DIVORCE is on the cards. Europe and the United States’ long-standing union is on the rocks. As is the norm, the split is taking place in a welter of bitter recriminations — particularly by Europe, the party petitioning for divorce.

Forged in the Second World War, and cemented by the common struggle against communism as well as, increasingly, a shared cultural diet of TV, fast food, music and fashion, the marriage between Europe and the United States showed some signs of strain during Bill Clinton’s Presidency (e.g. over Iraq). But these became really pronounced after George W. Bush entered the Oval Office and proceeded to dismantle the entire framework of multilateralism and international cooperation: Kyoto, the ABM Treaty, efforts to curb small arms proliferation, and so on.

Then came September 11 to effect instant reconciliation. The immense tragedy experienced by the United States caused Europe to overlook its own grievances and wholeheartedly support the American-led ‘war against terror’. Europe and the rest of the world: George Bush had what was probably the biggest global consensus in recent history for action against those responsible for 9/11. It wasn’t just sympathy that created that consensus. It was also America’s apparent return to multilateralism: Washington sought the help of Europe and the Muslim world in its new campaign.

The latter were the first to break ranks, expressing disquiet over the military (if not rhetorical) targeting of Muslims and the murder of innocents in Afghanistan. Europe stood faithfully by America throughout the war. It was only as it drew to a close, and the Taliban collapsed but the bombing of civilian areas continued that the Europeans started to voice muted criticism. Over the past few weeks, that muted criticism has increased in volume and intensity to reach its present state: open condemnation of US policy.

The deployment of international forces was the first major disagreement. Europe wanted troops in Afghanistan to maintain order and prevent a descent into pre-Taliban warlordism and anarchy. America wanted a cleared plain to search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That disagreement was resolved without too much bitterness: after a slight delay troops were sent in.

A more serious row developed over the treatment and legal status of Taliban and Al Qaeda “unlawful combatants” transported by the US to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. While European concern about torture and deliberate maltreatment was unexpected, concern about the status of the detainees was entirely valid. Europe quite rightly objected to Washington’s attempts to wriggle out of both the Geneva Convention and the US civil law by denying the detainees POW status and holding them outside American territory. Donald Rumsfeld’s initial response was to indignantly dismiss European objections. Since then, the US has made only cosmetic efforts to improve the conditions of the prisoners. The basic rejection of international law for the Guantanamo detainees remains.

The Middle East is a region and a conflict on which parties on either side of the Atlantic have long held divergent views. Washington rarely strays from its traditional line of unquestioning support for Tel Aviv. The Europeans have a less jaundiced perspective: they appreciate the underlying causes of the problem there, and the rights and frustrations of the Palestinian people. Hope that 9/11 would occasion less partisan American engagement in the Middle East postponed surfacing of US-EU differences for a while. But as that hope proved forlorn, and as the aggressive tactics employed by Ariel Sharon’s government and the violent Palestinian response have led to a massive escalation in the region’s ‘dance of death’, Europe has spoken out.

In sharp contrast to Washington, which has pinned responsibility for the violence solely on Arafat, European leaders have condemned the confrontation which Sharon has provoked and made use of as a cover for his so-called retaliatory action, and described Arafat as ‘a partner to negotiate with’. They have also threatened to take legal action against the Israeli government for its destruction of EU-funded Palestinian infrastructure (a broadcasting station, Gaza airport, etc). As America increased the pressure on Arafat, Europe has increased its calls for a Palestinian state as the basic component of a comprehensive peace settlement.

International peacekeepers in Afghanistan, Camp X-ray, the Middle East have been major sources of discord between Europe and Washington. But by far the biggest stems from where the war on terror is going next. Hints by various members of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — the unfinished agenda of the first Bush presidency — could face military action, have been received with alarm by European leaders. They have made it clear they would not support such a widening of the war on terror. German Deputy Foreign Minister Ludger Volmer bluntly told Washington ‘this terror argument cannot be used to legitimize old enmities’.

President Bush’s State of the Union speech appears to have been the last straw for the Europeans. Calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea ‘an axis of evil’ has provoked a chorus of protest from Europe. Even the traditionally supportive Britain has spoken out against it — albeit in an almost apologetic manner. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw tried to explain the speech away as domestic electioneering [referring to next November’s Congressional elections], only to be corrected by Condoleeza Rice saying that the president meant everything he said.

The French have been characteristically more forthright in their criticism. Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine made a scathing attack on US foreign policy. “We are threatened today by a new simplism which consists in reducing everything to the war on terrorism. We cannot accept that idea. You have got to tackle the root causes, the situations, poverty, injustice.” He has accused Washington of approaching foreign policy “unilaterally, without consulting anyone, based on their own interpretation and on their interests”.

If Vedrine’s criticism was scathing, that by EU Commissioner for International Affairs Chris Patten was absolutely devastating. He echoed Vedrine’s comments by accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously “absolutist and simplistic” stance towards the rest of the world, stressing the need to tackle terrorism’s root causes and objecting to American ‘unilateralism’. Patten went even further: he called for Europe to have the courage to defy America and forge an international stance of its own, and urged it to stop Washington before it went into “unilateralist overdrive”. In effect, a call to arms against a new global menace: the United States.

As yet it is too early to say if Bush really meant the threats he made in the State of the Union address (and on subsequent occasions). Privately, some EU officials think it could just be a vote-winning ploy, or a or blustering to disguise the fact that Washington doesn’t know where to take its anti-terror war next. But the possibility that Bush if serious and that he does plan to mount an attack on Iraq, or, worse, on Iran, cannot be ruled out. Also, if he sticks to his policy of letting the Middle East burn and pushing Iran back into the hands of the Ayatollahs, the consequences will be disastrous.

Which is why Europe has to heed the warnings of Hubert Vedrine and Chris Patten. It has to take a united stand against America’s unilateralism. It has to remain engaged with Iran and back the reformist agenda. It has to put forward alternative solutions for the Middle East based on Palestinian statehood. It has to push for alleviation of poverty, deprivation and injustice that feed terrorism.

ENERGY pricing has become a major issue in Pakistan. In fact it is not only the basic price of the energy in all its forms which has become a contentious issue but also the taxation on it which has been becoming increasingly heavy.

And they are varied taxes beginning with the petroleum and natural gas surcharge which is to raise Rs 47 billion this year and ending with the sales tax of 15 per cent on power. When the world price of oil rises, and the taxation remains high or becomes higher, the hardships of the consumers increase further.

Discovery of more oil or larger gas reserves in Pakistan does not lead to a drop in prices of oil or gas. The oil companies which explore and then extract the oil have to be paid world prices and then pass them on to the consumers.

The government gets a large share of the revenues of its Oil and Gas Development Corporation wells and of other well in which it is a partner, but not the people. In this regard the people of Pakistan are treated far differently than the people of the Gulf states with their oil wells.

Energy prices are very important for us as they have a multiplier effect on prices as a whole. When oil or gas prices go up the people have to pay higher prices not only for them but also for all the products made by using them and the services which utilize such high cost energy. And transport cost, of course, goes up whether one owns a car or not or travels by bus.

The government is happy the high rate of inflation of the past has come down to around 5 or 6 per cent, while the people dispute that. But the government on its part is now pushing up the cost of living by raising the energy prices one way or another, and adding to the Consumer Price Index.

In the western countries energy is accepted as a basic need of the people rather than a luxury as the government tends to regard it in Pakistan. Hence the overall taxation on it is low there. The US until recently was known for its less than a dollar gallon petrol. They prefer to tax more what is produced using the cheap energy and its consumption.

But we have high taxes all along the line, and yet the overall tax revenues is low, primarily due to extensive evasion, and corruption in the tax departments. While the ex-refinery price of a litre of petrol is around Rs 10 the tax is about Rs. 16 to 17. So the ultimate sale price is around Rs 30 or rs 135 per gallon. In addition the government is determined to collect 15 per cent over all electricity bills except the small ones as sales tax. That means paying 15 per cent over the Rs 6.71 per unit when the consumption exceeds 1,000 units.

The chairman of WAPDA Lt-Gen Zulfikar Ali Khan has been vehemently opposed to the hefty levy. He argues the power rates in Pakistan are already very high, in fact the highest in the region, and so the people should not be asked to pay more. He sought exemption of the consumers from the levy, or the subsidy given by the government to continue but the government has been opposed to the subsidy as it is committed to the IMF and the World Bank to levy the GST and boost the revenues. Hence the appeal of Gen. Zulfikar to President Pervez Musharraf has been of no avail.

And now WAPDA has taken upon itself to restore the subsidy with retrospective effect from August 8 and pay Rs 280 million out of its revenues. It is not obvious how the loss to WAPDA would be only Rs 280 million when the government had estimated to collect Rs 9 billion through the sales tax.

It is not clear either how WAPDA can give up that amount when its deficit in the current year’s budget is estimated at Rs 32 billion. But Gen. Zulfikar has been arguing that the higher the cost of energy the lower the consumption and larger the drop in WAPDA’s revenues which it cannot afford.

It is also known the higher the power rates the larger the power theft which WAPDA says it has been able to bring down along with the heavy technical loss to under one-third of its output. The same would happen in KESC which has a far higher theft rate, though its supply is confined to the city while WAPDA covers the whole country.

What is striking is that while multilateral agencies have been calling for cheap energy to keep the cost of production low and increase the exports, in Pakistan they stand for far higher power rates. If that leads to larger power theft they want those who pay for their power to be made to pay far more. The result is the industrial sickness, fall in exports and further rise in power theft. In Pakistan the aid agencies give preference to balancing the budget or reducing the budget deficit over all else. While that may help solve one problem that creates a host of other problems, which defy easy solutions.

Now the gas prices are to go up as a result of the government’s commitment to the gas exploring companies to bring gas prices in Pakistan at par with world oil prices. However, that will be done in phases. The process has been underway for some years with the argument that gas prices in Pakistan are very low, particularly domestic gas prices.

Minister for Privatization Altaf Saleem says that gas prices for domestic users would be raised soon while gas prices for industrial users would be reduced. He says that gas is a precious asset which should be used for productive purposes instead of domestic purposes.

He says the government is now subsidising 3.5 million domestic gas consumers who use less than 50 cubic metre of gas for a month and pay an average of Rs 200. If they were using LPG or wood instead for cooking they would be paying Rs 100 or Rs 400 a month. Hence the need for rationalization of gas prices which would reduce the cost of industrial production. Meanwhile the cement industry is being switched over from gas to coal.

He attributes this lamentable situation to the poor performance of the official Oil and Gas Development Corporation which drilled only 500 wells in the last 50 years — 10 wells a year. Compared to that a company drilled 16,000 wells in one month in Canada. And yet the rate of striking gas in Canada is one for nine wells, while it is one for three in Pakistan.

Foreign investors’ interest in investing on gas and oil exploration continues in view of the increasing gas finds. Out of 205 million dollars invested in Pakistan in the first six months of this financial year 78 million dollars were on oil and gas exploration and 28.5 million dollars on the power sector.

But equally important is building the transmission system to bring the gas from the well to the refineries and the industrial consumers which, too, is a costly process. Far more investment is needed in this area. But such investment and finding large reserves of gas do not produce any excitement among the people. They do not see the price of gas going down as a result of such discoveries, and even the talk we have enough gas by now to meet our needs for the next 20 years, which is disputed.

We have on one side very low wages and poor salaries and on the other side high prices. The World Bank and IMF insist that we pay world prices for our oil and gas, and tax them heavily to boost our revenues. And that makes the people lose their enthusiasm for developing the country, which is not healthy for a developing country.

If the cost of living does not come down as a result of development and new facilities do not become available at moderate rates the people tend to react cynically when the government or wages go up all talk of its large development plans and high growth targets. If to add to that there is heavy taxation which makes everything far more costly and gives a spur to large scale smuggling, the cynicism of the people increases further.

Some years ago when the US had a large and chronic budget deficit it was suggested that a five cent tax on a gallon of petrol could wipe out that deficit. But the government would not take to that as it did not want to tax energy and make it a highly contentious political issue. The approach of the Pakistan government is the reverse. Here energy is regarded as a major and easy source of large revenues. And that gives rise to all kinds of abuses, including large theft of power and even 12 per cent of the gas produced.

Economists like Shahid Javed Burki, former vice-president of the World Bank argue that on the basis of the purchasing power parity of the rupee the per capita income of a Pakistani is not 420 dollars a year but 2,000 dollars. When it comes to the energy sector, except domestic gas, that is not true as we are paying almost double of what an American pays for his petrol.

THE political and administrative system of the country has been drastically changed under the Devolution Plan of the present government.

As we already know, a three-tier hierarchy of local government has been established since August 2001. The scheme’s most important and powerful body is the district government with nazim at its head. The nazim encompasses, literally, the powers of the executive and the legislature — in other words, of the governor and the chief minister taken together. Perhaps this is what the underlying purpose of the plan is.

Looking at the powers and the functions of district nazim, one cannot escape the conclusion that the mainstream political parties will be hardest hit because a non-party based powerful district government will be poised against the members of the parliament and the provincial assemblies elected on the basis of single member territorial electoral constituencies. At best it will be a contest between two different centres of power in a district and at worst a standstill situation. It would, however, keep many ambitious people busy.

A formidable array of functions and powers with 12 departments has been placed under the nazim and the supervision of several other provincial and some of the federal government departments has been entrusted to him.

If the nazim has so far not spread his tentacles, it may be due to lack of his knowledge of his powers and authority. Or, he may be a genuine democrat at heart. But soon, it will be a race for using the power. We seem to forget the age-old maxims that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and checks and balances are sine qua non for the smooth working of any system of government.

The formation of various committees for ethics, culture, finance, justice and public safety has been completed. The justice committee is given the task of putting the aggrieved people into contract with the MIT of the High Court, whereas the committee on public safety with members nominated by the provincial government would oversee functions of the police department.

The setting up of village and neighbourhood councils and conciliation committees has been provided for in the ordinance. No rules or details are available so far as to how these bodies would function. Neither have the rules of business for running the government been publicized nor is there any indication about the relations between the district coordination officer (DCO) and other officials on the one hand, and the nazim, on the other. What would be the situation in case a DCO, EDO or a DO of a department disagrees with the nazim?

What has recently transpired is that at least three DCOs have been transferred from their posts for dissenting with the nazims in Sindh. The development schemes are to be planned by the DCO and passed by the district assembly. Almost all the schemes within a district are to be planned and executed by the district government. n the district where the nazim and the opposition are irreconcilable, it has been observed that the district nazim has the final world.

The principle of completion period of a scheme within a fixed timeframe, cost-benefit ratio, cost overruns (unforeseen or deliberate), preferences in selection of, say, roads over drainage or schools and dispersal of projects would be hard to materialize with inexperienced and non-technical planners vis-a-vis planning and development department.

The nazim has been charged with the responsibility of announcing his vision for his term of office in district assembly. How many nazims have outlined their plan and programme is yet to be known; abiding by it even harder to achieve.

Some quasi-judicial functions have been conferred on the nazim such as declaring section 144 Cr.Pc and an assembly as unlawful. He is charged with the responsibility to oversee the maintenance of law and order. One would be thankful if someone enlightens the people about the existence of such powers for to an elected official in a developing country like ours.

The plan envisages common urban and rural development. Town committees and adjacent rural areas have together been constituted into union councils. The revenues generated from such union councils have been transferred to taluka (tehsil) councils and their functions entrusted to taluka municipal administration. This is highly resented by union councils.

For the sake of equity and justice, it is necessary to empower the union councils which are the only directly elected bodies under the plan, to utilize the funds and carry out other functions themselves directly. In fact, there is hardly any justification for having a .... municipal administration outside the large cities. In fact, the union councils should be given the funds for development schemes for planning and executing with least possible interference3 from the district.

How the arbitrary decisions and the conduct of a district government be properly put under check and its wrong actions of omission and commission redressed does not seem to be possible through the forums provided in the ordinance such as local government commission and district Mohtasib. Where the state institutions, such as Election Commission, have failed to ensure free and fair elections, obtaining desired results from lesser institutions does not appeal to credibility.

The writer is a former deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

WINSTON Churchill who invented the phrase “Iron Curtain” did not dream up the term “Cold War”. That- La Guerra Fria- was coined by thirteenth century Spaniards to describe their uneasy coexistence with Muslims in the Mediterranean.

This is perhaps the time to bring it back into its correct historical usage. For there can be no doubt that if Saudi Arabia goes ahead with its apparent decision to ask the US to close down its important military base in Saudi Arabia, many Americans will conclude that a cold war of sorts between the US and the Islamic world will have begun.

Everyone knows that removing America’s military presence from the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia has been Osama bin Laden’s number one demand. In meeting it America, however brave a face it puts on it, will feel deep inside itself that its 50-year long relatively benign relationship with the oil kingdoms and sheikhdoms of the Arabian peninsular — and one should add in Egypt — is drawing to a close.

While neither side can cut the economic relationship — America needs to buy and the Arabs needs to sell their oil — it is inevitable that the past intimacy will be transformed into a more workaday arrangement. It will indeed take everyone’s ingenuity for that not to slide into a cold war. The Americans will feel rebuffed and all too ready to believe that they and the Arabs are on opposite sides of what has become a very high fence.

One senses that the White House has seen this coming, and even more so since September 11. Not for nothing has it been courting the ex-Asian republics of Kyrgizstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Muslim in a loose and ready way they may be, but the Soviet era did much to secularize the culture. Moreover, they are not Arab and they certainly do not belong to the heartland of Islamic culture as bin Laden sees it.

Most important, they appear to value an alliance with America, all the more to shore up their newfound independence from Russia. They seem to be indicating that even if the war in Afghanistan is over they wish the Americans to stay in their new bases, and even expand them. And America sees in the long term an alternative supplier of oil to the Arabian peninsular

It is also becoming apparent that the Americans may stay on a while in Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf is clearly sincere in his wish to break the grip of Pakistani fundamentalism once and for all. Although fundamentalist parties have never won more than a small percentage of the votes in an election they have called too many of the shots, not least in the dangerous relationship with India, over Kashmir.

It appears that Musharraf sees an American military presence as a valuable source of influence in helping push his own army and intelligence services in the direction of making a much-needed breakthrough on finding a solution to the division of Kashmir.

Meanwhile, America is about to step up the military relationship with predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Forced to wind down its military training program after the fall of Suharto it is now considering being drawn in again as the new government struggles with radical Islamic armed movements.

All this suggests that the picture painted by Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilisations” is rather more complicated that he suggested. The Islamic world is not that homogeneous and is riven by fault lines, even as it shares one important historical experience- the imposition of Western culture, first by force of arms and more recently by the twin influences of the market place and economic modernisation. — Copyright Jonathan Power

PRESIDENT Musharraf should not feel unduly dispirited at the prospect of holding a national election in October. It may comfort him to know that a seasoned British parliamentarian, even after 500 years of democracy, bemoaned the electoral process as ‘a regrettable necessity’.

It will certainly reassure him to learn that at least one of his predecessors — President General Yahya Khan — who found himself in a similar predicament in 1970, shared parallel apprehensions. Talking to US President Richard Nixon during a visit to Washington on October 25, 1970, President Yahya Khan told him that he intended to hold elections on December 7 but complained of ‘the absurd levels’ to which politicians were prepared to stoop.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, for example, he disclosed, had accused him of delaying the elections so that he could ‘sell out Pakistan’ in a secret deal with Mrs. Indira Gandhi in New York, where Mrs. Gandhi and Yahya Khan had gone separately to attend the 25th anniversary celebrations of the United Nations. All too conscious of the travails of a parliamentary presidency, Nixon commiserated, expressing the hope that Yahya would ensure ‘a strong presidency as in France.’ Yahya replied: “Without it Pakistan would disintegrate. Our people like the parliamentary system only because they have been ruled by Britain for so many centuries, but they do not have the prerequisite, namely a two-party system; we have about 35 parties.”

Today, it would be hard to trace a genetic connection between those 35 parties and their erstwhile successors. In a way, it is not necessary to, for the parties themselves prefer not to remember their own history. The Muslim League has over the years extended into as many factions as a headless octopus has ill-coordinated arms. The PPP of the late Mr. Bhutto is riven with dynastic squabbles. The MQM owes its loyalty to a leader who has a British passport and communicates from an address in North London’s Edgware High Street. Ageing leaders smell of mothballs while younger ones like Imran Khan, Farooq Leghari, and the emerging Omar Asghar Khan could be said to belong to the age of computers — if only because their present following would fit (with space to spare) onto a microchip.

During the summer this year, therefore, one can expect to feel the political temperature rising as the date for the elections draws near. The public can expect to witness the spectacle of innumerable parties jostling for attention, not of the electorate but of the ruling junta, for none of them is under any illusion about the actual source of authority. A lesson the recently elected nazims are learning is that it is not winning the race that matters; it is wresting the laurels from the judges afterwards.

Many years ago, an Indian bureaucrat was complimented on the orderly manner in which they conducted their elections. He replied: “Anyone can hold an election. That is a matter of logistics. What matters is not the election but the transfer of power afterwards. We in India knew that we had achieved political maturity when the Congress Party lost the elections in 1977 and handed over power to the Janata party, and when the Janata Party lost the elections in 1980, they handed power back to Congress.”

As recently as a year ago, while celebrating the Golden Jubilee of the election commission of India in January 2001, the Indian prime minister Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, underscored this very point: “Not once in the past five decades has the outcome of a single parliamentary election been questioned. Not once during the past thirteen elections has the transfer of power been anything but smooth.” During the half-century since independence, the Indian electoral mechanism has demonstrated that where there is a collaborative political will, there will also be a dependable electoral way. And the Indians have shown the way — whether we as Pakistanis acknowledge it or not, or are prepared to follow it or not.

It is easy for outsiders to be dismissive of the Indian political scene; the erratic behaviour of Indian politicians invites such condescension. However, ignoring the flotsam and jetsam that pollutes the surface of Indian politics, there are certain facts about the Indian electoral performance that command serious attention and respect.

When the first Indian elections were held soon after independence, Indian voters numbered 173 million, almost 35 million more than our total population today. For the last Indian elections held in 1999, the Indian election commission had on roll an electoral register of 620 million voters. To understand the magnitude of that figure, one has to remind oneself that the entire population (not simply the voting population) of that other symbol of democracy — the United States of America — was at the time only 267 million.

And during the past three parliamentary elections for the Lok Sabha and 33 state assemblies, the election commission handled three billion voters (equivalent to half the population of the world). For the next elections, whenever they are held, the election commission plans to use nationwide electronic voting machines with a compulsory ID card identification for every voter. That is not a small achievement for a Third World country as volatile as we are politically.

It is perhaps not surprising that when the Indian election commission celebrated its Golden Jubilee in January 2001, the entire leadership from India’s political spectrum responded to the invitation of the chief election commissioner and sat together without argument. “India has seen thirteen parliamentary elections and many more elections to state assemblies in the past fifty years,” Vajpayee said on that occasion. “In each of them, some have won; others have lost. Nevertheless, there has been one permanent winner in all these elections. It is the election commission of India.”

What every election commission can do is to conduct the elections; what it cannot do though — not even the Indian — is to ensure the transfer of power afterwards, and that is the one key question that lurks unanswered as yet in the scheme of the Pakistani elections scheduled for October this year. To what degree will President Musharraf be willing to transfer power, how much and to whom?

Whoever finally is likely to find a seat on the hard wooden benches planned for the members of the National Assembly, whoever is to be accommodated in the cabinet, whoever is likely to defy political gravity and slide up the greasy pole to the prime ministership, one electoral result is clearly predictable even from this distance — General Musharraf will remain the president of Pakistan, before, during and after October. He has to, for a number of reasons.

The first is that he feels too responsible for conducting the affairs of state to retire. The second is that at the moment there is no one who can deliver either credible elections or induce a preferred result. A third, vital reason, is that President Musharraf needs a mandate not so much to address Pakistanis but to talk to the Indians. One can divine in their reluctance an expectation that if they are to recommence any substantive discussions with him, it will be only after he has demonstrated that he possesses a legal and unequivocal mandate. If they wish to complete the hat-trick after Tashkent and Simla, they would be prepared to do so only if they are confident that such an agreement would be enforceable and not be rescinded.

After two years in power and even though he is said to be a good listener, there is nothing new President Musharraf could expect to hear. He might, though, like to heed the words of an earlier American, Abraham Lincoln, who when taking his country from a state of war to a state of peace, told the US Congress on July 7, 1861: “Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.”

While in the present circumstances, power may well come from the barrel of a gun, the significant characteristic of electoral politics is that there is always a Pakistani voter at either end of the gun.