GENERAL Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto, Qazi Husain Ahmad, editors and columnists at Dawn and elsewhere — persons of different backgrounds and persuasions — have one common desire: they all want democracy. Not some fake look-alike, but the real, genuine one. But they do not necessarily agree on its purpose, form, mechanics, and procedures.

In their own day Stalin and Mao claimed that their Marxist-Leninist systems of rule were truly democratic. The Islamic parties in Pakistan insist that their model of democracy (the details of which remain obscure) is really the correct one. But a great many people in this country are not inclined to accept that claim. It is likely that when they speak of democracy, they have a specific western model, or a mix of western models, in mind.

According to a well-known aphorism, democracy is government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Sounds great; but not entirely true. All good government — be it monarchy, aristocracy, or “polity” (Aristotle’s distinctions) — is government for the people. “Government of the people” is essentially a decorative expression without any settled meaning. They have the “people’s” government in China, but the “people” have little to do with its working. Great Britain is a democracy but its government is the Queen’s government, and its people are called her “loyal subjects,” not citizens.

The third part of the aphorism would appear to be the crux of the matter. A system of governance is a democracy if the people have some significant measure of participation in deciding upon the laws under which they will live, the taxes they will pay, and the subjects upon which the public revenues thus created will be spent. The exact measure and forms of their participation vary.

In the small towns of America’s New England states (with populations, let us say, around 500) all local government regulations and other decisions are still made by assemblies in which all citizens may participate. Called “direct democracy” it is, according to some democratic theorists (notably Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson) the purest form of democracy, and the closer a political system is to this form, the more desirable it is. Resort to representatives is to be had because the citizens’ direct and personal participation becomes unfeasible when the government’s territorial jurisdiction, and/or the number of citizens involved, is large as is the case in big cities and at the state and national levels. But even in these larger jurisdictions some American states allow citizens to “recall” (meaning dismiss) an elected official if they are dissatisfied with his work.

The forms and measure of popular participation in governmental decision-making may vary from one democracy to the next. Yet, they all conform to certain basic rules of the game. They provide for periodic elections in which the people choose those who will make laws and those responsible for ensuring that these laws are implemented. The representatives are expected to serve the people’s interest honestly and to the best of their ability. They are accountable to the people, who may dismiss them at the next election if their performance has not been satisfactory. Election of representatives and their accountability to the electors are the two indispensable ingredients of democracy. What else?

The primacy of the people’s representatives in governmental decision-making, within constitutional limits, is essential if the political system is to be called a democracy. It is this primacy that the seekers of “real” democracy in Pakistan want to establish and which the sceptics (generals and bureaucrats) want to circumscribe. The latter fear that, left to their own devices, the representatives will become shirkers and plunderers because our political culture has not taught them any better.

Is this fear well founded? General Musharraf says democracy in Pakistan must make adjustments to our social and cultural “environment.” That sounds sensible. We should then ask what we as a people are like with reference to the essentials of good governance, namely, honesty, justice and fair play, keeping of covenants, dedication to duty, respect for the law, tolerance of the dissident, cherishing of the public domain, and primacy of the public interest.

It is often said that not only our politics but our society at large is “corrupt”, meaning that the virtues just mentioned do not inform even inter-personal or private transactions to any great degree. In the absence of reliable data, it would not be useful to press this point. But we do know it for a fact that many of our representatives do not allow these virtues to guide their official conduct. Can they then be relied upon to let democracy work in a reasonably satisfactory manner?

The answer is that nowhere can they be left entirely unchecked. Speakers on both sides of the aisle will agree that those engaged in the business of pursuing and exercising power must be controlled. They differ on what exactly the controls should be and from where they should come. One well-known solution to this problem is that the centres of power in a polity should be controlled by an internal system of mutual checks and balances, supplemented by public opinion as a court of last resort.

The efficacy of these levers of control is not in dispute. In Pakistan observers, and interested parties, differ as to the identity of the legitimate centres of power. According to General Musharraf they do, and should, include the prime minister, the president, and the army chief. This, he says, is the “ground reality” and it will be counterproductive to ignore it. His opponents argue that this reality is in the nature of an aberration, and that it should be removed.

This debate is taking place in the context of a system of parliamentary government to which both sides profess to be committed. Let it be said first that the army chief has no business here. In no established democracy in the world, whether parliamentary or presidential, is the chief of the army staff recognized as a centre of political power. In our case he claims this status because, encouraged by the relative weakness of other power centres, he has gotten into a bad habit. One of our top agenda items must then be to figure out a way of making him break this habit.

In most of the ongoing parliamentary systems the president is limited to ceremonial functions and may take substantive action only in crisis situations, such as that of a breakdown of government. If his functions are to include exercise of substantive authority, and if he is to be an effective participant in the operation of checks and balances, he should be directly elected by the people so as to have democratic credentials analogous to those of the prime minister. As a weaker alternative, the constitution might allow him predominance in certain specified matters. But if he is to remain a symbolic head of state, limited to ceremonial functions, he is not any kind of a power centre at all. The role of a balancer is then not open to him.

It should be noted that normally parliamentary government does not admit of checks and balances, because here the parliament is supreme. Checks on the chief executive will come from within the system itself (cabinet colleagues, committees, parliamentary opposition), organs of civil society, and the public at large. In Pakistan these “checkers” are all under-developed. What is then to be done?

The issue goes beyond the doings of a prime minister and his cabinet colleagues. Far too many politicians — members of representative assemblies — are both indolent and corrupt. They are ready to take bribes, embezzle funds, and use their influence in high places for personal gain. We have all heard of “horse trading,” which is one of the principal causes of governmental instability. The deeper reason for this state of affairs is that neither the people nor their representatives entertain a high regard for the public domain and its interest. In our culture, cheating the government, making money at the public’s expense, and acting otherwise outside the law have never been considered particularly reprehensible.

One reason for our political decrepitude may be that, except for about thirty out of more than two thousand years of our history, we have not been a self-governing people. Government in our experience was not something to be regarded as our own. Since it was mostly an oppressor, our attitude towards it came to be, and remained, adversarial. Getting the better of it in our dealings with it was then surely not anything dishonourable.

Wise indeed are those who maintain that the way to improve the working of democracy in our country is to let it operate for an extended period of time. As we gain more experience of governing ourselves, we as a people and our representatives will learn to value the public domain and place the public interest above individual self-interest. As that happens, our politics will become cleaner and orderly.

If in course of time we have working institutions of representative government based on free and fair elections regularly held, and established ways of holding our rulers accountable to the people for their performance, well then, we will have democracy that is real enough. In the end it will bear emphasis that if democracy in our land does not meet our professed expectations, because we as a people are not righteous enough, it is still much more desirable than military rule. If General Musharraf is good and true and honest, that is an accident of history. It cannot, however, be said that all of the colonels and generals he has planted in government are the same way. Nor can we rely upon history to continue producing similar “accidents” after he has eventually gone away.

THE campaign and ballot for referendum has brought to the fore once again all the weaknesses of Pakistan’s society and the incredulity that surrounds its leaders, institutions and the media. Left wondering whom to believe, the honest folks determine: no one.

Looking at the statements and statistics dished up to them, the people cannot be blamed for their distrust. Here is a sample. According to the Election Commission, 43.39 million out of 61.90 million eligible voters had cast their votes (how the Commission has calculated the number of unregistered voters below 21 and above 18 years of age is not explained). The polling, thus, has been 70.09 per cent. Of that 42.02 million, or 92.23 per cent, voted for President Musharraf.

The PPP spokesman Raza Rabbani put the voter turn-out between two to six per cent with Shikarpur falling even below two. The government sources put the turn-out in Tharparkar at 95 per cent. Both figures stretch credulity to the breaking point for Shikarpur is the home of an emerging exuberant pro-Musharraf party, and Tharparkar is a vast desert inhabited sparsely by poor and nomadic low-cast Hindus. It is difficult to imagine even Switzerland, the birthplace of referendum, matching this feat or that of Dera Bugti, a fiefdom of its Nawab, where almost the entire adult population voted.

The chief election commissioner is Pakistan’s former Chief Justice. Raza Rabbani is a Supreme Court lawyer otherwise known as an officer of the court. Both are bound by the ethics and oath of their profession which is to help, not mislead, the people. Here you can imagine how duped and betrayed the people feel when they are told to believe a voter turnout with two per cent at one end and 70 at the other. They feel exasperated and cheated. And Musharraf has been telling them all along to trust him.

The Human Rights Commission has declared the referendum a farce. Its views are heard and respected world-wide. Our election commission shouldn’t ignore them either.

A clue closer to the truth came from minister Nisar Memon during the course of the ballot day. An affirmative vote even of 25 per cent, the minister thought, should suggest a resounding endorsement of Musharraf’s policies and ambitions. The minister recalled Nawaz Sharif’s “massive mandate” of 1997 which arose from polling just 16 per cent of the registered votes in a turn-out of 35 per cent. If that could give Nawaz the licence to amend the Constitution, to make the legislators his yes-men or lose their seats and foist a nonentity on the contrary as its president, surely a military commander unbridled by law or legislature could do much more with a 25 per cent or less popular vote.

In their estimates the political parties perhaps felt compelled to stay close to Zia-ul-Haq’s referendum. Then the turn-out officially exceeded 60 per cent. What the people observed and believed was less than 10 per cent. The Election Commission, on the other hand, it seems, felt like outbidding its predecessor of 1984 both in percentage and loyalty.

The truth lies somewhere between Raza Rabbani’s two per cent and election commission’s 70 per cent. Perhaps it was closer to Nisar Memon’s expectation of 25 per cent. If it was 25 heaved to 70, the election commission has done enormous damage to the country, its institutions, to General Musharraf himself and to the nazims and councillors who supervised the poll.

The declared turn-out of 70.09 per cent is unnatural for an uncontested vote anywhere. In the past party-based elections here the attendance had been much lower and falling. Touching the peak of 45 per cent in 1990, it slid to 40 in 1993 and to 35 in 1997. In this trend of waning interest even in contested party elections, a much lower turn-out should have given President Musharraf the popular credentials he was seeking.

In parliamentary elections the candidates and their parties invest effort and money in canvassing and helping the electorate. Whatever the standing or popularity of a candidate and his party, the contest for a national assembly seat is said to cost anywhere up to Rs 20 million on publicity, conveyance and victualling of the voters and polling agents.

If all that investment secures a voter attendance of no more than 35 to 40 per cent and a fraction of that could get a candidate into the parliament, it wouldn’t have been a bad bargain for Musharraf to be content with 25 per cent of the voters coming out for him on a sizzling summer day. The critics also would have acquiesced in it or at least their comments would have been less scathing. The election commission has given them a heyday.

In the elections to the assemblies after all the exertions of the candidates and parties, the scale is finally tilted by the support given, or denied, by the police, revenue, irrigation and other officials. That support is missing in a one-sided affair where the candidate is too high and far away to feel beholden to them. This time round there was no fear either for Musharraf’s enfant terrible NRB had destroyed the officialdom and its leading lights (AC, DC, Commissioner).

The “feudal-imperial remnants” of the Raj, as the NRB called them, may have lost sight of people’s welfare but still could have arranged the transition of generals into presidents.

The NRB and other cloistered advisers of the president betrayed inexperience in assuming that two hundred thousand nazims and councillors would constitute Musharraf’s formidable country-wide cadre to help him bring the people to the polls and drive the old politicians out. The fact lost sight of was that the nazims and councillors had their own political affiliations and future to protect. The Basic Democrats when the time came voted more for Miss Jinnah than for their own creator, Ayub Khan.

Having thrown the official machinery into disarray and before the benefit of his programme could reach the people (fundamentalism and unemployment continue to take their toll) MUsharraf was ill advised to seek the people’s vote to stay on for five more years. He decided to hold the referendum ignoring every independent and objective advice.

As in the case of “devolution of power to the grassroots” without involving the provinces, he was led by advisers into a referendum at a time when the hostile propaganda against him had reached a crescendo and relief for the people was nowhere in sight.

The referendum has caused much harm and no good to the country. It has earned Musharraf much adversity but no goodwill. To undo all that he has to start afresh. In that he should sense the public opinion. A hardened political culture is not changed just because the sycophants are applauding.

He tasted the hardness of it when his roaring public meeting at Karachi was followed by a peaceful but scarce ballot, then by arson, explosions and a complete strike. And all that happened within a week in a city he called his own.

The dust raised by the referendum will soon settle down. His career in public life will be determined not by its count nor by his “real democracy” but by the efforts he makes to eradicate violence and bring in prosperity.

WHICH of the two is funnier: a government flying off the handle, or an opposition soaring away on a flight of fancy? The colour of such humour is black, of course; but then we are no longer in control of our choice of entertainment. We have to live with what we have.

I am completely baffled by the inability of governments to appreciate a lesson as old as fable and as new as fact: you cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

You cannot put a monster into political play when you need it and then expect it to go back obediently to bed when you need to reappear with your respectable mask. You cannot get away with deception either.

Facts refuse to change when they become inconvenient. Moreover, the days when facts could be buried under various forms of pressure are over. I am not talking about a demarche from the European Union here; India has never lived behind any curtain, iron or bamboo, or indeed that horrifying curtain of European collusion and silence behind which the rape (the word is not a metaphor) of Bosnia continued for years before the Americans intervened.

India is a democracy in fact and spirit. It has media and civil institutions that rise to meet the challenge of oppression, using the power of honesty and conscience to shake the power of authority. A Gujarat awakens that conscience and suddenly even a dormant government institution on human rights discovers a soul. A retired police officer like Julio Ribeiro uses the weight of his reputation, the authority of his contribution to the nation’s fight against terrorism in Punjab to draw a line in Gujarat. NGOs move in to serve the afflicted and speak the truth that is being denied by ministers. The courts wait to lend their credibility to the cause of civilized values.

The multiple points of power in the spread of democracy come into play to protect the principles upon which democracy must rest in order to work. Democracy is not protected merely by the freedom to vote on one day in five years; democracy is the right to be free every day of your life, and the right to protest against oppression and barbarity whenever it happens, wherever it occurs. Indians will not let the truth of Narendra Modi’s Gujarat remain buried; that is the great strength of India.

It is too easy to blame the media, which is the classical response of any government, of whatever colour or dispensation it might be. The ploy is too trite to succeed. I may as well add, talking from the inside, that “media conspiracy” is an oxymoron. The only thing that editors really conspire about if they conspire at all is about one another. This may seem less dramatic than conspiring against government, but alas it is the truth. Editors do not hold cloak-and-dagger meetings and then, presto!, all headlines take a U-turn the next day. Each newspaper or television channel takes its own decision about how to handle a developing story.

If there is one thing that media people guard with extreme jealousy, it is their independence, and this includes independence within their own tribe as well. But media has to be sensitive to both the street as well as its own values. Frankly, there is no daily demand on the conscience of a media person, which is why you might get the impression so often that media does not have one. Maybe that is why governments get a shock when suddenly there is evidence of a conscience, and call it a conspiracy.

The politics of hatred cannot be switched on and off. It certainly cannot be stopped by the person who started it. That is the problem with the Narendra Modi administration. It has no credibility left. The truth may be bad enough; his image has become far worse than the truth.

You can keep him in office for as long as the BJP has a majority in the assembly, but he will not be able to run a government. Power is not the ability to give an order. Power is the ability to get an order obeyed.

Authority is dictatorship without a moral element, and Narendra Modi has no moral authority left. There is nothing secret about what he did; the world knows that the revenge-riots were ordered by him. It is true that a failure to protect law and order cannot be a reason these days for the removal of a chief minister; very few if any would survive such a principle. But we are not discussing weak administration in Gujarat; we are discussing maladministration, or power used for malice and deliberate, wanton terror. We are talking about state terrorism.

If the BJP does not remove Narendra Modi from Gujarat, then Narendra Modi will remove the BJP from Delhi. Indians, of all hues and religions, may at times get swayed by the powerful hypnotism of communal hatred, but India will never elect a government that permits the use of hate as policy.

The Congress response to this complex point in our history is curious. It has begun to behave as if it is already in power. One can discount the swagger in the step; any opposition force that marches into space vacated by the ruling party has the contemptuous bounce of a victor surprised by the enemy’s retreat. Other things cannot be as easily discounted.

The party has divided the country into two Indias, a Congress India, with its own council of chief ministers, and the unfortunate rest. Sonia Gandhi is the prime minister of Congress India and the rest of the country must oblige her with the status and protocol due to such eminence.

The conference of the Confederation of Indian Industries was indicative of this new approach. Mrs Sonia Gandhi would not play second fiddle. And so the outgoing president of the CII, Sanjeev Goenka, son of a Congress Rajya Sabha MP, R.P. Goenka, broke precedence and invited Mrs Gandhi to speak before the prime minister through a contrived plenum. Mrs Gandhi chose to underline her new eminence by announcing that the winds of change were blowing even through the CII, so everybody please take note and begin practising genuflections. After hearing the speech someone commented that the CII had been renamed the AICC, but we can ignore once again such disobedient humour.

We noted at the beginning of this column that no one had told Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. But he did know another proverb, which he conveyed to Sonia Gandhi at the newly-politicised CII: don’t count your chickens before they have hatched.

A national election is the sum total of regional moods. This was proved once again in the last general elections, when the wave that lifted the prime minister to power could not stop a BJP defeat in his own state, Uttar Pradesh. The Congress is sanguine that the 14 states where it is in power will ensure a majority for the party in the next parliament. Even mild political analysis exposes such naivete. Leave out Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and the number of parliament seats in the other dozen do not add up to the number sent by UP and Bihar alone. In all 14 states the Congress will pay the inevitable price of incumbency, and get fewer seats than it got in the last general elections.

In four decisive states where the Congress is not in power, UP, Bihar, Bengal and Tamil Nadu, it has no chance of winning. This means that the Congress is not in the picture in around 200 seats of the Lok Sabha. In Andhra Pradesh, where the Congress should win, the party is in familiar disarray. The most high-profile Congress MP from Andhra Pradesh, T. Subirami Reddy, who has just been rewarded by Sonia Gandhi with a Rajya Sabha ticket, has his own definition of a political party. For him a political party is something that happens at a five-star hotel. So where are the 272 Lok Sabha seats going to come from that will make Sonia Gandhi the next prime minister of India?

The BJP has recognized its weakness in Uttar Pradesh and done something about it. It has overruled its own regional leaders and come to terms with Mayawati. If this alliance holds in a general election, which of course is not certain at all, both will benefit. Instead of building her own alliances in UP, Sonia Gandhi chose to spurn the opportunity offered by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

It is possible that her new political advisers have told Sonia Gandhi will win in UP; and maybe such advice fetches rewards. You can get serious indigestion if you stuff yourself with khiyali pulao. Anyone in Lucknow will be able to explain what that means, if Mrs Sonia Gandhi cannot understand this simple Hindustani.

I suppose switching to a foreign language like Persian is not much help either, but there is another saying in Persian that might be relevant: Dilli door ast. The Congress can come to power in the next elections. The BJP is doing its best to ensure that. But for it to happen, the Congress has to get back to the harsher world of reality, rebuild its political links across the space it has lost among its traditional voters of the north, work hard to protect what it has achieved in its own states, and believe that it is a long, hard and bitter road ahead to power. Riding a high horse takes you nowhere very fast.

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