A de facto Presidential System
Author: Ashfaq Hussain Shah
Self-preservation is the first law of nature. So was applied on 3 November. It was Justice (retired) Wajeeh ud din who made the then serving Chief of Army, General Pervaiz Musharraf, feel insecure – in Musharraf’s flight to the presidency – by filing the Constitutional petition challenging his candidature. According to the New York Times, on 2 November, an eminent lawyer, Shareef ud din Perzada was consulted, who advised Musharraf if the shoe fitted wore it. The next day, a saviour appeared from the person of Musharraf to save the country – with all ‘honesty’– from committing suicide. Thereafter, the emergency was slapped, the judiciary was packed, and the media was gagged. That was how Pakistan successfully entered into the third phase of democracy which had been envisaged by Musharraf on 12 October 1999. In the post-November 3 scenario, if there could be an aggrieved party, it would be Wajeed ud din who lost an opportunity to be an elected president. The more he stirred the scenario, the worse it stunk.
Shareef ud din should not have been bothered to elaborate a simple point: a serving government servant could not contest elections for a public office. For that matter, an incumbent president could not seek re-election for another term. Now, both of the points have been addressed in the amendments introduced to the Constitution validating the authenticity of the Constitutional petitions of Wajeed ud din. Undoubtedly, in the pre-November 3 scene of the episode, the Supreme Court was all ears to Wajeeh ud din. Now is the new scene with a new Supreme Court – of course, with a new mandate. Suspension of fundamental rights also went against Wajiah ud din as his case was based on his that right. During the emergency, the fundamental rights remained suspended until the amendments were not introduced.
Supposing these amendments are to stay, the face of the Constitution is bound to give a different look. It cannot be called a Constitution catering for the needs of a Parliamentary system of government. Instead, the amendments have offered a room to a public officer to be a vigil on the elected representatives. According to the new (proposed) amendments, a government servant, whether military or civil (including the judges), can be elected as a president. The story does not end here. There is a power of Article 58-2b vested in the presidency to dissolve the parliament. Further, the president will be a head of National Security Council and of National Command Authority where the prime minister is second to him in each case.
With its present characteristics, therefore, the Constitution projects a de facto presidential structure. In the next five years, to bring a constitutional amendment to do away with the 58-2b related powers of the president is nearly impossible as the Senate enjoys presence of a majority of the pro-Musharraf supporters. In the same vein, to reject the amendments introduced through the PCOs-2007, two-thirds majority in both the houses will be required to be attained by the opposition which will be near impossible thing. In that case, Musharraf will be staying as the President. Moreover, even if the pro-Musharraf supporters are not able to bring a constitutional amendment to validate his post-November 3 acts, Musharraf will be staying as the President. The situation presents a bleak scenario for the next Assembly. It also means that there will be done more desk-thumping and less work in the Assembly.
The most interesting aspect is that the amendments cannot be challenged in any court. That is how the ‘exemption culture’ has flourished in Pakistan from the tip of the pyramid of power to the broad base of the masses. The situation has made Pakistan a country where the might rules: the jackboot can trample on a sacred document called Constitution after putting it ‘in abeyance’ and the proposed changes cannot be called into question in any court. If this is not lawlessness, what is that otherwise? In such a country, if people in general do not abide by law that should not come as a surprise. The trend descending from the higher echelons is supposed to be followed. The question is: if the Constitution is no more a sacred document to be respected and followed, how can the law that is derived from the Constitution can be deemed respectable? That is how the trickle down effect of the ‘might is right’ is ravaging the society.
The other side of the picture is: Musharraf has also landed himself in trouble. He could have entered into a deal with Benazir Bhutto to introduce a Constitutional Amendment before November 15. By so doing, he could have got a legal cover to his presence at the helm, even if the Supreme Court had decided against his candidature. In past, Musharraf got endorsement of the Assembly to stay as a President but did not get elected by it. Now, even if the next Assembly may not remove or impeach him, his stay will remain controversial giving rise to discussions and mayhems. Moreover, if the new Assembly will be fighting for its supremacy by denouncing the de facto presidential system, the third phase of democracy enunciated by Musharraf is bound to be frustrated. As the events are unfolding, where the anti-Musharraf campaign is taking ground and where the anti-military sentiment is growing around, the immediate future is not without upheavals: the voice of the people is the voice of God. Of course, when things are at the worst they begin to mend.
Author’s Contact: ashfaqhussain_shah@yahoo.com
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This is the first best article I have seen on pkpolitics to describe the current situation. Every nobody knows we as a nation have hit rock bottom. Now the question is will we stop here or should we start digging?
There has to be some serious suggestions how we can get out of this hole, I mean obviously we cannot come out of it in our President’s shoulders.
Nice article.
There is no limit to how low we can sink. Unfortnately, there are too many Perviaz Musharafs and very few Iftikhar Chaudhrys in Pakistan.
I am not sure why the author is calling it a “de facto” presidential system. In a presidential system, there are checks and balances in place to make sure that the president does not abuse his/her powers, like the congress or some form of assembly. This is “pure and unadulterated dictatorship” and nothing else. One person makes all the decisions; there is no accountability for his actions. He has made the entire nation a hostage. How does this system represent a de facto presidential system?
@Amir Hameed:
de facto = “actually existing, esp. when without lawful authority”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/de facto
In the same dictionary, there are other meanings of “de facto”, such as, “in fact; in reality”. The author should have clarified the context in which he was basing his article on.
de facto, de jure, de novo, main too kehtee hoon kay inn sabb alfazoon ka matlabb hee nahin pataa pakistani awaam koo. bhlaaa abb iss article ko kitnay loog samjhain gay becharay.
admin jee , aap iss ka urdu main translation kerwa ker post krein ta kay zyada say zyada loog iss ko samajhh skein. abb her koee too CSP officer nahin hay na yhaan per.
Goos article…
i agree with Amir Hamid…to call it presidential system of anykind is to give it more legitimacy then it deserves. We must, at-least on this forum and wherever possible, call it a dictatorship for that is what it is. Words matter. They shape our perception. It is important that we do not allow the gravity of the matter to get diluted by our use of words. I propose that we do not call Musharaf president etc but simply a dictator.
The article makes it clear taht no legal way to get rid of Musharaf, let alone the army rule, is left open. This is a very very dangerous situation. Only two options remain, virtual slavery or revolution.
Kalila
Bibi Ji, forget about de facto, de jure. Majority of Pakistani public is not aware of what real Democracy means. First try to get Urdu handouts that explains what democracy is and how it works and how is it different from feudal system which in application in Punjab, Sindh and NWFP. De facto, de jure cames far afterward.
I hope you don’t need Urdu translation for “Democracy”.
javed BHAI , main to kehtee hoon kay aap he ye naik kaam shroo krein. print some handouts and distribute them on lahore mall road. agar main pakistan main hotee to ye kaam zaroor kertee.
Agar main Pakistan main hota to yeh zaroorat hi na parti……….
If I was in Pakistan, I would have make Pakistan a Super power. (Just trying to beat you in making “bongiyan”)
…. Geo on Cable from 20th Dec …..
http://www.geo.tv/eid2007/index.html
admin jee aap rokain na iss koo plz. daikhain ye kiss tarahh baat ker rha hay. akhir ye ” yabliaan ” kioon maar rhaa hay. koee hay jo iss ko qaboo karay ya phir ye azaad hay aik larkee kee insult kernay per.
I didn’t mean to insult you.
I apologize if you mind my comments, but “Main to kehta hoon …agar main Pakistan main hota to sab kuch theek hota”
ajnabi larki
Behan ji, What does this � yabliaan � means? Never heard this word before in my life. Tried looking up on dictionary but I think its not a proper word. Grateful if you translate this for me. (I find this word a lot harder than de facto, de jure and de novo)
atta boy javed!
Shah sb, good effort, thought provoking too. I agree with you as research question has two thousand answers against the unlawful control of power of Musharraf. I would also like to add a point that some people believe that CJ Iftakhar Choudhary was controversial too, my point here is that its not a question of individuals, its a matter of removing respect of a department which should be superior then any other department, specially army. So please we should not discuss individuals but the institutions.
Musharraf the way has done it believe me he in the influence of power did not realized what he has done. He might not be corrupt individually as compare to chowdharies, but he really screwed the system of Pakistan infect. Rather he has removed the fear of justice to our forthcoming politicians. Now what ever he (Musharraf) is doing will add his bad reputation, nothing else.
I m looking forward to Allah’s Reham on us, because evil may have a long life, but still it has end.
Jvaid u sound like a politician of pakistan, isn’t it? And ajnabi larki you look like a pakistani awam jis ki baat sunnay waala koi nahin…lol
Rightly said. shareefuddin Pirzada is among few genius people that Pakistan has, but unfortunately, his genius has always been used to destabilize the country. He always sides with dictators and helps them impose their illegalities under legal cover. there is no doubt that he is the black sheep of pakistan. I dont know when will we be getting rid of him.
Self preservation is the motto of every single politician I have seen or read about in Pakistan.
And self preservation is what the illustrious Iftikhar Chaudry wanted as well.
Raza Agha Zulfi Bhutto was also accused of self-preservation, and it may as well be true in the case of Iftikhar Chaudhary. There’s plenty to argue about, but the truth rests in either man’s heart or wih Allah. But the important thing here is not the reason behind their actions. Zulfi as well as Chaudhary both have done something that’s given hope to a lost people. Before either man did what they did, the people of Pakistan silently suffered under the subjugation that we were subjected to. Lekon un dono ne hamaray soye hue zameer ko jaagaya, hamaray kamzor dilon mei haq keliye larnay ke jazbaat ko ujaagar kiya…
Afterall, the grandson of the Prophet of Islam was also accused of self-preservation at Karbala…
“Corruptio, Optimi, pessima” (The corruption of the best is the worst).
The fish rots from the head down, and so it has happened in Pakistan: all corruption is top-down and it has now seeped the entire body of the Pakistani society and not just the political class.
Peerzada, the “jadoogar” who has pimped into power many a uniformed criminals in the past and most recently said in the USA: “I am a lawyer and I provide service. People pay me and I do my job”. Convenient! Very convenient! crimes pays, eh?
The current system is not presidential system - it is still martial law because all the changes he made was through PCO and him as Chief of Army Staff and not as President. A Pakistan’s president can only act via 52 B - thats all.
As for Sharifuddin if someone comes tomorrow to him and says he has raped his (meaning Shairfuddin Pirzada) daughter and that would he defend him in court - what would he (Sharifuddin ) do in that case. Would he still for the sake of money defend the person who raped his daughter. May be he is so greedy he would dump his duaghter and even defend that criminal. Because like Mir Jafar and Mir Sadiq he has no qualms of conscience and would do anything - and now like them he has got a place in Pakistan history and everyone would remember him in very very bad words and this is his life’s achievement which he would take with him to his grave. Now he even if says all teh rules were dictators and despots and corrupt doesnt justifiy his action because he chose to a part of it.
Same goes for AG Qayuum whose father justice Akram sold his conscience and hanged Bhutto.
Musharraf doesnt realise one thing - he has opened the door for kiyani for future action which Kiyani can do at his own will whenever he choses and if he takes that action - he would be acting within the ambit of orders of Supreme Court which in last decision had asked everyone not to follow PCO. So all those who followed it have violated Article 6 and punishement for that is death penallty. I hope Shareffuddin also knows that - Inshallah that day would come one day and very soon. Bush is also on his way out - he has just another ten months left.
A Coup Against the People - Harvard Crimson
Bush’s and Musharraf’s Contempt for Judges and Lawyers - Jacob Hornberger
Shakespeare And Pakistan
Tyranny, not Islamism, is Greatest Threat to Pakistan
Let’s compare Musharraf with George Bush
TOP TEN IDI*TS of the MUSLIM WORLD for the year 2007
Musharraf: Individual Before Nation
‘Our’ dictator gets away with it by Pepe Escobar
@c hussain
And was it Roedad Khan who had signed Z A Bhutto’s death warrants?
Here is an excerpt from Ayaz Amir column from 1999 about Roedad:
It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as
Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things,
a revolution. Every despotic regime in recent memory he faithfully
served. The burden of the infamies then gathered by the country he
valiantly bore but the infamy of Kargil has cut him to the quick
and made him write a frenzied piece in the News with gems such as
this: “What a terrible burden of guilt our rulers bear. One day
this treachery shall be avenged and out of all this would come the
politics of the future.” He goes on to ask, “Who will light a
candle in the gloom of our morale?” The answer should be obvious:
another Zia-ul-Haq with Roedad Khan as his secretary-general of the
interior.
More about Roedad Khan in the piece Demons of December — Road from East Pakistan to Bangladesh. Excerpt:
Information Secretary of Yahya Khan, Mr. Roedad Khan continued to climb the ladders of promotions and retired with all perks and privileges from the senior most post….The civilian bureaucrats serving the regime, like Information Secretary Roedad Khan were advising the generals about ‘putting some fear of God’ in Bengalis and how to purify Bengali race and culture by Arabising the Bengali script.”
Here is a direct link to the Ayaz Amir’s piece from Aug 1999 mentioned above. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same
Certainly worth a read.
Excerpt:
Amidst this hectic activity the prime minister decrees the construction of a new state guest house at Bhurban, Murree. In Lahore he inspects the model of the new airport terminal, whose outlines resemble the mock-Mughal facade of the PM’s secretariat, and orders that it be completed by next year. Meanwhile, in the name of road development, the vandalization of Lahore continues, with age-old trees being pulled down and ever wider malls being built to accommodate the traffic sense peculiar to this country.
Things have been brought to such a pass that ordinary people (as opposed to drawing room literati) are past caring. Weary of sights and sounds which keep recurring like scenes from a bad dream, and their last illusions lying broken and scattered over the landscape, they are past caring and, to the government’s infinite joy, past protesting. Burning tyres, erecting barricades and braving police lathis after all are functions of hope, vigour and enthusiasm. When from the body-politic these vital qualities are drained, from whence should arise the spirit of protesting?
The people of Pakistan have tried everything: repeated dictatorships, experiments with different brands of democracy, the rise and fall of Benazir, the glittering summits of the heavy mandate. They have raised monuments to the Chaghi hills, hailed Dr A.Q. Khan as their deliverer and believed with all the fervour of their emotional souls that the defence of the country had become impregnable. The lies and absurdities they have put up with would have caused an upheaval in any country similarly placed. But their stamina for more experiments now lies exhausted.
It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things, a revolution.
Sorry to post another piece but I really loved the Ayaz’s piece so here is another excerpt:
Endlessly restless and therefore flitting from here to there, fascinated with gewgaws and gimmicks, believing that somewhere through the woods lies a golden short-cut which if discovered would turn the burden of governance into a perpetual holiday, are vintage Nawaz Sharif traits which at least the members of Pakistan’s permanent politburo (Roedad Khan being an erstwhile member of this club) should have fully known when they went about creating him as a counter-weight to Benazir Bhutto. But they were blinded by their prejudices, hating Benazir more for being her father’s daughter and less for her presumed failings.
Indeed when it was discovered that Benazir was quite unlike her father and that her reigning passion was to feather her nest rather than to rock the national boat, many of the politburo members who had earlier thought her to be the very personification of fickleness and evil gladly took up service under her. The history of Pakistan is replete with such ironies.
It is also instructive to remember that while Benazir cut her populist moorings and became a child of the civil-military establishment, Nawaz Sharif moved in the opposite direction. From being a creation of the establishment he became his own man, especially after his falling out with President Ishaq Khan in 1993. In other words, he freed himself from the clutches of the English-speaking establishment and successfully created a Punjabi or a desi mass constituency for himself which ultimately culminated in the heavy mandate of 1997.
The tragedy is that while the intellectual and moral calibre of the English-speaking governing classes was always low, that of the desi crowd which has assaulted Islamabad on the strength of the heavy mandate is even lower. Between them Pakistan’s goose is being cooked.
@Dervaish
You are so right. Our problem is that we don’t realize how morally corrupt each of us has become. Whether it has rotted from the top down or from the bottom up, it is rotten nonetheless. And I find it funny that although we all smell the rotten meat, we think the smell is from around us and refuse to accept our personal contribution to that rot. It’s always “It’s everyone else that is rotten but not me” so there is no looking for a fix and the rot gets worst by the day……..
@Dervaish
But I don’t want to pick on us alone. Reading this Bill Moyers piece about America, one would think he was talking about Pakistan:
In our drugged state, we cheer the winners in the game of wealth, the billionaires who benefit from a skewed financial system — the losers, we kick down the stairs. … We open fire hoses of cash into our political system in the name of “free speech.” Television stations that refuse to cover government make fortunes selling political bromides over public airwaves. Pornography passing as advertising assaults our senses, seduces our children, and pollutes our culture. Partisan propaganda gets pumped up as news. We feed on the flamboyance of celebrities. And we actually take seriously the Elmer Gantrys who use the Christian Gospel as a guidebook to an Iowa caucus or a battle plan for the Middle East. In the face of a scandalous health care system, failing schools, and a fraudulent endless war, we are as docile as tattered scarecrows in a field of rotten tomatoes.
Now let’s see what Pilger has to say about Britain:
As events have demonstrated, Blair and the cult of New Labour have destroyed the very liberalism millions of Britons thought they were voting for. This truth is like a taboo and was missing almost entirely from last week’s Guardian debate about civil liberties. Gone is the bourgeoisie that in good times would extend a few rungs of the ladder to those below…and all but abolished the premises of tolerance and decency, however amorphous, on which much of British public life was based. The trade-off has been mostly superficial “social liberalism” and the highest personal indebtedness on earth. In 2007, reported the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the United Kingdom faced the highest levels of inequality for 40 years, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and more and more segregated from society. The International Monetary Fund has designated Britain a tax haven, and corruption and fraud in British business are almost twice the global average, while Unicef reports that British children are the most neglected and unhappiest in the “rich” world.
Abroad, behind a facade of liberal concern for the world’s “disadvantaged”, such as waffle about millennium goals and anti-poverty stunts with the likes of Google and Vodafone, the Brown government, together with its EU partners, is demanding vicious and punitive free-trade agreements that will devastate the economies of scores of impoverished African, Caribbean and Pacific nations….
…In 1977, at the height of the cold war, I interviewed the Charter 77 dissidents in Czechoslovakia. They warned that complacency and silence could destroy liberty and democracy as effectively as tanks. “We’re actually better off than you in the west,” said a writer, measuring his irony. “Unlike you, we have no illusions.”
Sorry forgot to add links to the articles above:
Bill Moyers: America on Steroids
John Pilger: Liberalism To Murdochracy
Perhaps the diseases are not of the same type and quality, although the Pakistani pimp-and-whore elites are trying their best to “catch-up” with the worst that is on offer. As a Pakistani, as a concerned Pakistani and as a decent human being, your and our competition should not be with the trash and trash cultures of other places but with efforts to live and die according to what has been laid down by your own tradition, culture and faith. America’s problems must not be replicated in a country like Pakistan: they must be understood critically and lessons must be learned from them. But everything in Pakistan, from politics, media to general lifestyles of the masses seem to be going that way: an accelerated process of degenaration (usually known under the euphemisms of “development”, “progress” etc.) where monkeying the worst of the postmodern West are considered acts of refinement and something to bee proud about.
In my opinion, Pakistan should progress in adopting the presedential system. Presedential system will work better for Pakistan, because most of the power is hold by the President. Also, people of Pakistan will be able to elect their president directly.
Parlianmentry system is not working for Pakistan right now, as no party gets the 2/3 majority and the parlianment that is formed is always a hung parlianment, which unable to pass any legislation. If one party tries to pass one legislation, other party blocks it and vice versa, making no legislation to pass.
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