Idealism & pragmatism

MANY commentators have advised General Musharraf to step down after the October elections and transfer power to the resulting government. They have tried to allure him with the promise that this course of action would assure him a place of honour in the annals of our history. He has proved to be much too clever, and determined, to be distracted by such talk.

In his address on April 5 the general chided the intellectuals and their kin for their excess of idealism, and asked them to be realistic, pragmatic, and mindful of ground realities. He assured the nation that he was unalterably committed to the maturing and stabilizing of democracy in Pakistan, but this democracy must have some correspondence with our indigenous social and cultural environment.

We cannot force the general to change his mind. If we are to reason with him, we may have better luck if we speak to him in his own language. Let us then be pragmatic. Without becoming overly philosophical, we may consider pragmatism to mean that, while establishing goals, policymakers should remain cognizant of the likely availability of the relevant means. But note that the supply of means is not to be regarded as rigidly fixed. If that were the case, no improvement would ever be possible.

The same holds for “ground realities.” These, too, are not to be taken as engraved in stone. Changing the existing realities is the purpose of all reform. No reform is possible without ideals; they provide the direction that reformist policies and action are to take. We may then conclude that the general is mistaken if he thinks that the realms of the desirable and the possible, idealism and realism, must always be mutually exclusive or antagonistic. In real life they go together, drawing upon each other. We don’t have to forsake one or the other. We only have to guard against excess in invoking them.

What are, according to the general, the ground realities we must confront in assessing his plans? There is first the retarded state of our political culture, whose propensity to incoherence and corruption must be controlled. Second, the army chief is one of the main centres of political power-the “power brokers” as he calls them — in the country; the other two being the president and the prime minister. He is no longer content with playing this role covertly. He wants it to be recognized openly and legitimated.

The third ground reality is the general’s determination to remain in office for five years following the election. Nothing will be gained by telling him how relaxing life in retirement can be. He won’t go. Fourth, the Supreme Court has authorized him to amend the Constitution. Note also that the Constitution is not currently operative; it is being held in abeyance. Not as a reality, but as an imperative of good governance, the general emphasizes the primacy of the public interest in all government decisions and acts.

A question or two may be raised with regard to General Musharraf’s plans. The Constitution (Art. 48, VI) allows him to take a “matter of national importance” to the people in a referendum. Surely his continuance in office is such a “matter.” It should, however, be noted that the Constitution does not give the result of a referendum binding force. The referendum should not be confused with a presidential election. Under the existing law it is none of the people’s business to elect someone as the president of Pakistan. Before they can perform such a role some law empowering them to do so would have to be made. To date no such law has been made. The Chief Executive’s order no. 12 of 2002 will not do. For the “democratic mandate” to serve as president to which it refers is not the same as an election.

The result of the referendum will express the people’s preference for, or their rejection of, a proposed course of action. An affirmative vote will not make Musharraf president for a period of five years. It will do no more than provide a moral justification for further enabling action, such as a constitutional amendment appointing him president with effect from a given day. (Recall Zia-ul-Haq’s precedent.)

It is probable that any amendments to the Constitution the general makes will remain effective until they are repealed, and I doubt that they could be repealed with retrospective effect. In other words, the general could remain secure in his office even if his continuance has been accomplished through a constitutional amendment. The same may not, however, apply to the amendments that authorize the structural changes he wants to make. On the other hand, it is likely that any attempt to oust him, or to undo his work, will create a huge crisis that the next parliament may not want to invite.

General Musharraf has identified the furthering of democracy, and the primacy of the public interest, as two of his highest priorities. He wants to institute checks and balances to ensure stable, honest, and competent governance. In his address of April 5 he gave us assurances that do not seem to go well together. The prime minister, he said, would be the head of the executive, and he would have all the power needed to run the country’s affairs. But while the general is president, the prime minister “dare” not engage in corruption, distort the institutions of governance, or do anything to the detriment of the public interest. The president would stop him.

He went on to assure us that he was not lusty of power, and that he did not believe in sharing power. Any relief that we may have felt upon hearing him say this did not last a moment, for he added that, being a soldier, he believed in the “unity of command.” This is bad news. Taken together these two propositions mean that, as president, the general wants to be able to guide the prime minister every step of the way. Others will say that he wants to subordinate the prime minister to his own preferences and whims.

In its present form the Constitution does now allow the president the large supervisory role he seems to desire. Nor does it contemplate a body like the National Security Council. It will have to be amended to make room for them. The general says that, as of this time, he has not made up his mind about the amendments he wants to make, and that he will consult us, the people, before coming to a decision. This means that there is still time for us to reason with him.

The general says the British model does not suit our “environment.” If so, which way do we go? Common sense will tell us that the office of the prime minister should carry real functions and effective authority to perform them. Under our present Constitution the president must follow the prime minister’s advice in all matters. Musharraf thinks this is not right. If he feels he must have the final decision making authority in certain policy areas-for instance, defence and foreign affairs-then he can amend the Constitution to provide that in those areas the prime minister will act according to the president’s advice. But his supervisory role should not cover the whole range of governmental business. For then the prime minister will surely have been made redundant, and no man of competence and honour, who also has public support, will want the office.

In thinking about the NSC the general seems to have two purposes in mind. First, it will resolve crises within the system of governance without the president having to dismiss the prime minister and the assemblies or the army having to take over the government through a coup. Second, since the army chief is in fact a “power broker,” along with the president and the prime minister, his role should be openly accepted and formalized, and this will be done through the NSC.

Wise men and women have told our generals repeatedly that the army should mind its own business, that it should not want to be a participant in the general conduct of government, and that such participation will bring about its own ruin. But they have ignored this advice. Their insistence on participation in the settling of “crises,” and in the making of high policy, has become one of our “ground realities.” No president in recent memory has removed a government without the army chief’s concurrence.

Closer examination of General Musharraf’s statements may reveal that he wants a lot more than participation. He has announced that he will retain the office of the chief of the army staff as well as the office of the president after the October elections. Whatever the reasons behind this plan, it will enable him to personify two of the three “power brokers” in our political system. Considering that he will be holding a gun in addition to two of the three votes in the brokerage, the prime minister will be in no position to act as an equal partner in the decision making process.

The general wants checks and balances in the interaction between the three power brokers. But to date we have not heard of checks that will restrain the army chief. He seems to be moving toward a system in which the army, represented by its chief, will have a predominant role in determining what the national interest and its dictates in given situations may be. Could it be that he wants supremacy more than he wants checks and balances? If so, that will negate his declared intention to nurture and stabilize democracy.

Referendum: gain & loss

IN the midst of a political campaign more intense than ever conducted by a politician, General Musharraf should pause to assess its gain or loss — his own, of his administration and, incidentally, also of the people.

The skeptics say it has been an all round loss for all the three. They pat themselves on the back as their ranks swell with every blurt of a governor or the police impounding a bus.

Those sceptical about the referendum were dismissed as dishonest or disruptionist by General Musharraf at the very outset. Governor Maqbul summoned his police to beat up the scribes among the skeptics for he did not approve of their audience count.

The skeptics go by the creed of the apostle of skepticism, Pyrroh, the Greek philosopher (360-272 BC) that equal arguments can be offered on both sides of any proposition; search for absolute certainty, or truth, is a vain endeavour; and a judgment based on perceptions must give way to reality.

The Punjab governor should have waited for the reality to emerge before picking up his baton. So should have Musharraf’s advisers who, differing with the skeptics, perceive the referendum to be the ultimate answer to the woes of the people and, more important, their own urge for power.

President Musharraf was admired even by his detractors for keeping the press free though he nursed a grievance that it did not reciprocate by being fair to him.

He expected support for his regime in return for the freedom of expression. That wasn’t a legitimate expectation yet he received courtesy for his person if not endorsement of his tactics and policy.

The president’s first loss is, thus, obvious and enormous. A friendly, if not always supportive, press has become hostile. The wounds of the reporters must irresistibly show up in the bias of their future dispatches. The crowd numbers will become still smaller and their response cooler. The world watchdogs of press freedom will sit up and scowl. The country’s ranking in civil liberties will take another dive.

Alongside the press hostility comes the hardship caused to the people by the transports snatched and roads blocked for security. It is a normal practice in crowd herding with which the people and the transporters alike have learnt to put up. But it has been carried a bit too far this time round.

The reports from Gujranwala and Multan that almost every public vehicle was impounded 24 hours ahead of the meetings there on Wednesday and Friday must have set a new benchmark in police high-handedness and inconvenience to the people. Coming from a convivial Pervez Musharraf it has also caused surprise and hurt. That is his image loss.

While the police takes away vehicles by force it always promises to pay but seldom does for it never has enough money even for its own. It is therefore compelled to pay back in favours. The defective vehicles are declared fit to ply disregarding all rules of safety and decency. So, it should not enrage Musharraf when he next sees chaos and mayhem on the roads. It is the transporters exacting their price from the public for the services rendered to the administration.

That is what the people have come to believe is the police-transport mafia collaboration at their cost. They expected it to end, not strengthen further under Musharraf.

The president is asking for five more years in office chiefly on two counts. First, the reforms he has introduced are not reversed; and, secondly, a system of checks and balances is introduced in governance through constitutional changes. The only change, or reform, he has put on the ground is the district government and the councils below it for “good governance and effective delivery of services.”

The referendum campaign has all but subverted that purpose. Under diverse pressures from the administration and the political parties to which the nazim and his deputy owe allegiance every council has become a house divided against itself.

Some nazims are spearheading the referendum campaign, others are indifferent, some are opposing it. The nazim of Karachi had gone to Beijing to study,amusingly, its levitated monorail when his own city doesn’t have even a regular bus service. His deputy is supporting the referendum. In the soon-to-be expected tussle for power between the two, the winner will not be good governance but political expediency. The development and welfare of the people is once again left to the remnants of the same old bureaucracy, which the NRB determined, must disappear for it was rooted in the “feudal-imperial system.”

In Musharraf’s local government scheme, the nazim heads the administration and the police is answerable to him for law and order. The question that arises is: will the police take orders from a nazim who, according to press reports, is himself being “taken to task” for opposing the referendum at the behest of his party? The danger is that the local councils will be judged, as they were under the political system, for their allegiance to the power that be, and not by their performance.

The other “reforms” the president says he needs five more years to protect — checks on arbitrary power and religious extremism — haven’t yet gone beyond the declaration of intent. The legality of the referendum wouldn’t have been doubted and the justification for it would have been greater had the president gone to the people with the constitutional amendments (the Supreme Court has given him that power) he has in mind to give effect to his ideas. Alongside he could have asked for a term to enforce the amendments. It could still be done by postponing the referendum by a month or so. The tension will lessen and court petitions will abate.

The suppressed skeptics and the silent majority would have been then motivated to leave their homes to vote. The fear haunting them now is that in the strains caused by a low turn- out, or rigged referendum, it all might go back to the power bargaining counter where militancy and rhetoric have always overwhelmed sanity and moderation. Extremism in politics and religion thus may stay on as the central elements in Pakistan’s public life.

Au revoir to soft money

I WAS walking by the Capitol the other day when I saw a bedraggled man holding a paper cup. I thought at first that he was a homeless person. But as I looked more closely I realized that he was a congressman.

He held up his cup and said, “I need money for my election. It’s the last chance I have.”

“Hard money or soft?” I asked.

“I prefer soft money since Congress has ruled I have to stop asking for it after this election. Like everyone in Washington, I’m running against the clock.”

“By mentioning soft money, you are of course, referring to money donated by corporations, associations and unions who have no alternative but to pay their dues to the party of their choice.”

As we were talking, a man came by and threw coins into the cup.

“God bless you,” the congressman said.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“He’s a well known lobbyist. He always gave me soft money, but the good days are almost over. That’s why I’m begging in the street.”

“Why is soft money so important to the political system?” I asked.

He replied, “Soft money is the mother’s milk of politics. If someone gave you soft money you knew he was a good guy, and if he didn’t, you assumed he was a cheapskate who didn’t care about honest government.”

“Was the money you collected from Enron good money or bad?”

“It was good money until someone looked at their books. I took as much soft money from them as I could without any strings attached.

“Then I found out they were bad guys and, like every congressman, I was fit to be tied. Their soft money was so soft you could play handball with it against Vice President Cheney’s garage.”

“When did you get suspicious that the good guys at Enron were bad guys?”

“When the good guys took the Fifth so they would not blow the whistle on themselves.” A lady walked by and asked the congressman if he had change for a five-dollar bill.

“Yes, ma’am.” he said. “Just call me if you want me to go into the tank.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s the spokeswoman for the National Paper Shredding Association. She always gives to the people who are in need. She is going to have to figure out a plan to get around the new restrictions.”

As she walked away, the congressman said, “Bless you, kind lady.”

I asked how the people raised soft money.

“We had all sorts of committees that were willing to share the spoils with us. We formed the Clean Government and Freedom for All Club, the Yankee Doodle Dandy Get Out the Vote League, and the If It Doesn’t Hurt, You Haven’t Given Enough Friends of the Round Table.”

There was a quorum vote in the House, so the congressman had to go inside. He handed me his paper cup and asked me to hold his space for him so none of the other impoverished congressmen would take it. He said, “When it comes to soft money, it’s every man for himself.” —Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Why Sonia is BJP’s insurance policy: NOTES FROM DELHI

MOST political leaders consider themselves utterly fortunate if they can become indispensable to one political party. Sonia Gandhi has achieved the impossible. She has become indispensable to two political parties. The Congress as well as the BJP.

Fourteen Congress chief ministers gathered in Guwahati with the singular purpose of singing hosannas to their choice of heir to Atal Behari Vajpayee. On the other side of India, in Goa, Mr Vajpayee took up the challenge and opened the campaign for the next general election. Take my word for it. His gamble was protected by insurance. The BJP’s insurance policy is called Sonia Gandhi.

The BJP has dared its allies in the National Democratic Alliance to break ranks and join a coalition with Sonia Gandhi. An alliance with the Congress would be easy for most of the partners of the ruling NDA. Old enmities have melted in the heat of new fires.

Let Sonia Gandhi mention today that she is not interested in becoming prime minister and in less than a week there will be either a different BJP or an alternative coalition in power in Delhi. After Gujarat, even George Fernandes’ Samata Party would split if Mr Fernandes remained loyal to the BJP in such circumstances. But the BJP knows that the prime ministership is a non-negotiable item on Sonia Gandhi’s agenda. She would much prefer Atal Behari Vajpayee to remain prime minister if she cannot get the job herself.

That was Sonia Gandhi’s obstinate insistence in the old dark days of “272” (you have to lisp that to get it properly right). The confidence behind that itch has increased with fourteen states in the Congress fold. So the BJP can sit back and watch its partners in power squirming around a paradox: the stronger Sonia Gandhi feels, the weaker she actually gets.

Is this aversion to Sonia Gandhi personal? If it is, it is wrong. Why should, therefore, potential allies of the Congress make Sonia Gandhi into an issue; why not leave it to the Congress to decide whom it wants as leader? The answer is simple. Because she is not of Indian origin. She is an Italian. A passport, acquired fairly late in life, and much after it could have been done, does not make you an Indian. Her daughter Priyanka is an Indian, but not Sonia.

Each time both speak they prove this. Sonia Gandhi does not know a single Indian language; more categorically, she does not think in Indian. What does she think she is going to do as prime minister? Speak to Indians in a kind of English that even the English would consider foreign?

A prime minister has to communicate, constantly, with the people. Sonia Gandhi has no ability to do that. She and her party answer that by pointing out the famous fourteen, the 14 states where the Congress is in power.

That is only a technical fact. While we should not make more out of this than necessary, it remains pertinent that in her preferred province, Uttar Pradesh, Sonia Gandhi lost in her own constituency, Amethi during the last Assembly elections, in which the BJP got hammered. The question today is where the country stands over its minority Muslim population.

That is the challenge thrown before every political leader, every political party, and every Indian. That is what the next general election will be fought on. Those who think the answer can be written in black and white fool themselves. The wisest of India’s political leaders Jawaharlal Nehru appreciated the complexity only after he had been defeated in his passionate quest to preserve the unity of India from the divisive rhetoric of the Muslim League. There are sleeping passions everywhere; which spark will light up which corner of the mind and the heart (the heart can be more dangerous than the mind, when it become vengeful) is an open question. The biggest challenge is obviously before the Indian National Congress because it claims to believe in all three of the words that make up its name. It must decide on a critical point: is Sonia Gandhi an asset or a liability for the party in this debate?

This is a moment, I believe, although I can only depend on a hunch rather than evidence, when even a Jawaharlal Nehru might have thought of stepping aside for a Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, if Patel could carry the Congress argument more convincingly. But in order to think like that you have to place the country’s interests above your own. The BJP is confident that Sonia Gandhi will never do that. That is the BJP’s insurance policy. So far Sonia Gandhi has been taunting the BJP with the prospect of elections. After Goa, the BJP is taunting Sonia Gandhi with an election date, not just in Gujarat but also in the country. The BJP would have been much more reluctant to take on a Congress led by Narasimha Rao in such a debate. But the situation is qualitatively different now.

A Narasimha Rao could even form an alternative coalition in this parliament, and turn the Lok Sabha into what it should be on occasion, the court of the people for the people. Sonia Gandhi’s staccato phrases in an unfamiliar idiom will not serve. The Congress needs a leader who can think on his feet, not one whose thoughts have been written out for her in large type. No Congressman will tell her this, but the thought of Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister interferes with an Indian’s notions of self-respect.

Indian Muslims are today shattered by Mr Vajpayee’s speech in Goa. Part of the reason is that they were comforted by that analogy of the mask. As prime minister Mr Vajpayee made that mask into a strategy and a policy, placing himself in between the Hindutva passions that flared up repeatedly in his own ranks; to use an analogy, he saw himself as the mortal Shiva who had to drink the poison to prevent it from spreading into the body politic.

This was the man whose thoughts on a holiday in Kerala two years ago influenced the agenda of the nation, and dismayed the Hindutva brigade that wondered why it had made him prime minister. Something snapped somewhere. Perhaps it was the personal accusation that he had become a sponsor of Hindutva policies rather than a bulwark against them. Only he can say what happened, and what made him sweep every Muslim under the pockmarked fundamentalist carpet.

The real question before us is not what impact Vajpayee’s speech has made upon Indian Muslims, but the impact it has made upon Indian Hindus. We have to understand the Vajpayee phenomenon coolly, without the traditional invective that so often passes for anti-establishment courage, and is therefore totally counter-productive.

An image has been created, perhaps consciously, that Vajpayee is the BJP’s Nehru. This may have some truth to it, but it obscures the larger truth. Atal Behari Vajpayee is actually the BJP’s Jinnah, not Nehru. I say this as a compliment, not a criticism. We have demonized Jinnah so much because of Partition, that we do not understand what his career truly represented.

The most damaging aspect of Hindu-Muslim relations in India is an untruth, but that does not make it less potent. This is the charge of appeasement. A growing number of Hindus, and you can include among them people who may never vote for the BJP, believe that Muslims can “get away” with anything while secular and democratic India provides no space for Hindu response or anger. The most important reason for this is that the face of Muslim opinion, in public life and media, is occupied by the most communal and sordid elements of the community. I certainly do not want to categorize the ulema into a single negative phrase, because they are not all evil. Equally, they are not the real representatives of the Muslims on secular and political matters.

When Sonia Gandhi wants “Muslim” leaders she gives a ticket to a man who used to abuse her husband mercilessly through his beard, and spread communalism through his beady eyes. Even the thought of her assassinated husband did not prevent her from compromising with Obaidullah Azmi. Some of the shaven faces in the so-called Muslim leadership are little better.

Shahabuddin has been conducting a campaign of communal divide for nearly twenty years now, and the acid he smears on the ground still spreads anger among Hindus. Where is the Muslim leadership that has spoken of education and reform and economic progress? It is as if the only problems that Indian Muslims have is the fate of a Shia mosque at which no one prayed; or insistence on a discriminatory law against old widows.

Jawaharlal Nehru had an effective observation for this syndrome: majority communalism, he said, was far more dangerous than minority communalism because majority communalism could lead to fascism. Minority communalism could only be dangerous, he implied. But there are no Nehrus anymore, and communalism of both varieties has escalated to a level that Nehru and Patel could never have imagined. They lived through Partition, remember, so their imagination was not totally innocent; they had seen horrors their fathers could never have imagined. Each time it gets worse.

Jinnah never fully understood the consequences of what he was doing; and when he got his Pakistan he did not reject what he created, but he did wonder, publicly, whether it would work as he would have wanted it to. Jinnah wanted Pakistan to become a Muslim version of secular India.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.