What is the constitution of your country?
To this question the citizens of Nazi Germany had a simple and common answer.
The Will of the Fuhrer.
In fact in all autocratic regimes an honest answer to the above question will not be any different. The will of the Fuhrer has largely been the constitution of most of the countries of the world, most of the times. Meaning thereby that autocratic regimes have not required bonafide and certified dictators at the top to be deemed and declared as autocratic. There have been frequent occasions and cases when rulers, whose ascendance to power have been through democratic process and who have left no stone unturned in zestfully declaring themselves as products of democracy, have succumbed to the hidden Fuhrers beneath their democratic appearances, and embarked upon the paths of tailoring the constitutions of their countries according to their whims and will. Our own country has produced many a Fuhrer-both of dejure variety and the defacto one. Field Marshal Ayub Khan combined both. So did General Zia-ul-Haque. As does General Pervez Musharraf. Meaning thereby that they can be dubbed as Fuhrers both in name and deed. ZAB was a dejure democrac but a defacto Fuhrer. He alongwith the members of his parliament authored the constitution of 1973 under the constraints of which he was supposed to rule. But Fuhrers have never been good at accepting constraints. For them their will is the ultimate law. Thus it was that the constitution of 1973 started undergoing a series of amendments, till in three decades it ended up in the shape it is now – fully reflective of the will of the Fuhrer.
Mian Nawaz Sharif too wasn’t a Fuhrer of ordinary dimensions. But he was wrong in surmising that his ‘mandate’ was as good as a four-star uniform. After the sunset of October 12, 1999 he discovered that his Fuhrership had been built on borrowed numbers.
10-11-2013
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