Premier Replaced!
- Siddique Malik, USA

In a parliamentary democracy, replacement of the Leader of House, i.e. the Prime Minister, on the initiative of the ruling party members is considered a part of normal political process; genuine is the operative word, though.

In December 1991, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in Paris, representing her country at a meeting of EU leaders. Back at home, a group within her parliamentary caucus decided that it was time for her to relinquish power (she had been in power for many years and the party’s need to bring in a new face could be understood). This group held an internal caucus ballot to challenge her leadership.

Although a majority of those who participated in this ballot voted to retain her, the result clearly indicated an erosion of her parliamentary support. The ‘iron lady’ dashed back to London and tendered her resignation to the Queen. The Queen, of course, was as impartial in this entire episode as any head of state in a ‘genuine’ parliamentary system could be. Apart from uttering a few customary words of praise for the outgoing Prime Minister, the Queen didn’t feel the need to shed any light on this sudden change of the occupant of the 10 Downing Street.

Contrast this episode with the recent resignation of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali from the office of Prime Minister of Pakistan. Theoretically, this resignation was an internal party phenomenon, too. However, Mr Jamali had been in office for only 18 or so months and had been doing as good a job as any Prime Minister with curtailed powers could. Therefore, his party’s sudden change of heart suggests that an extra-party force, and a very strong one, was at work. No one in the PML has clearly explained the main reason behind this change. Why did Mr Jamali who hours before tendering his resignation had said that he had no plan to resign suddenly felt the need to ‘nominate’ his successor?

The Pakistan Muslim League has made the office of the Prime Minister a laughing stock. If it wanted Mr Shaukat Aziz (who did not meet the legal pre-requisites of the job) to be Mr Jamali’s replacement, it should have waited until he fulfilled these requirements, before proceeding with the change. Why such hurry to oust Mr Jamali that an intervening prime minister needed to be installed? A prime minister is not just an ordinary officer of the state.

Theoretically, he/she is the fountainhead of leadership for the nation’s administrative machinery. How could Mr Jamali’s party remove him, bring in a replacement for a few weeks until the eventual replacement is readied, and expect that the state machinery will continue to function unaffected? This is a step of extreme irresponsibility.

If Mr Jamali was so incapable that he could not do the job for another few weeks, then why did his party make him Prime Minister just 18 months earlier? Is this not a dereliction of duty on the part of the PML? This clearly indicates how irrelevant and inconsequential the office of the Prime Minister has become. It does not bode well for democracy in Pakistan.

Amid the speculation over this abrupt development, one fact has gone completely unmentioned. For the first time the occupant of one of the country’s top jobs had come from Balochistan. His inability to complete his term of office has added to the loss of the concept of due process by suddenly removing a small province from centre-stage.

On the one hand, Pakistan’s political parties are so helpless before the dictatorial behaviour of their leaders that they will refuse to jettison their leaders even after they have been convicted by a court, or have sent goons to attack the Supreme Court and, on the other, the PML suddenly became so charged up with activism that it thought nothing of pulling the rug from under the feet of its leader who months earlier was installed as the country’s chief executive and had done nothing to deserve an unethical and a conspiratorial jilting.

Despite Mr Jamali’s civility and the PML’s claims of his ouster being an internal party process, the logic clearly suggests that his departure was triggered by the same forces whose objective has always been to ensure that no Prime Minister in Pakistan should get a concrete chance to leave his/her mark on history. This indicates a contempt for the people of Pakistan, whose main elected representative is their Prime Minister.●

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