From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
Shouldn't We Care
About Democracy
In Pakistan?
The Bush administration should insist that Gen. Musharraf hold free elections.
What does it take to get the Bush administration to rebuke Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and to hold him to higher standards than those the U.S. required--in a different age, admittedly--of Ferdinand Marcos or Anastasio Somoza? Or, put another way, if President Bush can demand that Yasser Arafat hold free elections, allowing the Palestinians to choose their own leaders, why does he not ask the same of the Pakistani dictator, and extend the same courtesy to the people of Pakistan?
A week ago, Gen. Musharraf imposed a range of constitutional amendments--29 in total--that would cripple the prime minister who comes to power in the already flawed legislative elections scheduled for October. Stringent eligibility requirements have excluded most serious political figures from running for office; and, in any case, Gen. Musharraf has appointed himself president plenipotentiary for five years, after a referendum so clearly rigged that even he--his skin thicker than the Khyber dust--has seemed embarrassed, on occasion, by the outcome.
The latest amendments would allow Gen. Musharraf to dissolve the elected parliament at will. All important appointments will be made by him, including the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, the provincial governors, and the justices of the Pakistan Supreme Court. The general has also set up a national security council--over which he will preside, of course, and of which the prime minister will be merely a member among many--that will institutionalize the role of the army in national governance, much in the manner of the Turkish army. (The analogy with Turkey--beloved of Gen. Musharraf--should not be overstated. In Pakistan, the army is just another interest group, only better armed, alongside the feudal families and the Islamic fundamentalists. It is not above the fray. In Turkey, by contrast, the army acts as a central ballast to prevent such groups from going too far.)
Gen. Musharraf has been spared stinging American criticism of his actions for two reasons. First: Pakistani democracy hasn't got a very good name, whether in this country or elsewhere. Recent elected governments have been incompetent and corrupt--and undeniably so--giving the general a useful pretext to refuse to relinquish power.
Second, and more contingently, Gen. Musharraf is regarded as a reliable ally in America's war against terror. There is no doubt that he has--in spite of the opportunism of his support--provided handy logistical assistance to the U.S. in its Afghan war. That he has shown less enthusiasm for curbing cross-border terrorism against India is hardly surprising, although even here there is evidence that America's tough talking--not to mention India's understandable refusal to withdraw troops from its border with Pakistan--has forced him to place some controls on the terrorist camps that operate, with his imprimatur, on Pakistani soil.
But do these two points mean that he should get a free pass in his assault on democratic institutions in Pakistan? I think not. On the first argument: to say that democracy has never worked satisfactorily in Pakistan, and that this reduces in magnitude Gen. Musharraf's sin of anti-democracy, is both trite and fatalistic. Democracy has not worked in that country not because Pakistanis are congenitally incapable of dealing with the political form but because democratic institutions have never been allowed to take root, or to operate unmolested. By whom? Why, the army, of course, which is, once more, repeating its anti-democratic canards with the aim of keeping power.
The second argument is equally specious, and even a strategic folly. What the U.S. should want--in a war against Islamist terror that is going to last not a year or two but a generation--is a stable Pakistan, not a stable dictator, however pliant and obliging he may be. An assassin's bullet may, one day, end the general's life. What then for the U.S.? Would the anti-terror alliance not be more secure if it rested on a partnership with an institution--that of an elected government--instead of on one individual?
It is folly also to believe that, had Pakistan had a democratic government in power at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. would not have secured the level of cooperation from Islamabad that it did from Gen. Musharraf. No government in Pakistan's history--whether led by a man in uniform, or by an elected politician--has ever been hostile to the U.S., or uncomprehending of American interests. The U.S., furthermore, need not fear a government of elected fundamentalists in Pakistan. The voters of that country have never supported Islamists, and if the latter thrive today in Pakistan, it is thanks solely to army patronage.
One can't ignore, also, the fact that the army is a part of the problem underlying Pakistan's relations with India. Compulsive anti-Indianism is the army's philosophy, allowing it to posture as the guardian of national security. In this, Kashmir is only a symptom, not a cause, of the friction between the two countries. Bear in mind, however--and this is a salutary note on which to end--that not one war has taken place between the two countries while an elected government was in control in Pakistan.
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor and chief television and media critic of The Wall Street Journal.
