Reason to be proud

FEB 18, 2008 will be remembered as a great day in the history of Pakistan. It gave critics reason to shut their old notebooks, and reconsider their accounts of Pakistani political culture and its potentialities.

The event of the day, a general election, proceeded in a manner that falsified sceptics on all counts. It gave every citizen reason to be proud of being a Pakistani.

About noon time on the election day I visited a polling station in a neighbouring small town, called Pangali, of about 12,000 people. The proceedings were taking place in a girl’s higher secondary school building. The place was crowded. Out in the compound representatives of political parties had set up desks where they verified their party voter’s identity and gave him a slip bearing the names and pictures of their party candidates. I saw no signs of any hostile confrontation between rival groups. I was told that folks in Pangali knew one another and they remained good neighbours regardless of their party affiliations.

I saw six policemen in the lobby of the main building. They said all was going well and they anticipated no trouble. I then went into one of the rooms where the balloting was taking place. A couple of polling officers and an assistant presiding officer managed the operation here. They knew of me and welcomed me as an observer. They verified each voter’s name in the official list, inspected his ID card, and gave him a ballot paper, one each for the National and Provincial Assembly candidates, which he took to a corner table, marked and inserted into the designated box. All of this went on without incident. Officials here expected a voter turnout of more than 60 per cent by the end of the day.

There were a few disturbances here and there but, contrary to widespread predictions of violence, peace and order reigned at most of the polling stations across the country. The people showed that they could go their separate ways in politics without hitting one another, and that it was probably certain vested interests who engineered incidents of political violence. They indicated also that they were receptive, as much as others, to democratic ways of settling issues.

Virtually all observers in this country and abroad had feared that the elections were going to be massively rigged to the advantage of PML-Q and its allies. This party has been routed even in Punjab, which was supposedly its bastion. Its tallest men have fallen and suffered humiliation in their own hometowns: Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Gujrat, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad in Rawalpindi, and Humayun Akhtar in Lahore.

It is evident that rigging did not work. Public officials — police, revenue officers, nazims and others — either did not intervene or, if they did, the voters ignored their pleas. They refused to be intimidated or seduced. They responded to the calls of their conscience, convictions, or preferences. They demonstrated that they would forego considerations of personal gain to do the right thing.

Most of the MMA members boycotted the election, but its largest component, JUI-F, one of the major parties in the previous National Assembly, did contest. It was nearly wiped out in this election and its head, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, lost the election in his home district (Dera Ismail Khan). His party ended up with no more than five seats in the new National Assembly.

The Islamic parties, taken together, never had more than a few seats in parliament. They got many more in 2002 but that happened because General Musharraf’s administration manipulated the election to help them out and to disadvantage the mainstream parties (PPP and PML-N). They have now returned to their normal status. This turn of events has to mean that the people of Pakistan have once again chosen to deny the professional spokesmen of Islam an influential role in their politics. It means also that a substantial majority of them has rejected fundamentalists, extremists, militants, and those who sponsor blasts and suicide bombings. This does not mean that extremist violence will disappear tomorrow, but the election results have separated militants from the moderates.

The JUI was the ruling party in NWFP for five years following the 2002 elections. It has been thrown out by the Awami National Party which is a secular left of centre party. This event could be interpreted to mean that Pashtuns and others in NWFP have voted for moderation, liberalism, and modernisation.

The election results make it clear that the people of Pakistan have turned away from the past. In defeating all those individuals who were close to General Pervez Musharraf they have rejected dictatorship, arbitrariness, rule of whim and wish. They have voted for government by their chosen representatives whom they may be able to hold accountable for their performance to some degree.

Representatives of the people will form governments at the centre and in the provinces within a week or so. This should not lead us to expect that these governments will not run into problems in finding their feet and getting their work done. For one thing, they will be coalition governments in most cases. Coalitions are not as energetic as one-party governments can be. Coalition partners may see eye to eye on some issues but not on others, which means that the latter will not be taken up. They may also be unstable if the partners are wavering in their commitment to the alliance, and if some of them threaten to walk away if their demands from time to time are not met.

It is naïve to expect that these elected governments will, ipso facto, be able to resolve all of the conflicts and surmount all of the problems that confront the country in a day. They cannot, for instance, overcome the shortages of water, electricity, gas, and wheat flour or bring down the prices of other necessities of life. There are situations over which they have no control. They cannot manipulate international oil production and prices, which have a bearing on the production and cost of energy in Pakistan.

They may be able to mitigate the severity of some of these problems by instituting helpful conservation policies and eliminating waste. They may reject globalisation in areas where it is likely to make life difficult for their own producers and consumers. They cannot, and no government elsewhere can, create a problem-free world. Life, in the nature of things, is a never-ending struggle to remove troubles that keep coming one’s way.

We should be grateful to God if the men and women in charge of these new governments are reasonably honest and competent, dedicated to duty and hard-working, and willing to place the public interest above the personal and the private If they turn out to have these qualifications, they will deserve applause and our support.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Fallacy of national consensus

NOT aspiring to be prime minister, though he could be one in a few months if not immediately, Asif Zardari is turning into a national conciliator and political thinker.

He wants a government of national consensus and a new political contract at the same time. Apparently he sees no conflict or contradiction between the two.

In pursuit of his conciliatory effort Mr Zardari is prepared to make Nawaz Sharif the prime minister if that brings about consensus. He would also let Pervez Musharraf remain president for the next five years if that avoids the feared confrontation. In pursuit of his political thought he is seeking greater autonomy for Sindh (hence for all the provinces) by rewriting the Constitution for that is what his demand for a ‘new political contract’ seems to imply.

Whether Mr Zardari is prompted by patriotic sentiment or narrow party or personal interest the obtaining political realities and the results of the polls held on Feb 18 do not favour either the formation of an all-party government or a substantial revision of the Constitution.

A government could not be possibly called a product of national consensus if it does not include the Q League which despite its debacle at the polls remains a force to reckon with. In fact it is the only party besides the PPP which would have representatives from all the four provinces in the next National Assembly. Though Muslim League-N will have more members in the National Assembly — 65 against Q League’s 42 — it has won no seat either in Sindh or in Balochistan. The number of votes polled by the Q League across the country is also eight percentage points higher than Nawaz Sharif’s party.

Thus, both for its country-wide representative character and larger, though scattered, vote bank the Q League must find a place in any government that lays claim to being national. However so open and acute is the animosity between the ‘Chaudhries’ of Gujrat and the ‘Mians’ of Lahore that it is difficult to visualise a government functioning smoothly in which their parties are the partners. A government to be national must also include the regional and nationalist parties — the foremost among them being the ANP and MQM — and some independent members too for their individual influence or tribal importance.

The concept of national government is peculiar to parliamentary democracies which have only one or two parties besides the two which alternately occupy the treasury benches as the Conservatives and Labour do in Britain and that too in times of war or an emergency of similar proportions.

With its score of parties which keep splitting, reuniting or realigning, the political culture of Pakistan does not admit of a national government nor has the country ever had one. Even if one were now to come into being through the exertions of Asif Zardari it would be lacking in unified direction and end up in burdening the exchequer with a horde of ministers, advisers, special assistants and what have you. Just imagine even the coalition of three parties at the centre under Musharraf had 80 of them and in Sindh the departments of the government were divided between the governor, the chief minister and Pir Pagara.

The understanding that the PPP, PML-N and ANP reached on Thursday may be touted as a step towards a government of national consensus but it may lead to confrontation. The driving force behind the understanding has been the future of the president and the reinstatement of the judges. Now these two issues are important but cannot form an enduring basis for a national coalition that hopes to govern the country for five years.

The credit nevertheless must be given to Mr Zardari for convincing Nawaz Sharif, who was demanding instant resignation of the president and reinstatement of judges, to leave both these issues to the parliament. It is to be hoped that now the lawyers too may come round to this viewpoint which has the support of one of their senior colleagues, S.M. Zafar. The only alternative to a decision in the parliament, Mr Zafar has argued, is a revolution which is certainly not in the making nor does anybody want it, least of all the leaders who are all poised to enjoy the government.

The president’s powers especially his power to dissolve the national assembly and the judicial crisis that he has created will not take long for the parliament to resolve especially when a two-thirds majority seems to be in place to amend the Constitution if it needs be. The common man’s problems that the new government would be required to tackle however need administrative and not constitutional solutions.

The official parties lost at the hustings because Musharraf’s laws and policies had destroyed or diminished the administrative structures and, to boot, their governments in the provinces were incompetent, arrogant, corrupt and wasteful. Only ethnic unity, harsh party discipline and large flow of funds from the centre for urban development saved the MQM the fate that its senior but ineffectual partner — PML-Q — met in Sindh.

At the root of all problems of the people lie lawlessness and unemployment. Both can be best handled by the administrators under the policy direction of a strong party government and the vigilance of an equally strong opposition. Coalitions are kept together through compromises and patronage and are best avoided where a party on its own is in a position to form a government as the PPP is now in Sindh and the PML-N in Punjab.

A government of national consensus in our situation is a flawed concept. It implies sharing the benefits of power rather than shouldering the responsibility of governance. Then there is an inherent risk of horse-trading in forging a consensus.

Once the parliament has resolved the crisis surrounding the legitimacy of the president and his actions against the judiciary which should not take long it should get down to right the wrong that Musharraf’s laws and his personal whims have done to the structure of the civil services and morale of the civil servants in all vocations at all levels. Musharraf himself became conscious of it and set up a commission for reforms in governance. In two years of its existence the commission has done pretty little — literally nothing — as its approach, like Musharraf’s, was political and biased.

In their long absence from politics and public life and the accompanying persecution or neglect, the politicians must have learnt their lesson; how wrong they were in subverting the public service and judging the public servants by their loyalty to them rather than to their profession — a mindset that has now reached its culmination. In many ways an independent administration is more important than an independent judiciary for a partial official can cause more harm and to a larger number of people than a partial judge ever could.

ANP rejoices with restraint

RIGHT until now the overriding three A’s for Allah, America and the Army were meant to be Pakistan’s preordained destiny. Finally, the (silent) fourth A – for ‘Awaam’ has spoken loud and clear – against the prevailing chaos and mayhem in Pakistan and Pukhtunkhwa (NWFP) in particular.

Words cannot express the current euphoric mood in the Pukhtunkhwa. The pre-election uncertainty and apathy has given way to an unrestrained jubilation – though nothing tangible has changed the wretched lives of ordinary folks – there exists a feeling of hope and yearning for tomorrow, after the nightmare of interminable bloodletting that had taken grip of the province during the MMA government.

On our way to the spacious Bacha Khan Markaz situated in the verdant suburbs of Peshawar, the ubiquitous red flags, banners, posters and slogans fluttered on a bright sunny day – PPP not lagging behind in this colourful outburst. Roadside crowds could not contain themselves offering us sweetmeats, gushing, ‘The Red tide is here!’ Was this reminiscent of the jubilant 1970s elections, after yet another protracted military regime as another dawn of democracy was on the anvil? Throughout the length and breath of Peshawar district people rejoiced, “We finally got rid of the scoundrels!” (Reference to the despised MMA government)

Asfandyar Wali Khan succinctly remarked: “The verdict of Pukhtunkhwa is that we prefer school uniforms rather than suicide jackets.” The resurgent leader, who led the energised ANP with progressive, educated, mostly middle class leadership and cadre, deserves full credit for this landslide victory after decades of hopelessness in the aftermath of the Cold War. On one side were the resurgent Islamists gloating over the victory of religion against the liberal, secular forces – on the other hand the junta consolidated its heavy hand of despotism, deftly facilitating the MMA’s victory in 2002 elections, while reinforcing terrorist elements into the tribal as well as the settled areas of the province.

Bushra Gohar, ANP’s CEC member and the firebrand NA candidate from Swabi claimed, “The peaceful elections in Swat and the overwhelming verdict against extremist forces all over – including Waziristan – sends a resounding message to all and sundry. Pashtuns are not terrorists but peace loving, progressive people and against violence. In Swabi and some districts women not only voted but celebrated with traditional music!” Now this is a real revolution in the making in the Taliban hinterlands!

Clearly ANP won despite the bombings and threats. Their election manifesto spells provincial autonomy, economic reform, renaming of the province, gender empowerment, as well as redefining the ‘war against terrorism’ as their political agenda. Afrasiab Khattak, the provincial president argued: “Terrorism in NWFP is only a manifestation of the militarised state of Pakistan. Being the main source of instability, if the anomaly is corrected at Islamabad HQ, normality will naturally return to the entire nation.”

ANP has made it abundantly clear that it will uphold their manifesto as a plank for governance. “At present the province is hobbled by a severe budget crunch as only six per cent of total expenses are covered by its resources, while the federal government pools in with occasional NFC award, the divisible pool and other sources to cover up the yearly shortfall,” says Haji Adeel, General Secretary, ANP.

How would the social sector development, ignored by successive governments, face up to the challenges of public expectations on important issues such as health, education, inflation and the prevailing poverty trap? After all it is the economy that really matters, besides, governance. According to Haji Adeel, “ANP expects that only foreign affairs, currency, defence and (partly) communications remain with the centre and the concurrent list be amended to emerging realities.

Pukhtunkhwa is a resource rich province that contributes Rs50bn in tobacco in federal tax alone. On the contrary, wheat and cotton are not taxed as they belong to the Punjab. Timber, gemstones (emeralds), minerals (uranium) high quality oil and gas are also taxed by the federal government and local exploitation of resources is not permitted. Fifty per cent of corn in Pakistan is cultivated here.”

“Despite the 1990 ANG formula and subsequent 1991 Water Apportionment Award, Punjab has illegally diverted over one MAF through various water channels out of the province for cultivation, while over three million acres in the southern parts of the province remain barren for lack of water. The hydel power net profits should yield Rs30bn yearly.

This amounts to over Rs7tn till June 30, 2007. Neither transfer of the much needed resources has occurred nor have we been permitted to develop the hydro electric potential of the province which can exceed over 45,000 MW, according to expert estimates, beyond our needs for another 20 years, besides, exporting to neighbouring countries,” complains Haji.

These rough estimates, if translated into financial accords and transactions can change the face of the impoverished, downtrodden and neglected province wreaked by the demons of hopelessness and extremism. The ‘new social contract’ between the federating units which PPP, PML-N and ANP have pledged to their electorates, needs to be drawn up in order to have any semblance of governance through public demand.

Violence is the last resort of desperation. But one can feel a tangible commitment by the ANP leadership not to let this golden opportunity slip by. Bushra Gohar says, “We cannot afford to fail again as this may be our last chance.” It is also imperative the western donors who want to fight a ‘war on terror’ on their own terms, but also impose strict WB/IMF prescriptions need to critically look at the consequences of unravelling of the Pakistani welfare state. They simply cannot have it both ways.

According to John Pilger, “The goal is what Bill Clinton called the ‘integration of countries into the global free-market community’, the terms of which, noted The New York Times, ‘require the United States to get involved in the plumbing and wiring of other nations’ internal affairs more deeply than ever before’.”

This plumbing and wiring has to stop now. Let Pakistan govern itself.

adilzareef@yahoo.com