Emergency Plus equals Martial Law Minus BY:Humayun Gauhar



Its classic! We’ve been there so many times. Once again Pakistan’s ruling elite has temporarily suspended its war against its people and is at war with itself over the sharing of booty – the spoils of office and the right to pelf. Once again those in power have done something drastic to take all the cake for themselves and leave none for their opponents. Once again those out in the cold want their place back at the banquet table with at least their original share of the cake if not more. And once again it’s all in the name of the people and democracy.



For once the people are not taking sides – yet. They are cynical about the government and cynical about the opposition. Why should they come out in support of those who deceitfully promised them bread, shelter and clothing but all they gave them were batons, bullets and bombs and often the grave for shelter? For the first time there is not even an illusion of alternative leadership. Forget illusion, people are without delusion. They can see no mirage of a savior, a messiah, a deliverer, not one credible politician. Finally the realization is dawning upon them that they always were orphans. Their salvation will only come when they understand that it is bootless to wait for messiahs and deliverers. They have to find their own salvation by themselves. That is when the kernel of the idea of revolution is born, a revolution that upturns an inhuman status quo born of an anti-people system that is the product of a flawed basic law. Until that happens, they will look increasingly towards religious extremism for relief and redress.



The street is silent; the bazaar still. Why should people face beatings, imprisonment and death for those they have regularly elected as their representatives in the forlorn hope that oppressor will somehow turn redeemer? These tyrants are people’s tormentors in the garb of liberator. They have always betrayed them, robbed them, impoverished them. Only the drawing rooms are abuzz. It is the sound that an elite in opposition mistakenly takes for the resonance of revolution, the cry in the street, the shout of the bazaar. Alienated are they from our real sounds: the dance of our street, the music of our bazaars, the rhythm of our villages, the drumbeat of history. The proud, resilient people of Pakistan never lose their optimism, which is why there is always hope.



What is this thing called ‘emergency plus’ that has been imposed in the name of ‘the national interest’? The ‘plus’ is added to ‘emergency’ because our constitution does not give the government enough powers to do what it wants under simple emergency. Under the constitution the president proclaims emergency; anything more he cannot. Which is why ‘emergency plus’ had to be proclaimed by the chief of the army staff, because the president cannot. There is no room for a Provisional Constitutional Order in the constitution. It can only be done in ‘emergency plus’. Thus a simple emergency would not have enabled the government to change recalcitrant Supreme Court judges. It had to be more than emergency but less then martial law. The government calls it ‘emergency plus’; we might just as well call it ‘martial law minus’ – minus chief martial law administrator, minus the plethora of martial law administrators spread all over Pakistan, minus Martial Law Regulations, minus military courts and minus the whole jing bang lot that we are all too familiar with.



President Musharraf admitted quite candidly that emergency was proclaimed because of a runaway judiciary, to fight terrorism better and to arrest the economic downslide that both were causing. He didn’t mention that worse is the naked American interference in Pakistan, dictating to us that Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto should team up to fight terrorism. Having lost the war on terror, shouldn’t anyone tell them that Louis Farrakhan would make their best president? The suggestion is less bizarre than Benazir becoming prime minister, for despite American insistence she is no moderate or liberal. Farrakhan is Muslim, by all accounts extreme, the perfect person to engage with Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Company to end the war on terror.



What is ‘the national interest’, a question asked often? Needless to say, when today’s opposition is in government, they will also fall back on using ‘the national interest’ as cover. The national interest is the iniquitous status quo. It is invoked when that status quo is threatened. The national interest is used as cover for preserving a status quo that is intrinsically anti-people and pro-ruling class. It comprises tribal chieftains, feudal lords, politicians of all hues, business people and industrialists, bankers, the regular religious parties, the civil and military bureaucracy, the judiciary and the bar, academia, media and so forth. In short, those who comprise ‘the establishment’. When there is any threat to this status quo, from within or without the ruling class, the national interest is invoked. That is all.



It’s not that we’ve never had a state of emergency before. In 60 years we’ve been under some sort of emergency for 35. Ayub Khan proclaimed a state of emergency when the 1965 war with India started. Both General Yahya Khan and his ally Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ruled under a state of emergency throughout their periods in power. Both also ruled under martial law, Mr. Bhutto for the first four months of his rule. Musharraf had the same ‘emergency plus’ from takeover to 2002. Now he has imposed it again. When a ruler, civilian or military, is under threat of losing power by a court decision, he or she imposes emergency. When a state high court ruled Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s election illegal, she slapped a tighter and tougher emergency on the ‘largest democracy in the world’ than Pakistan has ever known. Why, her son went about forcibly sterilizing men in exchange for a transistor radio! Musharraf has done the same – declared an emergency that is, not gone about sterilizing people – because the Supreme Court could have declared him ineligible. Now he is left to grapple with the question of indemnity – via Supreme Court or a simple majority in the National Assembly or a two-thirds majority? But knowing him, he will get it.



We’ll discuss Musharraf’s reasons for the emergency next week. The future doesn’t look as bad as the doomsayers were making it out to be. Before I could write that Musharraf should hold elections soonest and get out of uniform, he has announced that both will be done before February 15, taking out what little wind there was in his opponents’ sails. But Madam, of course, was not to lose the high ground that Musharraf has gifted her at American insistence. She called the announcement “too vague” and wanted definite dates. What’s vague about “before February 15”? She could have added that Musharraf should also give her an assurance that she will win the elections. A ‘one-point-agenda’ expert out to get Musharraf no matter what declared that elections under Musharraf were not acceptable, uniform or not. What we have been moving towards under Musharraf after Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif left democracy in tatters is a transition to democracy in three stages, not instant democracy. Transition means slower than instant. It means stage-by-stage. Nobody is saying that Musharraf’s democracy was perfect. But we were at the threshold of the third stage when Musharraf’s opponents just picked up the democracy train and threw it off the tracks. This country has lost so many chances. All they had to do was wait another 12 days and we would have been there. The assemblies would have been dissolved, Musharraf would have become a civilian president with much-reduced powers and we could have been well on our way. But the Supreme Court wanted to reach the Palaces of Westminster instantaneously. Look, when the best flight to London is via Dubai and Istanbul, no matter how long the journey, that is the route you have to take. You cannot insist that the plane take you to London non-stop. But if in Istanbul you blow up the plane because you are not seated in first class, you will never land in London. You will land up in jail. Or when a deep-sea diver comes up, he does not do so all at once at high speed. He goes up little by little in order to let the pressure equalize, otherwise it will blow his eardrums and kill him.



If Musharraf does as he says – I am convinced that he will barring a nuclear attack on Iran – he will reclaim his lost credibility and then some more. But if the end result of all this needless kafuffle is that we end up in the London of the rotten boroughs and our odious leaders of the past back in power, it will eventually lead to another army coup. Then Mr. Musharraf will have a lot of explaining to do.


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