The Hullabaloo Over The "Minus One Formula"

Pakistanis love conspiracies and rumors, like to disregard facts on the ground, and absolutely hate trusting the democratic process. Through the confluence of these factors rises the entirely strange and bizarre spectacle of the "minus-one formula", a belief that is neither a formula nor limited to minusing one. Let me explain.

In a manner so sudden that it must be orchestrated, the question of Asif Zardari's future as president of Pakistan has become the most-discussed political issue of the day. Rumors have been swirling in Islamabad and within media organizations across the country that a "minus one formula" is about to be inculcated, and that in an action half way between a coup de grace and a coup d'etat, the "establishment" is in the process of ensuring Zardari's removal from power. Nobody, least of all me, knows where these rumors came from. Nobody knows who exactly is supposed to deliver the final blow. And nobody knows who the relevant actors are, ostensibly pulling strings behind the scenes: the military? Renegade PPPers? Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N? Some combination of all them?

Frankly, I don't care. It is irrelevant. And while it remains speculation at this point, it is disturbing enough. As someone unused to defending Asif Zardari, let me make a few points.

First, Asif Zardari is the constitutionally elected president of Pakistan. There was nothing illegal about his rise to power, nothing untoward, nothing fishy, no rigged elections, no intimidation of voters, no ballot-stuffing, no acts of violence against rivals. It was a free and fair election. The PPP got the largest share of the vote. By the way the system is organized, they got to nominate a Prime Minister and a President. They nominated Yousuf Raza Gillani and Asif Ali Zardari respectively. This is the very simple story of Zardari's ascension to the office of president.

Do all Pakistanis like this fact? No -- page 43 of this report makes that clear. But this does not matter. There is a right way and a wrong way to express dissatisfaction with President Zardari's performance. The right way is to vote out his party when the time comes. The wrong way is to force him out unconstitutionally before the time comes. Pakistan has suffered enough of the latter. If Zardari is removed from power by any means other than a national parliamentary election, it would spell yet another blow against sustained democracy in the country.

As a general rule, Pakistanis are notoriously impatient with their rulers. Within a few months or years, they yearn for the leadership to change, procedural niceties be damned. This is a deeply damaging and problematic political ethos. A populace cannot complain about military takeovers and "dictatorship", come out on the street to fight to insert civilian rule, and then promptly abandon principles when the results are not to their liking. The very point of democracy is that it affords a guaranteed, mechanized and systematic way of removing leaders that the public is against -- it is not a guarantee of good governance or concerns about the common man. It is time the Pakistani people understand this distinction. Voice your displeasure all you want, but supporting non-democratic machinations to removing democratically elected leaders is a red line no one should cross. There is a time and a place for that -- called "elections" and "the voting booth" respectively.

Second, and related to this point, it is time for Pakistan's civil society and political parties to band together and flatly reject the notion of this "minus-one" nonsense. The silence from Nawaz Sharif, champion of democracy and freedom and liberalism, is deafening. This has been a long-standing Pakistani tradition: whenever civilian leaders look to be vulnerable to undemocratic removal, political opponents look to reap the rewards instead of speaking up for the democratic process. Though it would not surprise the more cynical amongst us for this trend to continue, it would be nice if Pakistani political parties unequivocally and loudly dismiss the possibility of "minus one".

Third, it should be emphasized that the actual functional process of "minus one" is unworkable. As Cyril Almeida argued in an excellent column last week, the options for removing Zardari from power -- the judiciary/NRO, an internal PPP revolt, impeaching him in parliament, the Americans or the Army making a move to a song rehearsed time and again -- are either logistically unworkable or extremely unlikely given the socio-political situation in Pakistan. You never say never in this wild country of ours, but it would require a curious set of circumstances to actually bring this about. In December of last year, I made the point that people often confuse a government's weakness for a state's vulnerability. Just because Pakistan is in a dicey position does not mean its leaders are. Zardari is, at present, perhaps the most impregnably positioned civilian leader in Pakistan since his father-in-law. It would take some doing for him to be forced out.

Fourth, it bears emphasizing that nobody knows anything about the origins of "minus one". I treat most claims from public officials in Pakistan with a degree of skepticism, and this goes doubly for a PPP that claims to be an anti-establishment party. The politics of paranoia, victimhood, and personal persecution have been practiced by the PPP every time it has been in power -- under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, under both of Benazir's terms and now.

It could certainly be the case that there is a set of masked and nefarious actors in the background -- the "establishment" -- working to destabilize the PPP and its government, as all its leaders seem to be claiming. It wouldn't be the first time that democratically elected governments or their leaders have fallen prey to "conspiracies". But it could also be the case that these conspiracies exist nowhere other than their heads, and as most South Asian leaders are wont to do, are imagining their rivals as being up to all sorts of shenanigans when in fact nothing is actually happening on the ground. While I am more likely to believe the former story -- as I said in the beginning of this post, the fact that these stories kicked up so quickly and simultaneously is too much of a coincidence -- I am not prepared to dismiss the latter out of hand. In Pakistan, as ever, the truth remains elusive, primarily because politics here is almost by nature a backroom affair.

Fifth and finally, while I do not support this minus-one nonsense, I do support the blunting of the president's powers. Pakistan's current political system is the bastard child of a parliamentary system on the one hand, and ad-hoc measures to aggregate power in the office of the head of the state on the other. It is time to do away with this needless confusion. The country's political system was envisaged to be a parliamentary one, with the Prime Minister the head of the government and the President -- if one existed -- solely acting as a titular and symbolic head of state.

President Zardari can fulfill a great service to the country, as well as carry out his campaign promises, by getting rid of the infamous Article 58 2 (b) of the constitution, that allows the President to dissolve parliament at a moment's discretion. Editorials in Dawn as well as The News have both argued for this position too -- that the President should stay, but take the brave step of giving up this ridiculous and anachronistic power. While it would be unwise to hold one's breath on this front, one can hope that the constitutionalists amongst the PPP pressure Zardari to take this bold and much-needed step.