Passing into history
By M A Niazi

The new National Assembly is to duly take oath on Saturday, and elect a Speaker and Deputy Speaker, as well as Prime Minister, by Monday. The Khoso caretaker cabinet will thus pass into history having done its job, that of holding elections. Though not mentioned in the ‘Rules of Business’, it basically did nothing else, which also fitted in with its role as a caretaker.

As the name implies, a caretaker government is supposed to hold elections, and make sure that the government chugs along at a time when there is actually no government, certainly no elected government. What has happened is that the lame-duck period of a government has been taken over, and given to people not normally associated with politics.
In the UK, the source of the parliamentary system of government, there was a tradition until this century of a Prime Minister only leaving office after the new Parliament passed a vote of no-confidence against him. The US President, elected in early November, begins his term on January 20. This means that there are two months when the President not only knows his term is ending, but also who will succeed him and what sort of person he is.
This proved to be the real test of the caretaker idea in Pakistan. In Bangladesh, where it has been in place earlier, it has already been stretched to provide the ‘Bangladesh Model’ that has all along been used to scare Pakistanis.
In essence, it means that a caretaker government does not hold elections within the constitutionally stipulated time, but continues in office. This implies judicial and military support, and the Khoso government had to fend off the charges that it would not hold elections on time. Behind these charges were fears of what had already happened, and thus could happen again.
The caretakers, however, are leaving office without the country having passed through any sort of crisis. It is leaving behind all the crises it had inherited, and will allow the incoming Nawaz government to blame the PPP for them all. The caretakers solved nothing, and were not supposed to.
But their holding of elections comes under fire by the allegations of rigging by political parties. Particularly painful is the President giving currency to these charges by his claim that returning officers in the Punjab played a role. The Supreme Court had originally banned judges from acting as returning officers, and only agreed to let them when the Election Commission insisted. To have them thus impugned is discouraging.
Another problem with the rigging allegation is that it means the PPP cannot improve on itself. How can it sincerely seek the reasons for its defeat if it does not accept that it was beaten fairly?
There is the possibility that the party may shy away from a public admission, but internally concede some of the charges. This might not be becoming of a democratic party, but it would shield President Asif Zardari from the criticism that would be aimed at him. This is important not just because he wishes to avoid embarrassment, but because he wishes to avoid being obliged to face the charges against him. In this connection, he will watch with deep interest the fate of his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, who is facing charges of high treason and murder.
The neutrality of caretakers was initially not assumed. Indeed, in 1988, when President Ziaul Haq dissolved the National Assembly, he did not bother to appoint a caretaker, and assumed the powers of Prime Minister himself. However, the Supreme Court ruled that there had to be a caretaker cabinet, headed by a PM, when the President dissolved the Assembly, so Mustafa Jatoi was appointed caretaker PM when President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved it in 1990.
Jatoi contested the ensuing elections, as did the caretaker Chief Ministers, as did that of Sindh, Jam Sadiq Ali, who made sure of Jatoi’s election to the National Assembly in what was not considered one of the fairest of polls. It was after the dissolution drama of 1993 that Moeen Qureshi became caretaker PM, and despite his many other flaws, did not contest the poll.
The 1996 dissolution saw Malik Meraj Khalid become caretaker too. At this stage, the caretakers were presidential appointees, and their not contesting was a constitutional convention.
The next election, that of 2002, was held by President Musharraf, and he himself was the Chief Executive. The new Parliament passed the 18th Amendment that among other things formalised caretaker cabinets and stopped their members from contesting elections.
It is also worth remarking that caretakers take full advantage of the constitutional provisions governing their tenure. Of course, perhaps by far the longest exploitation was the first, when the Junejo government was sacked on May 29, 1988, and power not transferred to an elected Prime Minister until Benazir Bhutto took oath on December 2. However, since then, there seems to have been a standard of three months, observed first by Mustafa Jatoi, and then by Moeen Qureshi, but Meraj Khalid went almost a fortnight over, spending three months and 12 days in office.
One consequence of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2008 was the postponement of the election. A result of that was that the caretaker cabinet, headed by Muhammadmian Soomro, remained in office for four months nine days, from November 16, 2007, to March 25, 2008, when Yousuf Raza Gilani finally took office.
Even the Khoso cabinet has summoned the National Assembly, when it will proceed first to elect a Speaker and Deputy Speaker, and a Prime Minister, at the last possible constitutional moment. An earlier summons, as for the Provincial Assemblies, would have led to an earlier transfer of power.
The caretaker cabinets are an idea supported by the military, so as to oversee the elections. Politicians have been tried, and found wanting, but the caretakers have shown that they are not enough to prevent parties from hurling charges of rigging. So far, they have stuck to their job of holding elections, but it will be some time before that fear that this constitutional provision will prove a backdoor to military rule will disappear.
After all, a caretaker cabinet looks a lot like a military government. Both are technocratic and consist of civilians, who would not normally form part of a cabinet. However, the big differences are two. First, the head is military in one case, civilian in the other. Second, military governments have no time limit, while caretaker governments do. Indeed, military governments also become caretakers in the run-up to the elections after a bout of military rule.
The last government may have helped many realise that democracy will not necessarily yield governments, which are dedicated to solving the people’s problems. The caretakers’ inability to do anything about loadshedding has shown that the ‘Bangladesh Model’, of using the caretaker provisions to cover military rule, also do not work.

The writer is a veteran journalist and founding member as well as executive editor of The Nation.

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