We have been hearing for several weeks that our people are not excited about the prospect of exercising their right to vote in the elections about to be held. Most of them are said to be singularly uninterested in the campaign that is under way — rallies and speeches of candidates, party manifestos and promises. The whole exercise has been slow and discouragingly dull. Why? And, has it always been like this?

Voter turnout (a principal indicator of public interest, measured in percentages of eligible or registered voters who come out to cast their ballots) in parliamentary elections in Pakistan has been as follows: 1970: 63.4 per cent (in West Pakistan, and as high as 68.7 per cent in Punjab); 1985 (“partyless” elections boycotted by the MRD components) : 52.93 per cent; 1988: 42 per cent; 1990: 45 per cent; 1993: 40.32 per cent; and 1997: 35.99 per cent. Many observers fear that the turnout on October 10 may fall even lower than that in 1997.

These figures may be more or less discouraging, depending on where one is looking for comparison. Turnout in parliamentary elections in some of the western democracies — New Zealand, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany — is quite high, ranging between 75 and 90 per cent of the eligible voters. It has been considerably lower in the most recently held parliamentary elections (between 1998 and 2,000) in some of the Asian democracies: Japan: 62.49 per cent; Malaysia: 53 per cent; India: 53 per cent.

It is often rather low in the United States. In the last two presidential elections (2000 and 1996) 51 per cent and 49 per cent of the registered voters cast their ballots. In the “mid-term” congressional elections (unaccompanied, and unaided, by the glamour of a presidential election) voter turnout figures are even lower: for instance, 42 per cent of the eligible persons in 1998 and 45 per cent in 1994.

The more generally advanced reasons for the relatively low voter turnout in the United States are: weakness — or, looseness, if you will — of the major political parties, perceived ineffectiveness of politicians, and multiplicity and excessive frequency of elections. Two additional reasons may be suggested. First, the doings of government do not affect the lives of most Americans as much as they affect the lives of citizens in Britain and Europe. It does not, therefore, make a whole lot of difference to the “average” American who the next president will be or which party will have the majority in Congress.

Second, even while knowing that voting is important for the health of the political system, a person may decide that since others are going to the polling station on this cold and rainy day, it would not really hurt the system if he stayed warm and comfortable at home. He is acting the role of the well-known “free rider.”

The first two of the above reasons — weakness of parties and perceived ineffectiveness of politicians — plus the “free rider” mentality would seem to apply to the situation in Pakistan. But the turnout in two Pakistani elections calls for further thought. Why was it as high as 63.4 per cent in 1970 and as low as 35.99 per cent in 1997?

Two considerations with regard to the 1970 elections come to mind. These were the first direct elections at the national level ever held in the country on the basis of universal adult franchise. Second, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto placed before the people issues that were at once momentous and novel. He called for food, clothing, and housing for everyone, abolition of serfdom by abolishing feudalism, land to the peasant, share in industrial management for the worker, freedom from exploitation, personal dignity, and political efficacy for the poor.

Never before had a package of good things like this one been offered to the people by any other politician or party in the past, or even during the same election campaign. No wonder then that the people were excited and activated, including those who hated him.

Commentators who attribute the current public apathy to the absence of the principals in the “mainstream” parties from the political scene should look at the 1997 elections during which both Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto were present in the field and campaigning. Yet the voter turnout hit its lowest point (35.99 per cent) in history. Why did that happen?

It happened because while the PML supporters were out at the polling stations, far too many of the PPP workers, sulking at the way they had been treated by their party bosses, and the party’s traditional supporters, disgusted by the corruption of Ms Bhutto’s government during her two terms in office, stayed home on election day. The PPP vote bank froze as a punitive response to Ms Bhutto’s waywardness.

Setting aside the unusual circumstances surrounding the elections of 1970 and 1997, the voter turnout in our elections has ranged between 40 and 45 per cent of those whose names appeared on the electoral rolls. This is not bad as compared to the mid-term congressional elections in America, but is not good enough when compared to the turnout in Indian and Malaysian parliamentary elections. It is disconcerting to note, however, that low voter turnout does not seem to bother those who do end up in positions of power. In 1997 the PML (N) received 45.9 per cent of the valid votes cast which, in turn, amounted to 35.9 per cent of the total number of eligible voters, meaning that the party won its “astounding” victory with the support of as few as about 17 per cent of the eligible voters. This low level of popular support did not discourage Mr. Nawaz Sharif the slightest bit. He proceeded to rule as if he had been elected emperor by acclamation, and behaved like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

Why is the public apathetic now? One would expect the people to be excited in view of the probability that military rule is about to yield, in some significant degree, to an elected parliamentary government that will have substantial authority to govern. One reason is said to be that the people do not really believe that the military’s surrender of authority will be anything other than perfunctory and symbolic. Second, they do not believe that their quality of life will change for the better even if the forthcoming civilian government has genuine and sufficient authority to govern. They have given up hope; they are in a state of despair.

There were plenty of bad governments in the old days — cruel, unjust, ungiving bloodsuckers. Did people get into states of despair then? Probably not, because they did not expect much from their rulers. They stayed away from public authorities as much as possible, unconcerned with how struggles for power proceeded and who seized power from whom. They remained cloistered in their own domestic affairs. In our own time people have been taught to expect services and amenities from governments, and these have not been met. Their sense of deprivation has increased with the passage of each government, and now they are seized of despair.

But despair, which means the feeling that nothing can be done to make life better, and which produces aloofness from the public domain, is wholly inconsistent with democracy, which requires popular interest and participation in public affairs. What can be done to pull our people out of the aloofness into which despair has driven them?

The effort in this regard has to be made, first and foremost, by politicians. They must give the people once again the feeling that improvement is possible. Given the depths of deprivation to which they have fallen, a substantial improvement in their quality of life will take a long time to bring about. What should the politicians then promise and try to accomplish?

The slogans of 1970 cannot be repeated. For one thing, promises made then were not kept. Second, with globalization and privatization as dominant trends, drives for bridging the gap between the rich and the poor that smack of socialism are no longer in vogue. Instead of introducing new issues, the ones that occupy the people’s minds should be addressed. They cannot all be resolved at once. The ones that are felt to be the most urgent should be taken up first. Resolution of the Kashmir dispute with India, assertion of national sovereignty in the face of American pressures, Islamization of our society and polity, and our foreign relations generally are not among them.

During the last twenty years our people have increasingly lost the security of life and possessions. Politicians must give top priority to the restoration of law and order. They must promise and act to control the currently intolerable incidence of both old-fashioned and white-collar invasion of private and public property. They must also promise to put an end to religious, sectarian, and ethnic conflict and killings.

They ought not to attempt reform across the board. Beyond domestic security, they should promise to do, during their first term in office, all they can to expand employment, Promises should not be made extravagantly without regard to their achievability, They should be made selectively if they are to be credible. Third, the politicians who come to power in a few weeks must promise to exclude corruption in all its forms from their own ranks and from the upper echelons of government (president, prime minister, cabinet members, higher bureaucrats and officers) even if they cannot eradicate it everywhere in the public domain.

If the next government can make some visible progress on these fronts, the sagging spirit of our people may be re-enlivened and their belief in the efficacy of democratic politics revived.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts.

E-mail: syed.anwar@attbi.com

THE elections are poised on a knife edge. If things go wrong which well they might, the campaign, already limpid and directionless, might end up in courts or on the streets instead of the polling stations.

This kind of anxiety persists despite frequent affirmations by the president that come what may, elections shall not be postponed, and equally emphatic declarations by the political parties that whatever the provocation by the regime or its Election Commission, they would not boycott.

The anxiety is on two counts. First, many and far-reaching amendments made by the president to the Constitution and to the rules and procedure for conducting the elections, and second, the attitude and utterances of the real leaders of the three important parties (PPP, Nawaz’s Muslim League and Altaf’s MQM) who, though themselves disqualified from contesting, are yet dictating all the election policy and directing the campaign from their self-imposed or forced exile.

The schedule to the Legal Framework Order issued in August contains the amendments made to the Constitution (numbered 29 but in fact many times more because of the sub-clauses). The Order itself overrides anything contained to the contrary “in the Constitution or any other Order or law.” Thus the Constitution as it now stands includes all the amendments listed in the LFO and the LFO itself is a supra-constitutional instruments as it will prevail over any constitutional provision which comes into conflict with it.

The president has also kept the power to himself to determine on what date the whole or a part of the suspended Constitution (including the provisions added to it through the LFO) will be revived. There should be, thus, little doubt that the election and all matters flowing from it like the summoning of the parliament, the oath to be taken by its members, etc., will be determined under the revived parts of the Constitution. But that is not where the power of the president ends. Through the LFO he has also retained the power to promulgate still more Orders further to amend the Constitution. A new Order promulgated could change the current reading of the situation altogether.

The apprehension of the electoral scene shifting to the courts or streets before the polls or in the interlude between the poll results and summoning of the parliament arises from the political parties (or any other class of citizens — the bar councils or associations, for example) choosing to challenge any of he amendments going beyond the scope of the Supreme Court’s order of May 12, 2002, validating the Proclamation of Emergency and the Provisional Constitutional Order. The revival of the Constitution in parts may also be challenged on that very ground. A general, and fair, expectation is that after the elections, as soon as the parliament meets, the Constitution will come back into force in full. The Supreme Court’s validating order unfortunately does not go beyond the elections. On Gen Musharraf’s post-election actions, the Supreme Court shall have to rule again, if challenged.

The worse eventuality arising out of it would be if a defeated party were to resort to street protests, especially if it happens to be any one or all of the three whose chief leaders are abroad and they are already accusing the government of helping its chosen party (PML-Q) and the Election Commission acquiescing in it. Nawaz Sharif, in an interview to BBC, has already declared the election process a farce.

The initiative to avert battles in the courts or on the streets should come from the president. He should hold discussions with the political leaders, lawyers and intelligentsia on the immediate and full enforcement of the Constitution after the elections.

Even if he is wary of reviewing the LFO and of letting the leaders in exile return in freedom, it would help restore an atmosphere of trust and confidence in the country if the president were to undertake not to amend the Constitution further, repeal the Proclamation of Emergency and PCO and enforce the Constitution in full and say so at the inaugural session of the new National Assembly which he should convene within the time-frame laid down in the Constitution.

The discussions with the political parties and other sections of society may not bring about trust or cordiality but should assuage the tempers frayed by wild speculations about the powers of the parliament, the cabinet and other institutions being curtailed even beyond the LFO by a delayed revival of the amended Constitution and that too in parts. The president having acquired all the powers he wanted and instituted all the safeguards for his person and system, it would also be in his own interest now to close this bizarre chapter of arbitrary constitutional and administrative reforms.

The LFO has indeed impaired the parliamentary character of the political system envisaged in the Constitution. The people and the politicians should not however fall prey to the propaganda that all the organs of the state other than the presidency have been rendered impotent. The powers of he parliament and provincial assemblies to make laws and that of the courts to interpret them remain intact. The only real power taken away from the prime minister is in relation to the appointment of the chiefs of the armed services and judges of the superior courts, and the only threat the LFO poses to the assemblies is their dissolution by the president on the advice of the National Security Council.

The prime minister (chief ministers in the provinces) will continue to control the law and order (police), community services (health, education, etc.) and development and the vast cadres of the bureaucracy which go with these functions. The politics, they say, is local and all about patronage; the LFO has not altered that axiomatic situation. The public representatives thus should not feel inhibited by any of the amendments, whether they want to serve the people or exploit them as in the past.

Under Zia’s Eighth Amendment, the president could dissolve the National Assembly on his own. The successive presidents did that three times. When that power was not there Zia removed and then hanged Bhutto. When it was withdrawn under Nawaz Sharif’s 13th Amendment, he was removed by military force.

Thus, whether it is a prime minister who is incompetent or corrupt or it is a president who is intrusive or ambitious, the hazard of dissolution remains. An honest and competent prime minister could persuade the National Security Council (which will have a majority of civilian members) to compel a capricious president to resign; he could otherwise be removed only through impeachment — a long and tedious process.

On the eve of elections and in their aftermath, the parties in search of power and the common people in their struggle for survival should seek compromise and not confrontation. The members of the parliament (NA and Senate) by two-thirds majority can at any time vote to annul not the LFO alone but also the earlier amendments made by Nawaz Sharif, Ziaul Haq and Z.A. Bhutto.

General Musharraf is not right when he asserts that no government in the future would be able to undo his system or reforms. The power of the parliament to amend the Constitution is inherent in its existence. The thrust of the national debate and effort should therefore be on having in place an enlightened parliament through fair elections and not on the basis of the ‘legality’ of Gen Musharraf’s amendments.

It is however the Muttahida Qaumi Movement which has gone to the heart of the national malaise by demanding a new constitution. Howsoever amended, the present one has not worked over the past 30 years, nor would it over the next five. This calls for a referendum.

The people who have seen and suffered nothing but aggravating poverty, violence and corruption are bound to vote for a new order based on Jinnah’s thoughts and ideas. In the continuing power game under the expedient dispensation of the politicians and the generals, the strong will have no scruples and the weak no hope.

The writer is a former home secretary, Sindh.

WHAT is the point of a revolution if it has not crossed my door? Everyone looks at a turning point of history through his own rear-view mirror. In 1776 the world changed for the United States; in 1789 for France; in 1918 for Russia. Too much changed in the 1940s: Germany, Europe, Japan in the big league; while India spearheaded the anti-colonialism revolution, China seized hold of a post-Marxist revolution, and America stepped up the slow drive to take over the world.

In 1967 the Middle East became another equation. In 1971 the map of South Asia was renamed. In 1972 the destiny of South East Asia was reshaped, releasing it for phenomenal economic growth. In 1973 the oil-rich and leadership-poor countries got their opportunity, only to fritter it away in waste and theft. Later in that decade, by tactically slow steps, characteristically imprecise in dates and precise in intention, China changed. In 1992 the Soviet Union became another country.

Does September 11 belong to such a calendar? One year ago, there was hype, and there was also hope. Twelve months later, it is time to sift the evidence. Much depends on whether history swivelled on a point of principle, or merely an axis of action, ambition, cause and consequence.

If September 11 means that America was wounded, both in spirit and flesh, and wants satisfaction for its injuries, then September 11 is no more than an awful day for the principal power of an emerging world. But if it means that international relations will be conducted henceforth on the basis of principles that had been cloaked by pragmatism, then we may have the beginnings of a different story.

Unsurprisingly, the life-and-death tensions of post-World War Europe made South Asia a primary focus for the United States. If the Soviet Union had not seized Kabul, Afghanistan would have remained nothing but a collection of rocks to Washington. The United States was too engrossed in the cold war against the Soviet Union and the hot war in Vietnam for it to care about the peripheral problems of South Asia.

It treated China with indifference, Japan with patronage, and East Asia as secure staging grounds for operations in South East Asia. Israel lifted the profile of West Asia. Latin America belonged to the superpower backyard and therefore needed attention. It is safe to say that South Asia occupied a place somewhere below South Africa and somewhere above Nigeria on the American attention span. One blink and it was forgotten.

Very logically, therefore, when America intervened in the region, it arrived with an abysmal knowledge base. The problem was resolved in typically American fashion, direct, honest and with implications about which Washington was clueless during the war and uninterested after it. America and its allies supplied the money, weapons and intelligence operatives to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

They left the problems of knowledge, analysis and priority to Pakistan. This last should be amended. It was not just Pakistan; it was General Ziaul Haq’s Pakistan. He had an agenda for his country, for Afghanistan and for South Asia that was way outside anything the Americans could have conceived, let alone wanted. But they played a critical part in keeping that agenda alive.

What pace would events have taken if General Zia had remained alive instead of dying in a still-undeciphered military plane crash? Impossible to answer, but there is a clue in the pace that they acquired despite the fact that power passed into the hands of General Zia’s bete noire Benazir Bhutto, not once but twice.

Which government in Islamabad could resist the temptation to convert one troublesome border into a fire-free zone, the better to ensure that all of the country’s resources were concentrated towards the “real” enemy, India? The Taliban were organized, financed, armed and sent to Afghanistan via Kandahar not by some fundamentalist military dictator in Islamabad but by the freely elected government of the liberal, democratic Benazir Bhutto. She applauded their success as her success. The Taliban did not quite return the compliment.

Perhaps there was some unexpressed residual embarrassment in the American position. Having used jihad themselves, they were hardly in a position to preach its demerits to others, even when the latest champions of the idea imposed a savage regime that sneered at international opinion and remained comfortable in the cocoon provided by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Washington reverted to type. It contracted out Afghan affairs to Islamabad; and since South Asia once again had retreated from its radar screen, complacency could easily be confused with diplomatic virtue.

President Bill Clinton’s knee did jerk once, and in either a display of pique, or in an effort to make America forget about Monica Lewinsky, he bombed an empty medical shed in Sudan and a few rocks in Afghanistan (theoretically in search of Osama bin Laden). But when nothing happened for one full day or so, Washington went back to sleep. In any case, there were other things to worry about.

Despite at least a dozen serious reminders, America always treated terrorism as, essentially, someone else’s management problem. The insularity of America is not an accidental growth. It is a deeply cherished thing. Perhaps it lies in the fact that the Americans who control the continent now are all immigrants or refugees, peoples who have left a world that they rejected behind them, literally and emotionally. They do not want to return to the hatreds and grubbiness of what they spurned; they want to get on with their chase for more toys, trinkets, sparklers, food, clothes, celebrities, highways and, of course, skyscrapers. There is an obvious contradiction in an insular people taking charge of the world. But facts do not change just because they are distorted by paradox.

The logic of American intervention in Afghanistan, its indifference to what it had spawned, and a parallel rise in Muslim anger against what the community saw as American neo-colonialism, picked up a momentum that inflamed more than one hidden, or smouldering, ember. The most volatile element of this syndrome was a psychological one. The success of the jihad against the Soviet Union, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire, gave the idea the intoxicating veneer of invincibility. If the Soviet Union could fall, how long before the United States began to tremble? As for a regional power like India, that was like walking on cake.

A child born in the year that the guns came out in Kashmir would be a teenager today. It is a long while to test the ground.

Quite obviously, for different people 9/11 has different connotations. For me the most important fact is the exactly one year later Jammu and Kashmir is holding an election that has already acquired the frisson of popular will. A free and fair election cannot be held under the rule of a gun, whether the gun is trained on you by the state or by an insurrection. The government of Farooq Abdullah has begun to display the edginess that makes democracy what it is; intemperance of language is an indication of collapse of nerve. There is a visible surge among the people. Hope is too strong a word for a land benighted by misfortune, but there is an expectation in the air.

This is not a text without a context. The context is the new reality after 9/11. The message that terrorist violence is not acceptable as a means of change has travelled down to those roots in the grass from where anger tends to bubble. If that is the central concern of Pax Americana, then terrorism can only be counterproductive to whatever cause the Kashmiri might dream of. And once terrorism, and its sponsorship, is out of the way, all sides to the problems are committed to a dialogue to break the three-generation deadlock. That will not be easy. That dreadful lock will take time to pick open. But a process will begin. That is the expectation that gives this election its special energy.

If there is a solution it will lie in flexibility. The hard lines of the past must melt into realistic options for the future. Two words need to be eliminated from the dictionary of dialogue: victory and defeat. Victory and defeat mean a vindication for one side of positions it held in the past. The future must evolve from what is possible, not just from what has happened.

Easier said than done? Sure. But better said than never said at all.

One key to the war against terror is to ensure that India and Pakistan are at peace with each other. One presumes that Washington is not so naive as to believe that the Taliban are finished. The assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai is only one indication. This war is larger than an individual, even one as determined as Osama bin Laden. Nor is this war going to be won by pamphlets shaped like dollar bills promising millions in reward for information about Mulla Omar. This is not bounty territory of the Wild West. Mark Antony may have got it only half right when he said that the evil that men do lives after them while the good is oft interred with their bones.

Sometimes the evil is also interred with their bones. Time induces a hallucination, distancing the worst memories as today’s tensions blur the past. This is a war in the mind. Its most effective weapon is going to be, therefore, intelligence. Its biggest need is going to be patience. Many more solemn anniversaries must come and go before an outcome begins to glimmer in the distance.

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