Invoking Article 245; Ignoring Responsibilities & Repercussions

Use of military, whether in a developed or developing society, is always the last option to be used. Only when entangled in the vortex of internal or external security crisis, calling the help of armed forces can be justified. But Nawaz Sharif led federal government has called on army in order to avoid the upcoming challenges from the political opposition, leaving their chores upon the shoulder of Pakistan Army and it has probably ignored the repercussions it may entail.

The gov­ern­ment seems to have made the deci­sion in haste. Com­plete hand­ing over of the fed­er­al cap­i­tal to the army, which is already busy ter­mi­nat­ing insur­gency and fight­ing the war of sur­vival for Pak­istan, can only be equat­ed with accep­tance of fail­ure.

The pic­ture it would depict to the world is that the gov­ern­ment was strong enough to use civil­ian forces to guard the fed­er­al cap­i­tal when the sui­cide bombers were blast­ing in every cor­ner of the coun­try but kneeled before the ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies’ and ‘Insafi­ans’ when they announced to march to the cap­i­tal. It is indeed the first polit­i­cal vic­to­ry of the lat­ter and a sign of defeat from the for­mer.

The Nawaz gov­ern­ment seems to have not dis­cussed and delib­er­at­ed minute­ly upon the reper­cus­sions of invok­ing Arti­cle 245 of the Con­sti­tu­tion; the pro­vi­sion that empow­ers the gov­ern­ment to call the army to act in aid of civil­ian pow­er.

It must not be for­got­ten that the very pro­vi­sion was once invoked by the most pow­er­ful Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan and then he became so help­less to revoke it and had to sur­ren­der before noose of death which fol­lowed the impo­si­tion of Arti­cle 245. He was none oth­er than Mr. Zul­fikar Ali Bhut­to.

On the occa­sion of pre­sent­ing inter­im Con­sti­tu­tion, late Prime Min­is­ter Zul­fiqar Ali Bhut­to made his­toric remarks. He con­fi­dent­ly said, [block­quote style=“2”] If you are not vig­i­lant and if you do not han­dle things care­ful­ly, if the politi­cians make mis­takes and if we indulge in pet­ty mat­ters, go along destruc­tive chan­nels or fight amongst our­selves, it is just pos­si­ble that the bygone era (mar­tial law) might recur.”[/blockquote]

The late PM prob­a­bly for­got his own words and indulged him­self in such a closed end tun­nel that soon after 1977 gen­er­al elec­tions, when the oppo­si­tion refused to accept the results, he imposed mini-mar­tial law by call­ing upon army to act in aid of civil­ian gov­ern­ment. The invo­ca­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion that end­ed up with tons of prob­lems like the impo­si­tion of full-fledged mar­tial law at a lat­er stage, exe­cu­tion of Bhut­to him­self, influx of reli­gious mer­ce­nar­ies, and the sus­pen­sion of con­sti­tu­tion for near­ly 8 years, to name few of them, cost­ing Pak­istan an unbear­able loss.

Today the sit­u­a­tion is not very much dif­fer­ent from what it was in 1977. Pak­istan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) is not ready to accept the elec­tion results of a few con­stituen­cies, yet head­ing one of the provin­cial gov­ern­ments. Their mem­bers in the low­er house are duly elect­ed and sworn in as a result of the same elec­tion which they are call­ing rigged.

Fed­er­al government’s req­ui­si­tion to the army under Arti­cle 245 to take the fed­er­al cap­i­tal in con­trol for 90 days is some­what a con­fused move. The sit­u­a­tion does not war­rant call­ing the army to con­trol a rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful city. It would leave unfad­ing affects upon the over­all sce­nario.

It must not be for­got­ten that by invok­ing Arti­cle 245, the gov­ern­ment has involved itself in the unend­ing cri­sis that may wrap up the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. More than PTI, Pak­istan Awa­mi Tehreek (PAT) or any oth­er force, and anoth­er ill advice like that of call­ing the army for help might act as the last nail caus­ing the exit of the gov­ern­ment.

By the virtue of Arti­cle 245, the high court of that province (in this case the fed­er­al cap­i­tal) ceas­es to enjoy its juris­dic­tion. If any seri­ous law and order sit­u­a­tion is some­how cre­at­ed in the area, the army enjoys an implic­it pow­er to sus­pend cer­tain fun­da­men­tal right includ­ing free­dom of move­ment and free­dom of assem­bly etc. If the army exer­cis­es such pow­ers, it would wors­en the sit­u­a­tion in already tense polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment.

Arti­cle 245, as one can read between the lines, requires to be invoked in cir­cum­stances such as when there is an exter­nal aggres­sion or a threat of war. And also when defence, secu­ri­ty, strate­gic, and sen­si­tive instal­la­tions are under seri­ous threat of attack. Nei­ther PTI nor Awa­mi Tehreek has guts to attack the sen­si­tive instal­la­tions nor do they intend to do so.

The rea­son cit­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment about the poten­tial attacks from TTP in retal­i­a­tion of oper­a­tion Zarb-e-Azb is noth­ing but a façade. It is actu­al­ly unnec­es­sary drag­ging of the army into polit­i­cal affairs of the coun­try and is equal to the shift­ing of polit­i­cal bur­den over the shoul­ders of army.

Nawaz Sharif is test­ing his own med­i­cine. As far as PTI is con­cerned, it tabled very sim­ple demands to inves­ti­gate the votes cast­ed in four con­stituen­cies. Had the demands been met, it would not have forced the PTI to stage the march. For Tahir­ul Qadri too, the Pun­jab government’s incom­pe­tent coor­di­na­tion and the ‘shoot­ing at sight’ saga proved to be a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to seize the atten­tion of media and use it as his trump card for achiev­ing his polit­i­cal (or God knows what) objec­tives.

Polit­i­cal prob­lems can only be solved through polit­i­cal means. The politi­cians can­not be expect­ed to fight the ter­ror­ists hid­ing in the rough ter­rains of the trib­al areas. Sim­i­lar­ly the army is not expert at solv­ing pure­ly polit­i­cal issues the way it could be dealt with by the politi­cians.

Nawaz gov­ern­ment may have made a dis­il­lu­sioned, futile attempt in defus­ing the ten­sion, where­as Arti­cle 245 is noth­ing but an addi­tion to the brew­ing prob­lems. Such deci­sion may have been made over a cup of tea in a cab­i­net meet­ing, but if the san­i­ty does not pre­vail, the fear is that it would end with spilling the blood of many polit­i­cal work­ers being used by the par­ties. If the impo­si­tion of Arti­cle 245 is not lift­ed with­out wast­ing time, it would cre­ate more prob­lems for the gov­ern­ment and will also bad­ly affect the oper­a­tional capac­i­ty of the armed force in con­duct­ing the oper­a­tion Zarb-e-Azb.