Deals, deceit and denials

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

President Zardari admitted in a chat with journalists earlier this week that General Musharraf had been granted a safe exit from Pakistan under a deal underwritten by local, regional and international guarantors. The general reaction of our political elite as well as the media has been that Zardari merely acknowledged what everyone already understood. The PML-N has however elected to move a privilege motion in the National Assembly seeking complete disclosure of the Musharraf amnesty deal. In response, Farhatullah Babar, the otherwise honourable presidential spokesman, has elected to deny the initial disclosure altogether and claimed that President Zardari's comments were distorted and misrepresented by the media.

As a lawyer, one is shocked at the lack of national outrage over the audacity of our head of state to casually acknowledge willing abdication of national sovereignty as well as his personal pledge to protect and uphold the Constitution upon the prodding of local and foreign masters. As a citizen, one is confronted with a paradox, however. President Zardari's statement is encouraging on the one hand, for it is a factual public disclosure that would enable this nation to understand the reality and context of Musharraf's exit. On the other hand, revelation of such ugly truth exposes the level of our depravity as a state, where the wide chasm between the principles of our fundamental law and their actual implementation is simply explained away as "ground reality," and the highest official of the state has no qualms in admitting that his allegiance to the Constitution is qualified by his fidelity to secret deals guaranteed by the Americans, Arabs and our own khakis.

Let us start with Farhatullah Babar's denial. Here is another manifestation of the mindset infested by the wasn't-me syndrome (best articulated by Shaggy's song) that simply believes in blanket refutation of any fact that is

indefensible. Pursuant to this mindset, even if you are caught red-handed with your pants down, you simply come out vociferously denying that it was you and blame it on a conspiratorial design being hatched by evil forces to malign your noble character. We saw this in the case of Shumaila Rana – the PML-N legislator of credit-card-fraud fame – who simply denied that it was her using a stolen card, despite being caught on tape. More recently, we were subjected to the Meera scandal, where she also dismissed obvious facts without any credible explanation. Is dealing in lies a necessary affliction that comes along with the pernicious hypocrisy that we have grown comfortable with as a society?

What our politicos are failing to realise is that in the new Pakistan being shaped up by the values that fuelled the rule of movement, there is no appetite left for the brazen half-truths that elites have been traditionally dealing in. Once a piece of information is public, denying it is not the end of the matter. This nation, frustrated by the manner in which it has been molested over decades, is electing to subject its leaders to a higher standard of accountability. With the media and the judiciary willing to function as independent institutions committed to promoting public disclosure and accountability, the wasn't-me syndrome will not work anymore. It might no longer be possible to coerce the judiciary, intimidate the media and censor facts, or simply refute credible information and expect an unsuspecting public to play along.

Our elites will need to adjust to the new Pakistan where garbage-in/garbage-out (i.e., the computer science concept that quality of output is determined by the quality of input) is no longer an acceptable form of politics. This Pakistan is not as unforgiving as some believe, nor as gullible as it is made out to be. It is a country pregnant with the urge to move forward, but not in a mode of denial that refuses to acknowledge the murky past and the pernicious habits that have held it down for 62 years. And the first step in getting out of the vicious trap is to dismantle the "garbage-in" part of the cycle. If we vest our hope in the continuity of the political process as a self-remedying mechanism that would cleanse our political system, strengthen democratic norms and nurture able and inspiring leadership eventually bolstering accountability, rule of law and constitutionalism, we must ensure that the choices people make as this process runs along are based on complete disclosure of facts.

The Zardari disclosure has created public space to have a national discourse that we can no longer eschew. In a land where conspiracy theories abound, we often given more credit to our foreign masters for controlling our fate and our actions than they deserve. But legends, when continuously repeated, come close to resembling the reality. And the perceived reality of our uncontrollable subservience to foreign masters in turn influences the manner in which our elites behave towards them. These painful episodes where our national elites submit to foreign masters – be they Americans or Arabs – hurt our national pride and dignity. And our instinctive response is to demonise the foreigners being offered unconditional allegiance under a skewed agency theory: we as a people are not autonomous enough to make our own decisions and consequently not responsible for them either.

What about questioning and chastising the elites who readily relinquish our sovereignty as a nation in return for securing guarantees for their self-serving interests? We are aware that there was an agreement between General Musharraf and the Saudi government that resulted in Nawaz Sharif being offered a pardon and exiled in return for staying away from politics for a certain number of years. We also know that Benazir Bhutto struck a deal with General Musharraf, guaranteed by the Americans, Brits, Arabs and the khakis, which allowed the PPP leadership to return to Pakistan and lead to the promulgation of the NRO. Now we are told that Musharraf cannot be touched for contravening our Constitution because he has negotiated a deal, guaranteed by local (khakis?), regional (Arabs?) and international (US/UK?) actors, that offers him amnesty and the right to play golf!

BB remained reticent about her deal with General Musharraf. Likewise, we still await a candid disclosure of the terms of the agreement that led to the pardon and exile of Nawaz Sharif in 2000. These are not personal arrangements that our mainstream political leaders have a right to keep confidential. Nawaz Sharif's deal with the Saudis to save his life in circumstances when he was being held hostage by a military dictator might be qualitatively different from BB's deal with the devil to come back into power. But this remains for the people to judge for themselves once they are privy to all relevant facts. The nation has a right to know the details as a political matter for it affects our present. For example, if Mr Sharif believes that he owes his life to the Saudis and is consequently unable to push for Musharraf's trial due to his cultural morality that advises against it – given that the Saudis are now Musharraf's guarantors – he needs to come clean and deal with the political consequences in due course.

The legal position is unambiguous. President Zardari and the PPP government have no authority to allow the exercise of their constitutional powers to be influenced by an agreement with local or foreign guarantors that is against our public policy and the Constitution. But the more pressing question for the moment is whether as a nation we will collectively refuse to accept the barter of our sovereignty to foreign masters in return for personal guarantees offered by them to our ruling elites, or if we will simply let this damning disclosure mark another nosedive in our standards of public morality and rule of law.



Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu