SURVIVAL REVIVAL: The 100 odd days

Yousuf Raza Gilani should have known what he was getting into when, like Napolean and Roosevelt, he began his 100-day journey in March. All he can do now perhaps is claim credit for emerging from the tunnel he chose for himself.The ‘100 days’ arrived in Pakistan long after the calls for their banishment from the international political discourse.

They came at the most difficult of times under an uneasy coalition brought together by circumstances and not ideology. The term is borrowed from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s incredible 100-day solo run in 1933, in the presence of an aye-ayeing Congress and backed by a friendly press. It refers “to a period of intense political activity, particularly one that immediately follows coming to power. But it has become a cliché and also raises the risk of disparaging comparisons with that most famous 100 Days at the beginning of Roosevelt’s New Deal administration...”The American president had lent respect to the 100-day phrase, cleansing it of its negative late 19th-century connotations. “The original 100 Days was the period between the arrival of Napoleon in Paris on March 20, 1815, after he escaped from Elba, to June 28, when King Louis XVIII regained his throne following the Battle of Waterloo.”

There have been suggestions that “all newly-elected political leaders take a small vow, after (John F.) Kennedy, never to invoke this phrase. Napoleon was deposed for a second time at the end of his 100 days, and Harold Wilson’s first administration (in the 1960s) was troubled with a small parliamentary majority of four and was hardly a model for radical reformers.” In 1961, Kennedy “had ruled out such a rush to correct what he saw as the wrongs of the previous administration; in his inaugural address he said that even a thousand days would be too little.”“In the ‘100 Days’, Roosevelt enjoyed an often-pliant Congress and a honeymoon with the press. By its end, he had passed 15 major laws, given 15 messages to Congress and 10 speeches, held press conferences and cabinet meetings twice a week and sponsored an international conference, made all major policy decisions, foreign and domestic, and, as Arthur Schlesinger notes, “never displayed fright or panic and rarely even bad temper.”

Yousuf Raza Gilani should have known what he was getting into when, like Napolean and Roosevelt, he began his 100-day journey in the month of March. All he can do now perhaps is claim credit for emerging from the tunnel he chose for himself without loss of temper in the presence of a parliament divided by self-interest and an extremely hostile media. He should be mindful though that the new deal that binds his party should not culminate in Waterloo.The completion of the period was marked by two significant events — the blasts in Islamabad and Karachi and Mr Gilani’s own assessment that blaming the past government for today’s ills was not good enough. Others have been pointing out that not only the blame-game has to stop, the current government has to come up with a series of new measures to distinguish itself from its predecessor.The feeling at the end of the first 100 days of the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition is that this setup is a copy of the Shaukat Aziz government. A bad copy, say the people who have been hit hard by soaring prices and living in perpetual fear of the terrorist.

In his inaugural address to the National Assembly on March 24, Prime Minister Gilani had promised peace through dialogue. The return of the suicide bomber to Islamabad on July 6 and the serial blasts in Karachi the next day lay bare the lack of progress in rooting out the violence that has gripped the country for many years now. The militants are breathing down the government’s neck and new designs to divide the country’s commercial capital along ethnic lines have been revealed.The government, in which Pakhtoonkhwa-based Awami National Party is a major partner, has been repeatedly hit by the extremist groups. It has shown a will to negotiate but few know what concessions it is ready to give to groups of Taliban. A deal has seemed imminent before the two sides have decided to return to their old violent ways.Amid all these love-hate episodes the government of Yousuf Raza Gilani has conceded the authority of dealing with the situation in the North-West to the army chief.That prices are spiralling is bad enough, but worse is the feeling of helplessness displayed by the officials and the employment commission that the prime minister owed to set up is nowhere in sight. Even the Rs 6,000 minimum wage for workers has come to a naught given the inflationary trends in the country.

Reports say work is on to clear way for a return on trade unions in the light of the pledge made by the prime minister in his first speech to the parliament. The government has given some relief to the jail inmates in the shape of commutations while a proposal to abolish the death penalty has, expectedly, been fiercely opposed by the right encouraged by the success of its pressure tactics in the Frontier and right in the heart of Islamabad.By all accounts, the presence of the PPP at the head of the coalition has provided the right wingers with a ‘natural’ reason to unite against the government. The PPP’s own desire to restore to it some of its original appeal is countered by its inability to negotiate a change in the American policy for Pakistan. Politically, the party risks losing ground to forces which are seen opposing the US hold on Islamabad.The past images of the party and its co-chairman in power haven’t helped, but ultimately what earned the PPP flak from various quarters was its inability to deliver on its post-election vow of restoring the judiciary to the pre-November 3, 2007 position. The party had not committed itself to the restoration in its election campaign, yet in mid-March it was prevailed upon by its allies to set a 30-day deadline for the return of the judges who had refused to take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order of November 3, 2007. By and large, the first 100 days of the Asif Zardari-Yousuf Gilani combine have been held hostage by the deadline the PPP set itself for the restoration of the judiciary, an extremely popular issue, at least in the areas the PPP’s traditional rivals draw their strength from. That the party had re-emerged as a strong contender for power as a result of a deal brokered by the Americans was never in doubt, its failure to move on the judges issue was viewed as a proof that it was being kept on a tight leash by the masters.

By contrast the first 100 days of the PPP-led government were a golden period for the foe-turned-ally Pakistan Muslim League. The party, whose public ratings were improving even before the February 18 polls, saw its political fortunes soar in this unit of time. It managed to secure Punjab for itself without much ado and while the PML-N leaders feasted on the gift of sweet mangoes by an equally sweet Mr Zardari, they saw merit in aligning themselves with the popular causes, leaving the PPP alone to do the dirty work after its members resigned as federal ministers on May 12. Considering the criticism that has been heaped on Mr Gilani’s ministers, the party couldn’t have pulled its members from the cabinet at politically a more appropriate time.The PML-N says it wasn’t consulted on the action against militants in the Frontier and was kept in the dark on the potentially explosive hike in the price of petrol and not formally consulted before the appointment of Salmaan Taseer as the governor of Punjab. Mr Sharif’s lieutenants maintain they were not asked but only told that Mr Taseer was being posted as the governor to the province where the PML-N is in power, as if they needed a formal invitation to intervene in the working of the coalition.Much more significantly, the PML-N leadership also made promises not meant to be kept. It reneged on its words twice after agreeing to Mr Zardari’s judicial scheme. In May, Mian Nawaz Sharif told a press briefing in Lahore that he was ready to accept the judges who had taken oath under the November 2007 PCO in the interest of democracy. His party changed its mind and instead chose to take part in the lawyers’ long march on Islamabad in June. Then again the PML-N initially agreed to the provision of 29 judges in the finance bill, only for its stalwarts to back down on it soon afterwards. Those who have been putting the survival of the coalition over a revival of the judiciary have been repeatedly snubbed by the harbingers of popular causes. The proposals save both have somehow failed to catch the fancy of those who could have made and can still make a difference.