NOW that the repeatedly promised general elections are just a few months away, it might be useful to collect our thoughts about the mechanics of conducting them — particularly the role that political parties and their workers play in managing electoral campaigns and contests.

Political parties are essential, indeed indispensable, for making democracy work. Pakistan inherited the Muslim League, originally established in undivided India in 1906, and numerous other parties appeared on the scene soon after independence. But this did not happen without an element of doubt about their efficacy. Many of the ulema, sceptical of “western” democracy, disparaged political parties on the ground that their operation would divide the community. Their reservations were not, however, heeded and soon they themselves launched parties and contested elections.

The military in Pakistan is also disapproving of political parties. It has banned them, or excluded them from the electoral process, during periods of its dictatorship. But eventually it had to restore them. Ayub Khan not only permitted them to reappear but agreed to be the head of one of them. Ziaul Haq barred them from participating in the 1985 elections. But soon Mr Junejo, his nominee as prime minister, discovered that the National Assembly could not function effectively in the absence of parties. The Muslim League was then revived both within and outside the legislature and so were other parties. They were barred, once again, from the local elections held in 2001, but they are active in the elected councils, even if informally.

It would seem to follow that parties have, even if haltingly, become a part of our political culture. But how does the public perceive them and what does it expect them to do? They should, in the first instance, identify the issues and problems facing society, establish priorities, formulate policies, and propose ways of implementing them. They do some of this in preparing their “manifestos” but, as we know from experience, they abandon these soon after they have been printed. The major parties in Pakistan are pragmatic, not ideological, and if returned to power, they will deal with issues as these arise, using such means as become available. They are concerned mainly with attaining power, and they will worry about other things if and when they have attained it.

According to one view of politics, a man of honour seeks power to serve the public good. In another view, leaving aside the matter of honour, he wants it because its possession gives him a good feeling and brings him many other gratifications. In actual practice, and in most cases, a mix of these two types of consideration motivates politicians.

During British rule and, one might say, until the end of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government, the expectations of candidates for legislative office were rather modest. Elections modernized tradition; they were a new and approved way of defeating, and humiliating, rivals and enhancing one’s own prestige in one’s area.

An MNA or an MPA might want to be seen as having access to higher civil servants, obtain licences for owning a gun or two, and possibly enable a son or a relative to find a job. But the thought that he might make a significant amount of money, as a result of being a legislator, or intimidate a superintendent of police or a deputy commissioner did not normally enter his mind. Legislative corruption on a large scale first surfaced during Ziaul Haq’s rule, because he encouraged it and it flourished during the regimes of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Whatever the mix of ingredients in a politician’s motivation, winning elective office requires a great deal of work, and the candidate cannot do all of it by himself. He needs help, which brings us to a consideration of the party workers’ role. We are concerned with the kind that go from door to door to maintain the party’s contact with its support base among the masses, deliver its message, explain its needs, and bring people out on the street, to meeting places and to polling stations.

Even though the tradition of voluntarism is weak in Pakistan, men and women may be found who are dedicated to their party’s ideology (or personally devoted to some of its notables) enough to toil for it on a voluntary basis. One might expect this inclination to be prevalent in the Islamic and, to a degree, in the ethnic parties. It is interesting to note, however, that the Jamaat-i-Islami also has many full-time workers whom it pays a regular salary. This is not the case in either the PML or the PPP. Nor does either of them subscribe to an ideology capable of attracting any large number of voluntary workers. How does it then keep the workers it does have? They have to have some kind of compensation.

In rural areas the problem is easier. Here the party notables are likely to be landed aristocrats who can recruit some of their own tenants and persons from their extended families (“biradaries”), and caste groups to help with their election campaigns. But they may still have to hire persons, on a temporary basis, to do certain election-related chores and pay them, for the most part, out of their own funds. They are not likely to get a whole lot of assistance from their party organization. The candidate’s dependence on workers and the party is much greater in the cities where relationships, and even knowledge of one another, tend to be impersonal. Furthermore, the worker’s attachment is probably focused on the party more than it may be on a particular politician in his own area.

Party workers are a mixed bunch, and their needs and expectations are not the same in all cases. They don’t expect much of anything when their party is out of power other than protection, if possible, from the persecution unleashed upon them by the ruling party.. It should, however, be noted that high-ranking opposition politicians are not entirely without influence in government and, on occasion, they may be able to get things done for their workers by invoking the help of friends and relatives in high places. Even so, the issue of rewarding the workers is more urgent, and fraught with all kinds of impropriety, when their own party is in power.

They do not generally expect to receive cash unless they are party employees, such as those who maintain and operate its offices. Many workers are self-employed (shopkeepers, artisans, rickshaw drivers, etc.), or they may be working in a government agency or a public corporation. A few may not have any regular, full-time job. But they do want jobs for their children, relatives and friends, if not for themselves. The parties in power do try to accommodate their demand, which is one of the reasons why public corporations and nationalized industrial or financial units have been flooded with un-needed employees and gone into huge budget deficits. The workers are not, however, satisfied because many of the jobs in question go to the friends and relatives of the party bosses in preference to their nominees.

On the basis of interviews with about a hundred of them a few years ago, I know that the PPP workers are aware that, when in power, their party leaders, occupying high government offices, made a great deal of money unlawfully. They condemned this practice but seemed to feel that if the party bosses were going to persist in taking dirty money, well, then a part of it should somehow filter down to the workers’ level.

Workers in both major parties, at the ward and constituency levels, have another very interesting grievance, which is that they do not have any measure of participation in their party’s decision-making process-not even in the awarding of party “tickets” in their respective areas, let alone issues of high policy.

What is then to be done? It is clear that the workers’ expectation of unlawful rewards will not go away until the hands of their leaders are clean. If their hands were to become clean, some other happy results might also ensue. Good feeling, even enthusiasm, for the party would increase and so would the number of persons, with their own independent means of income, willing to work for it on a voluntary basis.

As the awareness that a party is doing something valuable for the polity expands, voluntary individual, and perhaps even corporate, donations to its treasury might also increase. It would be advisable to maintain a small corpse of permanent workers and pay them on a regular basis. This should be feasible, considering that the level of party activity between elections is low. Closer to the election time, temporary workers might be hired and paid.

Between elections party dignitaries at the constituency, district, provincial, and national levels should make contact with the people a lot more often than they do now. They might hold more frequent public meetings and put in an appearance at places where people ordinarily congregate. I remember that when I was an adolescent (which, alas, was far too many years ago), the Muslim League president in my hometown (Batala in the Indian Punjab), a very successful lawyer, came to the central mosque every Friday and delivered a political “khutba.” There is nothing wrong with our leading politicians doing something of the same order. Replacing the traditional “mulla” on the pulpit might even enhance attendance at the Friday prayer.

The issue of the workers’ participation in their party’s decision making also needs to be addressed. They are ignored because, like the rest of our political system, our parties are highly centralized. Decentralization and devolution are now coming into vogue and our parties would do well to move in that direction. Some version of the American “primaries” (a way of expressing local preferences in the awarding of party nominations), as a guide to the awarding of party “tickets,” might be considered.

PAKISTAN’s unending experimentation with laws and institutions has come closest to touching the life of the common man — for good or bad — under the present government. After local councils, it is now the police while the electoral and constitutional changes are impending.

Mercifully, the land reforms have escaped the government for want of interest or time. If the fruits of its economic reforms, despite official celebrations of success, have not yet reached the people, trust the euromoney and the IMF, soon they will. Shaukat Aziz would not be the