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Musharraf Presidency : Army divided over his takeover : Opposition by pro-China lobby

	July 02, 2001

According to reports from Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf’s takeover as the President of the country has caused a rift between pro-US and pro-China factions in the Pak army. The pro-China lobby in the army which is trying to oust the pro-US faction, is vehemently opposed to Gen. Musharraf’s decision. This faction, which has close links with the PLA of China, is headed by Lt. Gen. M.H. Usmani, Deputy Chief Army Staff, ISI chief Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad and Lahore Corp Commander Lt. Gen. Muhammad Aziz. A Washington based political analyst, M.D. Nalapat, claims that while it was this troika that launched the coup that brought the newly-minted Pakistani President to power 18 months ago, today they have turned against Gen. Pervez Musharraf. They perceive he is increasingly tilting to India. As a result, they blocked the promotion of key “US lobby” personnel such as Maj. Gen. Anis Bajwa and former Principal Secretary Tariq Aziz. Slowly, the “pro-China” group is taking over the key positions within the Pakistan Army.

This is a bad news not just for the US but equally for India, as most of the PLA-friendly officers have close links with the jehadi groups, and favour an aggressive policy of insurgency to “not just bring India to its knees but cut its limbs off”, as a Pakistani analyst close to the group told in Washington. However, the clock is ticking for them: Usmani retires as early as next January, while the ISI’s Mahmood Ahmed leaves service in June 2002 and the “pro-China masterminded” Lt. Gen. Aziz demits office on October 17, 2002. This will give gen. Musharraf the chance to replace them with US-friendly officers less entangled with the jehadis. They expect a second coup before the end of this year, designed to replace Musharraf with Usmani. It was this fear, they say, that prompted Musharraf to name the Chief Justice as his second-in-line rather than the Deputy Chief of Army Staff. According to them, the jehadis are mobilizing opinion within the army against Musharraf, aware that they need to act within a year, before he gets his position consolidated.

US Officials say that it was the fear of a countercoup against Musharraf that motivated US Secretary of State Colin Powell to nudge New Delhi into the invitation to the CEO-turned-President. Washington hopes that a successful summit will strengthen Musharraf at home. The catch is that this “success” may need concessions that no Indian Prime Minister can deliver.

Demands are being made from within the Army circles that Gen. Musharraf relieve himself of some pressure by handing over the post of Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee to the recently appointed Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Usmani. Pressure is also growing that he create a new post called the Vice Chief of Army Staff which could be given to the present Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Yusuf or the current Chief of ISI, Lt. General Mahmood.

Sources say, that in order to appease his opponents in the Army, Gen. Musharraf may appoint Corp Commanders as Governors of four provinces replacing the incumbent civilians appointed by Gen. Musharraf when he took over in a bloodless coup in October 1999. According to a Pakistan English daily, Dawn, the new Governors in uniform along with Gen. Musharraf, Gen Usmani and the Chiefs of Army and Navy would constitute the National Security Council.

The Musharraf government, has however, dismissed as baseless media reports that he is planning to appoint Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz as the new Prime Minister. Political observers say, the decision to scotch rumours of appointment of a Prime Minister assumes significance in the context of expectations that Gen. Musharraf would like to have a civilian set up before the announcement of the schedule for the General Elections to be held before October 2002. The speculation in the Pak press was based on the assumption that the military regime would like to impress international financial institutions, donor countries and the world about its democratic credentials.

Earlier there were reports that Mr. Shaukat Aziz would be elevated from the post of Finance Minister to the Prime Minister whereas Mr. Moin Absal would be made the Finance Minister. It was also speculated that former Interior Minister in deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet, Chaudhary Shujat Hussain could get a cabinet berth.

Gen. Musharraf is meanwhile finding it very difficult to win legitimacy and recognition from the political parties in the country to his self-promotion as President. His grand plan of building a consensus on his coming visit to India received a setback on June 27 when the Allies for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), a conglomerate of various Opposition parties demanding restoration of democracy, decided to stay away from the all party meeting called by Gen. Musharraf. The leader of the 16-party alliance Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan later said, they have nothing against the process of resumption of dialogue with India, but they were against the manner in which Gen. Musharraf took over as the President of the country. ARD constituents said they would not like to confer legitimacy on Gen. Musharraf as the new President by holding a meeting with him. PPP leader Raza Rabbani said, Gen. Musharraf lacked the constitutional and the popular mandate to settle vital national issues and therefore it is meaningless for the party to attend the meeting.

Gen. Musharraf continues to draw brickbats for his anointment as the President. Writing in the Dawn, political analyst Ayaz Amir says his decision shows that Pakistan has refused to learn from the past and that as a nation we are fated to retrace the steps of failures and blunders of the past. Once again, a General catapulted into power by the force of blind circumstances, is speaking the language of personal indispensability saying that he decided to takeover as the President in the “supreme national interest”. Ayaz Amir asks, what miracle is Musharraf seeking to deliver? What is his record in his office?

To some others, however, the decision has not come as a surprise. They say only those who have forgotten Pakistan’s chequered experience with the Army would have expected the General to act differently. Consider Pakistan’s past experience with three military dictators. Ayub Khan, who pioneered military rule in Pakistan and stayed in power from 1958 to 1969, was forced out of office by another army officer, Yahya Khan. The latter gave up power only after he had lost the 1971 Bangladesh war against India. And there were few signs that Zia-ul-Haq would give up control even after a decade in 1988; only his death in a plane crash forced the return of democracy. Mr. Sharif seems to have learnt well from his predecessors.

Why do military rulers cling on to power even after making promises of a quick return to democracy? Clearly because they learn to enjoy absolute political power, and are unsure of their personal fate if and when civilian rule is restored. And what if the civilian government, when democracy is revived, is vindictive? Yahya Khan struck a deal with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, to ensure that he was not charged with any crime, before he agreed to hand over power to him. Zia was convinced that Bhutto would “get him” - as he confessed to his confidantes - and, therefore, executed the former Prime Minister. Nevertheless, military dictators keep making promises of return of democracy to keep a flicker of hope alive within civil society, and they may even be persuaded to put it a democratic facade. Ayub Khan flirted with the idea of basic democracy, which was really military rule by another name. Zia-ul-Haq, after initially promising elections within three months, installed upper civilian regimes that he thought provided him with enough democratic legitimacy to continue exercising real power.

Less than two years after he deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless military coup in October, 1999, and with just over 15 months left for compliance with the Supreme Court’s “deadline” for holding parliamentary elections, the General has, with a stroke of the pen takenover as the President flouting all norms of democracy. For while there is no guarantee that Gen. Musharraf will actually hold elections by October, 2002, as undertaken by him before the Supreme Court, and not “seek” an extension for the purpose, he has now (having installed himself as President) nothing to lose even if the elections are held as promised.



Unconstitutional step

Constitutional experts say, whereas Prime Minister Vajpayee was the only world leader to congratulate Gen. Musharraf in advance of his takeover, his gate crashing into the Presidential Palace was a gross violation of Pakistan’s Constitution. Both under the original Pakistan Constitution of 1973 and the Supreme Court’s verdict of May 12, 2000, validating the military take-over “on the basis of the doctrine of State necessity and the principle of salus populi supreme lex (the welfare of the people is the supreme law), elections are required to be held directly only to the National Assembly and the provincial Assemblies. The President of Pakistan is not elected directly by the people. First and foremost, therefore, Gen. Musharraf’s assumption of the presidency is intended to insulate and immunize himself from the obligations of representative democracy as stipulated by the Constitution and the judiciary.

“Upon the office of President becoming vacant for any reason whatsoever,” reads the presidential Succession order of 2001, promulgated on June 20, “the Chief Executive of Pakistan shall be the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and shall perform all functions assigned to the President by or under any law.” While the term “Chief Executive” is nowhere to be found in the 1973 Constitution, the very first Chapter of Part III of the Constitution relating to the Federation of Pakistan (as distinguished from the provinces) is devoted to the presidency. By a simple, disingenuous statement the Succession Order thus converts an institution or person wholly alien to the Constitution into a regular Head of State enjoying the entire panapoly of powers granted by the Constitution. That is the other, major significance of the change in Gen. Musharraf’s legal persona. That this conversion is much more than the mere replacement of one President by another - former Supreme Court judge Rafiq Tarar by Gen. Musharraf - is evident also from the presidential tenure claimed by the latter for himself.

Even as Musharraf invoked Article 44 of the Constitution to confer a full five-year term on himself, he blatantly and cynically disregarded Article 47 while removing Rafiq Tarar. Article 47 of the Constitution reads the President may be “removed from office on the ground of physical or mental incapacity or impeached on a charge of violating the Constitution or gross misconduct.” Notice of such removal of impeachment may be given by not less than one-half of the total membership of each House, the National Assembly or Senate. Both the Houses shall then be summoned by the Speaker of the National Assembly for a joint sitting, which may investigate, or cause to be investigated, the ground or charge upon which the notice is based.

If after consideration of the result of the investigation, a resolution is passed at a joint sitting of both the Houses by not less than two-thirds of the total membership of Parliament, declaring the President unfit to hold the office due to physical or mental incapacity or violation of the Constitution or gross misconduct - then and only then does the President “ceases to hold office immediately on the passing of the resolution.” In the event of the President being absent or unable to perform his functions, the Chairman of the Senate or, if he too is absent or unable to perform the functions of the office of President, the Speaker of the National Assembly shall perform the functions of President until the President returns to Pakistan or as the case may be, resumes his functions, says the Pakistan Constitution. But, Gen. Musharraf has not only dissolved the National Assembly and Senate, but also the Senate Chairman and the National Assembly Speaker, which is normally not the case. Strange enough, in his absence like trips abroad, the acting President will be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because he has neither appointed a Vice President nor the Prime Minister and he does not trust the senior officers in the Army because of the poor track record of the Pakistan Generals with political ambitions. Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, pointed out in an interview to the BBC on June 21, the Senate (like the Rajya Sabha in India) is a permanent body under the Constitution and could not be dissolved in any case. Article 59 Clause (3) of the Constitution says “The Senate shall not be subject to dissolution but the term of its members, who shall retire as follows, shall be six years..” Unlike the Senate, the National Assembly in Pakistan in not a permanent body but has a fixed term of five years from the date of its first meeting.

The President of Pakistan can, of course, dissolve the National Assembly if, in his opinion, a vote of no-confidence having been passed against the Prime Minister, no other member of the National Assembly is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the National Assembly ascertained in a session of the Assembly summoned for the purpose. The President can also dissolve the National Assembly on the advice of the Prime Minister. But the discretionary power of the Pakistan President to dissolve the National Assembly, a power vested in him by virtue of Clause (2)(b) of Article 58, popularly known as the Eighth Amendment, and so often abused in the 1980s and ’90s - was done away with in 1997 by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Whether, therefore, the removal of President Rafiq Tarar and his own installation as President in his place, or the dissolution of the National Assembly and the Senate, or the “dismissal” of their presiding officers is not outrageously unconstitutional and undemocratic. And yet, the Indian Prime Minister is the only leader in the world not only to congratulate Gen. Musharraf but to congratulate him in advance, “in anticipation”.