Chip off the old block?

Two events from this past week suggest that PML-N has begun to dither in its resolve to practice a politics that is issue-based and driven by principles. One, Nawaz Sharif has publicly distanced the PML-N from the lawyers' plan to stage a sit-in after the long march planned for March 12, and this past Monday PML-N's leader of the opposition Nisar Ali Khan questioned the virtue of a dharna in helping restore judges. The PML-N leaders have loudly expressed displeasure over not being consulted by the lawyers while moving the long-march (originally scheduled for March 9) forward by a couple of days. Two, PML-N president and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif recently met with Ishrat-ul-Ibaad, MQM's Governor in Sindh, acknowledged the meeting as the first official contact between PML-N and MQM in years and also sent his regards for MQM Chief Altaf Hussain.

PML-N as a main-stream political party – the second largest in numerical terms in the present parliament – should have every right to forge its own policy for restoration of judges or join the Zardari-led reconciliation drive inspired by the National Reconciliation Ordinance, if it so chooses. The problem however is that changing its policy on the unconditional restoration of judges and opening channels of communication with the MQM at this stage amounts to reneging on solemn pledges made by PML-N to an already sceptical populace. The detractors of our existing brand of democracy have been crying hoarse that the political elite across the spectrum is a gay cluster of profiteers focused solely on appropriation, preservation and exploitation of power for narrow self-interest. The Zardari-led PPP made that apparent by backtracking on sworn and written covenants on the restoration issue and PML-N is expected to follow suit once its oath to abide by principle begins to threaten the state power that it wields in Punjab.

PML-N's acts and statements of last week are troubling for they seem inspired by the same thought-process that has afflicted Pakistan with a depraved political culture of deals and deceit. Nawaz Sharif had written in the foreword to PML-N Election Manifesto of 2008 that, "people in Pakistan are losing faith in the manifestos of most political parties because they are disillusioned by the actual implementation of such manifestos." And that PML-N's "top agenda will be a coherent strategy to restore the judges who refused to take oath under the PCO promulgated on 3 November 2007," and that, "the lawyers' movement that started in March 2007, to uphold the rule of law has been transformed by the powerful media and other segments of civil society, into a historic battle for fundamental rights and genuine democracy. The forthcoming elections provide a golden opportunity to win this battle by voting for parties" supporting such a cause.

Likewise on July 8, 2007, PML-N had convened an all parties conference in London, which stated in its declaration that, "on May 12, 2007, at Karachi, an engineered massacre of opposition workers was orchestrated, unarmed political workers were at the mercy of gun-toting MQM workers while the police and rangers watched. The Sindh High Court was laid siege and judges had to run to save themselves. The district courts were surrounded by MQM activists and lawyers including women were beaten." The APC then explicitly held "General Musharraf, the Sindh Governor (Ishrat-ul-Ibaad) and the provincial government, and the MQM responsible for the carnage carried out in Karachi on May 12, 2007," and demanded "an independent judicial enquiry by a judge of the Supreme Court to ascertain and identify the persons involved", and further resolved "to write a joint memorandum to the UK government for initiating necessary legal proceedings against MQM Chief Altaf Hussain for his alleged role in incidents of terrorism in Pakistan."

In this factual and historical background, is Pakistani public to be blamed for being incredulous or smelling a rat in PML-N's sudden amiability toward the MQM and detachment from the lawyers' strategy for principled restoration of the Nov 2 judiciary? Have the true culprits of the May 12 tragedy been miraculously found through the desirable judicial inquiry that PML-N is now warming up to MQM? Will PML-N's repeatedly uttered unequivocal support for the lawyers' long-march mean much if it stops short of participation in the dharna? Is PML-N's change of heart influenced by the fact that by virtue of an appeal presently being heard by the Supreme Court, a sword of Damocles is hanging over the eligibility of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif to serve as public representatives? Is the fact that PML-N doesn't have simple majority in the Punjab Assembly to protect the Shahbaz Sharif government against an onslaught by a prospective PPP-PML-Q alliance dragging PML-N into an appeasement mode?

The last time around, the long-march was an unprecedented success in terms of the numerical response and support that it garnered. It failed to realize its immediate objective not because the lawyers couldn't establish before the PPP-led government that their cause had overwhelming public support, but because the PPP-led government refused to respond to overwhelming public opinion and the pressure mounted by the march on an obdurate ruling regime stood discharged when the mammoth crowd dispersed early morning.

How will the repeat telecast of such a march produce different results this time when the PPP-led government is even more devoted to its shameless resolve to keep a PCO-ridden court in place? If the dharna is indeed imprudent, as Nisar Ali Khan has insinuated, what is PML-N's bewitching solution for restoration of the Nov 2 judiciary? How does PML-N plan to discharge the onus of fulfilling its fundamental promise to the nation – i.e. to get all non-PCO judges restored on the principle that the acts of Nov 3 were unconstitutional – which was the basis of its 2008 election campaign, and was reiterated by an oath sworn by all its parliamentary members after being elected? In following the lead of Zardari-led PPP and garnishing its political strategy with pragmatism and expediency, PML-N should bear in mind its inherent strengths and weaknesses.

PML-N's political support and stature has not grown in the recent past because its stints in power in 1990s bring back fond memories of benevolent governance. The party doesn't have an unblemished past. Nawaz Sharif's last government manifested a ruthless and unabated zeal for monopolizing state authority in a few hands. Despite enjoying a two-thirds majority in parliament and undisputed control over the federal and Punjab governments in 1997, the PML-N government locked horns with the military, the bureaucracy and the media, not to mention the disgraceful storming of the Supreme Court. The party played politics with religion and conceived the Shariah Bill that had nothing to do with enforcement of Islam and was all about seizing more power. PML-N's Ehtisab Bureau (remember Saif-ur-Rehman?) ushered in a new era of political witch-hunts in the name of public accountability.

The expression of support that PML-N has been showered with in recent times by large sections of the media, civil society and its erstwhile detractors is not due to but despite its past performance. There was a general sense that the Sharifs had learnt from their mistakes while in government and experiences in exile and were unconditionally committed to redefining themselves, their party and the political culture that they espouse on the basis of three fundamental principles. One, constitutionalism must be supported at all costs in order to defend democracy and prevent another unsolicited horseback praetorian from conquering Pakistan as happened on 12 October, 1999. Two, an independent judiciary must be installed and protected as a guarantor of a level-playing field in politics and to mete out justice to those caught at the wrong end of the system, as the Sharifs were after Musharraf's coup. And three, a minimum amount of integrity and loyalty must be injected into the political culture so that a coup-maker is unable to conjure up a King's League overnight.

And consequently PML-N's support for restoration of judiciary and opposition to a merger with PML-Q was partly seen as guided by the wisdom of these principles, driven home by the personal experiences of the party and its leadership. It unfortunately now seems that an appreciation of 'ground realities' and the corrupting logic of expediency has snuck right back into the PML-N guidebook. This is a tragic error that the party leadership has fallen prey to. Relegating its professed righteousness to the status of fustian claims, and dishonouring its sermons on the vitality of honouring one's word and abiding by principles, PML-N will not only suffer a tremendous loss of face and attract public ridicule, but will also place itself at the mercy of an inequitable state structure controlled by Zardari-led PPP. The moment of truth for the PML-N leadership is here. Principles are worth nothing if discarded when inconvenient.

Further, an about-face on the restoration issue at this stage will only confirm to the cynics that Pakistan cannot hang hopes on its present political leadership to shepherd the country out of the woods. If after one year of representative politics we have dragged even more political actors back into muck, the argument in favour of continuation of a self-cleansing democratic process suddenly begins to look weak.



The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad. He is a Rhodes scholar and has an LL.M from Harvard Law School. Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu