The post-election confusion

THIS country has faced many difficult and challenging times before. But never has it been confronted with the pervasive sense of political uncertainty that it is now going through in its third transition from military to civilian rule in 55 years. The October 10 election that marked the transition, rather than putting at rest this mood of uncertainty, has only increased it overwhelmingly.

The pre-poll uncertainty about how long the newly-elected civilian government is going to last this time has been compounded by the post-poll confusion about the composition of the new civilian government and who will head this government as the prime minister. Whatever the outcome, the swearing in office of the new government and PM under President Gen Musharraf will mark the beginning of another round of military-civilian rule, a la the Zia-Junejo regime of 1985-1988.

The major difference this time is the number of politicians who are scrambling to take Junejo’s place and the eagerness with which the major political parties are working to form a government under the military president.

Judging by the poll results, it was expected that the PML-Q, being the party that won the maximum number of seats in the National Assembly, would be directed to form the government with other “pro-government” parties. And the PPP (People’s Party Parliamentarians) and the MMA, which were opposing the military government’s policies and its LFO, were logically expected to sit in the opposition benches with other smaller anti-military government parties in the ARD like the PML-N.

But instead of this black and white, government-opposition post-election picture, what has emerged is a blurring of the line between who will form the government and who will sit in the opposition. Nearly two weeks now after the election, the country still does not know exactly which parties are going to form the new government and which parties will sit in the opposition.

Both the PPP and the MMA have been keenly eyeing at the prime ministerial slot in a coalition government just as much as the PML-Q is. Even within the PML-Q, there has been utter confusion as to who would be the PM candidate. Every one of the three parties which won the maximum number of seats in the National Assembly appear to be aspiring to form a coalition government with other major and minor parties and independents, while no party seems to want to be in the opposition.

The reason is pretty obvious: politicians know what they would be in for if they sit in the opposition. They would be the targets of political harassment and would come under constant threat of being arrested for anything ranging from loan default, embezzlement to murder, while politicians who align themselves with the military government can usually get away with anything. In the PPP’s case, sitting in opposition means Benazir Bhutto would probably not be able to return to Pakistan in the near future and Asif Ali Zardari would remain in jail. The present political atmosphere encourages taming of politicians; it does not encourage any opposition.

Beyond the formation of the new government and choice of the PM, there is a big question mark over the kind of role the PM and the new government will play in governance. Will the new PM and his government have an agenda for the nation beyond the personal agenda of looking after the nitty-gritty demands of relatives, party workers and voters for employment, admission, etc., etc. ? Just how much leeway does the PM or his government have in policy and decision-making? Or is their role merely one confined to policy implementation?

The introduction of the LFO by the military government has also put a big question mark over the kind of political system that the country will be having. Related to this is the uncertainty about whether the military will eventually succeed in getting a constitutional role under the LFO framework or whether the LFO will need to be sanctioned by newly-elected parliament.

Since the LFO arms the president with the authority to dismiss the PM, this in effect means the PM can be changed as often as the president thinks it is necessary, without the sacking of the entire government and calling for elections. Judging by events after Oct 10, there is no dearth of candidates for the PM post whenever the vacancy arises.

The uncertainty does not only regard the LFO and the PM. It also regards the highest office in the country — that of the president. Should a military leader continue to head this highest office?

Just as Gen Zia had a referendum to confirm himself as president over the new civilian government formed after the 1985 election, similarly last April’s referendum had given Gen Musharraf five more years as president over the new civilian government to be formed after the Oct 10 election. But Gen Zia’s death three years after the transition to civilian rule conveniently provided for the exit of the military president, ending Pakistan’s first military president-civilian prime minister rule. How long will the second military president- civilian prime minister rule last? Will the next president be from the military again?

Gen Zia had ruled after the transition to a civilian government without the support of the major political parties which had rejected such a cooperation with the military leader and boycotted his election. Under Gen Musharraf, the major political parties not only took part in the election but made some significant gains. If major political parties like the PPP, MMA and for that matter the PML-Q join in a coalition government and govern side by side with President Gen Musharraf, or even if the PPP and/or the MMA sit in the opposition under the military president, technically speaking, they will be acknowledging sharing of power with the military.

Would this signal a new kind of military-civilian ruling relationship, unique not only to Pakistan but to the world? Will this new system of military-civilian sharing of power be eventually institutionalized or “constitutionalized”? Or will Pakistan eventually revert to the rule by a civilian president?

This political uncertainty and confusion hardly provides the kind of environment or system that is conducive to formulating and implementing the sound and effective economic, social and foreign policies that Pakistan so badly needs. As things stand today, the country is in for more rocky days ahead.

Is there a vacuum at the top?

THE gnawing delay in the formation of a civilian government has thrown into sharp relief the key question of leadership vacuum as also the political and economic risks stemming from it. Even a fortnight after the election, the main parties are no nearer the goal of reaching a consensus on a coalition administration. It is now being speculated that the next government is not likely to be set up before the first week of November or perhaps even later, heightening concern over the growing uncertainty.

Narrow interests and vaulting personal ambitions coupled with rigid party positions have cast a shadow on the crucial task. Dearth of outstanding leadership among the main claimants to power, including the PML-Q has made the task even harder. Its chief, Mian Azhar, could not even win a seat for himself. Mild-mannered and accommodating, he could not build a strong, independent political image even after breaking ranks with the family-dominated PML-N, a fate he shares with several other political figures assembled under the PML-Q umbrella.

Chaudhry Shujaat, for example, had good terms with Mr Nawaz Sharif. However, Mr Sharif saw to it that the Chaudhrys remained mostly confined to Gujrat. Now, with the Sharifs out of the way, Chaudhry Shujaat may have stood a better chance to show his mettle. But, with his cousin, Pervez Elahi, vying for the Punjab chief ministership, he obviously does not want to attract the charge of family rule laid against Mr Nawaz Sharif, by pressing his claims for the prime minister’s slot.

The obvious criticism would have been that first it was Raiwind and now it is Gujrat. But a major factor in his reticence is that he lacks a forceful, independent personality capable of ingratiating itself with all the provinces and bridging the political divide. It is no wonder therefore that the name of Zafarullah Jamali, whose identification with a smaller province may be his chief qualification, keeps cropping up again and again. Similarly, the repeated talk of Zubaida Jalal being tipped for premiership points to a crisis of leadership.

On the other hand, differences among the major power contenders over a host of issues, including repolling on 174 seats, remain largely unresolved. The MMA, while somewhat toning down its rhetoric against the US, has ruled out support for any arrangement that puts a woman in the top slot. The alliance’s emphatic ‘no’ to co-education has also made matters difficult. But the fact that the main party, especially when it claims majority support, cannot find a candidate for prime ministership despite the passage of so many days has landed the country in a difficult situation.

In the PPP, apart from Ms Benazir Bhutto and to some extent Makhdoom Amin Fahim, there also seems to be no outstanding person, either. The PML-N is not much of a force, but the basic handicap the situation points to is that major parties are bedevilled by family rule while younger people in their ranks having the potential to provide efficient leadership are conveniently sidetracked. The basic reason is that in Pakistan, there is no tradition for election of party leader. The problem has also been aggravated by the recurrent discontinuation of the political process and its attendant ills. But, in the circumstances, it is for the parties, faced with a leadership void, to rise above narrow considerations, groom talent and push up proper people who can deliver and contribute to the development of a sustainable political system. Inordinate delay in forming a government, besides underscoring the shortcomings of the parties, undermines confidence in the nation’s politics. It also redounds to the advantage of the establishment, providing grist to the propaganda mills seeking to destroy their image and standing. Therefore, the sooner the current uncertainty ends, the better.

Is cultural nationalism best expressed by descent into verbal abuse?

VILE verbal abuse of the kind unleashed by Praven Togadia, an angry brain surgeon turned Hindu rabble-rouser, is neither earthshaking nor patently Hindu. Actually, calling Sonia Gandhi a bitch, as he is supposed to have done, can’t be much worse than calling Indira Gandhi a whore which the forebears of Togadia’s Vishwa Hindu Parishad did in the 1960s when their election symbol was a lamp and their party was called the Jana Sangh.

I remember as a young boy wearing two badges on my lapel, one carrying the Congress party symbol of a pair of bullocks and the other the Jana Sangh’s “deepak”, the lamp. It didn’t matter what the two stood for. The Jana Sangh boys used to shout a slogan in which Mrs Gandhi, then an information minister in the Shastri cabinet, was described in the foulest available words. So much for the Jana Sangh’s quest for cultural nationalism. Some culture, some nationalism.

Of late, Togadia and his senior partner in fanaticism Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, have been terrorizing the minorities with nasty digs. “Our deities love to wear garlands of human skulls,” one report quoted Togadia, the self-styled Hindu militant, as saying, suggesting that the skulls would be those of Muslims, or perhaps of Christians, his other pet quarry.

The rightwing Hindus are not unique in their rabid utterances against other religions. A few days ago an American preacher, Gerry Falwell, had described the Holy Prophet (pbuh) as a terrorist. There was all round condemnation of the remarks but not before a few people were killed in India’s Sholapur town where protests broke out.

Narrow-minded Muslims have been my worst nightmare. I remember the Muslim governess, for want of a better word to describe Najman Bua, as warning us as young boys against celebrating the Hindu colour festival of Holi because, as she said, “Allah Mian will cut that part of your skin where the colour falls.”

Sometimes in banter, often less casually, my Sunni Muslim friends would accuse their Shia hosts of spitting in the food served to Sunnis. Similarly, the Shia elite of Lucknow had launched an entire campaign to be allowed to recite the tabarra, abuses literally, against some of the great heroes of Islam lionised by the Sunnis. There are Praven Togadias in all religions.

If we take the Manu Smriti, the ancient book of legal and civic code for Hindus, Togadia would find some justification for his abusive ways. Chapter VIII, Line 270 of Manu Smriti commands that a shudra, an outcaste, who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. I do not know Togadia’s caste, but the Manu Smriti does appear to indicate that if he were not a low caste person, there was not much retribution in store for an abusive man. But a shudra would be punished, according to Chapter VIII, Line 271, if he as much as mentions names and castes of the twice-born (Brahmins) with contempt, and an iron nail shall be thrust red- hot into his mouth.

We all blame Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for the persecution of the Jews. But anti-Semitism, for the kind attention of the Gerry Falwells, was really at least as ancient as Martin Luther himself if not older.

“First, set fire to their synagogues or schools,” wrote Martin Luther angrily. “And bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians . . .. [It would be good if someone could also throw in some] hellfire. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”

So what Togadia and the VHP preach in India, or the Sipah-i-Sahaba and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi get away with in Pakistan, is neither unique nor very rare. Actually if we look around, the truly creative impulses in our milieu have never come from religious bigots. Take any of the great poets, including Hindi and Urdu poets, and writers and you won’t find any hint of bigotry. The entire progressive writers’ movement in the subcontinent was the true antithesis of what we today pass for culture.

I was perplexed, therefore, to find one of my favourite black American poets, Amiri Baraka, recently in the throes of an unseemly controversy in which he was accused of racism. In his transition from Black Nationalism to Third World Marxism, Baraka has filled and left vast areas of literary and cultural vacuums. But anti-Semitism would be the last sentiment he could be accused of harbouring.

However, to be completely honest, I received the controversial Baraka poem in my mail from a US-based friend recently. Accompanying the poem was a critical story pertaining to the controversy. So promptly I referred the poem to another friend at the Princeton University known otherwise as moderation incarnate. His remarks were withering and they are fully reproduced.

This friend, a highly respected professor at Princeton, wrote: “I find the poem over the top and not useful. Many in the Black community believe all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories and it seems beyond poetic licence to conjure up images of Israeli (and by association Jewish ) complicity which have no basis in fact...One is so much more effective sticking with the boring truth which is quite horrifying enough. We are dismayed by all the war talk and one is certainly allowed to say that. But self- censorship and manipulation of information a la Chomsky apply as acutely now as they always have. I sense no further precipitous descent into suffocating conformity. But I am complacent and no doubt reactionary... best and love to all.”

Now the poem, so that you may decide for yourselves if it is really as anti-Semitic as it is being made out to be. If you find it narrow and sectarian and violent, the Togadias of the world should take heart, for they finally have a normal secular poet mouthing sectarian inanities as they. If you find the criticism of the poem excessive, I shall pass it on to my friend at Princeton. Some excerpts:

Somebody Blew Up America

They say its some terrorist,

some barbaric

A Rab,

in Afghanistan

It wasn’t our American terrorists

It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads

Or the them that blows up nigger

Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row

It wasn’t Trent Lott

Or David Duke or Giuliani

Or Schundler, Helms retiring

It wasn’t

The gonorrhea in costume

The white sheet diseases

That have murdered black people

Terrorized reason and sanity

Most of humanity, as they pleases

They say (who say?)

Who do the saying

Who is them paying

Who tell the lies

Who in disguise

Who had the slaves

Who got the bux out the Bucks

Who got fat from plantations

Who genocided Indians

Tried to waste the Black nation

Who live on Wall Street

The first plantation

Who cut your nuts off

Who rape your ma

Who lynched your pa

Who got the tar, who got the feathers

Who had the match, who set the fires

Who killed and hired

Who say they God & still be the Devil

Who set the Reichstag Fire

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed

Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers

To stay home that day

Why did Sharon stay away?

Who own the oil

Who do no toil

Who own the soil

Who is not a nigger

Who is so great ain’t nobody bigger

Who live in the biggest house

Who do the biggest crime

Who go on vacation anytime

Who killed the most niggers

Who killed the most Jews

Who killed the most Italians

Who killed the most Irish

Who killed the most Africans

Who killed the most Japanese

Who killed the most Latinos

Who? Who? Who?

Who made Bush president

Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying

Who talk about democracy and be lying

Who the Beast in Revelations

Who 666

Who know who decide

Jesus get crucified

Who the Devil on the real side

Who got rich from Armenian genocide

Who the biggest terrorist

Who change the bible

Who killed the most people

Who do the most evil

Who don’t worry about survival

Who have the colonies

Who stole the most land

Who rule the world

Who say they good but only do evil

Who the biggest executioner

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the oil

Who want more oil

Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie

Who? Who? Who?

Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan

Who pay the CIA,

Who knew the bomb was gonna blow

Who know why the terrorists

Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego

Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion

And cracking they sides at the notion

Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain’t goin’ nowhere

Who make the credit cards

Who get the biggest tax cut

Who walked out of the Conference

Against Racism

Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother

Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?

Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?

Who invaded Grenada

Who made money from apartheid

Who keep the Irish a colony

Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later

(etc etc, the poem goes on)

Transfer of power

TAMEER-I-SINDH writes that the election observers of the European Union have rejected the government claims of holding fair and impartial polls. They have also said that the transfer of power may be delayed or may not take place altogether. If any of these two things happen, it may produce very grim consequences. The election exercise comes to its logical conclusion only when power is transferred in a transparent and fair manner. So, if it is not transferred according to the constitutional procedure, it will not only render the election 2002 meaningless, it will also create a political crisis.

The political history of Pakistan is full of anti- democracy conspiracies hatched by power-loving circles. Such elements may try to lead the government to the old path of conspiracies. The divided mandate and the inability of any party to form a government on its own may provide an ideal ground to the conspirators. In this situation, it is imperative for the government, as well as for the political parties, not to become a part of such a conspiracy and pave the way for early and peaceful transfer of power.

The government must also remain neutral while the political parties enter into alliances, and an alliance tries to prove its majority in parliament. It is up to the parties to forge an alliance to secure a majority to enable them to form a government. And the administration must remain impartial during the entire process to complete its obligation towards the holding of the election.

Kawish says that the incidents of parcel bomb blasts have happened soon after the appearance of election results. According to these results, an alliance of religious parties has secured a sizable majority in the National Assembly and in the NWFP and Balochitan, by riding on a wave of anti- Afghan operation sentiments. These blasts do not augur well for democracy, which is yet to be reborn. However, these blasts should not be misread to confuse the establishment of a new democratic setup.

According to Sindhu, some parties seem to be too anxious to form a government as if they cannot do without coming into power. Even those parties which have grabbed only a few seats in the Sindh Assembly are claiming that they are going to form a government. The forces that have performed poorly in the election cannot be blamed for seeing the assemblies as a mere ladder to reach the seat of power. But at least the stronger parties can be advised to rise above this niggardly approach because they can serve democracy while remaining even in the opposition.

Sach writes that the mighty Arbabs of the Tharparkar district have broken their own record of atrocities during the polls. Their victims staged a demonstration in Hyderabad where they displayed marks of torture committed by the henchmen of the Arbabs. They alleged that the Arbabs had begun victimizing the voters, opposed to them, by forcing to close even the transport and grocery shops in the areas. The Election Commission should order re-polling in the Tharparkar district and the government should take measures to save the Tharis from the atrocities of the Arbabs.

Awami Awaz says that the government’s withdrawal from regulating petroleum prices and handing it over to a regulatory authority has led to increase in oil prices after every couple of weeks. The increase in oil prices causes the prices of essential items and other commodities to shoot up, adding to the miseries of the people. The coming political government should take this issue on a priority basis and reverse this trend of too-frequent-increases in oil prices.