Jahane Rumi

“We cannot have an army or intelligence agencies that constantly destabilise governments. We cannot have rogue elements incessantly violating their oath and plunging the nation into crises — Benazir Bhutto (Herald, 2000)

Evidently, the state of Pakistan is rotten when its former Chief of the Army Staff, who does not stop touting himself as a true patriot, prima facie, violated the constitutional oath he undertook. It is not just Mirza Aslam Beg whose nefarious involvement in politics has been the subject of discussion in the courts and TV channels but countless others in Pakistan who have been upto similar transgressions and getting away with them.

After the death of Gen Ziaul Haq in 1988, military rule only changed its clothes. It survived and flourished for a decade until the Emperor threw off his civilian façade and took over in 1999 through a proper coup d’etat citing the same old excuse of saving the country. The history of 1988-1999 is yet to be written for it has remained hostage to the obfuscations of a political class created by the army itself and its loyalist intellectuals who rule the media and are found in Pakistan’s moribund academia as well.

The recent political glasnost in Pakistan — thanks to the lawyers’ mobilisation and the refusal of two major political parties to repeat their mistakes — is a new chapter in our history. Whether this is an illusion or a temporary triumphant moment, remains to be seen. The Supreme Court has, after a criminal delay of sixteen years taken up the Asghar Khan petition. The ‘free’ and independent Supreme Court did not take up this pending case until there was sufficient public pressure in the recent months. The judges have been remarking that they are representing ‘people’s will’ and perhaps this is why they are now establishing that they are truly independent and not taking cues from their erstwhile senior partner the military-intelligence complex. This is a welcome development and, if taken to its logical conclusion, might reset the way power dynamics have been structured in Pakistan.

After 1988 elections, it was clear that the junta, despite losing its greatest Machiavellian leader, Zia, was in no mood to transfer power to a civilian government. The story of Benazir Bhutto’s first ill-fated government (1988-1990) has been well documented by her advisor Iqbal Akhund in his book entitled, Trial and Error: The Advent and Eclipse of Benazir Bhutto (OUP Pakistan, 2000). The book, among other things, reveals the severe limits of Bhutto’s powers and outlines how she had little control over core governance areas such as security and economic policies.

During this time, there were two serious attempts to oust her: first, through a vote of no-confidence where the rogue intelligence officials doled out money to engineer the outcomes. The name of one Osama Bin laden was also cited as a potential financier of this effort. Bhutto’s government also indulged in horse trading given that was the ‘set’ game in town. In a hard-hitting interview given to monthly Herald (in 2000), Bhutto recounts the years in these words:

“..in December 1988, within a week of my forming the government, Brigadier Imtiaz, working at the ISI Internal, began contacting political parties to overthrow my government. My political adviser at the time, General Babar, moved to have him replaced. The army refused initially, though later, Brigadier Imtiaz was removed from the ISI Internal, not from the army itself…We collected proof, in 1989, of ISI elements visiting MNAs for a no-confidence move. We made audio tapes. The head of the MI entered my office and saw the photograph of the man who had been approaching my MNAs. He panicked, took the photograph and the tape and then sent me a report saying the man in question was deranged. In 1990, when the ISI launched a similar effort, we made a videotape called Operation Jackal. A serving army officer, Brigadier Imtiaz, technically not in the ISI but substantively still there, was taped saying: ‘the army does not want her, the president does not want her, the Americans don’t want her’. He was seeking the support of parliamentarians to oust the government. I gave that tape, substantive proof of treason, to General Beg. He filibustered.” (more…)

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan Director, Human Rights Watch, was one of the few people who recently gave testimony to US Congress on the issue of Balochsitan province. I interviewed him for The News on Sunday.

Can you outline your testimony to the US Congress on Balochistan?

Ali Dayan Hasan: The hearing provided an opportunity to highlight the dire human rights situation in Balochistan and was used by HRW to that end. We take no position on the issue of self-determination and I clarified that Balochistan was an internationally recognised Pakistani province and not a territory over which there was any dispute over sovereignty. That said, HRW expects Pakistan’s constitutional protections for citizens to apply to those who live in the province. I explained that while the state — through the army, intelligence agencies and paramilitaries such as the FC — was the principal abusive actor, Balochistan presented a complex situation with multiple actors involved in human rights abuse.

While the state is responsible for illegal detentions, disappearances and targeted killings, it is also true that Baloch nationalists have targeted non-Baloch settlers and Sunni extremists are killing Shias in the province. HRW also called upon Congress to examine US complicity with former military ruler Pervez Musharraf in the disappearances of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects, and how that enabled Musharraf to extend enforced disappearances to the menu of human rights abuses across Pakistan generally and in Balochistan in particular. I also explained that Balochistan was not a mono-ethnic province peopled only by the Baloch but that they comprised just over half the population and that any examination of the place of Baloch nationalism had to factor in the implications stemming from this reality.

Were you surprised at the outrage over the Congressional hearing in Pakistan? Do you think it was justified?

ADH: I made clear even before the hearing that HRW was only using the hearing as a platform to highlight the human rights situation in Balochistan and we viewed the politics surrounding the hearing in the US with discomfort. However, on balance, international groups such as HRW and Amnesty felt it important that an objective human rights analysis, based in international law rather than political rhetoric, be placed on the record. While I understand why Congressman Rohrabacher’s resolution asking for self-determination in Balochistan was negatively received in Pakistan, I have said before and I repeat that it is not within Rohrabacher’s or the US Congress’s capacity to create or dismember countries. Every sane minded person understands this both in the US and Pakistan. But these events have focused attention within Pakistan on the human rights crisis in Balochistan and that is a positive development. And now, knowing that it is on the international radar, it is incumbent upon Pakistan’s political and military leaders to end an untenable policy of denial and resolve this crisis speedily and meaningfully.  (more…)

Lahore, a centre for the arts and learning in the early 20th century, has been the custodian of a plural, vibrant culture for decades. Its walled city, unlike several other old settlements, has continued to survive despite the expansion of the city. So have its peculiar features: its dialects, cuisine, community linkages and, of course, rich festivals such as Basant. As the capital of Punjab, Lahore used to celebrate Basant — the arrival of spring — in a colourful manner.

Since the medieval times, Basant was acknowledged and celebrated by the Chishti saints. Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi turned it into an act of devotion, and Amir Khusrau’s songs captured the multi-layered evolution of this festival.

Punjabi poets such as Shah Hussain gave a Sufi flavour to it. Hussain, in one of his kaafis, says: “The Beloved holds the string in his hand, and I am His kite.” The festival offered a meaning to all and sundry: from playful kids to lovers and Sufis; from profit-seekers who developed livelihoods around the festival to the community as a whole.

Basant was celebrated by all communities prior to Partition: Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs treated it as a Lahori festival with an identity linked to the city. In this milieu, Allama Iqbal was known to be an avid kite flier. But the post-1947 rise of clerics meant that inclusive cultural practices were to be treated with suspicion. For many decades, the Pakistani mullahs have ranted against Basant as an “unIslamic” festival and one that endangered public morality.

Unfazed by these fatwas, Lahoris continued with the festival. It even received state patronage on various occasions. A citizen of Lahore, Mian Yousaf Salahuddin (the grandson of Iqbal), turned his old Lahore haveli into a cultural hub and, over time, Basant celebrations became an international attraction. By the 1990s, proactive civil servants turned Basant into a great regional festival. Lahore’s then deputy commissioner, Kamran Lashari, provided full backing to the holding of this event in the 1990s. That was perhaps the time when Basant also became most controversial due to its scale and the increased hazards of unregulated kite-flying in which metallic or chemical-coated string was used.

The use of this string instead of the traditional dor caused many deaths each year and the local government was unable to enforce regulations on its usage. The metallic wire would get entangled in electricity cables in the old city, leading to electrocution. The courts intervened and asked the Punjab government to ban the festival in 2007.

Ironically, the banning of Basant did not take place in the name of religion but through a public interest litigation. However, the ideological opponents of Basant have been happy with the outcome and have created an uproar each time someone raised the question of reviving Basant after putting safety measures in place. But Lahore is a poorer place now. It is devoid of this public celebration, especially for thousands of impoverished workers in the old city and neighbouring towns where Basant was celebrated with great fervour. (more…)

There seems to be a serious dearth of imagination while searching for solutions on Balochistan

As Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy recently wrote, “Men like Rohrabacher are no friends of the Baloch. But what can stop their meddling? The answer can only come once we dump the myth of Pakistan being one nation, one people”. The continuous undermining of Pakistan’s pluralism, citizenship rights and quest for self-rule has led to a situation where Pakistani flag is not welcome in many parts of its largest and most neglected province.

This is not the first time that the country has faced a dire situation. In 1971, we were faced with a similar dilemma and the civil-military elites of West Pakistan bungled. Their mishandling was exacerbated by an external intervention and for years we have been fed with stories of how all was hunky dory in the more populous wing of Pakistan until the evil ‘Hindu’ India destroyed the ‘Muslim’ Pakistan.

It takes a questionable resolution tabled in the US Congress by Dana Rohrabacher, an extremist republican with a dubious past, to alarm the mainstream Pakistani politicians and media about the plight of Baloch people. Yet again, a “conspiracy” to disintegrate the land of the pure has been reiterated. The good part is that Balochistan issue — something that the media was afraid to talk about — has become a subject of prime-time, and sometimes ill-informed, discussions on national television.

We cannot absolve ourselves of the decades-long discrimination that the province and its people have faced due to a variety of reasons. Whether it is the misuse of its natural resources such as natural gas, gold, etc, or its leverage in the federal power structure, the scorecard is pretty grim. In real terms, the issue of provincial autonomy has only been resolved recently via the 2010 eighteenth amendment. But even that seems to fit the clichéd description of being “too little and too late” given how the Baloch nationalists view it. (more…)

From Paper Magazine 2011- a year in review

Drones by Saba Khan

A journalist recently remarked that 2011 was the year that no one will remember. Alas, this will not be the case, as the year will haunt us for some time to come. The process of forgetting will not be effortless. Pakistan has undergone several such moments in the past. However, 2011 brought it all together in a chaotic fashion, exposing the blood-lined fissures within the society and the long-term crumbling of the state.

The year started with the gruesome murder of Salmaan Taseer, governor of Pakistan’s largest province as he championed the cause of a poor woman booked under the blasphemy law. His death was a shocking event in multiple ways: the murderer Mumtaz Qadri was a man supposed to protect him, the killer was garlanded and elevated to the status of a hero by many segments of the society especially the clerics. A tragedy of this proportion at one level appeared to be an epitaph of a society that had buried its humanity. Even worse the political parties, civil society and media remained cautious in the aftermath of the assassination; and the hope for a collective resistance was missing.

It took several months for an afraid judge to deliver a verdict against this heinous act and now the judge lives outside Pakistan to escape the wrath of clerics who find his act of sentencing Qadri abominable. The executive did little to punish errant officials who had allowed for things to come to such a pass; and the Parliament could not even offer prayers for the slain governor. Pakistan has never appeared so unkind and insensitive to murder, and that too in the name of a faith that preaches peace. This murder was followed by the assassination of Pakistan’s minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti ostensibly at the hands of Taliban and to date the killers remain at large. Bhatti’s death marked the end of activism against the Blasphemy law silencing most of the voices calling for reform to the man-made laws which persecutes both Muslims and non-Muslims in Pakistan.

Bruised by this ghastly incident, the country displayed another kind of a collective neurosis when a trigger-happy CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed three Pakistanis in Lahore. Davis’ act was despicable and he ought to have been punished. But Pakistan’s right wing and media manifested a rare kind of blood thirst against this operative of a notorious agency. The calls to hang Davis without a due examination of international and domestic laws came as another affirmation of a society, which has abandoned rule of law in favour of chaos and paranoia. It is a separate matter that the state bailed out Davis applying the Islamic laws introduced by Gen Zia ul Haq by paying blood money to the families of the victims. The executive was in overdrive and the judiciary also delivered a speedy judgement. The incident left Pakistanis more xenophobic and resentful of its long-time patron and ally, the United States.

Nothing has been more turbulent than the trajectory of Pak-US relations during the year. The two allies turned into frenemies by the end of the year. The Davis saga set the stage for stranger things to come.

An expensive wall hanging

On May 2, a special team of US Navy seals almost invaded a part of Pakistan in a surgical strike to capture and kill the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden (OBL). The location of OBL’s hideout was most embarrassing. The chief patron of a global Islamist movement was living apparently for years near a garrison town in Abbottabad, close to a prestigious military training academy.

There was uproar in Pakistan and the earlier shock and unanswered question – what was OBL doing there –was replaced by a nationalist outrage. The US had violated our sovereignty and if our security forces were negligent or complicit there was an issue. The contradictions within Pakistan’s policy and its domestic civil-military relations were at once laid bare under international spotlight.

The domestic crisis which emanated out the May 2 strike on OBL’s hideout deepened by the end of the year when the civilian and military power-wielders were playing out their conflict in the courts. The memo-gate affair, as it is now known, finds its roots in the writing of an unsigned memo allegedly written by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US calling for US intervention and support for the attempts to establish civilian control of security and foreign policies. By the end of the year, the Ambassador had resigned, faced a court petition, which culminated in the formation of a judicial commission to probe the charges, and been placed in virtual imprisonment beacause of fears for his safety.

Between these events, there were two other acts of violence. One against the state by a well-planned attack on a major naval base in Karachi in May 2011, and the second, the abduction and murder of a journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad around end of May 2011. Both acts disparate in their intensity and nature underlined one thing in common: the power of militant groups, a reality to be reckoned with. The naval base attack by the militants (or non state actors) apparently had inside support while the slain journalist was reporting regularly on the activities of extremist non-state actors as well as the operations of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

These organised groups also abducted the son of the late Salmaan Taseer from Lahore and an American aid worker Warren Weinstein in August. On the issue of latter, a video was released by the current Al Qaeda chief claiming that his network had the American citizen in their custody. For the release of Weinstein, Pakistan and the US have to meet several demands of the militants. (more…)

It has taken me some time to finish reading the assemblage book entitled Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change. An overly long reading list has been haunting me for the past few months, but I was slow and self-indulgent as I read and re-read many sections of this insightful book which is path breaking in many ways. First, it is a unique collection which emanated from intense thinking and collaborative action; and second, given the fairly recent rise of Indian mass media (also applicable to South Asia in general) this is quite a seminal work of its kind.

Four comrades at the School of Oriental and African Sciences (SOAS) conceived this book around a collective they called Sacred Media Cow to make sense of the rising Indian mass media and its ubiquitous nature, its articulation of a middle class vision, and how through this process Indian nationalism was being redefined.

The four editors – Somnath Batabyal, Angad Chowdhry, Meenu Gaur and Matti Pohjoen – are also contributors to this volume; and have assembled an impressive array of essays which move from mass media, news channels, to mainstream and regional cinema arriving at the rise of digital cultures of India. Through the book, we view the reimagining of India as a ‘shining’ middle class dream using the popular media lens, which are both powerful and trans-national. That is why the last essay, a poignant piece by Naresh Fernandes, The Uncomfortable Truth behind the Corporate Media’s Imagination of India closes in the various debates.

Fernandes makes an unpopular (and increasingly ‘unpatriotic’) conclusion: that despite the shining India narratives, India remains a poor, developing country with myriad problems. Using the stories of a reputed journalist P Sainath, this essay looks at the ‘other’ India which the ‘hyperreal’ media has rendered invisible to provide a more palatable vision for its key corporate target – the middle classes. The conclusion of the essay is haunting as it cites the infamous TV commercial where the legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan indirectly blames the poor for “preventing India from realizing its true potential”. Pohjonen’s introduction also cites this memorable line from Sainath: “Evading reality helps no one…a society that does not know itself cannot cope.” (more…)

There is no city like Lahore/ Everything that is wrong is set right here

It is a mystery as to how a layered city such as Lahore has attracted little scholarship in the past few decades. This is why Anna Suvorova’s book “Lahore -Topohilia of Space and Place” is a major book of our times. Suvorova is a distinguished scholar and currently heads the Department of Asian Literatures at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. Her earlier works on Urdu, Sufism and numerous translations of Urdu prose works are well known. This book, while a work of formidable scholarship is distinctive for its personal dimension. Like countless others, Suvorova is an ardent admirer of Lahore and tells us why Lahore has survived historical vicissitudes and also why its memory is so lovingly remembered, invoked and reproduced.

The third Karachi Literature Festival concluded recently. I am posting a short piece of mine which was published by the News on Sunday. Another report that I wrote for TFT can be found here. Faiza S Khan’s review is most interesting. Another review by Umair found it sterile and comments on the technocratic discussions that took place on ‘national’ issues. And a comprehensive round up at DAWN’s Books & Authors magazine here.

“When our lives are written about in the English language, the books become best sellers,” thundered Pakistan’s rebel poet Kishwar Naheed at the Karachi Literature Festival. This was a session where I had the rather undeserved honour of introducing and talking to Naheed and the other master poet, Iftikhar Arif. She added that there was little emphasis on quality as the books you were supposed to buy at the airports for light reading were now ‘high’ literature. This was an oblique, yet unambiguous reference to the Pakistani writing in English. The two worlds — “native” and English — remain quite separate in a manner that Kipling had envisioned. English writing from Pakistan has received global attention and is celebrated at festivals across the globe. Yet how many Pakistanis have an idea of what it is all about? This is an uncomfortable question that we need to ask and perhaps keep on asking.

The Karachi Literature Festival has now evolved into a serious annual festival where writers gather and interact with thousands of readers each year. To be fair to the organisers, they have been mindful of the principle of inclusiveness from the very start. Asif Farrukhi, an eminent writer (who is my actual role model for his supernatural powers to write, edit and think with a full time job) has been organising the “regional” side of the literary ramblings at the festivals. Big names such as Fahmida Riaz and others are given due acknowledgment by holding sessions with them. Yet, the emphasis, for obvious reasons, is on the universe of English writings — both by Pakistanis and foreigners. This year, Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple, Hanif Kureishi, Shobha De, Anatol Lieven and several others attracted much attention by their readers, fans and critics. There were a few sessions on Urdu and regional languages’ literature but it was obvious that the attendees were not always the same.

As a young woman confessed at the festival, “I hardly read Urdu, but do you consider Initizar Husain a great writer?” Despite the shocking nature of this statement, I was hardly surprised. The apartheid that exists in Pakistan’s education system marginalises the local and the vernacular compared to the more market-oriented, global English. Aside from its potential “benefits,” English language, for some, remains an odious status symbol. A colonial legacy, a preserve of the postcolonial elites, and a stepping-stone for entry into the deliberately constructed, globalised monoculture. (more…)

“…The Chishti school of Sufism did not exclude any religion and gave way to a plural Indian identity. This is why the extremists in Pakistan, especially the Taliban, are against such devotional practices.” In 2010, the dargah of Baba Farid in Pakistan, another saint of this Sufi order, was bombed…”

This is a fabulous piece published in Livemint.com..

On entering, the white dome attracts your attention. It’s not the architecture or the gold centrepiece at its top. Nor the birds circling it. This dome seems to shape and consecrate every moment of this place. The fakirs (ascetics) near the ablution pool face it. So do the pilgrims in the marble courtyards. The Khwaja’s tomb is directly below.

The heart of Sufism: Pilgrims carrying flowers for Moinuddin Chishti.

Four months later, when Rajasthan’s desert winter has given way to the heat of June, the dargah will be filled with lamps. Its assembly hall, resounding with the sound of the qawwals’ harmoniums, will herald the 800th urs of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Smaller groups of musicians will draw their own listeners within the various courtyards and sama (a gathering listening to mystical verse) music will echo in the streets. The terraces surrounding the dargah will come alive with their own qawwali gatherings and the last melodic strains will die only when the early morning prayer is called by the muezzin.

As the cliché about the intolerant Muslim refuses to go away, as Sufism remains anathema to a section of Muslims, what is the significance of South Asia’s most important Sufi shrine? (more…)

Pakistan’s President Iskander Mirza (1956-58) is remarked to have said that democracy was ‘unsuited’ to the genius of Pakistani people. Decades later, similar questions about democratic form of governance are being raised in Pakistan. Take any TV show, multitude of op-eds, or more worryingly, check what the young people have to say on Facebook or Twitter. The parameters of debate remain the same.

The urban Pakistanis’ disdain for the ‘illiterate’, ‘rural’ politicians to rule the country is a running theme. More importantly, the duality of civil-military rule has generated a peculiar discourse: the weak and corrupt ‘civilians’ compromise national security as opposed to authoritarian regimes which guard ‘ideological’ and geographical borders of the country.

This is why we have seen civilian governments come and go, especially in the past two decades with charges of corruption and violation of national security. For instance, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, while dismissing Nawaz Sharif’s government in 1993, alluded to, among others, the charge of murdering General Asif Nawaz Janjua, the Army Chief. Benazir Bhutto till her last remained a ‘security risk’ even when she compromised her principles and fully supported and owned the Taliban policy of the 1990s. The grave sin of Nawaz Shairf in his second tenure was attempting to secure peace with India; and the gravest of all was allegedly plotting to kill the Army chief in 1999 by diverting his flight.

And now the ‘proof’ of this errant and traitorous behaviour is an unsigned memo sent to Americans to contain Pakistan Army. Since the matter is soon going to be subjected to an inquiry and perhaps judicial proceedings, it would be best not to speculate any further than what has been reported, or shall we say, trumpeted in the press. Prior to this, the provisions of Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid legislation (passed by the US Congress) were somehow considered to the handiwork of the civilian government. It eludes commonsense as to how can a civilian government be so powerful to influence a foreign legislature. But then, such tales require a willing suspension of disbelief.

The recent memogate saga, not unlike the past occasions, has accelerated the pace of rumour-mongering and has spurred obituaries of the civilian government. Perhaps even more than the change-rhetoric generated by the October 30 rally of Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) where the memo and its alleged author Pakistan’s former Ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani was named in public as an official who may have compromised ‘national interest’. Most media commentators are saying that a change is going to take place before March 2012 Senate elections and the gathering storm of opposition protests (more…)

An old piece that I could not post earlier:

Commenting on the melting state of the economy, a reputed economic analyst stated how the “deplorable state of governance” was responsible for the “mismanagement of public goods”. Luckily, he also reiterated how such accountability was best undertaken through an election. A common misnomer that plagues public discourse relates to how “governance” is viewed as the job of an elected government and that the state and the government are interchangeable entities. It is important to note that the state of Pakistan — post-colonial, encroached and bitten by its non-state offspring — remains the dominant power centre and most elected governments have been at subordinate to these permanent interests.

The most glaring manifestation of this reality came about when the federal government in the memo-case (concerning the alleged treasonous act of authoring a memo addressed to the US against Pakistan’s security establishment) submitted before the Supreme Court that it had no control over the operations of the military and the premier spy agency — the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). This has been said before as well in other judicial proceedings but not so directly. Everyone knew that but the government’s admission makes it clear that ‘constitutional governance’ is but a pipedream in the land of the pure. Without prejudice to any institution, this has been the case for decades and is not going to change overnight.

A new state within the state may have emerged. During the hearing of the same case, an honourbale judge of the Supreme Court remarked in his obiter dicta that the Judiciary was not answerable to anyone but the ‘people’. This statement defies logic as judges are not ‘elected’ by the people; and they are also servants of the state, paid by the taxpayers who are represented by the Parliament. These developments have prompted a beleaguered government and its Prime Minister to announce that Parliament was supreme and that there ‘states within states’ cannot be tolerated.

Leaving aside the torrential decade of 1970s, the evolution of an autonomous power centre within the state apparatus in the form of the intelligence agencies is a well-recognised fact. A martial state since 1950s has been a player in the global power games in the region; and the redirection of state unlike India was almost inevitable. The 2008 elections were, therefore, a transitional moment and during transitions from military to civilian rule, power is shared and not exercised by the elected officials. The addition of another power-centre i.e. the Judiciary is a recent and in its nascent stage of development. Its future course remains unclear whether it can arrest the dominance of the military-intelligence complex. (more…)

Tehelka story last week: Government in final round of survival game: It’s do or die

Either the government will withstand the pressure from the unelected arms of the state or will cave in, says Raza Rumi

Pakistan’s beleaguered civilian government has entered into the final round of its survival game. This is not a new ‘game’ as the transition to democracy has been jeopardised from the very start. In 2007, the military junta started the process of negotiating with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the then Army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, and his trusted associate General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani shaped a power-sharing arrangement with late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The ‘arrangement’ was formalised in the shape of a law—National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO)—which inter alia intended to drop dozens of cases against PPP’s leadership and politicians. It should be noted that many of these cases were pending in courts for over a decade and due to lack of evidence or faulty prosecution, there were no convictions.

Politicians in Pakistan have faced ‘corruption’ charges since 1950s largely as an instrument to keep them in line and expand the space for the unelected executive i.e. the civil-military bureaucracy, which has ruled Pakistan for the longest period of time in its chequered history. The judiciary historically acted as a subordinate ally of the executive legitimising coups, convicting and debarring politicians and enabling a praetorian state to run the country.

Since 2007, the judiciary has evolved as a powerful institution due to the popular middle-class movement which contributed to the restoration of the deposed Judges and paved the way for Musharraf’s ouster in 2009. The period between 2007 and 2009 was when the urban middle class’ (led by the lawyers) aspirations (more…)

Never a dull moment. And, increasing requests for quotes, opinions and reactions. Sometimes I wonder if it makes a difference? I am putting some of these quotes in a purely self-indulgent moment.

Most recently, this story in Washington Post by Karin Brulliard quoted me. Entitled ”In Pakistan, coup looms but does not strike” here is my feel-good view:

“There is an enlarged democratic space,” said Raza Rumi, a newspaper columnist who counts himself among the optimists. “So this is an interesting moment. The government may or may not survive . . . but the assertion of the civilians is inspiring.”

DNA on Pak government getting ready to face the top court. Here:

Raza Rumi, a leading Pakistani columnist, said the elected executive and unelected institutions had “entered into a logjam”.

He said, “The parliament will debate a loosely worded resolution on constitutional governance while the Supreme Court will hear two important cases that can potentially endanger the future of the civilian government.”

Rumi noted that the military had reportedly decided to back the apex court.

“Clearly, the civilians have gained some ground as the military, despite its power, has refrained from launching a coup,” he said.

Columnist Raza Rumi suggested that state institutions needed to find a way to work together. ”The best option for all players is to work out a formula on power-sharing where the elected and the unelected arms of the state can coexist within their respective constitutional jurisdictions,” he said. (more…)