IT SEEMS that General Musharraf has amended, or intends to amend, the Constitution to effect certain changes in the country’s electoral system. The amendment abolishes separate electorates and the seats reserved for minorities, replaces them with a joint electorate, increases the total number of seats in the National Assembly from 237 to 350, including 60 seats reserved for women and 25 for “technocrats.”

Several objections and questions are being voiced. First, some of the political parties, especially the Jamaat-i-Islami, assert that the general had no right to amend the Constitution. This objection should be addressed not to him but to the Supreme Court, which has not only legitimized military rulers, who had come to power via a coup d’etat, but gone out of its way to authorize them to amend the Constitution.

Muslim League spokesmen, and those of the Islamic parties, are concerned that the abolition of separate electorates will undermine the ideology of Pakistan. A few considerations need to be brought to their attention. First, the system of separate electorates was never much more than a device to protect the Muslim minority’s interests in pre-independence India. On more than one occasion, the Quaid-i-Azam had been willing to give it up if Congress leaders would offer the Muslims other reliable safeguards.

It may be said that separate electorates were a necessary corollary of the “two-nation theory” that formed the basis of the case for Pakistan. On the other hand, one may argue that the theory did not declare a universal truth but addressed a specific situation in the Indian subcontinent. The Quaid-i-Azam was not a pan-Islamist in terms of the global Muslim community’s political organization. Note also that the great majority of the Muslim ulema regarded the theory as a contradiction in terms, for in their view nationhood and nationalism, of any and all kinds, were repugnant to Islam.

The two-nation theory is better understood as a strategic asset used to mobilize the Indian Muslims and to negotiate issues with the British and Hindu leaders. After Pakistan had been attained, the theory, its work done, was ready to be retired. It is not surprising that in his address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, the Quaid-i-Azam expressed the hope, even if somewhat indirectly, that the people of Pakistan would all become one nation in spite of their religious diversities. It has been customary to say that Pakistan is an ideological state, and that its ideology is Islam.

Such indeed is the case on paper. But the acquisition of an Islamic character for the state is no more than an aspiration on the part of some Pakistanis. Actually, the corruption and profligacy of the state’s functionaries are unbounded and so well known that its claim to being Islamic can be dismissed as sheer hypocrisy.

It may then be fair to conclude that the abolition of separate electorates has done nothing to undermine the ideology of Pakistan because, functionally speaking, it has had no ideology. It should be noted that the absence of a professed ideology does not make a state amoral. The state in Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and a host of other countries incorporated native religious values and principles into its ethic and ethos. With reference to the generally valued public virtues, none of these non-ideological states is any less moral than any Muslim state that calls itself Islamic.

History tells us also that ideological states — be they Islamic, Hindu, communist, or fascist — cannot function as democracies. Their rulers do not allow non-conformist equal rights, and they will imprison or kill great numbers of actual or suspected opponents as Stalin and Mao did and, more recently, as the clergy in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan did.

The next National Assembly will consist of 350 members. Assuming a population of 150 million (which we will soon reach), this means that on average each member will represent a little more than 400,000 persons. Is that too large a number? That depends on what we consider the function of a representative to be.

According to one American version, commended by Thomas Jefferson, a representative is no more than a spokesman of his constituents, obligated to express their wishes, views, and preferences in the legislature. He is their agent, their deputy. He is also to run “errands” for them, that is, intercede with government agencies on their behalf when they do not get what is lawfully their due. In this context, there is surely a limit to the number of persons a representative can effectively serve.

Then there is another view, typically associated with Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the grandfather of modern conservatives, albeit of the classical variety. Campaigning for a seat in the House of Commons, he once told the voters in his constituency (Bristol) that, if elected, he would not lobby for any individual or group, that while elected from Bristol, he would act as a representative of the nation as a whole, that he would not follow their instructions while speaking and voting in the House, and that he owed them his best judgment, not subservience to their opinions or passions of the day. In this view of the matter, the size of a constituency does not make much of a difference to a representative’s effectiveness.

The Burkean view is still alive. Now and then a politician will sacrifice his career, following the dictate of his own reason and conscience and ignoring the contrary views pressed upon him by his constituents. But it seems that in the more general practice the two views of representation have mingled into something of a middle course.

There is nothing wrong with a legislator expressing his constituents’ views on an issue of public policy or with his efforts to bring more schools, roads, clinics, and other amenities of life to his area. Legislative corruption in Pakistan has flourished mainly as a result of the legislators’ intercession with government agencies, including the police, for obtaining favours for their constituents, often outside the law, in return for a fee (which in most cases their “munshis” collect).

If the decentralization plans, currently in the public discourse, do get implemented, and substantial authority and power do actually travel from the national to the provincial and, from there, to the district governments, corruption will follow the same track. The National Assembly, and to a lesser extent the provincial assemblies, can then become deliberative bodies more than gatherings of men whose main function is to make profit for themselves and for their friends and neighbours. If that happens, the number of constituents each member represents will become less significant.

For a variety of reasons, many more men than women sit in legislatures in democratic polities. Seats are not reserved for women in any of them. Women who enter politics and run for elective office do so regardless of the opponent’s gender. Seats were reserved for them in Pakistan for a specific period of time under the 1973 Constitution. A few women also entered the assembly by contesting the election against men from “general” seats. Pakistani women are more active in politics than before, but this is probably a part of a larger trend. We cannot say that it has in any way resulted from the earlier reservation of seats for them in the assemblies.

What are then the considerations behind reserving as many as sixty seats for them in the next National Assembly? Has someone made this decision in a moment of absentmindedness while pursuing a larger agenda for “modernizing” our society and polity? If so, I doubt that it will accomplish the desired result. Law and public policy have never stopped women from entering politics. It is tradition, and the nature of the “beast” itself, that have inhibited them. Politics in our time is generally perceived as “dirty,” and politicians as devious and unreliable. Contesting elections is a hazardous activity that many “nice” and peace-loving men and women, especially the latter, would want to avoid. Politics is for the hardheaded and tough kind, be they men or women.

If the authors of this move have the impression that women make a unique contribution to legislative consideration of public policy issues that men cannot make, because they are men, let them think again. I should like to make it clear that I am wholly supportive of our women’s quest for equality with men in all walks of life that they may wish to enter, but at this point I am not at all sure that reserving seats for them in the assemblies will do anything to increase their participation in politics.

It is not necessary — nor is it particularly wrong — to reserve seats for “technocrats” — eminent scientists, economists, financial experts, diplomats, educationists, specialists in internal and external security affairs — in the assembly. But if they are to have the time and the inclination to participate in its work effectively, they ought to be persons who have retired from active service in their respective fields of expertise.

At a first glance, the requirement that candidates for election to the National Assembly should be college graduates appears to be weird, if not frivolous. Candidates should undoubtedly be able to speak, read and write at least one of the languages commonly used in the National Assembly, which are Urdu and English. It would be good if they were also intelligent, and even better if they were wise, patriotic, and dedicated to the public interest. But these qualities and dispositions have no necessary connection with the possession of a college degree.

One may want to recall that many of our more influential politicians, past and present (including the Quaid-i-Azam), had never gone to college. It is possible that, more than elevating the standard of deliberation and debate, the requirement is intended to exclude certain types of persons — for instance, the professional ulema, and the older generation of landed aristocrats and tribal chiefs — from the assembly.

WILL General Musharraf steal the October election is a question which rankles in many minds despite his promise to the people, “I will never let you down”.

The doubt is as stubborn as the promise is solemn, and it is not without a basis. The widespread cynicism should be viewed against the background of Musharraf’s own declaration that he needs to remain president for five more years and, secondly, no future government would ever be able to reverse the constitutional and structural changes (he calls them reforms) he introduces. It should also be viewed against the credible rumours that the adversaries of the regime, or the politicians he considers undesirable, wouldn’t be allowed to contest the elections.

The president’s two conditions imply that the sovereignty of the parliament that comes into being as a result of the elections would be curtailed to the extent that it wouldn’t be permitted to vote him out of office, nor would it alter or reverse the changes in the state structure he has already made and might choose to make during the run-up to the elections.

Further changes, the speculation goes, will be many and far-reaching. How the parliament could be prevented from reversing his laws and actions if it is able to muster the requisite majority, the president doesn’t explain.

Interestingly enough, there is no contradiction between the president’s promise not to betray the trust of the people and the misgivings of those opposed to his rule and reforms. Both the president and his detractors can be, and perhaps are, sincere in their pledge and reservations.

Concerned, perhaps, as much about his own glory as for national stability, Musharraf feels he needs to be around for some more years to break the gridlock of corrupt and reactionary politics and the horror and hysteria it has created since the separation of East Pakistan. This process, he seems convinced, would be interrupted if the country were to be handed back to the politicians unbridled.

Musharraf’s thinking may be contrary to democratic norms but his assessment of the national malaise is correct. His apprehension that the politicians left to themselves would not be able to remedy it is also correct. One has to see the former ministers and legislators flying in and out, parading on the streets or locked behind bars, bargaining with the military using intimidation or blandishment to agree with the president that their future conduct would be no better than it has been over the past quarter of a century.

It may thus be good for the people and prudent for the political parties to accept a constitutional dispensation in which Musharraf is the head of state for the first term of the parliament. Obviously, he wouldn’t be a president in the mould of Fazal Elahi or Rafiq Tarar but he should not be allowed to become another Zia-ul-Haq either. A balance has to be struck somewhere. Taking it to be an inescapable, and indeed desirable, constitutional adjustment, the government should encourage a public debate on the subject instead of being led only by constitutional experts and sycophants.

The new arrangement should not however disturb the cardinal feature of the parliamentary form of government in which the executive authority of the state vests in the cabinet and the prime minister with greater emphasis on the former, the prime minister being primus inter paras.

Only the possibility of their arbitrary, or vindictive, actions should be checked by the president and the committees of the parliament — a role they did not perform in the Benazir-Nawaz Sharif decade.

To become the president, General Musharraf should choose the straight though crude, path of a proclamation rather than staging the farce of a referendum as Zia-ul-Haq did or using the local councillors as electors as Ayub Khan did. A straighter deal this time round would help establish Musharraf’s new-found but yet shaky, credibility.

Barring the reintroduction of joint electorate, which has been predictably welcomed by all but the hard-line clergy, the other electoral changes announced by Musharraf’s precocious brain-child NRB are so unwise or unnecessary that they have set the critics looking for the concealed motives behind them.

The need for increasing the number of legislators both at the centre and in the provinces is hard to understand when the legislation is almost always through ordinances, question-hours are a dull routine, debates are desultory, the ministers attending the assembly sessions rarely and the prime minister hardly ever.

The parliamentarians will now be needed less than before because the local problems and development will be all taken care of by the district/city governments and the three tiers below. Increasing their numbers would cause only more expense (according to a Karachi evening daily for Sindh assembly alone the extra recurring expenditure would be Rs 16.268 million a year) and interference in the work of the councils and the bureaucracy.

No evidence is available to show that the university graduates make better legislators, more committed to public service or less corrupt than those who are not.

The envisaged condition restricts the electoral contest to less than five per cent of the adult population. The condition also operates against the rural area where most people and problems reside. Not to be ignored are the problems arising out forgery and equivalence with the certificates issued by madressahs and other local and foreign diplomas. Perhaps, a London matriculate would not qualify though everybody would agree it is a better qualification than a local Bachelor’s degree. In selecting the person who can best represent them the judgment of the people should be trusted more than that of any official agency.

The people’s judgment, and consequently the calibre of the parliamentarians, can improve only through mass literacy and free access to information. That needs planning and resources. What is being done is just a gimmick which could prove costly for the candidates who may not be graduates but are closer to the people.

The reserved seats for technocrats in the Senate were used in the past to bring in cronies rather than really able men. Then, no two people agree on the definition of a technocrat. General Saeed Qadir who, besides being an army commander, had managed a large transport fleet and was a quick and confident decision-maker had hard time proving before a court of law that he was a technocrat. If a reform is needed in the Senate it is to make the elections to it direct.

What is true of the senators is also true of women. Increasing their seats without direct elections would serve the ends of the parties nominating them but not the women’s cause. The issues like the number of seats and educational qualification, even if justified, are neither pressing nor a demand of the people. General Musharraf should tell his advisers to throw up proposals for public debate on important subjects like provincial autonomy, independence of the judiciary and civil services, ridding the electoral process and national life itself of corruption and prejudices. All that will require careful plodding work.

The subjects in the concurrent list of the Constitution and some more must be transferred to the provinces if the “devolution” is to make an impact. AT present, caught in a cycle of debt and dissipation, the provincial and district governments alike look up to the centre for both money and direction even for doing whatever little is left for them to do.

As at present, where a person failing the sub-judge’s examination finds an entry in the subordinate cadres through political wirepulling and ends up as a judge of the supreme court (as Rafiq Tarar did), or where the appointment of a retired Chief Justice of Pakistan as Chief Election Commissioner gives rise to suspicions of a plan to rig the election or doctor its result (as on the appointment of Mr Irshad Hasan Khan) — such a judiciary cannot be called either competent or independent. This statement may appear harsh but it is true nevertheless.

General Musharraf’s recent actions have given rise to large expectations. If he fails to build institutions to meet these expectations, nostalgia for the politics of the past might return before October. Benazir Bhutto made a triumphant return when Zia-ul-Haq promised Islam (peace) but bequeathed violence.

ATAL BEHARI VAJPAYEE becomes prime minister about twice or thrice a year; anything more is for those with larger appetites. One reason why his leadership has not staled despite three years in office is because he does not spread himself wide, and thin. He is not an interventionist in his own government, a temptation that prime ministers and presidents are very prone to. He does not come in the way of his ministers, and start doing their job for them, although, God knows, there are times when India would be happier if he did.

Being aloof makes sense, for him. You cannot be a minister and not become unpopular in India. That is impossible. The ruling principle of the motherland is that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong in spades; and if anything goes right, no one will notice. That is the cost-benefit equation of power.

If you don’t like the mathematics you can choose another profession. Hence, the less the prime minister is associated with his own government, the less vulnerable he is, personally.

If the economy is in a mess, go blame the finance minister. If bombs blast holes all over the country, check with the home minister. When Atal Behari Vajpayee, therefore, allows a free hand to his ministers, we should not confuse it with goodwill or generosity. Just put that in the category of good politics.

However, the obverse is that if you do not understand when those two or three moments of crisis, or national need, come every year; or appreciate what needs to be done when you are standing alone on high ground, then you are irretrievably sunk. Such space opened up after the terrorist attack on our parliament on December 13, and nearly inflicted more damage than the worst nightmare could have envisaged.

The response had to be multi-tiered. At one level was the immediate need for security forces to eliminate the terrorists. This was done with commendable speed after the embarrassing initial failure when the security ring was punched open. The political response and the overall management of the incident is a more complex business. The first duty of the government was to prevent any ugly internal fallout; there is no shortage of elements, some in the ruling phalanx, eager to fan communal fires out of every spark that comes their way.

All political parties, very consciously and very carefully, refused to identify terrorism with Indian Muslims. There were times, during the debate in parliament, when one could see rhetoric beginning to wander in dangerous directions but at least one important politician pulled himself back from the brink.

The highlight of the national response to terrorism was surely the debate in the Lok Sabha. The context might seem slightly inappropriate, but what a pleasure it is to see a mature democracy in full flow.

Parliament was attacked; it was obvious in 48 hours that the objective was to hold as many of its members hostage, spread death and havoc if necessary, and defeat the government on the bargaining table just as it had been defeated during the hijack of the Indian Airlines plane.

India’s parliament responded with the strength of confidence and the grace of a democracy. Clearly the tone of the debate had to be set by the opposition: what can a ruling party MP do except be obedient to the powers that be or, if his IQ is on the lower side, find a surrogate to hit?

The leaders of the opposition shaped national policy with their views. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has no reason to be kind to the BJP with the elections in Uttar Pradesh in view, defined the difference between the national interest and the national government, identified himself with the first and left no doubt that the second needed a wake-up call.

The real impact, however, came from former prime minister Chandra Shekhar. He spoke at a moment when war hype was dominant, and when any opinion poll would have found a majority of Indians urging a war that they wanted to start without knowing how it would end. If ever a speech can claim to have helped alter a mood, then that must be one.

That speech did not change the mood, but it interfered with a rising spiral. Prime Minister Vajpayee acknowledged this contribution when he intervened during the debate, noting that Chandra Shekhar’s questions were worthy of Arjuna on war during Mahabharat. Mrs Sonia Gandhi was the one disappointment of an outstanding debate. She should not really speak in parliament until she has learnt the value of conviction over compromise as well as the art of discourse. She is not in the league around her.

You could be forgiven for believing that the prime minister, sitting in the house, was resting while the others had their say. His eyes were half-closed. The good news is that his mind was open. He could have turned the wind in whichever direction he wanted. Mercifully he chose to be a prime minister of India rather than a leader of a political party.

By the time he had finished, he had become quite the master of ceremonies. He achieved many things simultaneously, at least one of them good for his own political health. One presumes he realizes that the national anger against terrorism, and against Pakistan, will not translate into a vote for his party in the UP elections. If the war in Kargil could not change the UP mind in the last general elections, when Mr Vajpayee was asking for a vote for himself, then December 13 is unlikely to bring Mr Rajnath Singh back to power. The goodwill Mr Vajpayee is accumulating now will serve him in good stead when the backlash of a Lucknow defeat begins creeping towards Delhi.

The big question between now and those elections is relations with Pakistan. Delhi has done everything short of opening hostilities to indicate its rage, and its conviction that December 13 was yet another battle in an undeclared war by Pakistan against India. There are enough Indians who believe that the only meaningful response to a undeclared war is to declare one.

There used to be a time when a clash between India and Pakistan had all the cozens of neighbourhood acrimony. The two countries are now simply too powerful for the world to sit back and let them get on with it. Between them they could bring the most sensitive and unstable bit of unreal estate tumbling down.

However Indians must decide their own course of action, on the basis of the Indian interest. Every war has to have an objective. Our objective is the elimination of terrorist camps and arsenals located in Pakistan. By definition such camps are unconventional, disguised and mobile. Can they be hit in a conventional war? Terrorists do not operate from cantonments. Will it help to defeat the Pakistan army, assuming that the Pakistan army can be defeated in a war that it will fight to protect its country’s borders? Can you defeat only those elements in the Pakistan armed forces who are encouraging this jihad against India? Is the objective of such a war to seize territory? It cannot be, for what do you do with that territory? Are there are any guarantees that a conventional war will not escalate under the pressure of circumstances?

You cannot launch something as serious as war without thinking through the questions, answers and options. Colin Powell made a wise comment to Ariel Sharon when he reminded the Israeli prime minister that there was a tomorrow, and then a day after. Today’s anger must always be matched against tomorrow’s possibilities.

India has the sympathy of the world today; the challenge is to convert that sympathy into active and meaningful support. I do not think the terrorists realize how much they have hurt their own cause, if their cause is Kashmir, by this sustained, suicidal adventurism. However, there could be a method in this madness. Terrorists, living on the fringe of reality, may want to provoke a larger conflagration.

General Pervez Musharraf is not a terrorist, but he is doing what he can to provoke Delhi. To describe India’s reaction as arrogant is stupid; there is no other word for it. President Musharraf is generous with his tongue because generals, not being familiar with the demands of democracy, are not used to accountability. They think they can get away with anything as long as it sounds faintly patriotic. Perhaps the general has been spoilt into believing that his interaction with the media is consistently brilliant. Sound bites can bite back, general.

If his genuine assessment of Indian feeling after December 13 is that Delhi is being “arrogant” then the general has no appreciation of what is happening in a democracy next to his dictatorship. Such ignorance can do more damage than intelligent hostility.

Mr Vajpayee will have to steer through difficult minefields in the coming days, and try to keep his balance when all around him are losing theirs. However, this might require becoming prime minister more than twice or thrice a year.