indiaanditsneighboursJULY 08, 2019 News the Newsbehind 17
the 1980s, hand-picked and groomed
Nawaz Sharif.
As if learning from these experiences,
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who appointed
and removed a president and prime
ministers at will, never allowed political
grass to grow under his feet.
For both Sharif and his principal
rival Benazir Bhutto, relations with
the army were crucial. Sharif has been
unseated thrice for trying to ‘contain’
the army.
Benazir had accused then President
Musharraf and select army personnel
of plotting her assassination, which
actually occurred in December 2007.
Despite several probes, suspicion
persists about the role Musharraf and
offi cers played in her assassination.
Imran Khan’s case has been more
‘transparent’ in that he was, for many
years, an admirer of the military
waiting to be groomed. His 2016 siege
of the National Assembly for several
weeks was at the behest of a powerful
section of the army and was called off
after a telephone call from a serving
general.
Despite the army’s tacit support
to Imran and his Pakistan Tehrik-e-
Insaf (PTI), Sharif won in the 2013
elections. But it worked fully in
- Th e military was widely seen as
having engineered Sharif ’s ouster and
imprisonment through the judiciary
and then, the management of these
elections.
Th us, it would seem each kettle is
now calling the pot black, as it were.
Whether it embarrasses the Army,
that is the common target, it is not
openly protesting. Perhaps it is,
judging from the ban of the use of
the phrase ‘selected prime minister’
imposed by the deputy speaker of the
National Assembly, Qasim Khan Suri.
It is also evident from the way the
government’s media regulator PEMRA
has been busy expunging the word
from the discourse conducted on daily
TV shows. Th is could not be without
a nudge from the military.
It seems a case of human - and
political - frailty, but the military
needs to keep up appearances despite
its growing role in the country’s
governance. It feels compelled to
cushion the Imran Khan government
that is fighting multiple demons
and struggling to manage a battered
economy.
The Chief of Army Staff, Gen.
Qamar Bajwa, has recently been made a
member of the high-powered National
Advisory Council, independent of the
National Assembly. Besides attending
its meetings, Gen. Bajwa has taken to
speaking at seminars and conferences,
telling the government where it is going
wrong. Th is is not unprecedented. His
predecessor, Gen. Raheel Sharif, earned
much of his power and popularity,
besides going after the militants in the
wake of a deadly terror attack on the
Army Public School in Peshawar, by
speaking up in public on non-military
issues.
This has drawn criticism. An
editorial in Dawn newspaper (June
30, 2019), while commending
Bajwa’s observation that “there can
be no sovereignty without economic
stability,” also reminds the military of
the task it is required to perform in
its own area. “Th e military leadership
should not allow itself to be side-
tracked from its core responsibilities
— which include keeping the eastern
and western borders secure — and
instead apply its energies to its area of
expertise,” the editorial states.
Th e discourse on who is ‘selected’
and who not, has external dimensions.
Removed from offi ce by Musharraf in
1999, Sharif and his family were exiled
to Saudi Arabia at the intervention of
its monarchy. To facilitate their return,the Musharraf regime promulgated the
controversial National Reconciliation
Ordinance (NRO) granting amnesty to
the Sharif family and a large number
of politicians and offi cials accused of
corruption. Th is was later invalidated
by the Supreme Court.
Th ere is speculation that Sharif,
now in jail, might be exiled again.
Using the current debate to good
measure, Imran Khan has denied that
any foreign power has shown interest
in Sharif being taken out of Pakistan.
Addressing the National Assembly
recently, Khan quoted former US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
as writing in her biography that
Musharraf had been asked to drop
corruption cases against the Sharif
family.
“The Americans collaborated
to have the NRO (National
Reconciliation Ordinance) signed
because it was in their interest, Khan
said, adding that Rice’s account
showed that “those talking about
(me being) ‘selected’ were themselves
manufactured in the nursery of military
dictatorship”.
This new entrant to Pakistan’s
political lexicon is at once mutually
a denunciation by the stakeholders
and recognition of the army as the
elephant in the room.
Given the way Pakistan’s polity has
evolved, and the manner in which
the all-powerful army has tackled
successive civilian governments over
the last decade, this debate – and the
army’s expanding role in governance -
is unlikely to end any time soon.
(Th e author is a veteran journalist
and president, Commonwealth
Journalists Association)
In arrangement with South Asia
Monitor