Party,which has been all theatrics and no substance,would rather bring the impasse to the point where the government is booted out under court orders so it claims to have been victimised again (it would be its fourth forced ousting,if it comes to that). But in all this,the calculation to win a sympathy vote may fall flat on its face. The party has little to show but ignominy in terms of governance,this time round. Its home-base,Sindh,still lies devastated from the last monsoon rains,with millions displaced and abandoned to an uncertain fate.

The economy is in dire straits,inflation in double digits,the energy crisis and allegations of corruption have been the worst ever and worsening,and institutions like the Pakistan Steel,PIA and Pakistan Railways all but gone to the dogs. Pakistan State Oil,another giant,also seems headed for a nosedive because of mismanagement and debts owed to it by a delinquent and bankrupt public sector. The government has not done much to address people’s issues,who instead have borne the brunt of its failings. Its only significant achievement,the devolution of power to the provinces,has yet to bear fruit.

So today if the army and/or the judiciary want to punish the government for their own reasons,the PPP would find few coming to its rescue. The other two institutions know this well and only self-restraint keeps them from noisily pulling down this government. The PPP is all set to do that itself,only this time without gaining public sympathy in return.

So when the PM says there’s no danger to democracy regardless of whether his government stays or goes,he may be right after all.

The writer is an editor at ‘Dawn’,Karachi