Where political parties failed

The Speaker of the West Bengal Assembly, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, who is also acting chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, had a brief stopover in Karachi on his way to Islamabad.

He is a suave man, a competent parliamentarian and has been the Speaker for 23 years. He says he wants to step down and resume his legal ractice but his party, the CPI-M, would not let him go. The party itself has been in power in Kolkata for 24 years.

Describing the achievements of his party, which was led for most part by the redoubtable Mr Jyoti Basu, he said that the party with its deep roots had a powerful rapport with the masses.

Its cadres provide a vital link between the people and the leadership. So strong has been their commitment to the party's ideology and so effective is their enlightened message to the people, that not a single BJP candidate has been elected from Bengal.

In the backdrop of Mr Halim's observations, one wonders why the same can't be said of any party in Pakistan. The subject came up again with full force at a seminar on women organized by Bazm-i-Amina in Karachi.

One speaker came down heavily on the military governments in Pakistan, which he said, have done a great disservice to the country by stunting the development of political parties.

Another speaker spoke on violence in the universities and was critical of the role of the political parties. He pointed out that an unhealthy trend was initiated by the parties which recruited students in their rank and file and even armed them to serve their own interests. She held the political parties responsible for many of the ills one sees on the campuses.

Who is right? The fact of the matter is that our political parties, including the Muslim League which was founded by a group of elitist leaders in 1906, have failed to strike roots in the masses.

Until 1947 the Muslim League was more of a movement and after independence it failed to convert itself into a party with a structured machinery and discipline. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the army which has ruled the country for more than half the period of Pakistan's existence has not allowed a free interaction of political forces.

Thus the two-- the armed forces and the parties-- have jointly contributed to the failure of democracy in Pakistan. Each has fed on the other's weaknesses and used it as a whipping boy to justify its own inadequacies and wrongdoings.

Every time the army has taken over control, it has spoken of the corruption, ineptitude, bad governance and lack of stability because of the poor performance by the political parties.

In October 1958, Ayub Khan spoke of "the ruthless struggle for power, corruption, shameful exploitation of the masses" and tmisuse of Islam for political ends.

He described the "mentality of the political parties " as having sunk so low" that they would not enable him to form "a stable government capable of dealing with the innumerable and complex problems" facing the country.

The same story was repeated by Ziaul Haq in 1977 who said that the political leaders had created a vacuum which he was filling. Again in 1999 General Musharraf alleged that the politicians had been following "self-serving policies, had played around with, and systematically destroyed various institutions and brought the economy to a state of collapse.

Since the political parties had no power base in the masses they could not mount an effective resistance or even register a protest against military take over. Political parties mature with electoral experience.

At election time they are activated into mobilizing and educating the masses to achieve their ultimate objective of gaining power to implement their programme charted out in their manifestos.

In Pakistan the parties have been denied this opportunity because the political process has been held in abeyance whenever the military has seized control of the government.

One may well ask why the political parties did not attempt to create a power base for themselves by working with the masses on issues not directly an offshoot of electoral politics.

This could have been undertaken as a long-term strategy to expand the membership of the party and train the party cadres to work with the people and respond to their needs. One cannot deny that the parties would have had to face constraints in this area too. Nevertheless it would not have been an impossible task.

The elitist politics of the political parties which only sought office, and the absence of a tradition of public service among the Muslims of the subcontinent, account for this failure of the parties to reach out to the masses.

Although the People's Party started off on a positive note in this direction, it too degenerated into an organization engaged in power-struggle. That would explain why no political party in the country has had democracy within the party itself. Party elections are not held and the leadership is generally self-appointed with the support of a cabal of supporters.

This would explain the countless problems which destabilize the country even when the constitutional process is in place. Floor crossing, the duress which is used to win votes of confidence in the Assembly, the apathy of party members towards their parliamentary duties and the 'lotaism' with which we are so familiar are a reflection of the immaturity of political parties.

Had our political parties consolidated their position by winning suport at the grassroots level, the military rulers could not have had such an easy sailing in their political adventures.

In other Third World countries where parties are strong, bonapartism is rare. India, Sri Lanka and now even Bangladesh are good examples of how the political forces have managed to keep their armies in barracks.

Even now our parties can attempt to make a beginning. While they struggle to democratize the system, they can seek to strengthen their role by attempting to reach out to the people, by paying attention to their parliamentary responsibilities, attending to their party structure and, above all, doing their homework on various issues and proposing alternative strategies.

True, the ultimate objective of the parties is to gain political power. But while they are out of office they can surely work to strengthen their claim to power and improve their image.

Living with inflation

Once upon a time the country's budget used to be presented once a year and you knew where you were in relation to prices controlled by its contents. Now we have a supplementary budget every now and then (it is called a mini-budget, though there is nothing mini about it), add to that the frequent rise in the rates of utilities provided by the government. The result is that there is no relevance of the national budget to the lives of the people.

A friend was complaining about this in her own way. She said the rising cost of living had left the fixed income families so limp that even the aesthetic senses had been routed.

It was no longer possible to sit back in a relaxed mood and talk about books and art and culture, because the conversation somehow always tended to veer around to high prices, and comparisons with what was six months ago.

I agree, and this is one of my serious complaints against life, and I do not have many complaints. The stark reality for people like us (I am a pensioner, thinking all the time about what I can do to earn some extra money) is that the good old days may never come back, for inflation is now an essential part of our lives.

Though I must say that the so-called good old days never looked so good at the time we talk about. No amount of grumbling and cursing can bring the price barometer down. Life today is an endless battle between dwindling resources and ever-increasing needs.

Rising prices always make it a sad time for the housewife, be she educated or illiterate. In addition to the problem of making both ends meet, she has to face a grumpy and discontented household whose members seem to be oblivious of the reality of the situation and fret over small personal wishes that cannot be fulfilled.

One of the horrendous thoughts is how a family is able to subsist in 3,000 to 5,000 rupees a month. At the same time you hear (as I did a few days ago) of a house in Islamabad being sold for five crores.

To make matters worse Mr Shaukat Aziz keeps boasting that he will change the economic face of Pakistan, (for better or for worse?) and that particularly Attock and Tharparkar from where he is contesting for a National Assembly seat will become El Dorados if he wins.

This also means that if he is not elected, the people of the two constituencies will be left to fend for themselves as they will be doomed to deprivation, if not total destruction.

My wife used to crib about the frustration caused by proverbs and adages like "Cut your coat according to your cloth," and "Waste not want not," and "A penny saved is a penny earned."

Handed down from generations these sayings seem to mock the poor housewife's efforts to balance her budget. Till some years ago the generation older than ours was still around. They would repeat these sayings day and night and one was apt to lose one's temper on hearing, "Your grandmother used to run the kitchen on fifty rupees a month."

No one can turn the clock back. We have to make do with what we have. In the tight circumstances that people like us face every day radical methods have to be adopted to keep up with one's income.

I am so placed that I am now almost the housewife in my family which consists of my daughter, her husband and two growing boys. I am able to earn something extra every month through editing and translation work, but my son-in-law has to subsist in his limited salary as a government servant.

So we put our heads together and think of new ways to live within our means. Certain habits and principles make this job difficult since I insist that there shall be no saving on food and no beggar or needy person will be allowed to go away empty-handed.

People like us call themselves middle class. No, we are not middle class. According to the per capita income and the general state of the domestic economy we are well-to-do, if not actually rich. The poor middle class is way down below where you can hardly see it.

Even in this situation my wife used to say, "We do have an exciting time, not knowing where the next hundred rupee note is to come from. I pity the really rich. They can buy anything they want any time without worrying about the price.

How boring!" I have rarely seen anyone sporting this kind of philosophy. Now that I am alone I no longer find this state of affairs exciting, but in respect to her memory I try my best to make sure it doesn't frustrate me.

I love giving presents, so does my daughter. When a month begins we start counting how many birthdays we are going to have. She also remembers wedding anniversaries, though I have washed my hands of them.

"So what if they got married on a certain date? Why should I go on paying a tax even if they are not happy together?" Though I can't make myself get away from birthdays, the burden on this count was reduced many years ago when I decided to give only books as birthday gifts, irrespective of the age of the person.

Except with little children, I always ask, "Do you want one brand new book or five second hand ones?" Also I do not accept anything but books on my own birthday.

Making sure that no money is wasted is a constant joint mission with my daughter. It is surprising how much a close watch on the judicious use of electricity, gas, petrol and water helps in the long run.

But it is a long haul, for when you are temperamentally made in a certain way the practice of saving tends to sound mean to your own self. On many occasions we give up, saying, "Chalo, jahan satya naas wahan sava satya naas." (If you don't know Urdu get someone to translate it for you.)

We Pakistanis have this royal habit of giving lavish dinners. Now that the chicken in its variety of cooked forms has become a part of life, and is also cheaper than mutton, why must we have four or five other dishes to supplement it? I do not differentiate between formality and informality.

If a friend or relation cannot eat the food that I eat, he or she is no friend or relation. But here, habit again intervenes. If you really love your guests you do want to do something extra for them.

So the battle to meet the budget goes on. It is a never-ending battle, and if you are the improvising type (as I claim to be) it is a constant test for your ingenuity and your ability to manipulate your resources to make them look meaningful. But such is life. Thank God one is not the only one fighting this battle.

Venezuela's opposition fails again

The stakes were high, and Venezuelans left little doubt about their enthusiasm for participatory democracy. Voters in last Sunday's referendum started gathering outside polling stations before the crack of dawn.

Later in the day, some of the queues stretched for two kilometres. Voting hours had to be extended twice in order to accommodate those who had waited in line for hours without getting a chance to cast their ballots.

"This is the largest turnout I have ever seen," said former US president Jimmy Carter, who was in Caracas as an observer on behalf of the Carter Centre. And he's seen a few.

The question Venezuelans had been called upon to answer was reasonably straightforward: "Do you agree to nullify for the current presidential term the popular mandate conferred through democratic and legitimate elections on Mr Hugo Rafael Chavez Arias as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?" The popular verdict was equally unambiguous: 58 per cent said no.

Although this is for many reasons a reassuring outcome, it is not a particularly surprising one. After all, it is widely accepted that Venezuela's underprivileged look upon Chavez as a compassionate kindred spirit who not only empathizes with their predicament but is actively engaged in redressing decades of callous apathy and neglect. Secondly, the vast majority of Venezuelans are poor. With an estimated turnout of 80 per cent, a different verdict would have been far more remarkable.

Yet even as fireworks defied the Caracas twilight in the early hours on Monday and the president of the republic serenaded supporters who had gathered outside his Milaflores residence, the opposition, which had striven long and hard for the recall referendum, sounded off ominously about manipulation and fraud.

It must have desperately been hoping that the Carter Centre and the Organization of American States would, in their capacity as official observers, express at least a few reservations about what on the face of it was a strikingly transparent process. But there was no solace to be had from that source.

Sunday's referendum represented the opposition's third all-out effort to unseat Chavez since he was re-elected in 2000 to a six-year term. The time-honoured method of a US-condoned coup was attempted in April 2002; thanks to spontaneous popular protests and the support Chavez enjoys within the armed forces, the plot unravelled within 48 hours - although not before it had been greeted with approval by Washington DC as well as The Washington Post.

Towards the end of that year, they tried a different tack: a strike that crippled the petroleum industry for several weeks, causing losses worth $6 billion. To his credit, Chavez stood his ground - and eventually had his way. Oil revenues are now being used to fund social projects known as "missions" that are gradually but perceptibly transforming the lives of the poorest Venezuelans.

Since that failure, the opposition had concentrated on the referendum - an option-based, ironically, on a clause in the constitution introduced by Chavez. Whether it has any strategy beyond challenging the result remains to be seen.

It's worth noting, meanwhile, that, counting this week's triumph, Chavez has won public support for his policies eight times since 1998, through two elections and six referendums. That's quite an accomplishment for someone derided as a threat to democracy.

One of the commonest complaints against Chavez is that he has polarized Venezuelan society. It's a charge relentlessly regurgitated by much of the international media, as if it were an incontrovertible fact. As evidence, it is pointed out that for several years now the streets of Caracas have regularly been erupting with protests against Chavez and counter-demonstrations by his supporters.

These mass mobilizations have generally not been accompanied by much violence; the final rallies by both sides ahead of the referendum are reported to have been festive affairs.

And although strong feelings do indeed run deep among the chavistas and their opponents, the circumstances that bred this antagonism were not of Chavez's making. It makes more sense to see him as a symptom rather than the cause of the fault lines running through Venezuelan society.

Eyewitness accounts suggest it is easy to distinguish between pro- and anti-Chavez crowds even without hearing their slogans or reading their placards. The president's foes are well-heeled and almost exclusively white.

Those who look up to him as a saviour generally can't afford sartorial elegance, and most of them tend to be mestizos or blacks. In other words, a race barrier compounds the class divide.

Before Chavez came along, power alternated between a pair of political parties controlled by the white elite. The poor didn't figure much in their calculations, except at election time.

Courted for their votes, they could safely be neglected thereafter. Once it became clear that Chavez would not be content to carry on this game, that he seriously intended to institute measures aimed at alleviating the misery of Venezuela's disempowered majority, the upper and middle classes panicked at the prospect of a threat to their privileges.

At a press conference late last week, Enrique Mendoza, one of the leaders of the opposition Coordinadora Democratica, wasn't particularly reticent about the elitist coalition's irresistible urge for a return to the status quo ante.

Asked what kind of Venezuela the Coordinadora had in mind, he responded: "Where we are all Venezuelans, we are all together, whatever religious differences we might have, whatever class differences we might have. One Venezuela, where the rich and poor can coexist."

A Venezuela, that is to say, where the destitute and the deprived know their place, and make no effort to emerge from the rut chosen for them by the champions (and chief beneficiaries) of neoliberal economic policies. A Venezuela in which the class divide is considered sacrosanct, and where those at the top of the heap can rest assured it will not erupt into a class struggle.

Chavez is reviled among those who entertain this bleak and self-centred vision not so much because he spoke up for the poor and attracted their votes, but because he had the courage to act upon his convictions.

The fact that his lineage is obviously mestizo and black, and that he speaks with great confidence in a provincial idiom, only makes him easier to hate for those who refer to his supporters as lumpen and negro.

Prominent among the provocateurs has been former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, who was recently quoted by El Nacional newspaper as saying that violence is the only means of getting rid of Chavez, who "must die like a dog, because he deserves it".

It is quite extraordinary that Perez still considers himself qualified to comment on political matters, given that he was booted out of office for corruption. But then, he is by no means the only crooked figure among the anti-chavistas.

Perez's bile may partly be attributable to the fact that he was at the helm when a young colonel by the name of Hugo Chavez was among the leaders of an abortive coup in 1992.

This was about three years after an estimated 1,000 - and possibly twice as many - Venezuelans were killed during protests against "austerity measures" introduced by Perez as part of an IMF and World Bank-sponsored "structural adjustment" programme.

Chavez was jailed for his part in the coup attempt, but the authorities permitted him 60 seconds on television to persuade his followers to surrender. Chavez used the air time to condemn the status quo and implied that he would be back.

Freed in 1994, the bourgeoisie-controlled media did not take him seriously as a presidential candidate four years later. But his promise to use oil revenues for transforming the lives of the poorest Venezuelans obviously struck a chord. The privately owned press and television stations have never forgiven him.

Reactionary elites in Latin America have always been able to rely on Uncle Sam as an ally, because their interests coincide. They share an aversion to radical political, social and economic experiments that reduce the scope for exploitation.

The US is particularly allergic to dangerous examples in its "backyard" and, with the exception of Cuba, has generally succeeded in banishing or averting them through force or hegemony: Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua are just the most obvious examples.

Against the odds, Chavez has survived thus far. Unfortunately, it is likely that his energies will continue to be divided between pursuing his agenda and confronting his opponents at home and abroad, who seek to portray him as closet-communist caudillo, despite his enviable democratic record.

Washington and many relatively well-heeled Venezuelans also find it hard to swallow the fact that Chavez looks upon Fidel Castro as a mentor and does not feel obliged to obey IMF dictates or to fall in line with US foreign policy.

(The Clinton administration was disconcerted when, in 2000, he became the first foreign head of state since 1991 to visit Baghdad, as part of his efforts to breathe life into a moribund OPEC.)

At home, it's the Chavez administration's gradual redistribution of wealth that excites wrath and discomfiture. Land reforms, ownership rights for slum dwellers, adult literacy drives, job training for the unemployed, increased spending on education and health, free clinics manned by at least 10,000 Cuban doctors - these are the sort of measures that governments beholden to the IMF can barely dream of implementing.

History not in Kerry's favour

If John Kerry wins the US presidency, he will find himself in the same plight as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon when they took office. Each inherited another man's war. Each prosecuted that war, Johnson reluctantly, Nixon because he thought he could do better. Both failed and were destroyed by the war.

Johnson dreaded that this would happen. He told his press secretary, Bill Moyers: 'I feel like a hitchhiker caught in a hailstorm on a Texas highway. I can't run. I can't hide. And I can't make it stop.'

The murdered Kennedy's foreign policy advisers told him that if he didn't press on with the war, 'Asian communism' would conquer one non-western state after another - dominos tumbling. So did practically everyone else in the Washington policy community. It was one of those things 'everybody knew'.

Johnson was a populist economic and racial-justice reformer. He knew nothing of south-east Asia. He knew that if he prosecuted the war, he 'would lose everything at home'.

If he did not, he 'would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere'. Kerry expresses no such doubts. He apparently accepts what 'everyone knows' in Washington today, as in London, that 'failure in Iraq is not an option'.

This is true. Failure is no longer an option because it has already been assured by choices already made by the Bush administration. The questions that remain are failure's timing and the gravity of its consequences.

The principal purpose of the invasion was to turn Iraq into Washington's strategic anchor in the Middle East, with permanent US military bases there and an assured American role in its economy and oil industry.

The countries that previously played this strategic role were the Shah's government in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s and Saudi Arabia following the Gulf War. They provide inauspicious precedents.

The Shah's government was overturned by the same nationalist and religious forces that motivate the Iraq insurrection today. The identical forces, at work within elite groups in Saudi Arabia, were responsible for Osama bin Laden's creation of Al Qaeda.

John Kerry supported the invasion of Iraq. He says that he still does. His reproach to George W Bush is that he, Kerry, could have done it better. He would have won the support of all the allies and of the international community.

If elected, he promises to 'put a deal together' with those allies that would allow 'a significant, enormous reduction' of US troops in Iraq by the end of his first term, that is, by four years from now.

Subsequently realizing that this is not quite what the electorate wants to hear, he promised to withdraw troops within a year, a correction undermining the plausibility of both promises, contributing to his difficulty in clarifying where he actually stands.

None the less, he seems confident that if he is president, other countries will send troops to fight the insurgency, replacing Americans. He does not explain why they should wish to do so.

Last week, Polish and Ukrainian authorities noted that their troops, engaged by militants of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, had been sent to Iraq as peacekeepers, not to fight, and that their existing commitments will soon be up.

When Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968, during the Vietnam war, he said, like Kerry, that he knew how to win. His plan was to emulate Dwight Eisenhower, whose vice-president Nixon had been during the war in Korea. He would threaten nuclear war.

When Eisenhower took office in January 1953, he caused a message to be conveyed to Beijing and Pyongyang, warning that he would 'carry on the war in new ways never yet tried in Korea'. In July, an armistice was agreed, effectively partitioning Korea along the 38th parallel, as it remains today.

When Nixon became president in 1969, the notion of atomic attack on North Vietnam had already been bruited in limited Washington circles, but judged an unprofitable option.

He none the less transmitted a threat of 'massive retaliation' to Hanoi, to no effect. He subsequently ordered bombing attacks that eventually became the heaviest campaign of conventional aerial bombing in the history of warfare. The Vietnamese communists were unmoved.

The Vietnam war ended with an ignominious American withdrawal, following an agreement with Hanoi signed in 1973. Two-and-a-half years after that, Saigon fell to communist forces, with American officials scrambling on to helicopters from the embassy rooftop.

Nixon, however, had possessed an option in 1969 that he lacked the courage to choose. He had always said he admired Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle, when returned to power in 1958, at a moment of extreme crisis in France's war to defeat Algerian insurgents and to keep Algeria French, recognized that the war was futile, even if the insurrection itself might temporarily be defeated.

He cut France's losses. Defying military mutiny, despite significant resistance from French public opinion, and facing assassination attempts and a terrorist campaign directed against him and his government, de Gaulle negotiated Algerian independence.

It was an act of cold-blooded courage and realism.It did not leave France revealed as 'a pitiful, helpless giant', as Nixon said would be the case if the United States left Vietnam.

It strengthened France, freeing it to deal with the real issues of political and economic reform. If John Kerry is elected president, he will have the de Gaulle option. He will have a window lasting a few months during which he could reverse US policy and expect, provisionally, to carry public opinion with him.

Kerry could set a general timetable for coalition troop withdrawals, begin them, terminate the construction of permanent American bases now going on and reaffirm respect for Iraq's sovereign authority over its national economy, its industry and the disposition of its energy resources.

He could offer new support and urge international engagement in new efforts by the traditional religious and tribal leadership and existing political forces to re-establish the representative political institutions that existed in Iraq between independence in 1932 and the series of military and Baath party coups that began in 1958.

The conventional wisdom in Washington and London is that political disorder and communal struggle would actually follow, leading to chaos, Iraq becoming 'a breeding ground for terrorism'. Once again, this is irrelevant. Iraq already is a breeding ground for terrorism and is nearing chaos under the occupation.

It is obvious that continued military occupation worsens the situation: it provokes resistance and disorder. In any case, the ultimate responsibility for what happens in Iraq lies with the Iraqis, if they are let alone. This is what they have insistently been saying all along.

The intervention in Iraq is the latest in a 50-year series of American politico-military interventions into the internal affairs of non-western countries, none of which has been a success.

Most were failures. The consequence of failure in Vietnam unseated the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Revolution in Iran and defeat in Lebanon in 1983 seriously damaged the Carter and Reagan administrations. This year, Iraq may defeat George W Bush.

Why should John Kerry wish to be next? But on present evidence, this is likely to become the case. -Dawn/ Observer Service.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of several books on American foreign policy.