A sustainable system

In his press conference on the nuclear proliferation issue, President General Pervez Musharraf had highlighted four issues on which Pakistan faced dangers.
These were: nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, India/Kashmir, and internal religious extremism and terrorism.
To this list should be added the domestic political situation in reference to what the President likes to describe as the introduction of genuine democracy, but which its critics see as a manipulated and false edifice.
On all these fronts, the government's approach has been one of fire-fighting. In the process, it often appears that the government is under tremendous pressure and running from pillar to post.
Hardly does it seem as though one crisis has been dealt with when it re-emerges with greater force, or is overtaken by news of fresh disasters.
The reason for this difficult situation is that the President and his handcrafted political system are confronted by the chickens of the adventurist policies of the last three decades coming home to roost.
Despite the fact that the President has done a reasonable job of containing the damage and fallout of these crises, perhaps it is time to take stock and adopt a different strategy.
For one, the question of what, if any, succession plans the President has formulated has assumed even more urgent dimensions since the two successive assassination attempts against him in December 2003.
God forbid, if the assassins had succeeded (and they came uncomfortably close) on December 25 or in the earlier attempt, what would have ensued?
If history is any guide, virtual one-man shows seldom outlive their creator.
In the obtaining circumstances, the likely scenario would have been that the perceived threat of internal destabilisation in the wake of such a disaster would have induced pressures for the military to intervene once again. Had that happened, the whole edifice the President has constructed with such effort would likely have collapsed, and the country returned once more to square one (ie 1999).
This is because whatever may be enshrined in the Constitution to deal with such emergencies, the ground realities of power would likely have superseded it, as in the past, with relative ease.
The military establishment must learn the lessons to be derived from the past and present intervention in politics and national life, and abandon the notion that only they know what is best for the country and concomitant attempts to control the political process according to their preferences through institutions such as the National Security Council, etc.
Instead, they need to bring on board all the political forces, including the marginalised mainstream parties to frame the rules of the power game, agree on the bedrock fundamental consensus that underpins a credible democratic system, and refrain from future interventions, covert or overt, in politics.
This rethinking has assumed greater importance in the context of the national economy in the era, as General Musharraf describes it, of geo-economics.
Despite the relative economic stability achieved by the President's economic managers, in which the budget deficit has been brought under tight fiscal discipline, the balance of payments has gone into the black, inflation is low because of the deflationary policies of recent years, pressures on the price line are re-emerging as some economic activity revives, and investors, foreign and domestic, are concerned about the shape of things in the immediate, medium and long term framework.
Without a credible and sustainable system on truly civilian democratic lines, all the good work in the economic field and the fire-fighting in the other areas of critical concern to the country may be undone.
It is time the President accepted the tautology that all human beings are mortal and power ephemeral. He has the opportunity to leave behind a legacy of selfless service and a system that outlasts its author, for which he would earn more than a footnote in the country's history. Is General Musharraf equal to the task?