CERTAINLY, it is not wise for our military leaders and their advisers to push Pakistan into the throes of another unnecessary political polarization, which has serious ethnic, constitutional and ideological ramifications in the making. While the official machinery is all geared up on getting General Pervez Musharraf ‘elected’ to a five-year term by simply ignoring the constitutional and other electoral proprieties, several voices from within the country are counselling against such a unilateral and dare-devil pursuit.

It is true that in terms of objective realities, Musharraf, albeit the Pakistani army, is the de facto political force and specially given the post-September 11 western validation of the military coup for their own interests, resisting one more army chief donning a mufti may sound rather idealistic. Yet, this single step — however innocuous and harmless it may appear to its detractors — will simply push Pakistan yet into an abyss of serious crises making it more ungovernable. The issue of referendum involves not just the legitimization of Musharraf’s coup and his self-assumed presidency; it affirms the prioritization of personal, sectional and adhoc interests over the societal, democratic and pluralist imperatives.

This article simply highlights some of the serious problems waiting in the wings for Pakistan, since Islamabad, pushed by the GHQ, has decided to follow the referendum route to sanction Musharraf’s cherished desire of concurrently holding on to the three top-notch offices of the army chief, presidency and chief executive. This rather uncalled-for concentration of powers in one person is neither good for these offices nor for the country as it simply smacks of authoritarianism besides the primacy of an individual or of the GHQ over all other national institutions. It equally substantiates the claims that Pakistan’s major difficulties have come from the concentration of powers and its inability to develop sovereign, accountable and participatory institutions.

If history is to be our guide, Pakistan underwent two referendums under the past military rulers; and all of them turned out to be disasters. Even the contemporary supporters of such exercises fully remember the lack of public support and enthusiasm which had resulted in massive rigging. Zia’s referendum, despite its ‘Islamizing’ postulations and ‘koshered’ support from B teams, was called Rigrandom; Musharraf’s white- wash will be no exception, and the more the intelligence agencies and other props would try to show the higher percentage of turn- out and ‘yes’ votes, the more ridicule it will attract.

In a serious sense, referendum — especially with only one candidate and no alternative agenda or choice — is itself an arcane process, which simply debilitates the laid-out constitutional norms of seeking an office through universally, acknowledged public mandate. It also affirms that the general, while seeking the highest office in the country, is basically shying away from the laid norms and is skirting around the issues. It also shows that due to his untenable and constitutionally insecure situation in the post-election scenario, the general is preempting through a buffer facade.

Secondly, the proposed referendum — despite all the low turn-out or even negative voting — will make the future parliament totally redundant as the latter will be under the strong thumb of a uniformed president. Instead of the constitutional powers as commonly agreed in the Constitution of 1973, Musharraf will be following in the footsteps of General Zia. On the contrary, if the future parliament refused to be a mere rubber stamp despite some kowtowing prime minister in place, the president will simply dissolve it, or the country will suffer from another costly polarization, or a possible fragmentation. We saw that time and again under General Zia and the wily Ghulam Ishaq Khan, when parliaments were coming into office to be shown out through presidential vetoing powers.

Thus, neither a cowed down parliament sans powers nor a body asserting its legislative and sovereign role — which it would deserve and desire — will be acceptable to the general and his serving and retired colleagues. It may be packed with so-called technocrats and such other elements but then it will prove another sham like Zia’s Shoora. Related to that is the worrying ethnic situation in Sindh, where the Urdu speakers may support Musharraf but Sindhis will simply boycott it or vote against it besides demanding the return of Benazir Bhutto, which will definitely escalate the ethnic polarity.

Thirdly, Musharraf’s proposed amendments in the Constitution seeking indemnity and consolidation of powers a la Zia style assuredly mean that Pakistan is, once again, in for the vicious cycle of musical chairs. The amendment process is properly laid out and any person fiddling with it that may simply aggravate country’s travails where, once again, temporary personal gains or insecurities may be overriding national prerogatives. This had already happened in 1969, 1971, 1977, 1985, 1988 and so on.

Isn’t it time to make a fresh and healthy start in the country’s interests unless the GHQ wants to continue ruling us by ruling out all the autonomy of judicial, political, economic and constitutional institutions? Ironically, the Supreme Court has also created a very dangerous precedent — one more time — of allowing an individual to amend the Constitution. Regardless of the fact who is wearing the military uniform at the time, isn’t it a mockery of justice and constitutional proprieties? With due respect to the higher judges, there is no possibility of their being remembered as shining examples in the country’s history; they had a chance to put this country on the right tracks but alas that golden opportunity was once again squandered!

Fourthly and very seriously, it is not proper and beneficial to the military — on the payroll of the nation’s taxpayers — to be running the country, aborting/suspending/ amending the Constitution; tailoring the country’s domestic and foreign policies as these jobs are best left to the public representatives. Governance is simply not their job as their prime duty by virtue of being paid officials is to defend the country’s borders and not tamper its Constitution.

Fifthly, the supporters of referendum must realize that every time the army has tried to bypass the laid out political and constitutional processes and instead offered its own so-called systemic short-cuts, they all gruesomely failed. In fact, the tragic separation of East Pakistan could have been avoided or at least bloodshed and humiliation could have been spared if the political processes through civilian representatives were allowed to function. Musharraf’s political formula will meet the same fate as that of Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and of Zia-ul-Haq but only after rendering Pakistan further marooned and hapless.

No doubt, some of our political leaders in the last ten years failed to strengthen the democratic and accountable credentials, but majority of the representatives was patriotic and meant well. General Musharraf does not hold a magic wand to offer us new leaders altogether; let us rest assured we will be dealing with the same feudalist families and regional influentials. Thus, all the promises and hopes of a breakthrough are not true.

Sixthly, the fact remains that the military coup was brought in for personal reasons; it was a counter-coup and thus heralding it into revolutionary heroics is irresponsible. General Musharraf was brought in by generals and he will stay as long as they desired; thus, the entire political map under consideration is meaningless unless the GHQ is ready to make a substantial break with the past by allowing an uninterrupted working of the normal democratic and representative institutions.

If Musharraf has introduced some reforms, even after three years their economic, social and general impact remains limited. The promises for a liberal Pakistan were made under the external pressures and not because the civil society in the country had been heard for the first time by a benevolent leader in Islamabad. Instead of pursuing referendum and other adhoc and costly diversionary schemes it is crucial for Pakistan to seek a tangible solution to its growing misgovernance through the full implementation of 1973 Constitution. Certainly, the solution to the flawed democracy is more democracy and not another coup that leads us into an unending maze of dilemmas and uncharted territory. Individuals, especially the public servants, are there to serve the nation and not vice versa. If Musharraf could make a break with the past generals and their disastrous policies, history will remember him with respect and Pakistan will be the main beneficiary. On the contrary, if he pursues the tested path of his discredited predecessors then he would certainly prove another of those tin-pot dictators whose power and authority sprang from the barrel of a gun and whose departure left their societies in a deeper mess.

AS the commission appointed by the United Nations to constitute a Loya Jirga (LJ) looks for the people to be appointed as its members, a question comes up: Is the tradition being invoked in an authentic manner or is it being harnessed to obtain the objectives identified by the international community?

Loya Jirga (Grand Council) will be assigned the job of proposing and installing a transitional government for the country for a period of eighteen months following the expiry of the interim leader Hamid Karzai’s administration. An LJ composed of about 1,500 members chosen through a process of elections and nominations is expected to meet in June this year. Karzai’s administration makes room for the new set-up on June 22.

All through the recorded history consultations among prominent citizens representing all shades of Afghan society have been a vital characteristic of Afghanistan. These assemblies, essentially based on the tribal system that has survived decades of foreign interference, invasions, inter-play of international powers and internal feuds are called jirga.

Jirgas of various levels for different purposes have been the source of strength of the Afghan society. They have kept small tribal components as independent entities and also united in the totality of the country. They have helped resolve inter tribal and intra tribal differences, disputes and rivalries. LJ is the highest, most prestigious and time- honoured form of consultation and collective decision- making.

It is an historic institution that has served Afghanistan as its supreme unwritten law at crucial junctures; its decisions are binding on all citizens irrespective of sectarian affiliations, tribal affinities and ethnic and linguistic groupings.

There is no established record to show how and when the institution came into being and how its membership was determined. The system is presumed to be as old as tribalism itself. Consultation with the elders is an ancient tribal practice in Afghanistan. It evolved as a vital feature of society and provided a non-controversial forum for expressing views and reaching decisions.

According to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who, along with Karzai, announced the formation of a 21-member LJ commission, at a press conference in Kabul, its members were chosen from a “list of 300 nominations”. The nominees were mostly ‘strangers’ for Karzai; he could only ‘recognize four of the names’, he told the journalists.

That may establish the Karzai administration’s impartiality but LJC’s authenticity was not enhanced by his non-partisan stance on its composition. The genuineness of its representative character could be under a cloud. The commission was set up under the terms of the Bonn accord in December last.

One of the first recorded jirgas appears to have been held in 1705 ‘to counter Iran’s Safavi dynasty’s rule in the western parts of the country and its campaign to extend its authority over the rest of Afghanistan’. It called for resistance against foreign rulers. Another Jirga held in Kandahar in 1707 reinforces the earlier resolve, ended the Safavi domination, liberated the land and established an independent country.

Ahmed Shah Abdali was elected the first leader of an independent Afghanistan by the elders from all over the country in a Loya Jirga congregation at Sher-i-Surkh in Kandahar in 1747. The LJ members’ support enabled him to found an integrated empire of Afghanistan. This assembly also coined the name, Afghanistan for the mountainous state north-west of Pakistan.

Another historic LJ held in 1841 in Kabul decided to end the rule of Shah Shuja and free Afghanistan of British presence; an 1879 LJ ‘declared an uprising against the British at a time when some princes opposed it’. Loya Jirga formulated a neutral policy for Afghanistan during the two world wars. LJs approved the constitution of Afghanistan in their deliberations from 1922 to 1930.

The LJ was also responsible for forging military ties between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union by ‘approving the acquisition of weapons from the Soviet Union’ in 1955. The last two recorded LJs with established authenticity endorsed the new constitution of the country (1964) and declared Afghanistan a republic (1977).

Numerous attempts were made between 1977 and the present time to invoke this institution but they came to naught as influential groups, warlords and other elements tried to hijack the body by stacking it with their supporters. That undermined the credibility and the representative character of these LJs and got them rejected by the people.

These assemblies did not fulfil the agreed pre-conditions for calling an LJ which is regarded as different from any other jirga, besides other factors, in so far as it cannot be held ‘anywhere, anytime and cannot be called by anyone’.

A leading Afghan intellectual, Dr. Syed Bahauddin Majrooh, says, “tradition has it that only a national government accepted by the people in an independent Afghanistan has the right to hold Loya Jirga”. A Loya Jirga, he noted, must be “convened on the Afghan soil and only a national government accepted by the people in an independent Afghanistan has the right to hold it”. Writing at a time when Dr. Najibullah was the President of Afghanistan, Dr. Majrooh stated: “A Loya Jirga can be called neither by the resistance parties nor by the regime of Najib. They do not have the authority (to hold Loya Jirga)”. By this definition, an LJ called by a commission appointed by external elements becomes a dubious proposition. The legitimacy of a UN sponsored LJ could thus be questioned by some segments of Afghanistan’s population.

The United Nations invoking LJ is not a flash of inspiration. The world body mulled over this possibility for over a decade. Indeed the UN’s move to call an LJ could be viewed as a solution it envisaged at a stage when Afghanistan was neither a country accused of harbouring terrorists nor in any way did it pose a threat to any other country. Afghanistan was not till then an international issue of the kind it is now.

The then personal envoy of the UN for Afghanistan, Diego Cordovez proposed, as far back as in 1988, the formation of a jirga ‘composed of mujahideen commanders fighting inside Afghanistan and the representatives of various social, intellectual, tribal and other segments of the country’s populace’.

The last LJ was held in 1977. A lot of blood has flown down the mountains of Afghanistan since then- much of it drying on the very stones on which it was spilled; it would not wash away. That has left a trail of pain and, in the political contest, a harvest of acrimony in society.

Some of the problems confronting the LJC are:

1. In the intervening period of a quarter of a century, a new generation of Afghans has come up. Most of its members could be unfamiliar with the tradition of the LJ. Their reaction to the tradition is not known and hence not predictable.

2. There has been no census in the country for many years. That makes it difficult, indeed impossible to determine the ratio of ethnic, linguistic and sectarian groups. The issue of percentage of participants representing various segments has the potential for developing on contentious lines.

3. The members are to be selected from across Afghanistan. In a country still marked by unsettled conditions and the rule of warlords in many of its 32 provinces, it would not be easy for the commission to reach all parts of the country to select members of unchallenged credibility for the LJ because of law and order conditions.

4. The writ of the government in Kabul does not run much beyond the capital. That has bound the LJC to major cities thus far and chances of immediate improvement on the landscape appear negligible.

5. The US-led campaign against terror continues unabated in some provinces.

Convening an authentic LJ looks a formidable task under the present circumstances and composing it in accordance with the members of traditional vintage even more so. The importance of satisfying the sensitivities of the Afghans of all hues and allaying their apprehensions cannot be overstressed.

At the same time, it is to be conceded that if Afghanistan is to be born anew, it must rise from its debris, emerge from its own ashes. The tradition of the LJ has been rusted by disuse and distorted by misuse but it remains the only material available for creating a new Afghanistan. Although it is a tight-rope, perilous journey to sanity convening a Loya Jirga is the only option. It is an undertaking that should neither be avoided nor postponed.

THE third meeting of finance and planning ministers of SAARC countries ended in Islamabad last week after drawing up an action plan to fight poverty in the region and the factors that caused it.

While SAARC ministers have agreed on numerous steps to be taken jointly, the more important steps to fight poverty have to be taken domestically. But it is easier to agree on lofty goals than on specific measures and details, and even more on effective methods of implementing them in a volatile political climate.

The five major steps for reducing poverty like containing corruption, ensuring good governance, transparent use of public funds, improving official procurement process and bringing improvements in the police and judicial systems, have to be taken by the governments of each of the seven SAARC states in a manner that really works in each country. And such steps need to be taken by each country irrespective of whether SAARC makes such demands on them or not in a region where around 40 per cent of the people live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

India and Pakistan fought three wars in the first 24 years of their separate existence. While they fought for brief periods, unlike the wars in the West, they find themselves in near-war conditions often. And their forces have been facing each other eye-ball to eye-ball on too many occasions, as they have been doing since December.

The cost of deploying their forces on the borders is too heavy. And after that they spend far more on defence by strengthening their weaker sectors and acquiring far more deadly and costly weapons wasting precious foreign exchange. In the process vast funds which normally might have gone for economic development or social sector progress get spent on arms or soldiers. Meanwhile the population increases and poverty spreads further and becomes deeper.

When there is tension between the two countries far more is spent on the police and intelligence agencies, and attempts at good governance and rule of law take a heavy beating. And the judiciary comes under greater stress.

Within each SAARC country there are communal and political conflicts resulting in widespread violence and death. The current wave of communal killings in India is a tragic example. Muslims have been put to death in Gujrat in large numbers in a ghastly manner also subjected to economic boycott increasing the hardships of far more of them.

In Sri Lanka there has been the protracted civil war between the Sinhalese led government and the Tamils which now seems heading for a solution. In Nepal there has been a protracted murderous conflict between the government and Maoists which claims a large number of lives each week.

In Pakistan the sectarian strife has made many lives perish.

Until recently it was said that women would make better and more peaceful rulers. That view has changed following the number of wars women rulers have indulged in. Bangladesh provides a glaring example of two women who have ruled the country alternately against each other and never made peace between themselves. So the Bangladesh economy suffers and the poor suffer far more.

Crimes are on the increase in each country largely due to poverty. Too often the women are the worst victims of such prolonged and grinding poverty. In such conditions of abject poverty, it is no use talking of GDP growth of each country. That does not reflect the increase in population and maldistribution of the new wealth, to add to the old inequities. More realistic will be per capita income growth which accommodates the population growth, though not the maldistribution of the new wealth and some times the further impoverishment of the very poor.

If Pakistan’s per capita income is taken into account in dollars it has come down in five years from 475 to 425 dollars because of poor economic growth, increase in population and fall in the external value of the rupee until recently. No wonder there was doubling of the number of poor within ten years in the 1990s, which is now sought to be redressed by direct financial assistance to a number of the poor through Zakat, food stamps etc.

The poor are now told by the agents of the World Bank and IMF they are less poor than they seem as the purchasing power of their rupee is far more than earnings in the West. But for the man engulfed in a survival economy or who lives on a dollar a day or less, that brings no relief at all. The purchasing power parity of the rupee may bring some relief to the middle class, or middle class income groups, but not to the poorest and the unemployed who commit suicide after prolonged unemployment.

The finance and planning ministers of SAARC have met three times in the past. And they are to meet again next year in Sri Lanka to finalise the modalities for implementing their decisions taken in Islamabad. But they cannot achieve any great results unless the top leaders of SAARC meet at a summit long before that and grapple with the issues identified.

The summit has to agree on reducing mutual tension and conflicts, particularly possible military conflicts or fearsome face-off. They have to agree on reducing force levels and in cutting down their huge military expenditure. Such expenditure takes the bread off the mouth of the poor and milk off the mouths of babies.

But the Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee is not ready to meet the Pakistan president. And if they do meet at a SAARC summit he would not discuss bilateral issues however important or urgent. In the light of such obduracy the excellent decisions by the finance ministers at Islamabad last week have small significance.

The finance ministers have decided to make a great many collective demands on Western countries. They want the rich countries to check the flight of illegal capital from the SAARC region to their banks and persons from the region living there with their illegal deposits from here to be brought to justice.

They want the member states of the rich Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) to raise their aid level to the developing countries to 0.7 per cent of their GDP, as resolved by the UN General Assembly instead of the US giving 0.1 per cent and Britain 0.2 per cent, which they intend to increase only marginally now.

They want the donors to come up with debt relief and debt swap for social sector development for SAARC states.

Finance minister Shaukat Aziz says the rich countries would be asked to make legislation directing their commercial banks to frame rules against the illegal flight of capital from this region. He says the donor states would be asked to give financial relief to the SAARC region on the lines of that given to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries as this region deserved and needed such assistance.

The SAARC states also propose to make a reality of the South Asia Free Trade Zone. How can we ask for greater market access to other countries when we deny that ourselves to other SAARC states? But progress in this area has proved to be tough, particularly between India and Pakistan because of Pakistan’s apprehensions.

The SAARC states also propose an institutional mechanism to check corrupt practices in trade. And that is essential not only for the region but also each country where malpractices in trade are too common. What kind of institutional mechanism the countries will come up with individually and then work together jointly, remains to be seen. It is not an easy option.

Mr Shaukat Aziz has also spoken of the need for fiscal discipline in all areas in the SAARC states and the need to pursue prudent macro-economic policies to reduce poverty.

The package that the SAARC seeks from the rich countries covers debt relief, debt swaps for financing social sector development, far larger assistance and at vastly concessional rates, if not as outright grants, greater market access to the West and prevention of flight of capital illegally from the region to the West. That means such steps need not only official initiatives but also non-official cooperation, like those of banks and investment institutions.

Such assistance will be forthcoming, and in a large measure, and on liberal terms, only if the donors are sure the aid is being put to the best use and is producing the promised results. If instead they find a great deal of our resources are going to the arms to use against each other or on large standing armies on which too much is spent or on bloated bureaucracies, large aid will not he forthcoming. And if there is maladministration instead of good governance, along with thriving corruption, foreign aid will be small and come up with tough conditionalities.

THE current acute crisis in the Middle East might ultimately again be resolved adversely for the Palestinian cause, if indeed a higher degree of adversity can be imagined over the existing circumstances. Israel, backed by American military and financial power, has already demolished the physical symbols of the Palestinian Authority.

But the Palestinians have actually dealt Israel and the Bush administration a political and moral defeat, although the official and media spin here is somewhat different. The mere fact that the US administration had to finally agree to let Secretary of State Colin Powell meet Yasser Arafat, whom Powell’s boss had done everything to discredit and humiliate, is a victory.

Arafat’s decision to remain in Ramallah amidst the ruins of his headquarters rather than go out and agree not to return has made him a hero in the eyes of most Palestinians. Differences within the Palestinian Authority on domestic policy and issues of governance have been set aside, and even Arafat critics like Hanan Ashrawi have rallied to their leader’s side. This again is a victory for the Palestinians.

So much has been said in obituaries about Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother about her resolve to stay on in Buckingham Palace and in London during the Nazi blitz on Britain and how her resolve inspired the British. In his own way, Arafat has done the same for Palestinian morale while under savage attack from the Israeli war machine.

The energy and effort put into staging a pro-Israel rally in DC on Monday (for which mainstream media gave wide publicity) alone show how Jewish groups feel that public support in America for Israel may have been flagging after its attack on Palestinian refugee camps and towns, particularly the murder of civilians in Jenin — where the scene has been described by the International Red Cross as “horrendous” — and needs to be resurrected. This was a patent effort by the moneyed Israeli lobby to warn the Bush administration against any change in its pro-Israel policy, a reminder hardly needed in view of the perception that the Republican Party too has come to believe that being pro-Israel rather than being pro-Arab serves America’s strategic interests better.

Israel did the worst it could in the existing circumstances. The Bush administration backed its “right to self defence” and gave it time to take its bloody reprisals as far as it could. President George Bush described Ariel Sharon, widely known as the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, as a “man of peace”. But ultimately the administration had to take a turn in its policy and call for an Israeli withdrawal from territories re-occupied by Israel in the past three weeks.

This is a moral and political victory for the Palestinians, achieved, sadly, through the loss of scores of precious civilian lives. It should be remembered that the US has also been forced to accept the Palestinian formulation that a ceasefire must be implemented in tandem with the start of a political process leading to a solution of the basic problem.

There has been another small shift in America’s Middle East policy that has been talked about in the media here but never put into proper context or depicted as a change in direction. Before meeting Arab leaders, Secretary Powell met the foreign ministers of Russia and the European Union and has since expressed himself as not averse to the idea of an international or a regional conference on the Middle East.

Previously such suggestions were dismissed with disdain, but now the US wants to involve other countries in the search for a Middle East settlement, conscious also no doubt of the need to build a coalition here as well if it wants eventually to attack Iraq and unseat Saddam Hussein. The focus on the Middle East has already pushed Osama bin Laden and the so-called war on terrorism into the background, and that is not something that President Bush would particularly have welcomed.

VENEZUELA: Another policy reversal has been forced on the administration by the turn of events in Venezuela. The Bush administration and the state department could hardly hide their relief at the military’s ouster of President Hugo Chavez, whom they did not like. The state department statement was careful not to express the administration’s feelings too openly after the coup, but nowhere did it condemn the military’s overthrow of a democratically elected leader (as it had done in the case of the ouster of Nawaz Sharif, for instance).

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer hoped that “the situation (now) will be one of tranquillity and democracy”. Washington’s reaction was in contrast to that of Mexico, a close US ally, and several other Latin American countries that denounced the coup as an illegal overthrow of an elected government.

The Bush administration justified the coup on the basis of violent clashes that had occurred during a general strike and mass demonstration organized by big business and the leadership of some trade unions. Some 16 people were killed on April 11, a day before the coup, in clashes between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez demonstrators. It was not till the interim leader announced that he was suspending the constitution and disbanding parliament that the US called for a return to democratic processes in the Organization of American States statement that it signed.

When Chavez was restored to power, what did Washington say? That it hoped that the Venezuelan leader had learnt a lesson from the week’s events and would rule differently. The White House said Chavez should respond to the wishes of the people who want democracy and reform. “The Chavez administration has an opportunity to respond to this message and correct its course and govern in a fully democratic manner.”

America’s major newspapers had also welcomed the coup — a military coup, remember —, although expressing the hope that the military rulers would soon return Venezuela to a true democratic order. So, red faces all around. Venezuela is America’s third largest supplier of oil, and Chavez, with his left-leaning, socialist policies and his friendship with Fidel Castro of Cuba, was a disliked figure in Washington. Major American oil companies had also targeted Chavez because of his resistance to the privatization of the state-owned oil sector. He had denounced the US bombing of Afghanistan while condemning the terror attacks on New York and Washington. He had also played a strong role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in concert with Iran and Iraq, part of Bush’s “axis of evil”.

There have been suspicions that the US might have encouraged the anti-Chavez coup. The World Socialist Website (WSW), admittedly not a friend of the US establishment, has pointed out that there was an open destabilization campaign because of pressure from the Bush administration and by the International Monetary Fund and major financial houses. Since then, the administration has admitted that it had contacts with Venezuelan opposition leaders and military men beginning from December last year, but insists that nowhere in the discussions it advocated an anti-Chavez coup. But a cloud of suspicion hangs over the discussions, as questions at Tuesday’s White House briefing alone showed.

Ironically, WSW points out, the military remains Chavez’s primary constituency and he has always heavily relied on sections of the armed forces to run his government, and it will again be the vote of the general staff that will decide the fate of his resurrected government. As they say in novels, any resemblance between some of the events described above and conditions in Pakistan or elsewhere should be seen as being purely coincidental.