The Problem With Pakistan's Government

By Paula R. Newberg, MIT Center for International Studies. Posted May 27, 2008.

After the kind of year that no country ever wants, with its government in crisis, repression replacing even the most remote notion of good government, political assassination, and terror standing in the wings, Pakistan elected a new parliament in February. Led initially by a coalition of three parties previously deemed outcasts by President Pervez Musharraf, its cabinet of familiar political faces quickly agreed in principle, and at least in public, on a compelling and daunting political agenda. It reversed some emergency rulings, negotiated a hasty truce with insurgents living in the contentious tribal agency of Waziristan -- and then broke down on divisive issues left to them by Musharraf.

Domestic politics and foreign policy alike are now fair game for ambitious politicians long removed from power. This isn't the first time that civilians have inherited the detritus of a military-led state, and past success has been elusive at best. Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gillani therefore faces not only the problems created by Musharraf's national security state, but also the accumulation of decades of mangled constitutions, mixed civil-military law, weakened state institutions and fragmented political parties. Today's refreshing, if cautious good will nonetheless reflects a political order that was fragile and complex before Musharraf's 1999 coup d'etat, and remains so now.

The recent blur of pronouncements, plans and policies reflects this history as it touches on Pakistan's perennially sensitive topics: jumbled electoral rules, imbalances between provincial powers and central government authority, political corruptions long deemed acceptable, and a testy relationship between parliament and the president. Parliament is understandably keen to replace the opacity of Musharraf's tenure with a transparency that matches Pakistan's avid, 21st century media, and in so doing, cement the coalition's public image.

But daily life in Pakistan is increasingly punctuated by targeted, violent incidents and a prevailing insecurity that has not diminished since Musharraf's government was defeated. Ever-present, hard to diagnose and equally hard to fight -- a product of misalliance and miscalculation, equal parts foreign and home-grown -- Pakistan's anxious security problems could easily dominate the new government's agenda. Certainly the effects of Pakistan's engagements in Afghanistan's thirty years of war and the spillovers of global terror are searing reminders that neither past antagonisms nor allegiances disappear when new governments are born.

At first glance, stopping violence would seem to be the highest priority for parliament and voters alike. But it is Pakistan's governance -- the incomplete compact wrought among its people and provinces in an often-abused constitutional order -- that requires fixing first. The imbalances and inequities built into the country's current governance are not only problems themselves, but affect every effort to stop violence at its source, and rationalize foreign policy.

Counterintuitive? Perhaps. But this coalition came into office at a time of immense opportunity: so much that is wrong has become so obvious to so many that the deeply seated problems of the state are now part of common political parlance. That fact alone represents a challenge to the stability and efficacy of civilian government. After all, coalitions -- particularly among parties known more for their mutual enmity than their newly found amity -- are rarely as sturdy as they need to be. If the government can ultimately rise above the fissures that have been exposed already to seek stability more than separate political gain, the Pakistani state may have a chance to set a course that it can, finally, navigate.

Politics and the State

It has been left to the new parliament to tackle hard problems: how to restore judges who were fired by Musharraf; protect the often notional independence of the judiciary and repair the constitution; ensure rather than compromise (or undercut) citizen rights; repair immediate resource shortfalls and resolve long-term differences of economic ideology; revisit the over-arching structure of the federal compact; and, of course, decide what to do about Musharraf, whose determination to remain in office seems to mock the new government's future. These issues literally forced the winter's election, and cry out for prompt resolution.

The peculiar demands of the coalition's internal compromises both illuminate and slow progress in all these areas. The Muslim League (PML) campaigned zealously to restore the judges, for example, and its stalwart commitment (and perhaps savvy political allegiance) to this restoration was too much for the People's Party (PPP). The PPP was slow to embrace this matter; its tense histories with judges tend to color passions on this subject, and the late Benazir Bhutto's reluctance to challenge Musharraf continues to shadow the party's negotiations on fundamental problems of judicial autonomy. Each party has followed different economic policies during their previous tenures in office. Ambition more than principle may resolve these issues -- but also underscores the ease with which any Pakistani coalition can turn brittle and unyielding.

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Paula Newberg is a specialist in governance, development and democracy, and has written extensively about law, politics and foreign policy in south and southwest Asia for almost thirty years.