Martial law news2/21/2023 It rushes to the site of the fire, extinguishes the fire but, instead of getting back to the station, it lingers on, tarries too long, gets involved in the management and administration of the house, and ceases to be a fire brigade. In Pakistan, however, the role of the army is like that of a fire brigade. When power fails in Delhi, the emergency lamp comes into operation when power is restored, the emergency lamp again becomes dormant. When the country faces what is called “the deadlock of democracy”, the president acts as a referee, and avoids becoming a participant or a partisan in the political power game. In India, this role is played by the Union President, who is strictly neutral and commands great respect. Isn’t it tragic that when a strain develops between the pillars of the state, it is the army chief who is called upon to act as a referee? But, for historical reasons, it has acquired this role in Pakistan, which now appears to be irreversible, at least in the foreseeable future. It is axiomatic that the army has no political role in any democratic country, whatever its form of government. Periodic army interventions have deprived the state of Pakistan of its sovereignty, its past, present and future The supreme irony of this event is that the Constitution of Pakistan was to be abrogated or suspended by some of the very officers present then in Jinnah’s audience. “I want you to remember, and if you have time enough, you should study the Government of India Act (of 1935), as adapted for use in Pakistan, which is our present constitution, that the executive authority flows from the head of the Government of Pakistan, who is the Governor General and, therefore, any command that may come to you cannot come without the sanction of the executive head.” And he added: “I should like you to study the constitution which is in force in Pakistan at present, and understand its true constitutional and legal implications when you say that you will be faithful to the constitution of the Dominion. Months later, during his first and only visit to Staff College Quetta, he expressed his alarm at the casual attitude of “one or two very high-ranking officers.” He warned the assembled officers that some of them were not aware of the implications of their oath to Pakistan and promptly read it out to them. Gen Ayub Khan, ‘first to stab democracy in the back’ as a recently declassified document shows, he was planning it all the way back in 1953 It is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted.” He warned the officer concerned “not to forget that the armed forces were the servants of the people and you do not make national policy. This was not our understanding of how Pakistan should be run.” British officers have been appointed to head the three fighting services, and a number of other foreigners are in key senior appointments. The officer had complained that: “Instead of giving us the opportunity to serve our country in positions where our natural talents and native genius could be used to the greatest advantage, important posts are being entrusted, as had been done in the past, to foreigners. On the day of Pakistan’s independence, August 14, 1947, Jinnah - who had just become Governor General - scolded a young Pakistani officer. Jinnah was aware of the threat posed by the army to Pakistan’s fledgling democracy. Very soon, events were to prove how wrong we were. Jinnah’s Pakistan was to be governed by law, not man. On August 14, 1947, we took democracy, supremacy of law, supremacy of civilian rule and the independence of the judiciary for granted. Statesmen must never relax their efforts to find a remedy for this evil.” They should be reckoned among the most threatening of the perils which face their future existence. "Military coups,” Alexis De Tocqueville warned more than 200 years ago, “are always to be feared in democracies.
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