Raising Expectations

Sounding earnest and well-meaning, Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced his government’s intention of putting an end to poverty in this country and he has outlined what he considered to be steps in that direction. Unfortunately (but predictably), his proposals fall short of being credible at two levels. At one, he seems not to grasp that what obstructs better health and education outcomes is not their lack of recognition as fundamental rights; the challenge lies in the lack of resources and the absence of any commitment by our elites in prioritizing social welfare. At a more fundamental level, the PM appeared to display no understanding that poverty is not a headache that will quickly respond to some kind of Panadol; it is systemic and the system itself produces still more poverty and inequality.

Now, it is undoubtedly good that our present leaders should speak of social service delivery as an important priority of the state. The point is that they will also undoubtedly fail to deliver on such service. This is nothing new. Most of our governments have notoriously failed to deliver on the entire range of services a government is supposed to provide – social services (however limited), economic benefits, energy, water, food security, roads, railways, environmental protection, sanitation or even something as basic as law and order.

And also, when the system has failed, the people have turned to the military in desperation. The point that our civilian politicos need to note is that whoever may have initiated the change to a military regime at any time, the change has always been widely welcomed.

Like other professionally run outfits that place a premium on executive effectiveness, the country’s most organized institution detests indecision, incompetence, uncertainty, nonconformity and unnecessary shades of grey. In this, it is not unlike corporate executives, bankers and business barons, who can usually be counted among those who applaud military incursions into statecraft.

Back in 1954, General Mohammed Ayub Khan, the first Pakistani Commander-in-Chief of the Army of this young Republic, thought as follows on the night of the 4th of October, 1954 (as revealed in his exceedingly readable autobiography Friends not Masters):

“I was staying...at a hotel in London...on my way to the United States. It was a warmish night and I could not sleep...I was pacing up and down the room when I said to myself, ‘Let me put down my ideas in a military fashion: what is wrong with the country and what can be done to put things right.’ I approached the question much in the manner of drawing up a military appreciation: what is the problem, what are the factors involved, and what is the solution...? So I sat down at my desk and started writing.”

When incompetent or do-nothing or internally divided parliaments - however constitutional they may be - fail to satisfy the people’s demands, a Vacuum of Effectiveness is left, into which step the more action-oriented, better organised institutions

Please note the open and candid manner in which this General presumed to redesign his country’s entire future. His impatience with the political authorities and their continual failure to act towards objectives he felt were self-evident, are clearly apparent.

One can scarcely fault the future Field Marshal. In 1954, even seven years after Independence, the Constituent Assembly had failed to frame a Constitution. The nation was blessed, on the one side, with the kind of politicos characterised as ‘pro-government’ (mostly rural potentates, content to fly flags on their cars, receive special attention at the local Katcheri and play obscure games of shifting around baradari alliances), or ‘opposition-wallahs’ (populist spell-binders and left-wing ideologues, mostly from the then East Wing). None of these had felt any urgent need for meaningful legislation or political action.

No wonder this military man was so presumptuous! He was desperately impatient.

Less than three weeks after that warm October night in London, Governor-General Malik Ghulam Muhammad acted. With (as a newspaper of the time put it) “a general to the left of him and a general to the right”, he ordered the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the sacking of the government. The new government, formed under a chastened Prime Minister, included the first military man to hold Dual Office: the Defence Minister was General Mohammed Ayub Khan, serving C-in-C and author of the diary entry we have been discussing.

A busy time was to follow, as those who had brought about this civil-military coup proceeded to actualise Ayub’s midnight diary notes. Pakistan became a member of the US-sponsored SEATO defence pact and of the Baghdad Pact (subsequently CENTO), thus making this country a strategic element in the American Cordon Sanitaire around the USSR and China, and ensuring the inflow of weaponry, technology and funds to our armed forces. American aid for the economy, under the PL480 and US-IAD programmes, was negotiated. The provinces of the Western Wing were amalgamated into the ‘One Unit’ province of West Pakistan, with its capital at Lahore. The Tamizuddin Khan case was briskly contested, leading to the infamous judgement by Justice Munir.

A new Constituent Assembly was created, which finally framed a Constitution for Pakistan. But, barely two years after the promulgation of the Constitution, even this was abrogated and Martial Law was declared.

With Ayub Khan becoming President, the Army was in full control and in a position to reorder and reorganise matters to ensure that policies were correctly directed and that things got done effectively. Which policies and actions were ‘correct’, was of course not in doubt either. The minds of our good Field Marshal and those around him, were not sympathetic to the complexities of competing political ideals and the many grey areas.

Ayub Khan promulgated his own new Constitution. In defiance of already firmly established preference for a parliamentary system, the 1962 document provided for an all-powerful executive President - and one unfettered by such ‘alien’ concepts as separation of powers. Instead of a popularly elected Legislature or direct elections for the President, this Constitution provided for a pliable electoral college of 80,000 ‘Basic Democrats’ to vote for the Parliament and the President. Where the ethnic diversity and divided geography of the country obviously called for federal arrangements, the 1962 Basic Law was rigidly unitary in structure.

As any student of politics could have told Ayub, the 1962 document was unworkable. It collapsed into disorder even before its author’s departure from political office.

The point is that there is nothing particularly ‘wrong’ with the military mind; in fact, its preoccupation with clear objectives and effective action is very attractive. But to have it frame a complex document like a national Constitution, a task for which it is simply not educationally or psychologically equipped, was a gross abdication of responsibility on the part of the political leadership of the time. And, let’s face it, it had anyhow been the fecklessness of ‘civilian’ politicians that permitted such a situation to develop and their active collaboration and connivance that promoted this arrogation of functions by the military regime.

When incompetent or do-nothing or internally divided parliaments - however constitutional they may be - fail to satisfy the people’s demands, a Vacuum of Effectiveness is left, into which step the more action-oriented, better organised institutions: the civil bureaucracy and the Army. After all, both nature and the state abhor a Vacuum.

Since the failure of the Musharraf regime, there has been a tide running in favour of democracy and constitutional continuity. But the ineptitude and confusion displayed over the last ten months by Mr Khan’s government has created serious concerns, even among its supporters. And now new expectations of social welfare services that are clearly undeliverable are being raised among our downtrodden millions!