Musharraf- Zardari brotherhood in offing?

Asif Ezdi

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, it took a little child to cry out, as the emperor passed in a procession, that he had nothing on and soon the whole people were saying that their ruler was not wearing anything. If Andersen was alive today, he would have seen his fairytale acted out in real life in Pakistan, though in a rather different way.

In this case it was not a child but a courageous judge who exposed our very own emperor. When the chief justice stood up to Musharraf’s bullying, intimidation and blackmail, the whole nation followed suit. And just as the fairytale emperor’s ministers feared for their jobs if they were to tell him the truth, the advisers of our uncrowned king also counselled their master that all was well and all he needed to do was to get rid of one troublesome judge.

The similarity does not end there. In Andersen’s story the emperor, dressed in his birthday suit, shivered, it seemed to him that the people were right; but he thought, “I must go through with the procession.” And he carried himself still more proudly, and the courtiers carried the train which did not exist at all.

Our ex-general, with his narrow horizon and being a prisoner of his own propaganda, is finding it very hard to admit that the people could be right. But he too, like the fairytale emperor, has evidently decided to “go through with the procession.” Although the demand for his resignation has risen to a crescendo, he refuses to quit. Musharraf’s chamberlains and trainbearers also continued carrying the royal train till the pageant was brought to an end with the election. Only Shaukat Aziz, the grand chamberlain, left early to return to his home in the West from where he had come eight years earlier, but not before giving himself a golden handshake of hefty perks for his pains in the service of the “boss man,” as he used to call his benefactor.

Musharraf, of course, would like to believe that the procession is still continuing. He claims that everything has been going according to his plan for returning the country to democracy and that the election now completes the third and last phase of that programme. (The first phase, it bears recalling, consisted of a bogus referendum and a rigged parliamentary election, while the second phase ended with his farcical election, the suspension of the Constitution, the incarceration of judges and the muzzling of the media.)

Musharraf has declared that he is ready to extend his cooperation to the new government for the next five years. The question, on the contrary, is not whether he is ready to cooperate with the new government but rather whether the new government would like to keep him. His farewell to the army last December was so tearful, not just because saying goodbye to an institution in which he had served so long, his was an emotionally wrenching moment for him but also because he must have sensed that it could be the beginning of the end of his reign. Without his uniform and his swagger stick, Musharraf must now have sensed that “his” army is not at his beck and call to keep him in the saddle. And the army too under its new chief of staff knows that there are limits to how far it can go in helping its former chief in his political ambitions.

Musharraf’s best chance of survival lies in an unravelling of the coalition between the PPP and PML-N. The disagreements between these two parties, the principal partners in the governing alliance, on the judges’ issue and on Musharraf’s future have been on public display for several months and have not been concealed by the seeming bonhomie between Zardari and Nawaz Sharif.

The “root cause” of these differences is the divergence in the stance of the two parties towards the NRO. The top leaders of the PPP have benefited enormously from this Ordinance in the shape of rapid-fire acquittals from longstanding corruption cases and would not like it to be jeopardised through a restoration of the judges fired by Musharraf. This is not an unfounded fear, because before these judges were dismissed a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had barred the judiciary from deciding any case under the NRO as long as its constitutionality had not been determined. This decision of the Supreme Court was later reversed by the Dogar court. The PPP, therefore, has reason to be afraid that if the dismissed judges are reinstated through a simple executive decision, their earlier stay order would also be restored and they would resume hearings on the constitutional validity of the Ordinance.

There is a further reason for the PPP to be wary of a restoration of the judges without a constitutional amendment and this too has to do with the NRO. The NRO was passed on Oct 5, 2007, and its four-month life came to an end on Feb 4. However, under )aragraph 6(3) of the Constitution (Amendment) Order, 2007, passed by Musharraf on Nov 21, all ordinances in force at the time emergency was lifted on Dec 14 are to continue in force until repealed or amended by the legislature. The NRO is one such ordinance and if the PCO is accepted, it would continue in force even after the four-month period has expired. It is therefore no wonder that the stance of the PPP on the constitutional validity of the PCO has been equivocal and that legal experts of the party, such as Farook Naik, the attorney of Zardari and now Minister of Law and Justice, have been insisting that a constitutional amendment is needed to restore the judges.

The legal position regarding the PCO is quite simple: it has no constitutional validity and all actions taken under it, including the dismissal of the judges and constitutional amendments, are null and void. But the complicating factor is that the PPP has benefited from the dismissal of the judges and the constitutional amendments. The new Law Minister-cum-Zardari’s attorney is now trying to work out a package that will restore the judges, as the Murree Declaration requires, and yet places the NRO beyond judicial review as well as parliamentary meddling. Whether this can be done without a constitutional amendment is doubtful.

If the PML-N finds itself unable to back such a constitutional amendment, the PPP will need the support of other parties. That is part of the explanation for the new-found chumminess between the PPP and the MQM. In this season of brotherliness and reconciliation, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the next object of Zardari’s brotherly love is none other than Musharraf himself, the author of the National Reconciliation Ordinance. As Musharraf told the interviewer of a British daily shortly before the elections, he promulgated the NRO in order to stay in power. If he had not, he explained, “they would have all joined and then I would have been out.” If Musharraf manages to hang on to the presidency despite his overwhelming rejection by the electorate, it will be thanks to the NRO.

The writer is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan. Email: asifezdi@yahoo.co