Beyond a game of chess

Moeed Yusuf

FOR weeks now, Pakistan has been experiencing a series of political crises. The key political institutions — the civilian political elite, judiciary and the military — all seem to be caught up in one controversy or another.

For some, the daily political jockeying is no less than a circus. The common narrative is eager to ascribe conspiratorial motives for each and every move by these institutions.

Part of the problem with political analysis — and with the average citizen’s outlook — in Pakistan is that everything seems to be operating in firefighting mode. Each institution is presumed to be busy making tactical moves since no one has time for strategic thinking. By definition then, the best one can do is to focus on interests over an extremely short-time horizon — weeks if not days.

We seem to have lost the ability to examine issues strategically — to take a step back and look at the importance of issues and rationale for institutional choices from a distance. Only by doing so can one observe the larger picture and not view all happening around us as a game of chess.

Let us try and explain the current institutional clash in Pakistan in a slightly more strategic manner. Pakistan’s current situation represents a classic case of a situation in flux where power-wielding institutions are seeking to define fresh equilibriums vis-à-vis the other to their advantage.

Consider that the country’s traditional power balance was defined by a veto-wielding military, a pliant judiciary and a divided and submissive (to the military) political elite. Over the past decade, a number of profound changes have thrown the field open for recalibration of the power balance.

A military preoccupied with terrorism, a remarkable turnaround in the stature of the judiciary, rise of the media as an independent power broker, ouster of a strong military government headed by Gen Musharraf, erosion of the two-party domination, a resilient civilian government which has survived despite all its failings and major constitutional changes have come together to upset the traditional status quo.

Literature on organisations, institutional cultures and vested interests tells us that the first thing one should expect when a rigidly defined, long-held power imbalance begins to change is that all power brokers will seek to redefine the limits of their remit to their advantage by usurping as much space from others as possible before the system settles down again under a new equilibrium.

Seen from this prism, the judiciary, civilians and the military are all seeking to tilt the power balance in their favour.

The judiciary, starting from virtually nothing in hand, has all to gain here. Its institutional interests are perceived by some to be pushing it towards the domain traditionally held by parliament and political leaders. This could be taken as a sign that it is willing to challenge the original status quo power — the military and the incumbent government which would not mind clipping the judiciary’s wings to recapture some space.

The rather schizophrenic decision-making then need not be seen as some tactical game but rather as a means to maximising institutional power gains while the system is in flux.

As the traditional status-quo power, the military is at the opposite end; it is set to be the biggest loser in the new bargain.
Already, the military is quite obviously beginning to lose control over political developments; its power to tacitly or overtly veto undesirable outcomes is eroding by the day. And while some may point to the memogate scandal, the ISPR’s statements criticising the civilian government, rumours of a coup, etc. to challenge this view, the fact is that these issues were handled the way they were precisely because GHQ couldn’t affect change as it pleased.

Fifteen years ago, it was unlikely that the military would have taken to the courts on a memogate-type issue and essentially sat back and watched as the case unravelled; or that its officials would be put on notice by the court and they would oblige; or, as some have put it, that there wouldn’t have been a coup by now if similar circumstances existed in the 1990s.

Does this mean that the military is back in the barracks? Or that it is now just another player in the mix with no special privileges or levers to throw a spanner in the works as it used to? Not at all: the military will continue to remain an extremely powerful actor for the foreseeable future and will not always play by the book. But what is clear is that the vector is headed in the right direction, i.e. lesser veto-wielding options for the military and a greater compulsion to follow due process.

Finally, the civilians are also gaining at the expense of the military but their internal divisions are unlikely to let them maximise their gains. The crudeness of the incumbent government in challenging the judiciary — on the face of it a move to defend President Zardari — and its equally crude attempts to undercut the military — for instance, the botched attempt to bring ISI under civilian control or memogate, if one were to believe it — is not only about an individual.

It represents a real institutional tussle whereby the civilian incumbents are pushing to carve out their own space at the expense of the judiciary and military. Whatever they achieve will affect all political parties (as ‘civilians’).

At the same time, politics as usual continues to hold them back: the major parties are bent upon undercutting each other, and in the process are using the other two major institutions to back their case.

In the short run, one cannot escape the fact that this institutional reconfiguration is messy and paralysing for the state as it has focused energies on excessive jockeying rather than substantive policy issues. And yet, no country has managed to bypass several phases of such recalibration before they have arrived at a consensual, democratic and accountable system where institutions finally are able to synergise rather than compete endlessly.