The path ahead

PAKISTAN was the poorest performing economy in South Asia in the decade of the nineties. That was also the longest period when the country was under the management of popularly elected governments. Four different administrations held office during this period following a series of general elections held in 1988, 1990, 1993, and 1997. Two prime ministers from two very different parties subscribing to two very different political philosophies were twice given the responsibility to run the country. Both failed spectacularly. Should we, therefore, draw the conclusion that democracy has not been good for the Pakistani economy?

Or should we suggest that it was not the system that was the problem but the people who managed it? But then the proponents of democracy suggest that the systems that deserve to go by that description have built-in corrective mechanisms. Bad and incompetent leaders and groups undeserving of broad popular support may sometimes rise to the top but cannot stay there for very long. There is a strong belief that in a democratic system the true worth of the not very desirable people will be exposed sooner or later.

The system will ultimately cleanse itself. In the process there will be some cost to the society but it is worth paying that price rather than letting the system fall into the hands of those who cannot be removed form the positions they acquire. It is only short-sightedness that leads sometimes to the welcome of those who usurp power. Democratic systems don’t suffer from such myopia.

Or — to continue the argument a bit further — should we look a little deeper into Pakistan’s unhappy history and argue that the country’s experience in the last decade does not necessarily indicate a negative relationship between the rate of economic growth on the one hand and democracy and the quality of leadership on the other? In fact, those who are troubled by continuous military interventions in Pakistan’s politics place on them most of the burden for poor economic performance. They argue that had the political parties and the politicians been left to their devices they would have eventually put the country’s dysfunctional economic house in order. With the military not giving enough freedom of movement to political regimes, there was never enough time available to them to leave their mark on the economy. As such, according to this line of thinking, Pakistan’s poor economic performance cannot be blamed on democracy. My own — and I must confess, oft repeated — view is that what Pakistan practised during the nineties was not democracy by any stretch of political imagination. Instead, what we had was a system that was extremely malleable in the hands of crafty, corrupt and selfish politicians. The system proved easy to manipulate and allowed a small group of elites — the country’s political establishment — to exploit it to its own advantage. What ensued was a period of extraordinarily poor governance in which political and bureaucratic corruption became rampant and the number of people living in poverty increased exponentially.

For ten years, the country was not governed according to a system of rules promulgated by the representatives of the people. It was governed according to the will and whims of a few men and women. While few would dispute that Pakistan in the nineties was poorly governed, it still does not establish a case for military intervention in politics.

This is a difficult argument to settle one way or the other. What is important to contemplate, instead, is where do we go from here. Before answering this question, let us take a look at some numbers and place Pakistan’s economic achievement in the context of South Asia. Viewed from that perspective, Pakistan turned out a truly pathetic performance.

India had the highest rate of economic growth in the nineties — it averaged 6 per cent a year, twice as high as the rate of increase in the first forty years after independence. Raj Krishna, the late Indian economist, once dubbed this anaemic rate of increase in GDP the “Hindu rate of growth”. But as a result of the quickened rate of growth achieved after India began the process of reform, the country’s economy was 80 per cent larger in 2000 compared to its size in 1990. But India was not the only country in South Asia to outperform Pakistan. Sri Lanka, in spite of the continuing civil war in the country, was the second best performing economy in South Asia. Its GDP increased at the annual rate of 5.3 per cent.

Bangladesh, with a rate of growth of 4.8 per cent a year came in third. Pakistan’s GDP increased at the rate of only 3.7 per cent, slightly more than one-half of the rate of growth in the previous forty years. In 2000, the Pakistani economy was 44 per cent larger than in 1990. Juxtaposing Pakistan’s performance with that of India’s, we begin to see the cost to the former of the extreme political turbulence that characterized the decade of the ‘nineties. While the Indian rate of growth doubled in the nineties, the Pakistani rate of increase declined by one-half.

But GDP growth rates tell at best one-third of the story. What also matters is the rate of increase in income per head of the population. This, of course, is determined by a combination of the growth of GDP and the increase in population. Of the four large economies of South Asia, Pakistan had the highest growth rate in population — 2.5 per cent a year, compared to 1.8 per cent for India, 1.6 per cent for Bangladesh and only 1.3 per cent for Sri Lanka. In the decade of the 1990s, Pakistan added almost as many people to its population as its entire population at the time of its birth. In 1947, Pakistan had only 32 million people.

Between 1990 and 2000, the country’s population increased from 107 million to 138 million, an addition of 31 million people. Continuing rapid growth in population ate into the little growth in GDP that did take place. Per capita income increased by an insignificant 1.2 per cent a year. On the other hand, the Indian income per head of population increased by an impressive 4.2 per cent a year. This was three and a half times the Pakistani average. In other words, an average Indian was fifty per cent more prosperous in 2000 compared to his (or her) situation in 1990. An average Pakistani, on the other hand, was only 13 per cent better off at the end of the decade compared to its beginning.

We are still talking about averages. To get the full picture, we should look not only at GDP growth rates and the rate of increase in population. We should also factor in the change in the distribution of income. By some accounts, this worsened in Pakistan in the ten — year period between 1990 and 2000. The result was a sharp increase in the incidence of poverty in the country. By the close of the 20th century, Pakistan had 50 million people living in absolute poverty and their number, according to my estimation, is now increasing at the rate of 10 per cent a year.

The only comfort Pakistan could draw from these dismal statistics is that even in 2000 it had more equitably distributed income than was the case in other countries of South Asia. The bottom ten per cent of the population in Pakistan had the highest share in total income in the region — 4.1 per cent as against 3.9 per cent in Bangladesh, and 3.5 per cent for both India and Sri Lanka. Estimates of the Gini coefficient — the most commonly used measure of income equality or absence of it — suggests the same conclusion. The higher the measure of the coefficient, the less even is the distribution of income. At 31.2, on a scale of 100 to 0, Pakistan had the lowest Gini with Bangladesh at 33.6, Sri Lanka at 34.4 and India at 37.8.

These numbers suggest that in the nineties Pakistan lost a great deal of economic ground compared to other South Asian countries. There were a number of reasons for this but poor economic management comes out at the top of the list. Whatever the explanation for the sharp deterioration in the way the economy was managed, there cannot be any argument that there is now an urgent need to bring about a radical improvement. This is where the government headed by General Pervez Musharraf could play a decisive role. I suggested in the two-part article that appeared last week that President Pervez Musharraf should spend a good part of the time available to him between now and the elections scheduled for October this year on ensuring two things: that Pakistan begins the process of creating a fully representative system of government and that the people should finally begin to be served by a fully functioning state. It is reasonable to ask the following question in this context: Why shouldn’t the military government headed by General Pervez Musharraf leave these tasks to the elected officials who will take office following the elections this fall?

The simple answer to this important question — the one I have already indicated above — is that several times in the past elected leaders have failed to do these two things. There is no reason why they should behave any differently now. If they fail again as they did so many times before, the result for Pakistan will be truly tragic. The result of Pakistan’s failure could also be tragic for the world at large.

The suicide bombing on May 8 that took the lives of a dozen Frenchmen outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel is one horrible manifestation of what awaits Pakistan if its institutional structure continues to deteriorate. That is the lesson we must draw from what happened to Afghanistan in the quarter century following the invasion by the Soviet Union. A great deal, therefore, rides on what I would like to describe as General Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan project.

That project would have followed a different trajectory had the president been inclined to be more enterprising in his approach. Having gone as far as he did first in October 1999 by throwing an elected government out of office and again in November 2001 by reversing the direction of the country’s foreign policy, General Musharraf could have proceeded to totally remodel the political structure. In an earlier article I suggested an elaborate way of how that would have been done.

I was of the view that it might be appropriate to convene a broadly representative Constitutional Convention to give the country a durable political structure rather than continue to heap the much abused 1973 constitution with more amendments. But that has not happened. Marginal rather than a radical change appears to be the preferred option. However, even within this constrained approach it is necessary to be precise about the direction the political leadership must take once it is inducted into office. What should be done by the Musharraf government in this context is the subject I will pick up next week.

The business of murder

WHAT can I write or say about the Sheraton Hotel suicide-bombing that has not already been written or said? That it was a dastardly and cowardly act goes without saying. We are guessing at who the perpetrators could be.

We are certain about one thing: the terrorists (and it was an act of terror) were enemies of Pakistan. Beyond that none of us are any wiser though all of us are sadder. Karachi is no stranger to recurring violence, to bomb blasts, to targeted killings that have been shamelessly political or sectarian in nature.

On each occasion, we have been assured that no efforts would be spared to bring to justice the culprits, which is a somewhat soft word for murderers. This has been a standard response, so standard that one suspects it could be a tape-recording.

One of the fallouts of this latest outrage has been the cancellation of New Zealand’s cricket tour though only one match remained to be played. One regrets this though against the enormity of the terrorist act, this seems trivial and a small price to pay but thee is a real danger that future cricket tours to Pakistan may be in jeopardy. But we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Actually, I had wanted to write about the pogrom against the Muslim community in the Indian state of Gujarat and in particular about the article written by Ms Arundhati Roy carried by the Dawn Magazine of May 5. It is a masterful article, as devastating as was Emile Zola’s J’Accuse in the Captain Dreyfus case and just as angrily eloquent.

Those who haven’t read the article should do so. I beseech them to do so. They will learn that what is happening in Gujarat is no run-of-the mill communal violence. I would like to quote at length from the article starting with this indictment: “Fascism’s first footprint as appeared in India. Let’s mark the date; Spring, 2002. It breezed in the wake of the nuclear tests in 1998. From then onwards, blood-thirsty patriotism has become openly acceptable political currency. The escalating belligerence against Pakistan has ricocheted off the border and entered India’s own body politic, like a sharp blade slicing through the vestiges of communal harmony and tolerance.”

That’s just for starters. The writer, a distinguished novelist and a social activist (she was recently hauled up for contempt of court) writes with anger and passion and is unsparing: “While the parallels between contemporary India and pre-war Germany are chilling, they’re not surprising. (The founders of the RSS have, in their writings, been frank in their admiration for Hitler and his methods).

“One difference is that here in India, we don’t have a Hitler. We have instead, a travelling extravaganza, a mobile symphony orchestra. The hydra-headed, many armed Sangh Parivar — with the BJP, the RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, each playing a different instrument. Its utter genius lies in its apparent ability to be all things to all people at all time.

“The Parivar has an appropriate head for every occasion. And old versifier with rhetoric for every season. A rabble-rousing hardliner for home affairs, a suave one for foreign affairs, a smooth, English-speaking lawyer to handle TV debates, a cold-blooded creature for a chief minister and the Bajrang Dal and the VHP grassroots workers in charge of the physical labour that goes into the business of genocide.”

The western world has been so preoccupied with Islamic fundamentalism that it has turned a blind eye to Hindu fundamentalism. The western world still associates India with Gandhi and with his non-violence. It chooses not to remember that it was the forebears of the present BJP Government who assassinated Gandhi, precisely because he wanted to bring an end to communal violence.

Whether it is India’s skilful public relations or the West’s fixation with Islamic fundamentalism, what is happening in Gujarat gets virtually no mention in western media and what is happening in Gujarat is ethnic cleansing and in the words of Arundhati Roy: “The killers still stalk Gujarat’s streets. The lynch mob continues to be the arbiter of the routine affairs of daily life; who can live where, who can say what, and where and when. Its mandate is expanding quickly.

“From religious affairs, it now extends to property disputes, family altercations, the planning and allocation of water resources. Muslim businesses have shut down. Muslim people are not served in restaurants. Muslim children are not welcome in school. Muslim students are too terrified to sit for their exams. Muslim parents live in dread that their infants might forget what they have been told and give themselves away by saying ‘Ammi’ or ‘Abba’ in public and invite sudden and violent death.”

It now remains for Muslims to be made to wear green arm-bands as the Jews were made to wear yellow arm-bands in Hitler’s Germany. In the meantime Narendar Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is in his heaven and all’s well in BJP’s world. The supreme irony is that India is only worried about its international image. It is not worried about the systematic murder of Muslims in Gujarat, carried out with the aid and abetment of the Gujarat government.

Our hearts bleed for these Gujarati Muslims but they also bleed for the innocent people who are getting killed in Karachi’s bomb blasts, bomb blasts that appear to be wholly mindless were it not for the fact that they appear to have some ulterior motive or sinister purpose and we don’t have a Sherlock Holmes to unravel the mystery, in other words, we don’t have a clue.

Transforming the military

NO one questions the urgent need to transform the U.S. military so that it will make full use of 21st-century technologies and prepare itself for the very different kinds of conflicts it will have to fight in the future — and has already begun to fight in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration and Congress are prepared to commit huge new resources to the Pentagon, in spite of the return of budget deficits; a spending increase of more than $50 billion is likely to be approved for next year. Yet though the need is recognized, and a lot of dollars have been pledged, transformation is happening — at best — only on the margins.

Most of the added spending is going for health and salary benefits for military personnel and retirees, or for the mounting expenses of the military operations now under way around the world, or for expensive weapons systems that were designed with the Cold War in mind but continue to dominate the post-Cold War budget.

The Bush administration promised to tackle this problem, but early efforts by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his team were largely rebuffed by the uniformed military and Congress. Now, after considerable internal debate, Mr. Rumsfeld is trying again _ and once again is encountering a buzz saw of bureaucratic and congressional opposition. At issue is the $11 billion Crusader artillery system, a heavy and unwieldy weapon originally designed for set-piece battles against Soviet forces in Europe. Mr. Rumsfeld’s team would like to kill this dinosaur and transfer the $475 million earmarked for it in the 2003 Pentagon budget to other Army systems that would better fill the same need.

Eliminating a major weapons system is a big step, of course, and the administration has yet to fully explain its decision to Congress. But for now, the problem is that some Army officials and the Republican congressional delegation of Oklahoma, where the Crusader is due to be produced, are trying to make sure that the Crusader is never discussed on the merits. Last week the House Armed Services Committee, prompted by Rep. J. C. Watts, voted to keep the Crusader from being canceled for at least another year.

Sen. James Inhofe is planning to offer similar language when the Senate Armed Services Committee marks up the defense authorization bill this week. —The Washington Post

All at the cost of Palestinians

FOLLOWING the persecution of the Jews in Europe, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, advocated the creation of a Jewish state in Argentina or Palestine. In 1897, the first Zionist Congress was held in Switzerland, which issued the Basle Programme on the colonization of Palestine and established the world Zionist Organization to pursue the matter further.

In 1904, the fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Argentina. However, after about two years, the Zionist Congress chose Palestine for the establishment of a Jewish homeland.

When the first world war broke out in 1914, Britain assured the leaders of the Arab East, including the Palestinians, of its support in gaining independence from the Ottoman rule, in return for their support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany. However, in 1917, Lord Balfour, the then foreign secretary of Britain, sent a letter to the Zionist leader, Lord Rothschild, in which he stated that Britain would do its best to facilitate the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.

This letter is also known as ‘The Balfour Declaration’. At that time, the population of Palestine was 700,000 out of which 574,000 were Muslim Arabs, 74,000 Christians and 56,000 Jews. The Palestinians, who felt betrayed by Britain, convened their first national conference in 1919 and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.

The Zionists’ case for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was ostensibly based on the historic connection between the Jewish people and the region in question. The Zionists contended that during most of the 1200 years of the pre-Christian era the Jews constituted the main population of Palestine. The Arabs, however, claimed that these Jews were in fact emigrants from the Pharaonic Egypt and, unlike the Palestinians who are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the country, were not the original inhabitants.

The Arabs also argued that these Jews were deported from Palestine by the Babylonians and the Romans and their dispersion in the second century AD marked the effective termination of the so-called Jewish connection with Palestine. Moreover, the conquest of Palestine by the Muslim Arabs in 636 AD and subsequent conversions and Arabization of the semitic inhabitants of Palestine irreversibly established the identity of the region as part of the Arab world.

The ambition of creating a Jewish state was not favoured by all the Jews. The orthodox among them considered the creation of Israel a profane act. In their opinion, the establishment of a Jewish state was a most serious aberration and a blasphemous act that has been condemned by Torah. They also referred to the Jewish laws, which forbid the Jews to have their own state before the coming of the Messiah.

On the other hand, the Zionists referred to the Bible to justify the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They drew attention to the genesis which contains God’s promise to Abraham: ‘To your descendants I will give this land’ (the land of Canaan, now called Palestine).

This was, however, a deliberate distortion of the Biblical text to achieve political gains. The term ‘descendants’ is not restricted to the Jews but includes Muslims and Christians who are also the descendants of Abraham. The Zionists continue to exploit the Bible to justify their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza which they describe by their Biblical names of Judea and Samaria.

In 1922, the Council of the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate for Palestine. The mandate was in favour of the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, although the Jews were only a tiny minority in Palestine. It did not even once mention the Palestinian Arabs who were not only the original inhabitants of Palestine but also constituted the bulk of the population. As a matter of fact, the terms of the mandate were formulated by the World Zionist Congress which establishes, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Britain allowed itself to be used a political pawn in the Zionist struggle to usurp the Palestinian territory.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which approved the partition of Palestine. Under the partition plan, the Palestinian Arabs, who accounted for 70% of the population and owned 92% of land, were allocated only 47% of the territory. In 1948, the British forces withdrew from Palestine without transferring power to anyone. The Zionists proclaimed the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, without defining its borders. Israel’s prime minister, Ben Gurion, opposed the delimitation of the borders of the newly created state and said that “the war will determine the dimensions of the Jewish state”. Subsequent developments have proved that, guided by Ben Gurion’s advice, Israel has always sought to expand its territories by conquest.

The circumstances which led to the creation of the state of Israel sufficiently prove that Britain, in complicity with its allies and the Zionists, perpetrated a dreadful outrage against the innocent people of Palestine in 1947. The people of Palestine were denied the attainment of their independence, in exercise of their inalienable right to self-determination. Britain and its allies connived to create the state of Israel to protect their long-term geo-political and economic interests in the Middle East at the cost of the Palestinians.

The people of Palestine have been crying for justice during the last fifty years or so, in accordance with the principles of the international law, the UN Charter and the decisions of the UN Security Council. However, Israel continues to flout, with impunity, the international law, violate the UN Charter, reject the UN Security Council resolutions and is committing genocide against the innocent people of Palestine.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

A voice for the ‘silent majority’

SOME months ago, President Pervez Musharraf had said that the “silent majority” fully supported him. Now he can claim, as indeed he has, that the majority has “silently”’ voted for him to give him a fresh five-year term in the presidential office.

Congratulations and good luck. As he settles down in his job with this extended mandate from the “silent majority” he has some food for thought. The time has come for him to start chewing it.

First and foremost should be this sharp question for him to consider: Why is this vast majority silent? This should be a pretty disquieting thought for him. And it should keep coming back to him with a nagging persistence. Something has to be seriously lacking in the scheme of things where the majority votes in a big but silent way. In a normal human situation the majority is right. It has to be taken to be right. That is what democracy ultimately is all about.

Where a vast majority is silent, one must look for the causes of this stark anomaly. It should be President Musharraf’s first concern to find out what is it that has kept the majority silent. And it should be his first priority to act effectively to emancipate the majority and unlock its voice. Not that we live in silence. There is a lot of noise all over the place. Even the tinniest mosque in the smallest of habitation has four loudspeakers, all blaring at the same time. The calls to prayer from a dozen mosques collide and so the message is lost in the cacophony. This should be seen as disrespect to the call. But it is tolerated.

During the last nearly three decades the totally unregulated madrassahs claiming to impart religious education have multiplied 300 per cent while the growth and expansion of formal education for the majority has stagnated — that is, where it has not actually shrunk. Anyone who has time to listen to state controlled radio or watch the television would know how the voice of the majority remains at a discount and that of the minority at a premium.

Certain sections in our society try to intimidate rational thinkers by perversely branding them with expressions like ‘secularist’ and non-believer. There was a time when opponents would be branded communist and then persecuted ad infinitum. Violence in the name of faith was promoted by dictator Zia to perpetuate his misrule. That trend, then audaciously state- sponsored, continues. It is so strong now that it can do the damage without overt state support. Can we forget Benazir Bhutto planting a mulla on top of her Foreign Office?

President Musharraf is bound by solemn commitments to contain extremism in all forms and manifestations. Let us be honest and admit that there is a great deal of this aberration around. So far there is no evidence that systematic and sustained effort is being made to contain and soften, let alone restrain and reduce, it either in intensity or velocity. Our majority will regain its virtually lost voice only in proportion to the moderation in the tone and tenor of the obscurantic fringe in the country.

It is time to realize that the general public is not swayed one bit by the incessant sermonizing from the clergy. Any impression or perception to the contrary is a fallacy and an illusion that needs to be shed by all intelligent citizens. The government has neither the duty, nor indeed any right, to be adding to its responsibilities the role of the clergy. We have witnessed more than enough to be convinced by now that the intrusion of the clerics into active day-to-day political life has had a shattering effect on our national cohesion and unity.

Will somebody in the government please count the number of mutually exclusive and adversarial religious sects parading as political parties and injecting disruptive antagonisms into our society? Will some wiseacre in the government please undertake a census of mosques that have risen on usurped plots of land? Will the government conduct a survey of mosques that are primarily the outposts of one sect or another and only secondarily houses of God and worship?

One factor in the silence of the majority is that the average citizen is all too often so overburdened with the daily problems, cares and apprehensions that he has hardly the time or inclination to become an actively articulate member of society. Many of the pressures in the lives of urban citizens are easily removable or can be much reduced by a measure of streamlining in local administration.

In order to invest his claim to the allegiance of the “silent majority” with tangible and convincing substance President Musharraf should move out to the middle and become the voice of the majority. By now he would know fully well that the majority is sick and tired of religious violence. It is erupting every now and then and everywhere In Karachi, the country’s biggest city, religious violence is the crying shame.

A crucial queston

WILL the October 2002 elections be free, fair and impartial in letter and in spirit is a crucial question for the future of the country. The main points of General Pervez Musharraf’s plan include improvement of the economy and good governance.

He has reiterated his intention to bring about balance of power between the president and the prime minister in the future constitutional scheme whose main pillar is the establishment of a National Security Council. This body will have three chiefs of the armed forces as its members.

This step will formalize the decisive role of the army in running the government under a parliamentary system — an anathema in theory and practice. Parliamentary form means that the prime minister is chosen by the National Assembly and is responsible to the Assembly or the parliament. The president normally cannot remove the prime minister, who is the chief executive of the government, during the term of the Assembly if he retains the confidence of the majority of the House.

Under the 1973 Constitution, the president is the head of the state and a symbol of the unity of the republic. In order to have a smooth working relationship between the president and the prime minister, a mechanism of checks and balances are normally provided. Under it, the prime minister’s advice in running the government is binding on the president who has almost no discretionary powers.

The prime minister in a parliamentary system has other checks on his power. These include a strong role played by the committees of the parliament and adherence to parliamentary accountability through the procedural mechanism of the parliament. These conditions, of course, can be fulfilled if the electorate is actually the final arbiter of the sovereignty and there is independent judiciary and a free press.

In Pakistan, however, we have experienced during the past five decades that the power of the electorate to elect and be governed by the freely chosen representatives is denied in letter and in spirit. As a consequence, this results in bad governance, nepotism, favouritism, bribery and injustice. Violation of the oath of office by the holders of high positions becomes much too evident. Rigging and illegal and corrupt practices in elections have become a matter of routine.

The rigging and manipulations start with the ill-prepared voters list, arranging demarcation of the constituencies intended to favour selected individuals, posting of government officials at the behest of the favoured ones, locating of polling stations and listing the polling staff of the polling stations of the choice of the selected candidates. Turning a blind eye to bogus voting and in many cases allowing browbeating the polling agents of the opposition candidates and sometimes resorting to open violence by favoured candidates and their men are overlooked by the authorities.

The Election Commission almost never intervenes to prevent such malpractices. Allowing the casting of votes without proper identification multiple voting and manipulation in counting of ballot papers are some of the manifestations of the rigging. The authorities mentioned here mean the army dictators or the civilian leaders who are favoured by the establishment at a given point of time and the selected individuals and groups signifying the persons doing the bidding of their patrons. It will be a utopian scenario for Pakistan if the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf chooses to stay clear of the oft-treaded path of favouring political allies and disparage antagonists.

This scribe is a witness to open and subtle rigging resorted to by the candidates sponsored by the patron authorities in elections conducted during the last four decades. The disease has become deep-rooted and has been appearing in varying degrees. If the high-ups in our country cannot wean themselves away from this debilitating condition, how can any one ask the other lesser mortals to abide by the principle of good governance?

At present, some political groups have become favourites of the authorities, for, their influence in power politics is seen enhanced. If previous experience would be any guide for identification, a typical candidate from this category would have following features to qualify for the patronage of the authorities:

1. He will keep himself in the good books of the top bureaucrats and be a good host to lavish feats often with ‘shikar’ parties for the high officials. 2. He will be a reliable and an obedient subordinate in carrying out the orders of the patron authorities. 3. He will have no compunction in fulfilling the demands (often illegal) of his patrons. 4. He will readily subject national interest conveniently to his or his mentors’ personal or group interests. 5. He will not discriminate between right or wrong in public affairs as long as it helps him to retain power, pelf and authority. 6. He will resort to every type of maladministration and corruption, which he can get away with impunity. 7. He will gather around him a coterie of followers of the same character and temperaments as would please him. 8. He will find the most appropriate chance to get on the bandwagon of the rising political party as is most likely to grab power.

We see many prototypes of politicians of this ilk in our body politics, masquerading as national leaders — wealthy but conscienceless. This time too, particularly after the referendum, President General Musharraf has been surrounded by a number of such politicians. It would be too optimistic to hope that there would be free and impartial elections and inexorably leading the country to awful consequences. Will this prognostication come to be true is any body’s guess.

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