EDITORIAL: Sparks flew in the National Assembly on Monday when Leader of the Opposition Omar Ayub accused the military establishment of interfering in political affairs and manipulating the February 8 general elections of which his party, the PTI, says the ruling coalition is a beneficiary.
He also read out relevant article of the Constitution and the oath commissioned military officers take not to indulge in politics, indirectly suggesting that the Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations should be tried under Article 6 of the Constitution over his recent “political press conference.”
Brisling at these remarks, Defence Minister Khwaja Asif responded with a personal attack on the opposition leader, saying the process must start with the late military dictator Field Marshal Ayub Khan (grandfather of the latter). And added “the body of the fake Field Marshal, Ayub Khan, who imposed the first martial law, should also be exhumed and hanged under Article 6” – a pretty grotesque suggestion.
The biggest problem holding the democratic process back has been repeated interventions by military adventurists, aided and abetted by leading politicians and the higher judiciary. The 76-year history of this country has seen four (three declared and the fourth de-facto) martial laws, three of them combined lasting for over as many decades, and in most of the remaining period hybrid governance system.
Let’s get the facts straight first. Indeed Gen Ayub Khan ruled this country for over a decade, however, it was Iskandar Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, who committed the original sin in October of 1958, abrogating the 1956 constitution and declaring martial law.
He appointed the then commander-in- chief of the Army, Gen Ayub Khan, who within days booted him out and appointed himself as the President of Pakistan. Ousted in a mass uprising led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, formerly a minister in his cabinet, Ayub Khan quit handing over power to the then commander-in-chief of the army, Gen Yahya Khan, who presided over the breakup of the country with his flawed policies.
It was to foreclose any such future eventually that the Bhutto government while framing the 1973 Constitution included in it Article 6 which states that “any person who abrogates or subverts or holds in abeyance the Constitution by use of force or show of force shall be guilty of high treason”. That though did not stop military adventurism.
In 1977, Gen Ziaul Haq deposed Bhutto and declared martial law holding, the Constitution in abeyance, practically abrogating it. In fact, at one point he made the infamous statement: “What is a constitution? It is a booklet with ten or twelve pages. I can tear them off and say that tomorrow we shall live under a different system.”
After his sudden demise in an air crash, civilian rule was reinstated in 1988. But then again, in 1999, another army chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf, imposed a de-facto martial law by suspending the Constitution. Later in 2002 he issued the Legal Framework Order under which the 1973 Constitution was revived but with several amendments, authorised by the Supreme Court, which itself had no right to tinker with the supreme law of the land.
While he fulminated against the PTI (which bears some of the blame for the 2018 political engineering that went in its favour) Khwaja Asif was reminded by the opposition members that his own father as well as his party leaders such as Nawaz Sharif had colluded with Gen Ziaul Haq.
All he could say was that he had apologised for the same. That surely does not make amends for the enduring damage that military dictators did to the body politic. Why haul only Gen Ayub Khan over the coals? All military dictators along with their collaborators, politicians and judges who trotted out the ‘doctrine of necessity’ to validate military rule, must also be held to account.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
Comments
Comments are closed.