HERE is the news, in tricolour: the good, the bad, and the problematic. First, naturally, the good news. The Congress is three percentage points ahead of the BJP, 32 to 29, across the nation among voters asked which of the two parties could solve their problems better. Now for the bad news. For the first time in the history of the Congress, a leader from the Nehru-Gandhi family is less popular than the party. Alter that to significantly less popular.

Sonia Gandhi’s approval rating is just 20 per cent, making her in effect a negative presence for 12 per cent of Congress voters. One can imagine how negative she must be for non-Congress voters, who still constitute 68 per cent of the electorate.

This is particularly startling in view of the common Congress conviction that a leader from this family adds his or her own weight to the party strength. In Sonia Gandhi’s case, she is subtracting from the party’s appeal.

Leadership in any democracy is about adding to the vote. George Bush and Tony Blair have personal approval ratings that are higher than the support that the Republicans and Labour have in the United States and Britain. This is normal. When that equation changes the party sits up and asks questions.

Now to the problem. No Congressman, or woman, has the courage to ask this simple question of Sonia Gandhi. The word courage may seem an anomaly, but it is apt because under Sonia Gandhi the Congress has become a quasi-dictatorship, run by a small and very obedient oligarchy.

The BJP, therefore, instead of struggling in the pits, continues to smile, if not laugh, as it continues its leisurely progress towards its vote banks. With Sonia Gandhi as an enemy, who needs a friend?

Opinion polls become far more agreeable when they agree with your own opinions. I am happy to report that by such non-objective standards, the latest India Today survey of 17,776 registered voters across 98 parliamentary constituencies, all of them presumably with proper identity cards, is an excellent snapshot of the contemporary political mood.

Since we are a highly leader-oriented democracy, the biggest of the big questions in the poll was clearly the comparison between the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the prime minister-in-waiting, Sonia Gandhi. How do they compare?

Statistical fact: Vajpayee’s popularity has slipped by five per cent since January, from 38 to 33. Actually you don’t have to read India Today to find this out. This statistic is written on the face of every BJP leader in Delhi.

Statistical fact: Sonia Gandhi’s approval ratings have risen by just one per cent in the same period, from 19 to 20. Curiously, both Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi are at their lowest ebb. The only comfort that the government can draw is in the fact that at his lowest Vajpayee is still 13 per cent ahead of Sonia Gandhi.

The prime minister may be in decline, but Sonia Gandhi is not growing. Or growing up. Once again, you don’t have to read India Today to confirm this. This too is written on the face of every Congress leader in Delhi, except that no one will admit it in public — or indeed deny it in private.

One of the more remarkable findings of this survey is that Sonia Gandhi’s approval ratings have been in perpetual decline, or stagnant, ever since she touched a high of 32 per cent in May 1999.

In August that year it came down to 26 per cent, in October to 24 per cent, in January 2001 to 28 per cent, in August to 22 per cent; in January this year to 19 per cent and is now a meaningless one per cent better to 20 per cent.

This is the situation when the BJP is in power, and when it has done enough to resurrect any opposition. Why has Sonia Gandhi been unable to benefit from the BJP’s decline?

The answer lies in the beginning of this table. What happened after May 1999 when she had 32 per cent of the country with her? It was then that she made her famous remark in Italian-English that she had “272” MPs with her in her bid to become prime minister of India by defeating Vajpayee in parliament rather than in a general election.

She has not recovered from that remark. The prospect of Sonia Gandhi becoming prime minister of India freezes voters in their tracks.

Further analysis of the statistics indicates that a significant portion of Sonia Gandhi’s approval comes from Muslims and Christians, and this has evidently more to do with the minorities’ fear of the BJP than with any particular fondness for Sonia Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi has 33 per cent support among Muslims against 15 per cent for Vajpayee.

Frankly the surprise here is that 15 per cent Muslims still support Vajpayee; after Gujarat that figure should have gone down to zero. But Vajpayee’s clear distance from Narendra Modi has left him with some personal support in the community. Christians have some empathy for Sonia (her highest support, 35 per cent, is from them), but Vajpayee gets 22 per cent of the Christian vote as well.

It is transparent that Sonia Gandhi has been unable to make any headway among Hindus. She has only 16 per cent of the upper caste vote against Vajpayee’s 40 per cent.

Clearly the upper castes do not believe that she has become an Indian because she once dipped her toe in the Ganga. What is astonishing that a lady who claims to be the heir of Indira Gandhi cannot claim even 20 per cent of the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes vote; she got only 19 per cent. Vajpayee, who leads a party that has been seen as traditionally hostile to the lowest rungs of the caste system, gets 28 per cent of their vote in comparison.

The situation is similar among the other backward castes. Sonia has only 19 per cent support here, against Vajpayee’s 33 per cent.

What should worry the Congress is that despite being much younger Sonia Gandhi has not been able to connect with the 18-24 age group; she gets only 20 per cent here against Vajpayee’s 37 per cent. As for the +45s, they are starting to care for neither. If the prime minister has 32 per cent support here, Sonia has only 18.

So far, the poll indicates only negative pleasure for the BJP, of the I-am-bad-but-you-are-worse variety. There is one positive element for the prime minister, though. Both the major decisions with which he is personally associated have received applause from the voters.

He pushed through the surprising nomination of President Abdul Kalam, and there is overwhelming approval for this decision: 54 per cent are delighted and only eight per cent unhappy. But this eight per cent were probably born unhappy and refuse to change.

That the BJP may live to regret the choice of President Kalam is another story, and will doubtless grace these columns anon.

Much more significant, politically, is the public reaction to the manner in which the government has handled Pakistan over the last year, a long, difficult, delicate and painful exercise. A definitive 41 per cent believes that India has “won” in this confrontation, and 33 per cent say that the government has managed the face-off “very well”. This is Kargil in slow motion.

How would the same voters react to the prospect of Sonia Gandhi dealing with Pakistan? This question was not asked, but should be included in the next poll. It is the most important issue before any prime minister of India.

The most interesting statistical fact of the poll is that barring bumps caused by extraneous factors, inevitable in the rough and tumble of politics, the Congress and the BJP support has remained more or less even during the last two years. In January 2001 it was 34 per cent for Congress and 31 per cent for BJP; in August 33 and 28; in January this year it was dead even at 31 per cent each. In six months, despite all the shame and scandal, the Congress has improved by one per cent while the BJP has declined by two per cent.

There is an obvious conclusion to be drawn. Neither of the two principals of Indian politics can afford to be alone. The only reason why the BJP is in power and the Congress out of it, is because the BJP has an inclusive alliance policy, while the Congress rocks itself to sleep on a high horse.

Only another coalition can defeat the ruling coalition. But in coalition politics you cannot afford an ego; and in any barter it has to be give-and-take. You-give-and-we-take is out of fashion.

An alternative coalition can be created instantly, if the Congress approach is tactile instead of concrete. And while a party has every right to consider a dynasty indispensable to its fortunes, it has to remember a basic truth. A dynasty is very dispensable in a coalition. Clarity is always simple. That is why you can so easily find the path to power with its help.

The writer is chief editor, Asian Age, New Delhi.

AN irked candidate for the National Assembly told his returning officer (who had asked him a few elementary questions on Islam) that he was competing to be a parliamentarian, a law-maker, not the Imam of a mosque. The candidate did not know the essential articles of the Islamic faith. Yet another candidate could not recount the two commonly used names of the holy Prophet.

The newspaper reporting these episodes didn’t say that the two candidates were disqualified. Perhaps they weren’t, otherwise it would have made news. Both of them should have been under Article 62(e) of the Constitution which requires, inter alia, a candidate to have “adequate knowledge of Islamic teachings” and should also be practising obligatory duties prescribed by Islam.

The two candidates were far removed from fulfilling this qualification and so will be many more who went either unquestioned or unreported. This is just one of the many contradictions in what we profess to be and what we really are. It suited no government, not even Ziaul Haq, the author of the disqualification clause, to enforce it. By a special law General Musharraf has disqualified all those from contesting elections who were not graduates to bring new faces into the parliament. He is satisfied that 43 per cent of the members in the previous assemblies would thus end up in the trash bin.

Had Musharraf indiscriminately, and determinedly, enforced the disqualifications already listed in the Constitution, the percentage of the members left out should have been much higher. But Zia had his own scheme, — so, it seems, has Musharraf. The disqualification criteria just provide a cover.

Then it is not only the knowledge of Islam and practising its obligatory duties that is needed to qualify for an assembly election. More stringent virtues (and for that reason far more scarce among the candidates), specified in the Constitution are sagacity, righteousness, non-profligacy, honesty,and trustworthiness, ameen — indeed the quintessential quality of the holy Prophet. A view can be taken that the returning officers, the election commission and the courts all acted contrary to the Constitution by admitting those to the electoral contest who fell short of the exacting standards, perhaps majority did.

However, the election officials and judges should not get all the blame for it. The presence, or absence, of all these qualities can be discovered only by a searching, scathing debate in public. That hasn’t ever happened, nor is it likely now. Questions and opinions about the personal life and conduct of the candidates are tabooed. The present election commission, which has done little good but a lot of harm, has outlawed it under its recently issued code of conduct for the candidates.

The code comes into direct conflict with Article 62 of the Constitution as the honesty, trustworthiness, etc. of thousands of candidates cannot be adjudged even by a keen and conscientious returning officer or judge in a few minutes given to him. The character and lifestyle of the candidates could be exposed only by their rivals, neighbours, admirers and detractors in public discussions. The private dirty linen of politics has to be washed in public.

A recent acrimonious exchange in the press between Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Imran Khan has brought this issue to the fore. The Chaudhry, despite benignly conceding that he would not descend to Imran’s shallow level (who, it seems, fired the first salvo), goes on to levy charges which would cause enormous anguish and pain to the lovers of cricket and victims of cancer.

The Chaudhry wants to know whether it is the zakat fund (received for his cancer hospital) or the Jewish money (brought in dowry by Jamima) that he is using to finance his election campaign.

The Chaudhry’s diatribe, howsoever hurting, should persuade Imran to disclose the source of his funds. If the Chaudhry is proved right then not only the political career of Imran Khan will be thwarted but an icon of cricket and charity, as no other individual before, will crumble to dust.

But the story must not end there. Chaudhry Shujaat should address the same question to his allies like Ejazul Haq, his sibling Anwarul Haq, Humayun Akhtar and his sibling, who has just made his debut in politics. How did they amass their riches, real estate and foreign currency when their fathers were modestly paid government officials starting at Rs. 350 and ending 40 years later at Rs. 18,000 a month. Imran by comparison played profitable cricket and married a super-rich woman.

Then, above all, Chaudhry Shujaat should pose his own question unto himself. His father had a modest house, like any other, on Lahore Gulberg’s College Road. His lifestyle was generous though rural and spartan. Over the years of politics it has given way to a row of five huge but ugly villas. Then there is that much touted Zahoor Palace in Gujrat — a royal manor surrounded by the shacks of the Chaudhry’s peasants. But these assets yield no income. That comes from elsewhere.

The Shujaat-Imran episode has come in for discussion at some length only to emphasize the basic point that the personal life and assets of public representatives, or of those who aspire to be ones, should be a public property open to the minutest scrutiny. The nomination papers submitted to the election commission are required to be accompanied by a full declaration of a candidate’s income and assets and also that of his close kins.

The commission should publish them all for the people to point out concealments and flaws. That would indeed be a genuine effort to cleanse the politics of deceit and graft. The graduation condition and conviction of a few are an eyewash, if not vengeful. The eternal dilemma will remain, however. The friends of the government will escape; its opponents will be caught for lesser misdemeanours.

As the election fever mounts the politics and governance hit new low. Religion, economy, administration are all being ridiculed to provide grist to the mills of Urdu columnists. A string of fatwas flowing from the Punjab’s religious affairs minister top the list. His best one declares opposition to Musharraf kufr and elections alien to Islam. The rule of Islam is selection and the very existence of political parties is anti-Islamic.

Then he throws the gauntlet for his fellow pontiffs: if Muavia and Aurangzeb each could rule for forty years without being elected, why such a restriction should be imposed on Musharraf. Minister Qadri has as much right to issue fatwas as any other mufti. Then he has been chosen to give Islamic direction to Punjab’s administration. The other muftis are at liberty to issue fatwas that supporting Musharraf amounts to kufr but the issue should be resolved among the muftis without befuddling our people and amusing the world.

Pakistan’s political and religious strifes and schisms have driven it into the vortex of terrorism. There should be no doubt that had General Musharraf not decided to back the US campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistan too would have been its victim. In the world view Pakistan still stands in the gray zone separating extremism from terrorism. Even a minority vote for the clerical alliance might push us into the latter.

It should be recognized by the soldiers, clerics, the aspiring prime ministers, the parties and the people alike that the woes of Pakistan are entirely due to culpable obscurity of thought while the first law of both politics and morality is to think straight. Our standing in the world would depend on the strength of our economy, not a tally of missiles. In the savage principle of the survival of the fittest, as President Mbeiki put it the other day, militancy has no place.

IN SEVERAL of my earlier articles I argued against the constitutional amendments that had been floated from time to time, including the ones relating to the NSC and the dismissal of prime ministers and the assemblies. Many of them have been discarded, and I find that while some of the ones that have actually been adopted may be unnecessary, they do not add up to a national tragedy.

The size and composition of our legislatures, the modes of electing certain categories of their members and their officers, are not momentous issues, and we need not bemoan the amendments relating to them. The “mediation committee” (analogous to the conference committees in US Congress) to resolve the differences between the National Assembly and the Senate over certain bills is a laudable innovation, and the amendment providing for it should be welcome. Here I propose to discuss the question of presidential powers and a few other matters.

The amendments can be considered from one of two perspectives. One, that they have been made to suit the predilections and purposes of a certain individual, namely, General Pervez Musharraf. Second, that devised as reforms, they are expected to endure. It may be expedient to work with the first perspective while conceding that time may validate the second. To start with, then, the amendments will remain operative for a little over five years. The general says that if the new parliament tries to undo his work, it will have to “quit,” or else he will.

This may be a bluff: dismissing the next parliament will be a hugely complicated and hazardous undertaking in law, domestic politics, and international relations. On the other hand, it is likely that the parliament will not want to act precipitously. It will need time to find its feet before it thinks of doing battle with the president. It is even more likely that a two-thirds majority required for changing the Constitution will not materialize during the next five years, in which case we will have ample opportunity to see how well, or otherwise, the general’s amendments work.

There can be little doubt that fairly soon after the elections some party will challenge the amendments in the Supreme Court. The argument — popular with a variety of lawyers, politicians, and other commentators — that the court has no authority to “delegate” to, or confer upon, the army chief the power to amend the Constitution is not well made. Even though the courts are generally seen as making laws (through interpretation), they never admit to this role. Their professed business is to find the law and then to declare it.

In the case under reference, the Supreme Court looked at the coup of October 1999 through the prism of “necessity” and, having found that the coup-maker could do whatever he wanted, including suspending and/or amending the Constitution (not to speak of disbanding the court itself), made a declaration to that effect. The fancy conditions it attached to its legitimization of the coup were made possible because the coup-maker desired the court’s blessings for appearances’ sake. Taking advantage of his need, the court made a show of its own assertiveness.

Once the elections have been held and a civilian government is in place, the court may recover its initiative and become receptive to the argument that some of the general’s amendments will undermine the basic character (federal, parliamentary) of the Constitution and thus transgress the bounds of his amending authority the Court had prescribed for him.

Let us now consider the common apprehension that the amendments concentrate “all powers” in the president. This, I think, is more a figure of speech than a statement of bald fact. The president will have no formal share of the government’s most important powers, such as levying of taxes, allocating revenues to various claimants, maintenance of law and order, development planning, management of the bureaucracy, and a hundred other things.

He will have the power to appoint, in his discretion, chiefs of the three armed services and the chairman of the joint chiefs committee. He will appoint certain other high officials such as the auditor-general of Pakistan and chairman of the Federal Public Service Commission. He will appoint judges on the advice of the Chief Justice and a few other officials in consultation with the prime minister. So long as the criterion of competence is fulfilled, nobody will care how the Auditor-General or the Chairman of the Public Service Commission is appointed.

Will the military’s potential for intervention in politics decrease if its chiefs are appointed by a prime minister rather than by a president? Our history says that the army chief has been influential with prime ministers as well as with presidents, and he has pursued his political agenda without seeking anybody’s approval. But if he were to be receptive to invitations beyond his own agenda, these invitations are more likely to come from a prime minister (a politician with an interest in manipulating other politicians and voters to keep his office) than a president, who may or may not even be a political person. It would then seem to follow that nothing is lost by giving the president the authority to appoint the military chiefs. Turning to the restoration of Article 58-2(b), one may say that the Constitution, law, or tradition should provide some way of getting rid of a corrupt and/or grossly incompetent prime minister, if the majority party in parliament (of which he is the leader), or the parliament as an institution, will do nothing to throw him out. The country should not have to suffer his misrule until the next election. Getting rid of him by dismissing the parliament itself is wasteful, unnecessary, and even morally unjustified.

Considering that the possibility of reformulating the amendments is still open, I should like to suggest that the general’s original idea of being able to dismiss a prime minister without having to dismiss the assembly at the same time was more sensible and also fairer. A way should be found of inserting it in Article 58-2(b). I made a proposal in an earlier article that will bear restatement and merit the general’s consideration. The president should be able to require a prime minister, whom he regards as corrupt and or incompetent, to obtain a fresh vote of confidence from the assembly and, at the same time, forward to the assembly his bill of particulars against the prime minister. He can consider dismissing the assembly if it does not withdraw support from the allegedly corrupt prime minister.

As provided for in the relevant amendment, the NSC is not as threatening to the integrity of our parliamentary system as its earlier versions made it out to be, One or two elements in the scope of its concerns and procedures would still merit consideration. First, the good part. As the general had been promising, the Council will function as a “forum for consultation,” without any executive or regulatory authority. Any advice emerging from its deliberations will presumably be addressed to the president. It will fortify him in pressing upon the federal and provincial governments his own views if these coincide with those of a substantial majority in the Council.

The scope of its concerns includes matters relating to national security and integrity, democracy, governance, and inter-provincial harmony. The inclusion of “democracy” and “governance” makes the Council’s jurisdiction unspecific, potentially all-embracing, and susceptible to frivolous or disruptive interpretations. We hope the general’s assurance that it will not meddle with the normal working of government will be honoured.

The composition of the Council has been made more palatable. Military men will not dominate it; four of them (three services’ chiefs and chairman of the joint chiefs) will work with eight politicians (prime minister, presiding officers of the two houses of parliament, leader of the opposition in the lower house, and four provincial chief ministers) plus the president who may also be a politician. On the face of it, then, while the Council will provide the military chiefs a formal platform from which to voice their views and policy preferences, it will not enable them to dominate the government. Given the diverse roles of the Council’s members, its endorsement of a given policy or measure, including the question of a prime minister’s dismissal, should carry considerable weight.

One may, however, wonder why the four provincial chief ministers are here. Their inclusion may have been considered desirable for promoting inter-provincial harmony. If so, the move may be regarded as a plus for federalism (even if it is a strange and most unusual way of reaching that goal). On the other hand, their presence gives each one of them the right to go beyond issues of federal-provincial and inter-provincial relations and become participants (or meddlers) in the workings of the federal government. By no manner or means can this be regarded as advantageous for the federation.

The potential for “meddling” is enhanced by the provision that any member of the Council may request a meeting and, apparently, the president has to call one. If they chose to be frivolous or troublesome, the leader of the opposition or any of the four chief ministers could keep the Council perpetually in session and its members away from their normal duties. Even if this danger is more theoretical than probable, something should be done to remove it. One way would be to provide for regular meetings of the Council (let us say, once every three months) and enable the president to entertain requests for special meetings only if he concludes that the proposed agenda does not admit of delay.

We will have to wait and see how the Council works in actual practice. There is more to say about some of the other amendments but it will have to be deferred to another time.

anwar-syed@cox.net