A dubious deal
Asif Ezdi

The agreement signed last Thursday by the ruling coalition and Tahirul Qadri after four days of a massive anti-government protest in Islamabad has been greeted with relief, but it provides little reason for jubilation. While it defused the immediate crisis, there are plenty of grounds to be sceptical that the promise of electoral reform, which Qadri made the central theme of his protest march, will be realised.
Only a day before, Qadri seemed to be badly in need of a face-saving exit to call off the protest. He was being shunned by all political parties. The government had vowed that it would not give in to his ‘unconstitutional’ demands. Most of the opposition parties, led by the PML-N, met in Raiwind, to announce that they regarded his protest as a threat to constitutional rule and were resolved not to allow anyone to derail democracy. To complete Qadri’s political isolation, the PTI ended days of dilly-dallying by declaring that it would not join the protest.
The next day, while his supporters were being drenched by heavy rain in biting cold, the government suddenly accepted his ultimatum to hold talks on his demands. It is still not clear what caused the government’s U-turn. There are three possible explanations. First, the government probably wished to forestall a breakdown of law and order in the capital that could invite army intervention of the kind that forced it four years ago to restore the Supreme Court chief justice. Second, the government has been unnerved by the Supreme Court’s order for the arrest of the prime minister in the Rental Power Projects case. Third, with the approaching end of the PPP-led government’s tenure in mid-March, Zardari is fast becoming a lame duck.
The shrinkage in Zardari’s authority is reflected in the terms of the deal the government has now signed. Qadri was in the driving seat throughout the negotiations. Three of his four demands – relating to electoral reforms before the elections, the formation of the caretaker government and the dissolution of the National Assembly – have been accepted without any major change, while the fourth demand – reconstitution of the Election Commission – is to be examined further by some legal ‘experts,’ many, if not most, with a past tainted by collaboration with military dictators.
Qadri emerged as the clear victor in the four-day standoff which ended with the signing of the Islamabad Declaration. Having parachuted on the country’s political arena after a long absence, he has now propelled himself to the centre of the stage in a short space of four weeks. While still possessing Canadian nationality and therefore disqualified from holding elective office or heading a political party in Pakistan, he has won a virtual veto over the choice of the caretaker prime minister. He has also been accepted by the coalition partners as an equal participant in any discussion between the political parties on ‘electoral reform.’
If Qadri has emerged as the main winner in the political storm unleashed by his arrival on the scene, the principal loser has been Imran Khan and his party. First, the PTI allowed itself to be reduced to the role of a passive bystander as Qadri virtually hijacked Imran’s political agenda and the party’s claim to be the agent of change.
Then, it kept vacillating over the question of throwing its support behind Qadri’s sit-in and made itself irrelevant in the political drama which was gripping the whole nation. It is no wonder that the party is now facing its biggest crisis since its rejuvenation a year ago.
For the country, the major gain of Qadri’s protest march is that it has placed the question of electoral reform on the national agenda. Besides implementation of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, which set out the qualifications for holding elective office, the ‘Islamabad Long March Declaration’ calls for the implementation ‘in toto and in true letter and spirit’ of the Supreme Court judgement of June 2012, in which the court issued several directives to ensure that elections are free and fair.
Over the years our politicians have perfected the art of manipulating the country’s broken and corrupt electoral system and have a lot to lose if it is replaced by one which is fair and equitable. It is only now, in view of the agitation launched by Qadri, that our politicians have declared support for the Supreme Court’s judgement on the system of elections. While the parties included in the ruling coalition – the PPP, the PML-Q, the MQM and the ANP – committed themselves to the implementation of the judgement in the Islamabad Declaration, the major opposition parties (minus the PTI) did so at their meeting at Raiwind last week.
In their joint statement, 10 parties, including the PML-N, the JUI-F and the Jamaat-e-Islami, agreed on electoral reforms in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court and the “unanimous recommendations of the parliamentary committee on code of conduct” for holding elections.
Despite all these promises, anyone who thinks that our political parties genuinely want the implementation of the reforms called for in the Supreme Court’s judgement would be deluding himself. That is also true for the commitment made by the political parties which signed the Islamabad Declaration to implement Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution. If these provisions of the constitution were really enforced, those of our lawmakers who did not file their income-tax returns or who cheated otherwise in the payment of their taxes or who possess fake degrees, would stand disqualified, on the grounds that they cannot be considered to be honest and ameen. According to a conservative estimate, that would entail the disqualification of about 95 percent of the membership of our legislatures, including some who signed the declaration.
Since our politicians are not known to be prone to committing political suicide, the conclusion is unavoidable that they will do everything to prevent the implementation of the Islamabad Declaration, at least as far as the disqualification of tax cheats is concerned. This is something on which our entire political class agrees, whatever their political affiliation, and it is very doubtful that the promised scrutiny of the candidates to determine their eligibility will be anything but a formality.
There are many who believe that having achieved many of his immediate political objectives, Qadri will also not like to rock the boat by pressing the demand to make tax evasion a ground for disqualification. His statement that he was ready to take the necessary ‘measures’ to ensure implementation of the agreement he signed with the government is soon likely to be put to the test.
No less important than the constitutional provisions on qualifications for election is the Supreme Court decision on our electoral system in which the Election Commission was directed to explore ways of replacing the present first-past-the-post system, with a two-round run-off system, in order to ensure better representation of the people and majority rule.
Although all major parties have now endorsed the court’s decision, none of them has expressed any opinion on the specific proposal for a run-off system. The fact is that our politicians are so preoccupied with day-to-day politics that they have not even taken the trouble of seriously looking at the merits of the proposed new system.
An even more appalling instance of the ineptitude of our politicians is the demand of the opposition parties, repeated at their Raiwind meeting last week, that the government should announce the date of the forthcoming elections to the national and provincial assemblies. They do not seem to know that when an assembly completes its full term, the responsibility for determining the date of election rests with the Election Commission, and the days when the military ruler of the time used to announce the holding – and often the scrapping – of elections, are over.
The writer is a former member of the Foreign Service.
Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com