The Problem With Pakistan's Government

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.