The splendour of Paris: NOTES FROM DELHI

WHEN you take a taxi in Paris you expect to be taken for a ride. The good news is that even a ride in Paris is enchanting. In the parks along the avenues the handsome, adult tress have turned to rust before the fall. In the stylized square garden of Louis XIII at Marais the trees are still a light bright green but there is a feel of a last flutter in the air. The gardener out here is either a mathematician or a barber. The trees have been haircut into identical oblongs. In another place, another city this affectation might have seemed gauche. Paris carries it off with panache.

Louis XIII clearly took a singular decision and the citizens of this district, Marais, left their inheritance alone — it would have been gauche to interfere. The centuries-old bakeries of this arrondisement have become shoeshops now but are still called bakeries. Everything changes and nothing changes. The Eiffel Tower wears electricity over its steel, and a lighthouse beam rotates at the top, searching for nothing more significant than attention. You can still crunch the leaves on the banks of the Seine, but the famous lovers are not around any longer to steal kisses. That stands to reason.

There is nothing to steal these days, for no one has anything to hide in this Age of Just Do it. Lovers do not need the silence of the Seine; they are all in their drawing rooms, searching for inspiration from television during a pause. The fact of the matter is that sex has become a matter of fact. Even in Paris.

You and I shrug. A Parisian does not shrug. A Parisian does a tap dance with his shoulders. There is nothing indifferent or diffident about a shrug in Paris. It is full of pathos, and fit for opera.

The reason may be trivial, or not. The reaction is never less than momentous. When a lady in a car a good foot lower than our taxi loses the balance of her nerves in the middle of a well-structured traffic jam on the Rue Bonaparte, and begins to scream, our driver responds with a Parisian shrug, some silence and then well-meaning advice on how she should spend her time home with her children before he slips through a glimmer in between the cars.

I can report that the authorities are trying to do something about these famous traffic jams. The Rue Rivoli, for instance, now has a separate lane for taxis and buses, although every owner of a car has not been informed of this change. That jam has yet to become butter.

The Parisian traffic settles in the mind before it congeals on the street. The Frenchman will never surrender his fundamental rights, having won them at such substantial cost two hundred years ago.

The primary right of the motorist is to press the accelerator with as much force as he presses the brake, in quick succession. He also has the right to gesticulate his attitude towards life with both hands, while driving.

Two centuries after the first, a second French Revolution is taking place. The French are speaking English. Arguably this achievement is on par with beheading the Bourbons, dealing with Danton, surviving the hope and despair of Napoleon and coming to terms with Waterloo.

In 1815 the French accepted the victory of the English on the battlefield; they are learning to accept the victory of English in the classroom, the cafe and even the coiffure. Waiters now actually bring food when you ask for beef instead of boeuf, throwing in an indulgent smile for free. This is a stunning philosophical and psychological somersault. It would, however, be incorrect to say that all the old fire has died out.

There are still twentieth century cabdrivers who, when it is midnight and wet, curl their upper lip at the sound of English and insist, with all the familiar ardour and zeal, that they are going in exactly the opposite direction to which you desire to travel.

There is a glint in their eye as they leave you stranded and miserable on the Champs D’Elysee, the warmth of an excellent meal and fine company oozing out of your pores with each icicle of rain. But these are yesterday’s warriors, content with minor triumphs in meaningless skirmishes. The war is lost. English is taught in every school.

The French are, though, trying to salvage a last laugh from this horrendous defeat. An advertisement inside a train on the fast Metro between St. Germain and Gare du Nord shows a young man leaping into the air because he has successfully mastered “Wall Street English.” I had heard of cockney English, pidgin English, Indian English, Oxbridge English and BBC English. What was Wall Street English? It was a triumph of positioning. The French have bypassed the channel and moved directly across the Atlantic to Wall Street American. English has been shown its place, as it were.

France’s argument with America is political and cultural, not linguistic. There is muted glee in the French government over having slipped a bit of smooth oil under the feet of George Bush as the American president strides purposefully towards war with Iraq.

The Americans lost their way when they got stuck in a confrontation of words, specifically the United Nations resolution meant to authorize President Bush’s demolition of Saddam Hussein.

France, with the open help of Russia, has bought some very expensive time at a very cheap price for Saddam. Of course, Iraq will pay for this through some fancy deals in oil and weapons with Paris, but that can only be to the greater glory of the tricolour Republic.

There is also some superior sniffing going on at the manner in which the British have remained faithful to their American masters. Add to the sniff some mock horror: the poodle is supposed to be a French dog, is it not, so why is Tony Blair behaving like one ha ha ha? The only serious sign of British independence from America on Iraq is visible in some of the British media, which still knows how to laugh at itself better than the French.

A plaintive cartoon in Private Eye has George Bush saying: “The only way to find out if Saddam has got those weapons is to attack him and see if he uses them.”

The headquarters of the police and the headquarters of religion are literally next door to each other in Paris. Symbolic? Where should the wages of sin be paid? In prison or the confession box? Which is more necessary for the common good? The plain cell of the prefecture or the magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame?

One of the real dangers of this city is that even the mundane can tempt you towards philosophy. That is the power of beauty. Of all the sights of Paris nothing is grander than the Notre Dame, particularly now that the darkness of centuries has been scrubbed from its walls. The soul can search for sublimity here.

Luckily the police headquarters reminds me of ‘The Pink Panther’. I half expect Peter Sellers to come bumbling out, closely pursued by a tumbling Herbert Lom, both tripping into the Seine. Does my fancy exaggerate when I notice a veritable Inspector Closeau on the street? The police officer does have an expression that says that there is no point in trusting him too much.

Tales of petty crime abound. I suppose they would in any city with so many tourists. Indians of course have the best stories. One is spreading word that all he did was look up at the flight timings at Charles de Gaulle airport to find that his suitcases had vanished from under his nose. He must have taken his time to read that screen.

Or maybe he was confused to find French written in the English script. When he complained to the police they apparently told him that he was the 24th person to make a similar complaint within the hour. I just hope the other 23 were not Indians from the same flight.

The true beauty of Paris is not in the tourist brochures or the sales pitch of cathedrals, however wondrous they may be. It lies in the love with which an anonymous architect has shaped the unknown cornice. Every corner of this city is a small dream; every district a collective inspiration preserved with passion.

In the Second World War the French surrendered to the Germans rather than let Paris be destroyed by the Luftwaffe and artillery of Adolf Hitler. Six decades later the French have recovered the pride they lost in 1940. But if they had lost Paris as well in 1940 there would have been nothing to recover from the rubble. It was a good bargain.

The best contemporary bargain in the city could be a bar. Buddha Bar, just off the city’s most fashionable shopping area behind the Torcadero and Place I’Concorde, is setting the style in evening environment, decor and music.

They might want to improve their food though. Guess which song they are fusing their local genius to right now? Indipop. Things that go into the night with an Indian warble and Hindi words like Payon mein ghungroo lagte hain.... India has arrived, via Hollywood.

The writer is editor-in-chief of ‘Asian Age’ based in New Delhi.

Some failures of the economy

THERE have been significant improvements in the external finances of Pakistan in recent months but the domestic economic front continues to show too many negative signs. A continuing low economic growth rate, a large budget deficit which is the source of many economic setbacks, poor investment and low official development spending even in the key social sectors and widespread unemployment in an environment of increasing poverty are some of the failures of the economy.

The State Bank of Pakistan in its annual report for 2001-2002 cautions that improvements in the external accounts may taper off in future with significant negative repercussions. They may eventually result in the emergence of expectations of devaluations of the rupee and an increase in the currently falling interest rates.

Continued low economic growth for almost ten years has to manifest itself in several areas. When the economic growth is as low as 3.6 per cent against the modest target of 4 per cent for last year, the revenue collection has to be much below the target and the budget deficit far larger.

The State Bank does not say that tax revenues last year were a low 11 or 12 per cent of the GDP, but states it was 17 per cent of the GDP, but official spending was 23.6 per cent of the GDP, resulting in a budget deficit of 6.6 per cent against the target of 4 per cent. Undaunted by that, the same 4 per cent deficit is targeted for the current year as well, and efforts have been made to achieve that as the IMF and the World Bank are insistent on that. The country has to try hard to meet that target even after the political leaders take over from the generals.

But if the economic growth rate is low and business conditions are sluggish, the tax revenues are bound to be below the targeted level. Hence the tax revenue collection last year was Rs 414 billion against the targeted Rs 457.7 billion. The target was revised downwards four times before it hit Rs 414 billion, and the finance officials heaved a sigh of relief saying it had, however, crossed the Rs. 400 billion barrier. Poor economic growth has been a marked feature of the economy since the middle of the 1990s when the average growth rate has been 3.3 per cent per year in a country with a population growth rate of 2.6 per cent per annum if not the commonly believed 3 per cent.

Agriculture which is the mainstay of the economy, with a 25 per cent share in the GDP, has been disappointing. If last year its growth was only 1.4 per cent, the year before it was a negative 2.6 per cent with the principal crops showing poor results. And that is attributed largely to drought which has lasted for three years. Added to that is the poor additional investment in agriculture to increase output per acre and improve the storage and transportation facilities which prevent waste of the grains and other agricultural output. Because of that unemployment in the rural areas has been on the rise with too many of the workers doing part-time jobs on very low wages.

The large scale industry’s performance was also poor with the increase in output of 4 per cent last year against the target of 6.5 per cent. Hence the target for the current year has been scaled down to 6 per cent.

Following the poor growth in agriculture and a modest increase in industrial output some of the 3.6 per cent economic growth in the GDP is attributed to the 5.5 per cent rise in the service sector against the target of 4.4 per cent. Hence the target for the current year has been set at 5 per cent. But when the agricultural growth is as low as 1.5 per cent and large scale manufacturing sector’s growth is 4 per cent how could the service sector grow by 5.1 per cent is difficult to understand.

But when new investment in the economy is low, and it has been slipping down over the years in the recent period the economic growth rate has to be low and unemployment widespread. Total investment in the fiscal year 1998 was 17.7 per cent of the GDP, and that came down to 13.9 per cent last year while the target was 15.2 per cent of the GDP. The proper investment target for a developing country like Pakistan is 20 to 25 per cent, particularly for a heavily populated country with 40 per cent of the people living below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

But investment cannot be high if national savings are too low — as low as around 14 per cent of the GDP. Last year, however the national savings were 15.4 per cent of the GDP, exceeding the target of 15.2 per cent. But this year the target is 12.3 per cent of the GDP which is too low.

The official spending on development has also been too low, while defence last year claimed a larger chunk of over Rs 17 billion. The annual development programme outlay’s target last year was Rs 130 billion, but actual spending was about Rs 123 billion.

The development outlay for the current year is Rs 134 billion. Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz says he may be able to add Rs 10 billion to those funds out of the increased external aid. Even if that is done the total official development outlay will be only 3.4 per cent of the GDP from around 3 per cent for long, which is too meagre a sum.

The State Bank says more official spending on development will increase the official revenues as well as expand the infrastructure and reduce the widespread unemployment. The official unemployment figures are misleading or understated. The last figure produced by the Federal Bureau of Statistics is 7.8 per cent, an increase of 1.9 per cent over the previous figure of 5.9 per cent. And if the people employed for less than 15 hours a week are taken into account, the total of unemployment comes to 9 per cent with unemployment rate for women at 17.3 per cent against 6.1 per cent for men.

Maybe the new labour survey being conducted now will be better or more reliable. But the overall labour survey computations has been vastly defective understating the number of the unemployed as because of a sense of shame or pride too many unemployed or nominally employed men in the rural areas claim to be fully employed.

The State Bank has underscores the need for continuing the macro-economic reforms as future assistance of the IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank is dependent on that. They may make some concessions to the political leaders but not to the extent of reversing the reforms substantially. There is scope for altering the Poverty Reduction Paper which has not been finalised by the World Bank in anticipation of the just-held elections. But continuing the reforms alone is not enough for the economic salvation of the country. They have to do far more to meet the basic needs of the people for which the financial resources are not readily available in a stagnant economy which is too slow to break out in new directions.

Prof. Khurshid Ahmad, vice-president of the Jamaat-i-Islami says that the continuation of Gen. Musharraf’s economic policies would be disastrous for the country. He is in particular opposed to the continuing rise in the cost of the utilities administered by the government. If in addition to the high cost of power, the breakdown in supply becomes too frequent it is too exasperating.

The total national debt is now 102 per cent of the GDP, as compared to 99.8 per cent five years ago. While the domestic debt is 46 per cent of the GDP, the external debt is 54.4 per cent, with the explicit debt of 1.6 per cent. And that is to cost the government in debt servicing Rs 346 billion which is a reduction of Rs 40 billion from last year’s figure of Rs 290 billion despite the reduction in domestic interest rest rates and partial write-off or rescheduling of the foreign debt. Hence the new leaders do not have much elbow space.

Instead they have to implement many of the reforms and call for additional assistance. The international aid agencies have promised larger aid if the government sticks to the reforms and implements them zealously. They have warned they will reduce the assistance if the agreements reached with them were violated.

The new government can reduce its liabilities to an extent by going through the privatization of the large public utilities, like KESC and WAPDA units, PSO, Habib Bank, Sui Southern Gas Company and Sui Northern and PTCL which can fetch Rs 100 billion according to the minister for privatization Altaf Saleem. Ninety per cent of the sales proceeds are to be used for repaying the most expensive debt. But when the overall debt is around Rs. 4,000 billion reduction of that through privatization will be small.

Nevertheless, the privatization of these units has to come through quick unless they are to be allowed to build up larger liabilities. It has been said the public sector units cause the government an annual loss of Rs 100 billion. So relief from that is absolutely essential instead of adding to their liabilities and making them more worthless. Hence Prof. Khurshid Ahmad too has welcomed the privatisation as “a step in the right direction,” while he is very critical of many other aspects of the military regime’s economic policies. He has, however, not come up with specific alternatives. If the government had to invest Rs 30 billion in KESC to prepare it for privatization it shows the dimension of the heavy demands the public sector units have been making on the government and how they have been draining its resources.

The pressure on the would-be civilian government will be heavy and the demands on it from the people will be varied and costly. The resources at its command will be too small, its capacity to raise new resources through borrowing or as new aid will be small and depends on the extent of its cooperation with the donors with their rigid conditionalities.

They cannot divert resources from the large projects to which they are now committed. The country cannot afford more abandoned large projects. The old legacy in this regard following change of regimes must not be repeated.

The country has made considerable headway in improving its external finances. The people too are playing their part with considerable earnestness. Exports are rising and home remittances are increasing and are expected to touch 3 billion dollars this year instead of one billion dollars, as happened until recently. And the foreign exchange reserves have risen to 8.45 billion dollars.

The IMF and other donors have to be more sympathetic to the new regime and truly helpful to overcome its immediate problems. What has been achieved so far should not be undone by either side so that the country can stand on its legs soon.

Those tricky axes of evil

NEVER trust an axis of evil. First, when President George W. Bush threatened to invade Iraq if it didn’t readmit UN arms inspectors, that tricky Saddam immediately agreed. ‘Welcome back to beautiful Baghdad,’ he told UN inspectors, leaving the Bush administration gnashing its teeth in frustration.

If the UN didn’t give him a green light to re-bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age, Bush thundered with stunning illogic, he would ignore the UN Security Council and take action unilaterally. The very same Bush had a few days earlier vowed to invade Iraq because it was ignoring the Security Council.

As this tragic farce was unfolding, a new bombshell erupted when that other tricky axis of evil, North Korea, revealed it had nuclear weapons. Now, the CIA has known since 1993 that North Korea had at least 2-3 nuclear weapons and 5,000 tons of poison gas and germs, plus the missiles and artillery to deliver them onto Seoul, the 37,000 US troops in South Korea, all of Japan, and US bases in Okinawa and Guam.

Faced with the choice of removing North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction through war, or pretending that they didn’t exist, the Clinton administration chose to buy North Korea’s silence with 4 billion dollars in oil, food and nuclear reactors. The Bush administration followed the same see-no-evil policy until last week’s hugely embarrassing revelation from the North Koreans.

And what was Bush’s response? He lamely called for ‘tough negotiations’ with North Korea. This from the same president who refuses to have any negotiations with Iraq over the very same issue. So, the Bush administration is rushing plans to invade Iraq, which has zero offensive capability, while calling for talks with North Korea, which has 100 intermediate ranged No-dong missiles pointed at South Korea, Japan, and US Pacific bases, 100,000 crack commando troops whose mission is to launch suicide assaults on all US military bases in the region, and is about to deploy an ICBM that can deliver a nuclear warhead to the continental US.

Confronted by this glaring contradiction, Bush claimed war against Iraq was necessary because Saddam was a ‘uniquely evil’ dictator who had gassed his own people. North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader,’ Kim Jong-il, with his weird bouffant hairdo, pot belly, and ill-fitting khaki jump suits looks and acts like a hostile alien from outer space in a Japanese science fiction movie. Kim’s Stalinist regime, with whom Bush wants to negotiate, has just allowed two million of its citizens to starve to death in order to amply feed and supply the communist party and the military, and conduct secret nuclear and missile programmes. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are in prison camps. North Korea has kidnapped Japanese, bombed civilian airliners, and committed many acts of aggression and terrorism.

As for Saddam gassing his own people — meaning Kurdish rebels during the Iran-Iraq War — Bush’s outrage is utter hypocrisy. The US and Britain supplied Iraq with its chemical and biological weapons, financed Saddam’s aggression against Iran, and made no protests when Saddam used such weapons.

Rather than calling for war against Iraq for events that occurred in the 1980s, President Bush would do well to do something about the current use by his closest ally and mentor, Israel, of US-supplied tanks, helicopter gunships, ground attack aircraft, and heavy anti-tank missiles against Palestinian civilians, a brazen violation of American laws which forbid the use of US weapons against civilians.

Why does Bush continue to fulminate against Iraq while pussyfooting around North Korea? Because North Korea has no oil and is not the target of the powerful pro-Israel lobby.

As former NY Times columnist Anthony Lewis writes, where would Bush, who has ‘the most dismal record of any president in memory,’ be without his Iraqi crusade? Facing soaring deficits, financial scandals, and a world that sees his bellicose administration, led by a cabal of Pentagon extremists, rather than Iraq, as a real international menace.

The Pentagon estimates it can crush Iraq’s feeble armed forces in a week and totally occupy the nation in 30 days with only modest casualties. Mr Bush’s jolly little war in Iraq promises to be short and, he hopes, sweet.

North Korea is a different matter. The North has a tough, million-man army that has considerable defensive power in spite of obsolete equipment. North Korea has repeatedly threatened to ‘burn’ Seoul and its seven million inhabitants, as well as the US 2nd Infantry Division on the DMZ, with chemical and perhaps biological weapons. In 1993, the Pentagon estimated that a full-scale war with North Korea would cost US forces 250,000 casualties.

Better to create a straw bogeyman in Baghdad, reckons George Bush, and then triumphantly knock it down, than to tangle with those scary North Koreans. — Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2002

The threat of golf

AS if we didn’t have enough trouble in the world, the winter people on Martha’s Vineyard are almost at war with the summer people — and it’s over a golf course.

A developer came along and wanted to build a fancy golf club. He was turned down by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission because it would only appeal to the rich, who come there in the summer. Membership would cost one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars.

The story was so newsworthy it shared the front pages of the New York Times with stories on Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea.

I have never been to any of those countries, but I have been to Martha’s Vineyard, so I can write about it with authority.

First of all, I don’t hate golf. I hate the people who play it. Some of my best friends believe hitting a little ball across acres of God’s green earth into a tiny hole is the most important thing in their lives.

I am on the side of those who are against another golf course on the lovely island by the sea. If I had my way, I would take the same acreage and plant soybeans instead.

Martha’s Vineyard has three golf courses now, and in the summer golfers complain they have to wait days for tee time. If the winter people on Martha’s Vineyard (read all-year residents) had only been against another golf course, it would be one thing, but they have used the opportunity to complain that the rich and the celebrities are ruining the island.

I don’t deny this, but it is not only the rich and famous vacationing in the summer.

Most of the people are middle class and have been going there for years — many for generations.

The all-year residents say the island was ruined after President Clinton went there. What made it worse was that he was a golfer.

The summer non-golfing people claim they sailed, fished, clammed and played tennis. It wasn’t until golf came to the island that the millionaires showed up.

Underneath the anti-golf feeling there is a bitterness that the winter people do all the work, while the summer people have all the fun.

There is probably some truth to this. The all-year residents make their living off the summertime vacationers and they feel like indentured servants.

This jealousy has been going on for years — long before Clinton came to the island. Anyone who lives there or visits in the summer feels he or she should be the last person allowed on the island.

History tells us that the Indians resented the white people who landed there, and so on, ad infinitum.

So where are we now?

The tides will continue to wash in and out. The sun will set, the moon will come out, the fish will bite, and life will go on as it has for centuries.

The rich will make more money, and the once-rich will have to sell their Vineyard houses to survive.

I’ll still go there no matter what anybody says, but I wish that there was something to go to the barricades for besides golf.

—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

The post-election prospects

THE October 10 elections threw up a hung parliament and hung provincial assemblies. In Sindh and Balochistan, the Muslim League(Q), the People’s Party and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal respectively enjoy plurality while in the NWFP, the Majlis-i-Amal is in a position to form the government on its own.

In Balochistan, too, the MMA may form the government if it can win over a few members. At this writing the elections for the women’s and minorities’ seats have not been held yet; the National Assembly will be complete. only when that is done.

The delay in the formation of governments at the centre and in the provinces is thus largely due to the inaction and slothfulness of the government and partly because of the bickering politicians who are engaged in jockeying for power and position. In the meantime the government has been creating confusion by announcing that with the suspension of the Constitution, the president has been deprived of the power to call upon the leader of the majority party to form the government and that it is the National Assembly which will have to decide as to who should become the prime minister.

This is a ludicrous and an unconvincing argument since in parliamentary democracy, it is the head of the state who calls upon the majority party leader to form the government and where no party is in a position to do that, president, in judicious exercise of his discretion, may ask the next party or group to prove its claim to majority support. In any case the government so formed will have to seek a confidence vote in the parliament within a specified period. Such a situation arises when no party or combination of parties enjoys a clear majority in the house. But one hears of a new ordinance being underway prohibiting a no-confidence motion for a year. Then there is talk of yet another ordinance, allowing floor-crossing in the assemblies after the elections. This is obviously intended to help the favourite party increase its strength in order that it may form a stable government.

The most blatant example of double-standards is the decision of the government to withdraw the operation of the Political Parties Act from the FATA, denying the elected members there the right to join a party of their choice by October 24. Coincidentally, this happened after the visit of Gen Tommy Franks, the commander of the US Central Command, to Islamabad.

This indiscreet act on the part of the government has added to the prevailing discontent among the local populace about the intrusive role of the FBI in the tribal region. The arrest of the philanthropist orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Amir Aziz, said to be at the behest of the FBI, vindicates the MMA’s manifesto demanding total withdrawal of the US forces and FBI operatives from Pakistan.

This is misunderstood in some quarters as the demand of the extremist religious parties but the election results have amply demonstrated that the two strategically located provinces of Balochistan and the NWFP have pronounced their verdict against the US military presence in Pakistan. This has been the long-standing demand of the nationalist-progressive elements in the country too; they have been consistently opposed to all forms of US military presence in Pakistan.

This issue is central to the MMA coalition-making strategy. With the exception of Benazir Bhutto, no other party, not even the PPP Parliamentarians or the loyalist Muslim League (Q), has been supportive of the continuation of the US bases, much less the FBI role in hunting for Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects in Pakistan territory. The government’s policy of allowing America the use of military bases, installations and logistics facilities on its soil was a hot election issue is so far as the MMA was concerned.

It is a question of the sovereign jurisdiction of the state of Pakistan which has been compromised by the extension of America’s intrusive role to this country. Unfortunately, the meddlesome role of the European Union and the US as manifested in their attempt to block the MMA from participating in a coalition government at the centre may create an Algeria-type situation where the Islamic Salvation Front was prevented from formally winning the elections after its spectacular victory in the first round. One may, however, add that the MMA with its 45 seats has made an unrealistic demand that its nominee be made the prime minister.

This has naturally alarmed the western powers which have not forgotten the role of the religious parties now in the MMA during the war in Afghanistan. By all canons of parliamentary democracy, the PML(Q) with its 77 seats — now 97 with the inclusion of new entrants — deserves to be called upon by the president to form the government at the centre, and if its fails, the PPP should be given a chance to do that. If that also fails, one should not blame Gen. Musharraf if he dissolves the house and orders fresh elections.

It is true that the political parties contest elections in order to come to power so that they could implement their agenda. The usual practice is that the elected parties choose their leader who heads the parliamentary group. After the Assembly meets to elect the leader of the house. The head of the state then invites him to form the government. As against this, in the present post-election scenario, each parliamentary group has nominated its candidate for the post of prime minister and has made his acceptance as a condition for forming a coalition government.

The three parties — the People’s Party, the MMA and the Muslim League (N) — stand for the restoration of the 1973 Constitution, in its unamended form, the sovereignty of the parliament, the abolition of the National Security Council. On the other hand, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), the National Alliance, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and most independents would likely support the controversial amendments made by General Musharraf. Even so the loyalists would not be able to mobilize the two-thirds majority needed for the approval of the amendments. There is therefore a built-in deadlock in the very composition of the National Assembly.

The deadlock can be averted only in the event of a compromise between the two major political parties. The PPP parliamentarians are not going to compromise unless the cases against Benazir Bhutto are withdrawn and Asif Zardari is released from continued incarceration. Whether Benazir would agree to forgo her chance for premiership as part of a bargain with General Musharraf is anybody’s guess. Gen. Musharraf may find it easier to make a deal with Benazir Bhutto than with Nawaz Sharif from whom he fears revenge. The MMA could be assured of its due role in the NWFP and Balochistan and a respectable position in the federal government.

In Sindh any attempt to keep the People’s Party out of the next government in favour of a ragtag coalition would prove fatal to the federation. Equally dangerous it would be to ostracize the MMA since the group has a firm hold on the Frontier and Balochistan. The components of the MMA have been part of the political process of the subcontinent since long before partition and have continued since. They shared power in the NWFP and Balochistan in 1973 and during the Zia regime.

In sum, may one ask the PPP, PML(N) and MMA: what did they mean when they had been clamouring from the housetops for a national government? And on what common formula did they intend to construct a broad-based government? Now is the time for them to prove that their action is as good as their world.