Ikram Sehgal (IS)
I welcome you today to Ary Digital’s Ikram Sehgal’s TOUGH LINE. We are going to ask you some questions about your life and career and we hope that you will correctly answer them as you’ve done throughout your life. Sir, to start with, tell us something about your early life, parents?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
My father was a civil servant in NWFP as Assistant Commissioner so along with him I also changed schools as he was transferred from one place to another. I passed my primary school from Charsadda, schools from Haripur and Matric from DI Khan and had a fairly extensive sort of tour of various parts. Then for college I had to go to Lahore because my sister was also studying there as there was no girls’ college in NWFP at that time. This
was something really out of the ordinary, and before independence the whole province of NWFP did not have a single girls’ college. And now there is, so it shows, you know, the progress that we have made. So, because of her I had also to go to Lahore to Islamia College Lahore otherwise my father would have probably sent me to Islamia College
Peshawar of which he was the first graduate in 1918. So, my going to Lahore was very providential because I joined in 1944 and at that time the Pakistan movement was in full swing, so I readily joined that movement and before long I was selected to the Executive Committee and in 1945, when the election campaign started, I was an active member. I went to Lyallpur (now called Faisalabad) for the Central Assembly Election, then the Punjab elections in 1945-46, Mumtaz Daultana was at that time the Chief Minister of Punjab Assembly, he gave us 24000 Rupees for the campaign, and I was appointed as a Finance Member of the Muslim School Federation Islamia College to look after those accounts.
So I developed a double entry system from common sense and kept the accounts, I also took part and that had a profound impact on my future life because Quaid-i-Azam came to Islamia College many times, in fact almost 10 times between 1937 and 1947 and three of those 10 times I was in Islamia College so I had meetings with him in those three times along with the Federation Delegation and at the March 1946 prize distribution ceremony he gave us the award and said we are one, you are all Mujahid-e-Pakistan and I hope all of you will become Maimar-e-Pakistan and that was something that remained in my ears throughout my career.
What did I do; I became a development planner because of that. Secondly, he also said that Muslims are very backward in commerce and industry, so my diversion to commerce education and economics also was part of that, otherwise my father wanted me to become a lawyer. My encounter with Quaid-i-Azam, therefore, influenced my career and I therefore joined Hailey College of Commerce in 1946 and you’ll be surprised to hear that in 350 boys in the college, there were only three Muslims, the rest were all Hindu and Sikh; that was the extent of deprivation. So, that’s how I started my educational career.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
What was the first job Sir?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
So, when I finish my B.Com I wanted to appear for the Central Superior Services, but I was underage for competition, not yet 21. So, there was an advertisement from NWFP for the position of Deputy Director Information, I applied and got selected. I had a two-year stint in the government of NWFP. Qayoom Khan was at that time the Chief Minister and a very active Chief Minister so as Deputy Director Information I had a very good experience.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
It would be interesting to also note whether there was the same type of manipulation of information that we’ve seen in the 60s and the 70s?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
The information was not that manipulated, but the elections of 1951 were. The first elections of the National Assemblies and Qayoom Khan was a very good politician, and he did understand the importance of the media and he managed to raise his image as the most development-minded Chief Minister of that time. And we were the first Province to come up with a documentary on our development work, which I used to go to Lahore to record the commentary in Pashto. We were the first province to set up a Tourism Bureau of our own and I was the first Director of Tourism, so it was a very full period for me conducting all the foreign journalists and so on and so forth. But from the information point of view, we had a very good Information Minister, Abdul Kiyani, who was the brother of Justice Kiyani and so we were only a three-member cabinet and so it was quite remarkable compared to 2003 cabinet now, that we had only three. But there was a great sense of ideology at that time, a sense of idealism Pakistan having been created and everybody, even the civil servants were very enthusiastic about what they were doing and I’m sure the level of corruption was much, much lower. So, it was a very good period of idealism for me.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
So, when did you come to the Ministry of Finance?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well you see, after I appeared in the CSS and I was selected, I’ve deliberately opted for the Accounts Service, in fact military account service because at that time the main policy matters in the country belong to the Accounts because almost all the main policy makers belonged to the Accounts i.e. Ghulam Mohammad, Chowdhury Muhammad Ali, Abdul Qadir, Zahid Hussain, Mumtaz Hassan, almost all the prominent person and I wanted to deal with economic policy so this was my first preference and that’s why I regretted when they offered me to join the Police Service of Pakistan and I opted for it. When I joined the Account service within three years I started sort of conducting various assignments in the Ministry of Finance but then Martial Law was imposed in 1958 and the Administrative Reorganization Committee was set up and I became the Secretary of that Committee and that was a very useful experience for me because all the senior Secretaries to government under the Chairman were members of that Committee and I got, at a very young age, exposure to the organizational and staffing problems of almost all the ministries. I got Tamgha-e-Khidmat for doing that work, in 1959 I got the very first civil awards that Ayub Khan gave and after that G A Ahmad invited me to join the Planning Commission. So, my major tenure as the Civil Servant was in the Planning Commission from 61 to 71. Ayub Khan the Chairman, G A Ahmed was the Deputy Chairman and it was a very good team with Mahbubul Haq.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
That is known as the Golden Era of Pakistan for utilization and planning. Am I right in saying that this is also the time when the first serious issue came about corruption, people thought that only a few families are being, you know favored and the rest of Pakistan is not being looked up?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
The decade of the 60s, it was evaluated as one of the most impressive periods of economic growth, we had six and a half to seven percent growth rate if you leave East Pakistan out and take only West Pakistan; a very rapid, one of the highest industrial growth rates of 12%, we had investment that grew almost 14% and inflation was only 2%. So, it was a very important time despite the war of 1965, the 60s were remarkable. But two things happened. First, the premium on wealth money making eroded our value system because the most important thing was that you had to have money, so to that extent I think it did start our value system getting eroded in the city because people became rich very quickly. Secondly, the policy was more growth-oriented and while in 1965 we as members of the Planning Commission did start raising issues about social factors, about employment, about basic needs, about things of that kind, but it was too late. The whole issue of 20 families controlling two-thirds of the country’s wealth became a dominant slogan which ultimately led to the fall of Ayub Khan. But to my mind the most serious problem created was the over-centralization of administration, the Presidential System did not actually suit us, we should have had a Parliamentary System because East Pakistan did not feel it was running government, although development in East Pakistan did very well. But the fact that they did not feel they were managing their own affairs created the processes by which Six Points came about. And then East Pakistan became Bangladesh, so in many ways economic progress is no substitute for the feeling of managing your own political affairs.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You saw Ayub Khan and you saw Yahya Khan, what are your reflections about them?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Ayub Khan, no comparison. Ayub Khan was a much stronger leader, he grew with the job enormously and worked tremendously in terms of various kind of educational reforms, land reforms, administrative reforms, scientific reforms, about 30 commissions were set up in 1959/1960 and the whole bureaucracy was revamped. I think it was quite a remarkable period except on the political side where his thesis of having a centralized system; otherwise, things will not go that way.
His period was a very remarkable one. Yahya Khan came in 1969 in very difficult circumstances when the problems of East Pakistan had really gone beyond redemption and his ability was such that he did not even grasp what was happening in East Pakistan, all of us did at that time understand that East Pakistan should be allowed to become a looser federation and even a confederation would have been better than a separate country.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
One of the issues that East Pakistan raised at the time was exploitation, do you feel this was real exploitation or was it a figment of imagination. How do you feel about this?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I think East Pakistani economists did overplay that issue and, in my book, there is my diary in East Pakistan which has been reproduced and there are three working papers at the end of that diary which we had produced in 1971 in the final stage of negotiation because Mujeeb had demanded a payment of 3800 crores being the transfer of resources from East to West Pakistan.
In that paper we argued that the calculations were not correct. Actually, the fact was that East Pakistan did not have a strong private sector and while in terms of public sector allocation the transfer to East Pakistan was enormous, but it could not compensate for the (missing) private sector which was much more productive.
The private sector in West Pakistan was much more dynamic in the 60s and 50s.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You said that one of the ways of developing countries is to give jobs out, if you look at the national population if you look at the jobs that we created most of these were federal jobs or the jobs that went to West Pakistan?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well, there were of course quotas at the higher level and at the lower levels in the Federal Government there obviously they got a bigger share, but Wapda had almost a million employees in East Pakistan. WAPDA at that time, jobs were created comparatively and in the last five years after 1965 particularly 60% of the development program was in East Pakistan while 40% was in West Pakistan here. So, an effort was made PIDC was bifurcated, railways was provincialized, a number of institutions were decentralized but it was too late, the real issue was political.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
By 1971 we had crossed that failsafe threshold where we, this country could have remained together?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
If we had a political government two years earlier and if Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had not insisted on not attending the Assembly and Mujib had been given the Prime Ministership of Pakistan, the military need not have strayed from their course. You had so many ministries you would have had to satisfy him, he would have lasted four years or five years, the country would have stayed together maybe even as a loose federation. So, the fact that we did not offer the Prime Ministership to Mujeeb although he had the majority. But there was a structural problem. When the One Unit was broken and East and West Pakistan the equality which was between East and West Pakistan number of seats were done away with and East Pakistan members were more than West Pakistan, we should have created a Senate at that time. So, we did not have that safeguard and the majority in East Pakistan in the Assembly created a structured anomalies so there were, I think, Yahya Khan’s Legal Framework Order and his whole conceptual framework by which he wanted to save the situation against Pakistan was totally inadequate to what was needed at that time.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
So, your stint in FAO, you were known to be a good friend of China. What did you have to do with China’s food program?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
My national career lasted till 1971 and when the East Pakistan crisis became virtually unbearable, having worked for the Pakistan movement, I just could not bear. So, I had several offers at that time, and I accepted this offer from FAO to go as Director of Commodities and Trade Division. I had gone there, you see, totally frustrated by the experience of East Pakistan and I thought I’ll rest and write some books and save some money for my retirement. But I left in the middle of a food crisis, so the 1972 food crisis led to the world food process of 1974 of which I was the Deputy Secretary General. So my first visit to China was in connection with the preparation for the Food Conference and at that time China was ready to become member of FAO, the first U.N organ that it wanted to join.
So, I developed a long-lasting interest in the Chinese system and I visited in 1973 and then in 1974 and 1975 and in 1980 wrote my book on ‘China Rural Development. Learning from China’ in 1976. So then of course I kept working with them and when I subsequently helped to create EPOCH the first international loan programme went from EPOCH and so to that extent my stint in that role was much more productive because the World Food Conference was one of the most successful conferences and focused the world attention on the full conference and it led to the World Food Council. It led to the creation of IFA a billion-dollar fund in which OPEC contributed half the money and half the money came from the developed countries, so it was the first international institution in which the developing countries had a two-third majority.
And it was focused on poverty issues. So my 12 years, in fact 12 and a half years in Rome, six years in FAO two years in the World Food Council and six years in IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) were extremely productive years and enabled me to acquire a much stronger dimension not just in terms of making my contribution to those institutions but in terms of my understanding of the development problems and going in the light of Pakistan’s own experience of growth, a narrow concept of development which is growth oriented to a broader concept of development which is more integrated economic and social development.
This then led me ultimately to come back to Pakistan because you see what happened was that throughout this period, I received a tremendous projection in the international press and the Pakistani press. And then in one of the articles I was called the new Joseph for food diplomacy because of the plan that I had developed for building a Food Reserve to his invitation that whenever you are ready to save the world from famine so I was invited by as early as 1979 but at that time EPAK was just being born and I couldn’t leave it. Junejo came to Rome in 1982 and he repeated that whenever you are ready.
Well, I came back in 1984, just one year before the process was restored, and my purpose in coming back was to learn from my China model of rural development to try to evolve a model of rural development for Pakistan. So, I came basically not just to join the government. I had the job of almost 100.000 dollars a year and I came here for 3000 rupees a month, so the idea was to use my accumulated experience both in agriculture and in the rural development and social development for Pakistan. Now when I joined the Cabinet it was a transition period as elections were going to take place in less than one year and so I basically used that year to study the system and then I got elected to the Senate in March 1985 and then rejoined the Prime Minister’s cabinet later that year and remained in agriculture for eight years. Now Ziaul Haq of course at that time, when I joined in 1984, was planning the transition and it was very interesting because his idea was not to transfer power but to share power, so he actually shared only 30% of the power and kept 70% and then the Eighth Amendment transferred the remaining power. So it was a very interesting experience to see how he was masterminding the political transition and in those 10 to 12 months, I was very impressed by his patience to hear, by his memory to try to and the way he masterminded that whole phase was quite a remarkable experience for me to observe, what I would call political planning at first hand and so when I rejoined the Prime Minister’s cabinet my political education in terms of the Pakistani politics had already started. So, while I came to Pakistan as a technocrat, particularly initially, agricultural technocrat then later on as a financial technocrat, my political education had started very early.
Well Junejo stayed till 1988; I remained with him, then I remained as a Caretaker Agriculture and Rural Development for three months, then Benazir Bhutto’s government came in 1988 and we moved to the opposition. Then in 1990 when we won the election and Nawaz Sharif government came, then I rejoined as Finance Minister in 1990 for three years. So, in my entire 16-year political career I was a Minister from 1984 to 1988 i.e. 4 years, Finance Ministers from 1993 for seven years, then two more years as Financial Minister and one and a half years.
When we were in the cabinet and Nawaz Sharif was the Chief Minister of Punjab, he used to come to Islamabad for various meetings and at that time he was quite a dynamic figure in Punjab. He was trying to do things and trying to get support from the Federal Government, but I came to know him a little more in the next two years when we were in the Opposition, and he was Chief Minister of Punjab and there was a tussle going on between the Federal government of Benazir Bhutto and the Punjab government and he was all the time looking for briefing.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Your first stint as Finance Minister was in 1990 and you know the PPP started a campaign saying you are a Sikh. How did this thing come about?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well, I think that the term Sardar came a little because I must have imposed on such charges and some newspapers commented on it but I think our first stint as a Finance Minister and that period of economic reform was I think one of the most successful ones and even Mr Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister of India, was acknowledging many of the economic reforms.
He followed us and I used to meet him once or twice a year and he would discuss in greater details what was happening; the reason for that was that Ayub Khan’s period was a period of economic liberalization and we were at that time ahead of most countries because at that time it was not very fashionable and that’s why we made such good progress.
Then Prime Minister Bhutto came and nationalized industry and nationalized banks, insurance companies and gained that strategy so Pakistan lasted almost 20 years from 1970 to 1990. In the meanwhile, Malaysia and Thailand and Indonesia and Korea and Taiwan they moved ahead. So, Pakistan then resumed the stabilization program in 1990 when our government came back and that is where I think the much-delayed reform started. It’s a pity that we could not take full advantage of that economic reform, sometimes we did have a remarkable year as in 1992 but in 1993 our government was dismissed and there was continuing political instability after that; so, in 1990s if we had started the same reforms that we did in the 80s when Afghan War was there Pakistan would today in a very different position. So our first tenure from 1993 was one of the remarkable reforms.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
From most of the last decade you remained at near center stage of Pakistani Administration and politics, particularly you became Secretary General in 1993 for the Pakistan Muslim League. Now between 1990 and 1993, obviously you were very close to Nawaz because that is how, you know, he was the one who pulled you into the Secretary General’s job. So, what was this period between 1990 and 1993 like?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Nawaz Sharif had many qualities; one was he was very dynamic and a very decisive decision maker. He didn’t go there but he was always wanting quick results, he will give impossible deadlines to everybody, so we were able to undertake that reform program in six months which other countries have taken upto three years. So, to that extent he pushed us and also his general political instinct, what will be good for us in the first 10 years his priority was development and when an Indian journalist asked me in 1993 how have you moved ahead of India?
I said after Ayub Khan he was the first Chief Executive whose main priority was development whereas Ziaul Haq, Junejo, was not real so to that extent he deserved the credit. But his basic defect which came out much stronger in the second tenure was his desire to consolidate his personal power rather than consolidate the power of the institution. And that is where I think his major mistake was.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Correct me if I’m wrong because I’ve had this privilege of having long discussion with you between 1993 and 1997. Before 1993 we didn’t see much of Senator Saifur Rahman, how do you see this?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I think during the opposition days 1993 to 1996 they probably came close to him, sort of in those days since he did not have a place in Islamabad but whenever he came, they drove him around and they tried to so both brothers rather got close to him and then he got himself appointed as Chairman Ehtesab Bureau.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Would you call this a failure of institutionalizing because you know let’s look at it, by getting close he started molding literally Muslim League?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t think in the political terms, I think from 92 to 96 Muslim League, the party came out very well because we were in a position, so we got the opportunity you see, in 93 election we got 73 seats, PPP got 86 seats. If we had got 7 seats more, we would have formed the government and we were not able to organize the party. His presence in Punjab was a great help because he organized the Punjab Muslim League and during the Opposition Muslim League were organized very well and our ability to give tickets on a systematic basis in 1997 and to have presence throughout the country was a major factor. His role was remarkable and he provided leadership to unify the party Muslim League as you know is always related to factions, but he not only consolidated the ML he got on board a very large number of small parties who cooperated with us in the next election. I would give him very good marks in his first tenure for economic reform, very good marks in the second genre for changing the Pakistan Muslim League as a major party.
He became the President of Muslim League only in April 1993, so I think now his weaknesses started emerging in February 1997 when he got such a heavy mandate and there I think this thing went to his head I suppose. He thought that he had got all that because of his personal popularity and his main effort was to deal with all the threats to his survival and continuation so that he could continue indefinitely. That’s where Saifur Rahman comes in, that’s where everybody else comes in.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Let’s see if that is currently called Pakistan lexicon is that you know Majid Nizami sahib who you know is very close but you know and we know that within the month of it taking over Majid Nizami, we were you know questioning the fact that he supported the wrong person to come to the top?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t know basically I think Majid Nizami was a man who also believed in the institution and who believed in democratic principles and all that. Nawaz Sharif, when the second tenure started, he had personalized the administration in terms of not using the institutions of state and trying to, he obviously justified it because he wanted to move fast, and he sees all these institutions are highly bureaucratic and the CWP and therefore everything should be done at my level as I have demanded.
Why not, so I think basically like me his complaint was also that a real democracy needs strong institutions and if the institutions are strong the individuals time comes from there and he believes in consolidating his personal power as well as the power of his team and that’s why loyalty comes in persons that you can trust so it became a very close group that he was dependent on and I reminded him once or twice. But there was a core group of 12 to 15 colleagues that used to consult regularly and all of us had difficulty in finding time. Many members were unhappy uh that they could not get access to him so he did become a bit isolated from the mainstream things and uh went for, what I would call, more populist things which would give him popularity in the public.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
The first process of consultation that must have taken place and that certainly was the Indian nuclear blast, it led to the Pakistani response. In terms of consultation that would have taken place, now is it true that he went with consensus?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
You know, I think he was very clear that Pakistan would have to go for a test otherwise politically it will be difficult for him to justify that decision and there were some who were of the argument about whether to do it immediately or delay for a while to get some economic advantages otherwise there was virtual unanimity to go ahead and I think the narrative of that decision is justified by the present circumstance. If God forbid, we didn’t have the nuclear capacity India would not have waited for all these days that they have, so to that extent I think that Nawaz Sharif was correct, and he was certainly much more enthusiastic than anybody else in making that decision.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
In December many moments took place, so the most momentous was the night of the explosion itself with the exclusion of some foreign countries. Now this country has never really come to know how come was the decision taken and also because there were a lot of rumors.
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
You see because obviously such decisions are very sensitive, so they have not been discussed before. In the contingency planning that we’re asked to do soon after the nuclear test that if you have to go for test what will happen. The State Bank prepared the basic physical papers saying that if a test takes place obviously sanctions will happen, and our reserves are only one billion and currency accounts are 11 billion. So, the Governor State Bank’s recommendation was that we should, since these liabilities of 11 billion Pakistan will not be able to discharge very easily and most people who have deposited this money at 28 rupees or 30 rupees now the rate was 40 rupees and if we convert them forcibly at 40 or 42 nobody likes to lose money, and this will be a correct decision. So, his recommendation was that we should, on a particular day, convert automatically all the accounts into rupees and they can reconvert into dollars as required, but everybody has already by depositing that money and income tax exemption and about counterparts, no questions asked, a number of things because 7 billion out of 11 billion were local Pakistani Rupees that were deposited. But the Prime Minister said in a small meeting earlier, two days earlier, that no this is too drastic to convert and instead of converting them forcibly we should freeze them and in due course we might be able to pay them. So that decision was made but then between then and the tests there was no opportunity to work out the full implication and so when the test did take place it was as a surprise to all of us if the Ordinance had to be issued simultaneously, it did go to the Cabinet next day and the Cabinet confirmed that.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You just said that when the test did take place it came as a surprise to all of you. I mean you were the Secretary General of the Party, you did not know about the test?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I knew that it was about to take place but the fact they would take place at that particular point of time and on that particular day, nobody knew. I mean the Prime Minister and the team must have known but I came to know only one or two hours before the test was taking place.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Does this I mean, this was a little surprising because obviously you were a close member of the party, the Secretary General, right? Now who was part of the inner circle?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
You see, for the nuclear test of course I don’t think even the other people in the staff knew because this was something that the foreign press, as you know was totally at that time coming and we were under tremendous international pressure and President Clinton was calling almost every day. We were asked to stay ready in the sense that do contingency planning which we have done and so there was one meeting of the DCC, I think five six years earlier, 21st of May so we all knew that the decision has been taken to go ahead, the question was the exact timing and how long it will take for the technical people to be ready for it. So, we expected it but not on that particular day and at that particular time, so basically, I think in such a major momentous event when the political decision to go for a test is so important and that your mind is totally focused on those issues, the broader political and international dimensions, and the amount of attention that economic issues would have required at that time was not given unfortunately.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
During the time that Nawaz Sharif took over, President Farooq Leghari was there, and he just said that it was a very fair election, that he had a very fair election conducted, he had been used to, but he had fallen out but the point is that very soon thereafter the relationship between the Prime Minister and the President started to deteriorate?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I think it started with the 8th Amendment in April, two months after the election you know actually he must have decided that what are threats, as I said earlier he wanted to eliminate all possible threats to his removal or his instability and one of them was the power of the president to dismiss him so he realized that while because there was a certain rumor earlier that there was a proposal to postpone the election for two years and allow the Caretaker set up to continue under President Leghari and then of course the economic situation became somewhat problematic.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
That could have been a better thing than having a Martial Law for two years?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
No, but that’s beside the point. But at that time it appears that the Eighth Amendment and Nawaz Sharif had two third majority both in the Senate and in the House with the help of some other parties he decided to so we consulted the Parliamentary party and I personally advised him against it in the sense that this is a safety valve to keep Martial Law away and I suggested an alternative Amendment which was that if the President does use this power to dismiss the Assembly and the Supreme Court holds it to be out of order then the President must resign within 48 hours.
Because my experience of 1993 was that if Ghulam Ishaq Khan had gone after the government was restored the next instability would not have come, but he said no, now is the time and a third democracy cannot function if there’s another Center of power. It is true that if you remove the second balance which comes from the Presidential power then the Parliament must be strengthened. The Parliamentary Committee must be sanctioned, and the Election Commission must be independent, the UC Union Councils) must be autonomous and independent, so in the absence of that it did centralize too much power and that’s what most people are afraid of.
So that is why I’ve written a small booklet on the Eighth Amendment which shows the balance of power between the President and the Prime Minister. The ultimate solution lies in stronger Institutions, I think the idea of having a strong President and having extra Parliamentary checks and balances is not correct in the Parliamentary system and a democracy must have its own Parliamentary check rather than extra Parliamentary checks.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
The Chief Justice Syed Sajjad Ali Shah known as an honourable man, an upright man, incorruptible as you were in your association with Nawaz Sharif. This was public property, why didn’t the party stop him?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t think the cases that he was trying at that time was contempt of court. Some members had made statements in the House and there was you know that in the Supreme Court.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
But there were cases of corruption which he was taking off?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
The main thing was that started the process when rumors started, and first thing happened because of the military court and terrorist Court the Chief Justice wanted the judiciary to be given the chance to try and they said no we want a quick proceeding of the anti-terrorist system so that’s where the first reaction came. But then the rumor started that President Leghari now wanted to use the judiciary in reviving the 8th Amendment power, Article 58 to be the part which is to go back to him; now for this purpose the next item came whether they should have four more judges and obviously those four more judges would have given a bank which would have been somewhat more different from what would be constituted by a smaller Supreme Court.
So, these misunderstandings started in September soon after August when the anti-terrorist law went, I think to that extent the Supreme Court the fear to strike down the 18th Amendment and the source of Article 582(b) was rather unusual. The Constitution says that any Constitutional Amendment cannot be justified by the Supreme Court but to pass such a major judgment in 10 minutes without hearing it was also a bit unusual. So, there was some credence to the rumors that there was some plan to do it, Farooq Leghari could not use that power.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You are a democrat, was the storming of the Supreme Court justified?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Totally unjustified, I have never condoned it. I of course wasn’t aware of it including many members of our party. I don’t know, it must have been decided by a small group, I don’t know who did it, the basic rumor was that today the Supreme Court will decide the Judgment and pass the contempt of court decisions.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You say many members of the party were not aware about this, whereas Saifur Rahman was captured on CCTV, he was on tape who surrounded by party workers?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I think that’s why many of them went to jail afterwards those who had appeared but the party as a whole condemned it and in our own party meetings this was one of the things we condemned.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Always in most civilized always you know even though I’m going to go back a little bit and talk about Shehbaz Sharif, he was a doer, he was the person who was the figure people said that he had organized the storming?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t think nobody knows who actually masterminded and engineered or ordered what should be done but obviously the orders were probably that something should be done for the court not to be able to pass the judgment that day, because there was a move of course happened within the court there were 10 other judges who passed a vote the government could not have removed him.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You said the government could not remove him but the government was very much a party to what was going. There’s Mr Mohammad Rafique Tarar who became subsequently President was a man was supposed to take these cases of money to Quetta to impress the judges?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well, I think there is a lot and of nobody knows what the truth is but the fact is that at that time the Supreme Court also got a little involved in political matters only if the government had permitted them to get involved in politics. There was as you can see, there was differences between the President. You see the question is that in all these things there are of course articles written and books written, different versions since that did not come directly from BBC. My knowledge was sort of based on newspaper reports and I was not privy to many of these things but generally I think that there was problem on both sides, it was not just one time.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
And yet your party was ruled by proxy by an 80-year-old man who had never ever stood for election and he was having sort of a complete Draconian vote and everybody knew it well?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t think that he, at least in my own portfolio his interference never appeared in the sense that either to do this or do that. I mean in certain matters he thought he was guiding his sons and telling them off and basically one can’t say that he was running the country or ruling the country. He did advise him on certain matters, particularly local Lahore matters, administrative matters, and things like that.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
If a man has got veto power or who is going to be appointed as Chief of Army Staff, who’s going to be appointed President or who’s going to be appointed this but then he’s running the country, he doesn’t have to do anything, he’s running the country.
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well, there are certain matters in the world that did influence his son but the fact that there are some examples of things which may not be acceptable widely but by and large his influence I would not say totally unhealthy I mean there must be certain things every father advises their son to do better rather than do worse. So generally, law and order complaints would come to him about people, you see that this is not happening or injustice to widows or something so all his influence cannot be considered, he was basically a person who ran a good Ittefaq hospital, he was a person who was an honest businessman so I don’t think that the fact that the sons were obedient sons of the father.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
The supreme authority of Islamic Republic of Pakistan where all contracts, all rules and regulations, all Ordinances, orders are issued in his name; somebody comes and says just out of the head that Mr Tarar is going to be the President of Pakistan. You are the Secretary General of the party don’t you think that was a surprise?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
It was surprising of course to most people but the fact is that Mr Nawaz Sharif himself did not want this, but it coincided with his father’s wishes and they may have discussed it to whom among those he wanted a President who could not abolish the presidency with because the president had dismissed him twice and he didn’t want to be dismissed again so he wanted a president who was just a figurehead president. So, in that scenario they looked at 4 or 5 people who were not very effective and did not have a high profile and obviously they would have agreed on it so I don’t think that his father ordered him to appoint him but it was a choice which must have emerged from the family because Nawaz Sharif himself did not want a very effective person to that extent. I won’t blame him for everything that went wrong and Nawaz Sharif himself made his decisions very effective.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
My point is that, accepted that one should look up to the advice of an elder, accepted that one should listen to the advice of an elder, but Mr Tarar was a non-entity working on political basis to the Muslim League before he became president, I find this surprising. Nobody objected in the party, nobody objected in the Cabinet, nobody in the Inner Circle objected.
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
You see, of course it didn’t come to the Cabinet, it didn’t come to the party but it came to the cabinet the night before at about 10 pm and most people were surprised because they did not expect this, they had not heard his name before because there were eight or ten other candidates whose names had been mentioned. Otherwise, he was a decent person, a lawyer, a judge and member of the Senate so if you are looking for somebody who is sort of a distinguished looking person but not a very high profile President he was as good as anyone.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
This person went to India and had meetings with journalists, editors, academic intellectuals, politicians, students, everybody and he built up a consensus and this was just a visit to India and he’s you know like a dictator so now here is a man about to become President. There was no consensus about the things these were shoved down the throat of the country.
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well obviously this is how he made, I think also on many occasions did have fairly large meeting of different parties and our parliamentary party met almost every twice a month and there are all the other parties who were our colleagues were invited on the 13th Amendment and 14th Amendment, on the Sharia Bill and on many issues, where he felt that a consultation was required. This was a decision which he did not think about the consultation would be because there were of course commercial issues there were all kinds of issues, but it was not one of the decision of his which was very much liked or accepted in the past he said true but generally I think he also did result to consultation on political issues or about the consensus.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
You decided to leave the financial portfolio and took on the role of Foreign Minister during this tenure one of the worst crisis came about, the Kargil factor. How much did you know about the Kargil factor?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
You see it’s difficult to know because these are things which the Prime Minister would have consulted with the Army Chief or the team which is very close and we have had two different versions. There’s one version that he was kept in the picture as things went along and he said that he was not fully aware, so in other words what he was told probably he did not fully understand or grasp the implications of it. So, between March and May there were some briefings in which certain things were mentioned so apart from the actual people involved nobody will know okay.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
During this time there was a bus diplomacy going when Mr. Vajpayee came, and he came during this time right. I mean there is a Prime Minister of the country who knows about it and he would have to have taken a stand unless the Prime Minister himself gave the go ahead?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
I don’t know if the Prime Minister himself, my own feeling is that it was a locally planned operation like in the past. The operations must have been planned as a local operation but the fact that the Indian government was dismissed on a Vote of No Confidence on the 17th of April and they got into an election phase. India overreacted to the Kargil incident and sent in three to four thousand soldiers and brought in six/seven Divisions and it became a much more international incident otherwise if the elections had not happened probably, it would have gone over as a local incident which by September/October when the snows melted would have been vacated anyway. So, I think it got out of hand to a succession of unanticipated events and therefore those who planned they did not think they were doing something very big which required all kinds of things.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
What about the presentation, can you I mean as a sort of a capping of this whole hour, can you give us the benefit of your views, that’s because of the present crisis in terms of relations with India?
Sartaj Aziz (SA)
Well, obviously we are in a very very difficult situation and there is a global crisis also, Afghanistan and today we have a problem for the first time in many years our Western borders also become unstable and uncertain, and the eastern border is also heated up so we are in a double situation and I feel that today the threat that we face is much more serious than even in 1971. Because India over the last so many years was achieving this objective of isolating Pakistan first on the nuclear issue then on the democracy issue and suddenly 11 September changed all that and they were unnerved by this that how Pakistan moved. So there are multiple objectives first, they want to thwart our economic recovery because they don’t want us to benefit from the removal of economic sanctions and the other sort of relief that we have received on the debt issue and secondly they want us to pull us out of the Western Alliance and put us in the docks that you are supporting terrorism and how are you fighting terrorism and thirdly they want to divert the whole International campaign against terrorism towards the street to Pakistan.
Now in this situation when the entire world-focus has shifted from non-proliferation to terrorism benefits us in some respects because we were in the dark on the nuclear issue but now India wants to take full advantage out of it so it puts us in a very difficult situation right now and I think President Musharraf has acted boldly and correctly to say that it is not just Indian pressure on Pakistan or Kashmir but our own national priority to deal with extremism, to deal with the sectarian issue and have a society that is more tolerant but more balanced and this will in due course have some implications for our global relationship also. I hope now the ball is in the’ Indian court because in this respect the world has to force India to withdraw its troops and not hold the gun to our head otherwise Pakistan can act. But ultimately if you are avoiding going to war but if you are ready to face war then the war does not come, so we as a nation have to be ready and the difficulties that we are facing are similar to what we faced in the creation of Pakistan. But when the nation has resolution and is determined to safeguard its Integrity, its ideological frontiers and sovereignty then the enemy cannot succeed. It’s a moment of truth unfortunately there’s not that much unity here also and have lack a political will, we have a political vacuum also so things are a bit more difficult but let’s hope that we will weather the storm this time and go back to the democratic path within the time frame of October next year and move to transition towards the democracy.
Ikram Sehgal (IS)
Thank you very much, Sir.
