No blood, or tears, in Pakistan's 'constitutional coup'

There’s a delicious irony to political developments in Pakistan today. The civilian government and the military-ISI establishment are locked in a confrontation, which has set off feverish chatter about a military coup. Given Pakistan’s record of countless coups down the ages, and the fact that the current civilian government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani is immensely unpopular, it wouldn’t have taken much for the military-ISI establishment to seize control. Yet, the irony is that the only ones who are practically begging for a coup are the leaders of the civilian government, who know their time is up but would like to go down as “martyrs” in the defence of democracy. [caption id=“attachment_179306” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“No tears will be shed for the civilian government. Reuters”]  [/caption] The surest sign that a coup isn’t imminent came yesterday, when the war of words between the government and the military-ISI establishment was intensifying. In similar situations in the past, the tanks would have been trundling down Islamabad’s streets sooner than you could have said ‘Allahu Akbar’ (which is also the battle cry of the military). But yesterday, the deadliest weapon that the Pakistani military headquarters deployed was… a press release. ( As Eli Wallach says, in an iconic scene from the cult classic film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”) Curiously, the press release signed off with a declaration of “allegiance to State and the Constitution”. That must have taken a lot to commit to for a military that hasn’t been shy of subverting the Constitution in the past. But the reason the Pakistani military-ISI establishment doesn’t need to stage an armed takeover at this stage, despite the bitter confrontation with the civilian government, is that in this day and age, it’s possible to stage “constitutional coups” – of the sort that’s already happening in Pakistan. Why waste a few bullets and invite global ignominy (and take on the dirty business and the headache of governing Pakistan), when the civilian government is buckling down under the weight of its own misgovernance and in any case can be eased out using a partisan Supreme Court? Pakistan is witnessing a “ slow-motion coup”, one in which the Supreme Court is complicit. It’s a lot cleaner: there are no bloodstains to mop up. And it doesn’t make Pakistan’s patrons overseas too queasy if regime change is seen to happen ostensibly under the framework of the Constitution. To some observers, it appears that the Pakistani military-ISI establishment may already have secured tacit approval from the US for a “constitutional coup” that dislodges the government peacefully. By one of those curious coincidences, the US drone campaign to target suspected militant hideouts in Pakistan’s northwest was revived yesterday after a two-month lull. To Lisa Curtis, South Asia policy wonk at the Heritage Foundation, it suggested, among other things, that the Pakistani military may have acquiesced in the resumption of the drone strike as a way of securing US support in any action it may take, including unseating the Zardari government. “What (the Pakistani military) may be looking for is US acquiescence for what they may be trying to do, which may be trying to unseat the… government,” Curtis told the Christian Science Monitor. In her estimation, the Pakistani military perhaps calculates that giving into US counterterrorism interests – in the form of the drone attacks – might help it secure US backing. For the record, a US military official said overnight that the Pentagon had neither sought nor received assurances that the Pakistani army will not stage a coup. “This is a matter for Pakistani officials — their government leaders, military and civilian — to work out,” the spokesman said. Why now? Even though the confrontation between the Pakistani military and the civilian government has been accentuated since the events of May, when US Navy seals killed Osama bin Laden, they it has acquired an urgency in the light of upcoming elections in March to the Pakistan Senate. The Pakistan People’s Party will likely win control of the Senate, which will make it difficult for even a successive government to amend the Constitution. With the Supreme Court (and perhaps even the US) complicit in the Pakistani military-ISI establishment’s efforts to stage a constitutional coup, the Zardari government’s days appear numbered. Its valorous efforts to go down with its guns blazing – with the halo of martyrs standing up for democracy – appear doomed to fail. In the “battle of the press releases”, the civilian government looks fated to lose.