Perspectives
In quest of an enduring civil order
Pakistan's late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the whiz kid of Ayub Khan's first Martial Law cabinet was out and out a product of the establishment. He rose to become the country's youngest foreign minister under the direct patronage of his military boss. Even when he floated his Pakistan People's party, and during the crises of 1971, he was known to be hobnobbing with the generals.
Yet, after ascending to the pinnacle of power in a truncated Pakistan, he swiftly moved to cut the military to size and assert the supremacy of civil authority for the first time in the country's troubled history. A man of rare ability and x-ray vision, he knew exactly what stood in the way of Pakistan becoming a stable and successful polity.
So he sufficiently clipped the wings of the military brass to stop the rise of "Bonapartism" in the armed forces. Under his deft leadership -- amid the trauma of the nation's break-up and the bitterness of long years of inept military rule -- Pakistan could be salvaged from the brink of collapse.
It is, however, a different thing that he was hoisted on his own petard for the part played by him in the country's disintegration. His fortune started dipping soon after Pakistan's 1977 election, which he was alleged to have rigged at least selectively for his party. A countrywide agitation launched by Pakistan national alliance (PNA) left Bhutto totally exasperated and in the lurch.
During those turbulent days Bhutto received a high profile guest -- a friend from the royal family of Iran. In the banquet hosted by him for Princess Ashraf (sister of Emperor Reza Shah Pahlavi), Bhutto escorted her through the lined up invitees and at some point both came across General Ziaul Huq.
Bhutto had made him the chief of the army staff, superceding as many as sixteen generals, as he was his most trusted man in uniform, and obviously took him casually in the guests' line. But the princess, well conversant with Pakistan's martial politics, did not. After a few steps, she sharply looked at her host.
Bhutto knew what was in the princess's mind. "He is in my pocket," an apparently complacent Bhutto whispered his confident reply in the ear of his honoured guest. A few days later Bhutto was in Zia's custody, if not in his pocket.
Bhutto's fate aptly illustrates the vulnerability of democratic politics and fragility of a civil order in our part of the world, yet both are inseparably connected with each other. Since an enduring civil supremacy is a quintessential ingredient of modern democracy, the ruling dispensation will hopefully innovate ways and means to ensure that during the course of its long-drawn reform program, which is underway.
At this sensitive juncture, when one of the learned advisers indulges in misleading rhetoric by calling the set-up he belongs to an "army-backed national government" it flies in the face of the whole purpose of an early credible election.
The information and law adviser's notion of a national government was about to create fresh polemic, which could have been divisive in an already fissured society had not the army chief himself reacted promptly.
In a quick riposte while inaugurating the footwear section in Gazipur's machine tools factory, the general was dismissive of the adviser's perception of a national government and categorically stated that the present ruling dispensation was just a neutral caretaker government, and the military, like the civil and police administrations, was only another organ of it. It was so during the tenure of the political governments in the past, and will remain the same way even in the future when an elected government will be installed.
The army chief's clarification came as a great relief, and exploded the myth that was being built around the caretaker set-up.
Against this backdrop, the army chief's clarity of mind, his vision through the fog of confusion, and his liberal views are worth taking lessons from. He did not mince his words on the issue; neither did he resort to mealy-mouthed sophistry. On numerous occasions he expressed his abhorrence for politics, which he felt was outside his ambit, and devoted himself to fulfilling his mission -- that of creating a civil political order free from scam, sleaze and criminalisation. In that process, if he abdicates what is in his grip, he still retains his unique stature as one at the helm of the country's defence.
Ours is an enlightened and educated armed forces, well aware of the ugly consequences of cheap Bonapartism because we are still bearing the scars of the aberrations caused by two despots and continue to remain mired in their legacies.
Any democratic architecture to which we are committed presupposes the existence of strong civil order by establishing the supremacy of civil authority. The sooner we proceed towards that goal, the greater are the prospects of our polity.
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