Pakistan today is once again at the crossroads. While the military leadership is busy trying to legitimize its coup of 12th October, people of Pakistan are once again eulogizing the current leadership to perform miracles for them and take them out of a situation of economic morass. The people of Pakistan have been betrayed so many times that now they seem to be looking for a messiah, who will be take them out of a condition of abject poverty and deprivation and re-establish the state institutions, not for rule but to serve the masses.
Since General Zia's martial law, the international community has taken strong disliking to any military leadership no matter how clean and honest the motives of such leadership may be. Pakistan has already been booted out of the Commonwealth and the international community has shown its reservation at the new set-up. We as a nation cannot de-link ourselves from the international community completely and our compliance to the World Order for our economic survival is imperative no matter what rhetoric we hear from our leadership.
What we as Pakistanis have seen for more than fifty years now, is a rhetoric of tall claims from governments and then those claims being shattered in front of our eyes by a new set of rulers with their lofty claims only to be shattered once again by another set of saviors. The process goes on. Unfortunately, we have never been able to see the consistency of our policies being carried from one regime to another. However such consistency even for namesake was finally getting established after the end of Zia era and with the ushering in of democracy.
The salient features of this democracy until April 1, 1997 were the Presidential powers i.e. the famous Article 58-2(b) of the Constitution of Pakistan to pack a government back home if in his judgment the President thought that the government had committed a gross misconduct in running the affairs of the state. While the scope of 58-2(b) was quite extensive, it provided balance in the mechanism of power. The superior judiciary was the final arbiter of any such dissolution and the writ of the apex court was thus final and had to be followed and obeyed. While there is a wide chasm between theory and practice as far as the history of this mechanism goes, the reality is that such an arrangement provided the best balance of power for the state apparatus.
Its failure can only be attributed to the unscrupulous elements which were present in the state machinery during those times, otherwise 58-2(b) provided the best balance of power amongst the three pillars of the state, and it is only after its scrapping that the state power started getting centered around one personality. Even the Monarch in the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy has overriding power to dissolve the parliament. The reason that it is unheard of recently, is because of the maturity of democratic practices that have evolved in Britain over the year.
It is ironic that right after winning the 1997 elections with a heavy mandate which now has become a national joke, the ex-Prime Minister in an interview to a BBC correspondent categorically rejected the idea of scrapping 58-2(b) and strongly maintained that the single most important agenda in front of him is the revival of the sick economy and nothing more. However, soon after coming to power and intoxicated by the heavy mandate, Mr. Sharif attempted to remove 58-2(b) which he saw as the Sword of Damocles. Mr Leghari, the then President, who wanted to play a role of a watch-dog could do nothing after the GHQ decided to remain aloof from any political interference and so was passed the 13th Amendment to the constitution with much funfare, which clipped the presidential powers to dismiss the Federal Cabinet and dissolve the National Assembly.
From the time the 13th Amendment was passed until the time the military leadership took over, the ex-premier played havoc with the state institutions and changed his number one pre-election agenda from economic revival to the attainment of absolute dictatorship. During this time he can be held responsible for sacking of both Sajjad Ali Shah (the chief justice) and Farooq Leghari (the president). Also, he was responsible for the induced resignation of two Naval Chiefs and one Army Chief. Mr Sharif had in fact become a 'democratically elected dictator' with a parliament there to nod and acquiesce to all his foolish ideas and mega-projects, which a sagging economy could hardly afford.
Shortly before the coup, pressure was building within the state apparatus and the opposition in the form of Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) had started coming to the streets only to face humiliation at the hands of government controlled agencies and people in general had started talking about an in-house change with Nawaz being ousted as the premier. How far such an assumption would have been fruitful especially in the wake of the 14th Amendment, which for all practical purposes had taken away the power of the parliamentarians to question the authority of the chief executive, is a matter of a conjecture.
The pressure valve of our state apparatus, 58-2(b), was not there any more to check the excesses of the Nawaz government and the whole nation was feeling the pressure building up. No wonder when the Army took over on 12th October, the whole nation felt a sigh of relief. I firmly believe that had the presidential powers in the form of 58-2(b) not been clipped, the course of our events would have been quite different and the nation would have been at least on the path of achieving some semblance of democracy and the government would at least have had no worries to justify its legitimacy in front of the international community.
Pakistan today has lost three important years of its life and the number one agenda of the last government also remains the number one agenda of this new set-up. Pakistan was at the crossroads the last time the government was elected and still remains so. It is important for the present set-up to recognize that opportunities and chances seldom come in the history of nations and to avail them at this time is crucial for our national survival 
Asim Ashfaq Mian is a freelance writer for Islam Online from Lahore, Pakistan. He has previously held a position as a banking consultant with the Privatization Commission of Pakistan. For feedback, e-mail
asimmian@hotmail.com
Pakistan today is once again at the crossroads. While the military leadership is busy trying to legitimize its coup of 12th October, people of Pakistan are once again eulogizing the current leadership to perform miracles for them and take them out of a situation of economic morass. The people of Pakistan have been betrayed so many times that now they seem to be looking for a messiah, who will be take them out of a condition of abject poverty and deprivation and re-establish the state institutions, not for rule but to serve the masses.