THE electoral reforms announced by the NRB in January are cast in the typically middle class perspective. These reforms generally reflect the military regime’s response to three groups of people: the ‘liberal’ domestic and international lobby; the official classes and urban-based intelligentsia; and the army. On the other hand, the reaction of political stakeholders to the NRB’s proposals goes beyond the mere fact of reforms to their own exclusion from the process of decision-making.

The increase in the number of seats in the National Assembly is at the centre of the reform proposals. This development has both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The new figure of 350 MNAs is meant to meet two requirements. First, the electoral contestants should be able to contact people in the constituency personally. Also, the latter should be able to have access to their representatives after elections and hold them accountable. This requirement is essentially centred on the aspirations and demands of the voters, whose preferences and priorities need to be reflected through elections more effectively and meaningfully than was the case under the old framework.

Second, the task of contestants will be made easier if their financial and organizational resources are put to use in smaller constituencies. Currently, their potential to fight elections is over-expanded. This has created various problems relating to run-away election expenses, pursuit of clandestine sources of election funding and acute dependence on middlemen as vote-deliverers, such as village elders, biradari and tribal leaders and lower revenue officials. This requirement is, thus, focused on the contestants’ capacities and proclivities.

The provision for the expansion of the size of the National Assembly has qualitative implications as well. First, the new proposals have introduced 60 women’s seats, to be filled under the proportional representation (PR) system. There are two improvements in the previous provision for women’s representation: one, the number of seats has been increased three-fold; two, women legislators will be returned on the basis of direct not indirect elections. Indeed, a mere increase in the number of women MNAs elected under the old PR indirect election system would have been meaningless.

And yet, the new proposals are problematic in various other ways. There will be two kinds of parliamentarians sitting in the National Assembly — one elected under first-past-the-post (FPTP) and the other elected under the PR system. The first category will enjoy the support of a territorial constituency and thus will represent not only a party but also about a hundred thousand voters on average. The second category will first and foremost enjoy the blessings of the party bosses and only secondarily be voted for by the larger public. This would in all likelihood keep women contestants from taking part in the process of public mobilization in earnest — in the absence of a specific community of voters backing their candidature. There will be no accountability to a particular slice of the electorate. Under FPTP, MNAs represent both voters and non-voters in their constituencies. Under PR, women MNAs, as provided under the new proposals, will not be held accountable to their constituents.

It is not clear why the NRB chose simply to ignore the demand of various women activist organizations to provide for their representation in the parliament by opening the public arena for their participatory activity. In this context, a significant proposal related to reservation of 33 per cent seats for women on a rotational basis, to be elected jointly by male and female voters and through a mass campaign out in the field. As against this, the recent proposals will in all probability keep women from fighting elections in their own name. It provides for women MNAs to be classified as a special category, somewhat protected, and therefore isolated, from the mainstream of public activity.

Secondly, the provision for reserving 25 seats for technocrats is both artificial and arbitrary. This opening for inducting people into assemblies will be resented by politicians who struggle to win the general seats through an open-ended pattern of competition. For some time, the question of a lack of representation of the middle class elements in the legislatures, largely because of ‘feudal’ politicians, has surfaced in the media at regular intervals. The proposal for reservation of seats for technocrats and their election under the PR system aims at bringing the middle class into politics.

But this proposal may not succeed in committing the educated middle class to politics. Indeed, this method can keep the middle class tied down to the pursuit of a public career bypassing the whole process of operating through the party platform, mobilizing people, representing, and thus being accountable to, well-defined constituents and learning about the needs and aspirations of the people across divisions of class, caste, language, religion and sect. To become members of parliament, technocrats must first become politicians in spirit and practice.

Also, the middle class normally seeks to articulate its interests through the bureaucracy and the army, at least among the two communities of Punjabis and Pathans, with Mohajirs gradually less committed to this mode of operation. As long as the power to make policy and bestow patronage stays largely, if not exclusively, with the state apparatus, middle class elements will continue to look to extra-parliamentary sources of authority. In other words, the low power potential of parliament keeps the educated and professional middle class from pursuing a public career wholeheartedly. Informal arrangements to open party platforms to this class, both as competitors for party offices and as potential party nominees for contesting elections, would serve the purpose of bringing technocrats into the fold of politics. The formal and arbitrary arrangements for reserving seats for them in elected assemblies need, therefore, to be dispensed with.

Similarly, the controversy about educational qualifications for electoral contestants is symptomatic of the on-going tussle between politicos and the military-bureaucratic establishment, along with their support bases among the landed aristocracy and the middle class, respectively. The ideologues of democracy find the requirement for graduation as the basic qualification for electoral contestants to be against the principle of genuine public representation. It is the capacity of a contestant to represent his or her constituency rather than educational achievements per se which explains the widespread criticism of the new provision regarding graduation.

Those who have already gained experience of participation in legislative proceedings, often more than once, can now be disqualified from pursuing a political career through the membership of elected assemblies. The question is raised as to what is more important between trust and confidence of the people and educational qualification. Also, if articulation of interests of one’s constituents is the basic idea behind all elective dispensations, then it is the communicability, accessibility and capacity for reaching out to state functionaries in pursuit of the electorate’s interests rather than a mere bachelor’s degree that really matters.

Criticism of the condition for educational qualification emanated from concern for the poorer sections of society which do not have access to college education and will thus be excluded from the electoral contest. In this way, the provision for graduation can be considered elitist. On the other hand, this proposal has been criticised for being part of the establishment’s agenda of destroying feudal power, considering that several landlords and tribal chiefs as elected legislators did not meet the condition of graduation.

The lobby for educational qualification for MNAs argues differently. In its view, the relatively less educated public representatives are disadvantaged vis-a-vis the bureaucrats who are often highly educated and well-trained. As public office holders and parliamentarians, politicians tend to kowtow to the bureaucracy in the matter of formulation of public policy, drafting of documents and articulation of ideas in general. This makes the legislature grossly weaker than the executive on the one hand, and the bureaucracy as well as the judiciary on the other.

The decade-long experience of legislative debates from the late 1980s to the late 1990s showed that a large number of MNAs hardly ever uttered a word on the floor of the parliament. Far from pursuing an informed debate on policy or even simply projecting a demand or otherwise pointing out an issue of public importance, legislators often shied away from proving their relevance as public representatives.

The protagonists of a minimum level of education for legislators further argue that Pakistan is essentially English-oriented. This is typical of the ex-British colonies. This means that all laws, ordinances, bills, acts, rules, regulations, memoranda and reports are conceived, discussed, formulated and published in English. This situation is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Not surprisingly, uneducated or half-educated legislators have been generally excluded from the process of law-making.

Again, the articulate sections of the people accuse legislators of gullibility, at least those among them who find it difficult to operate in forums such as parliamentary committees or to communicate with their counterparts in the West. It has been argued that a minimum educational qualification would make the MNAs capable of gaining expertise on various issues of public policy. Even within the political community, all ruling parties or party alliances have banked on the better educated or accomplished politicians in their ranks to discharge responsibilities of governance while less educated members of a party or government have been relegated to a secondary status by their own bosses.

Considering the two points of view, perhaps a solution can be sought by partially accommodating them in the new framework. For example, education can be accepted in principle as a qualifying factor. However, the level can be lowered to, say, intermediate or matriculation.

Finally, the NRB’s latest reform proposals have done away with separate electorates which had been the most embarrassing part of the electoral system for over a decade. It earned a lot of opprobrium for the country and divided the nation on religious lines. Now, religious minorities will be able to participate in mainstream politics. On the other hand, it is clear that the joint electorate system practically excludes minority representation in parliament. A more thoughtful approach would have been to restore joint electorate, while keeping the reserved seats for minorities intact as an additional safeguard for their representation.

The electoral reforms are bold and imaginative. It is good that these have been thrown open for public debate and discussions. One hopes that the decision-makers would get the correct message out of the debate and take the country forward on the road to unfettered representative rule.

CAN Pakistan’s electronic media, radio and television, or more precisely, Radio Pakistan and the Pakistan Television Corporation, ever be completely free? Can they do without any government control and without any official interference in the tone and content of their programmes, particularly in the presentation of social, economic and political news and views?

Obviously, by freedom of these media I mean the freedom that we generally associate with the BBC and the CNN, to name just two of the democratic world’s broadcasting agencies. Though there is a snag in this too because, after September 11 and the war in Afghanistan, the CNN has shown itself to be amenable to government “advice” on the plea of national interest. However, the BBC, on the whole, keeps the flag flying.

Before I begin to say anything about freedom in the context of news presentation and the airing of independent views and analyses, I can be asked a ticklish counter question. “We always talk of freedom from official interference in news reporting by the print and electronic media. But has anyone given a thought to the ever-present pre-censorship imposed by powerful social and religious elements of our society which is a far greater inhibition to unbiased reporting and speaking the truth, and to a free and frank discussion of some of the vital issues facing the nation?”

I shall not even attempt to answer that embarrassing query. You and I know that because of that fear of society hanging over us there can be no real freedom for anyone in the mass media. That cross has to be carried. But what we can do is to try and get rid of the stifling and, at the same time, sycophantic atmosphere which made the reporting of even non-political day-to-day news a crushing bore under past elected governments and military regimes. During this half a century we had to depend on the BBC to tell us what was happening in our country.

But things are changing. It is a paradox that a military government should relax the strangulating control over radio and television. This process started some two years ago, and already we see politicians on PTV and live discussion of public problems. The way things are going we may see our radio and television acting and behaving like newspapers which have a field day as far as absence of restrictions on the press are concerned.

Moreover, for the citizens of Pakistan the establishment of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) may well become as big a step as the first step on the moon. PEMRA will make its presence felt when private news and views channels on radio and television become a routine happening. In the meantime the very manner of the presentation of news and, more importantly, discussion of national issues over the electronic media is becoming unrecognizable from what we have been accustomed to since youth or childhood or birth, depending on our age.

Let me go over what constituted news for radio and TV before the new breath of fresh air invaded their studios. The news bulletins were so strictly confined to the utterances and activities of government leaders that momentous happenings that affected the common man — accidents, deaths, political upheavals, riots, disturbances and the like — found no place in them.

Calamities like floods were reported only in the context of what the government was doing about them, and the most terrible accident that killed a hundred could only find place in radio and TV news if a federal minister was there to oversee relief work. Of course reporting political activity of the opposition variety could not even be imagined.

Nowadays I prefer to read my news rather than switch on the radio or TV for it. As I write this on Basant day someone tells me about the extensive coverage given by PTV to the popular festival in Lahore, the happy kite-flying multitudes on the roads and on the roofs of houses, and how all the hotels, from the humblest to the five-star type, are full of visitors from outside, including fun-loving foreigners. I already know that most of the diplomats in Islamabad had moved to Lahore for the occasion. Which means that PTV has learned to share the happiness and problems of the masses.

For the first time, Radio Pakistan and PTV have boards of directors whose members are not the controlling bosses of the two organizations but people from outside — senior officers from the ministries of finance, foreign affairs and defence as well as a couple of non-officials. I am told the top guns of both the media put up a stiff resistance to this, but they were overruled because it was felt that no worthwhile change could come about unless fresh blood was inducted into the body which is to be the final word on the complexion of programmes and news and views.

This reminds me of a piece that I wrote some years ago on what would happen if radio and television were given absolute freedom to conduct themselves on the lines of foreign electronic media. I had said that the staff of radio from August 1947 and of television from August 1964 had become so conditioned to dictation that they are sure to have lost whatever initiative they possessed and wouldn’t know what to do if faced by a controversial bit of news. I quoted that popular verse about the bird in prolonged captivity preferring death to liberty: Itne maanoos sayyad se ho gaye jo rihai mili bhi to marjaaenge. I hope this doesn’t happen to our radio and TV people.

Coming back to PEMRA, this authority shall be responsible for regulating the establishment and operation of all private radio and TV stations, including cable, to be set up for the purpose of international, national, provincial, district, local or special target audiences.

The chairman shall be an eminent professional of known integrity and competence. One of the nine members shall be appointed by the federal government on a full-time basis, while five shall be eminent citizens from the provinces. Two of these shall be women. The remaining three shall be secretaries of the ministries of information and interior, and the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

To ensure that the public can voice its views about radio and TV programmes there shall be a Council for Complaints consisting of a chairman and five members from the public, two of whom shall be women.

Entrepreneurs have been knocking at the doors of the Pakistan government for a long time seeking licences to establish private radio and TV stations, but none of the elected regimes listened to them. What a tribute to democracy that a military regime should take steps to ensure as much freedom as possible to the electronic media!

OVER the past some weeks the world climate has been improving as viewed from Islamabad. Sensible citizens should have no difficulty in reading the factors that have calmed the adverse winds for this country. It is President Musharraf’s firm handling of the fanatic fringe, spawned and pampered during the Zia dictatorship.

But the task of restoring reason and good sense in our life has only just begun. Our problem on this score is very deep-rooted and widespread. What has been done is only touching the outer and more visible edge of the fanatic seam in our social geology.

Much of the lava remains in this fearsome volcano. No doubt there is some reason to feel easy with reports that ‘direct foreign investment’ may be returning to Pakistan. But the investors have only begun to think. Let nobody start counting the chickens before they are actually hatched.

If there is an encouraging trend, it is only a trend. It would take a lot of doing on our part before this tenuous trend becomes a sustained stream. What we have achieved so far is to belatedly learn that religious extremism poses a dire threat to our present and future. It is only a first step on a road that is rough, tortuous and long.

What ought to be worrying many right-minded people is the meek and weak tone of the minister for religious affairs. His problem is that he has to appear to be busy doing something. But he does not clearly know what he ought to be busy doing. He sounds like a person unsure and afraid.

To be honest, this ministry of the so-called religious affairs never had any justification for its existence in the first place. Recall that the founder of this republic had declared that in this state the government shall have nothing to do with the religion of its citizens. When that be the guiding philosophy, what do we have this ministry for?

Unless you know your foe, you can never hope to vanquish him. Extremism under a religious cloak is the real foe. Now that the foe has suffered a reverse, it is on the look out for ways to stage a comeback. All manner of loaded statements are being issued by these defeated elements.

Our minister for religious affairs is playing into their hands, treating these statements as calling for a reply. What is the representative status of the surrogates of the extremist ring leaders, some of whom have been rounded up? Why must the minister take any notice of the outpourings of the defeated rabble-rousers? Ignore.

On the one hand, the government is dealing sternly with these extremist troublemakers, on the other, a minister of the same government is paying the tribute of responding to them in an apologetic and defeatist tone. This just does not make any sense. The minister’s weak-kneed attitude tends only to provide oxygen to the mulla element.

For the clear-headed citizen, the government’s kid-glove treatment of the madaris and the mosques issue remains less than comforting. Nobody would quarrel with the view that the madaris can play a useful part. But ‘can play’ is only a hypothesis and far from proven in our national environment.

No doubt Maulana Rumi, Ibn-i-Khaldun, Ibne Rushd, Ibne Sina, Amir Khusrau and thousands of luminaries in our history studied in madaris. But those madaris produced those giants of intellect and faith. What do our madaris produce? Only masjid muezzins and funeral prayer leaders? They are largely idle parasites and mischief-makers.

Either go for strong-handed and no-compromise reform of the madaris or be done with them. There is no room for compromise with what has been proved to be something from which no good can ever be expected. Let us be honest and outspoken on matters that have such explosive potential.

These misguided mullas had pushed us to the brink of irredeemable disaster. With courage, President Musharraf has pulled us back. But back only from the precipice. We should be fooling ourselves if we fall into the illusion of safety. The cause of danger is still very much there in our situation.

Fellow Pakistanis: Make no mistake, for us this is a surpassingly crucial moment. Almost everything that matters depends on how successfully we emerge from the sea of troubles into which the wrongly motivated jihadis had plunged this nation.

We still have any number of Sufi Mohammeds around. All of them should be brought to answer for the thousands of lives their misguided preaching has destroyed. There is good reason to ask for the trial of all those who had savagely jolted the ship of our state.

The interior minister has occasionally alluded to the issue of proliferation of mosques all over the country. Most citizens darkly suspect that many of these new mosques are not quite legitimate places of worship. It is clearly the duty of the state to look into the legal status of these mosques.

After all, these are supposed to be public institutions and must, therefore, satisfy the requirements of the law. What is the status of the land they stand on? Who manages them? Where do they find their finances? Do they preach sectarianism? No doubt, all genuine mosques, and other places of worship must be respected and, where needed, supported by society as well as the state. Respect and support is only for places of genuine worship. The ones that are not genuine are twice to be shunned. First because they are flawed. Secondly, and more importantly, because the fake mosque represents wrongdoing in the divine name.

The government is committed to look into sectarian affiliations of mosques. A watch has to be kept on the sermons to ensure that these are not abused for fostering divisive sectarian animosities and igniting misguided sentiments.

There is considerable substance in the view that some kind of impartial monitoring be undertaken to prevent mosques falling in the hands, or under the influence, of unwholesome elements. The fear that not all mosques are in proper hands is certainly not unfounded.

Only the innocent or the naive would fall into the smug self-deception that the Taliban tendency has been tamed. What is certainly true and up to a point reassuring, is that the country is much wiser on this point than it has been over the years. Firm action to tackle the ‘Talibanophile’ sections will be widely welcomed and supported by an overwhelming majority of the people. What is the government waiting for?