| 12 September 2004 | Sunday | 26 Rajab 1425 |
Politics and governance
The clash of power and economics
There was a time when the study of politics, now called political science, was regarded as a branch of moral philosophy. The first American textbook in the field was entitled "A Manual of Political Ethics" (Francis Lieber, 1833). Yet the connection between ethics and politics, both in theory and practice, has always been tenuous. Machiavelli taught that morals were irrelevant to the pursuit and preservation of power. Thomas Hobbes, another great figure in the school of "political realism," maintained that morality, far from having any inherent value, was simply the verdict of the victor in struggles for power.
The irrelevance of morals to politics has been asserted more often with reference to a state's foreign relations. Covenants with other countries may be broken if, with the change of circumstances, they have become detrimental to the national interest. Opposing the idea of supporting France in a war against England, because France had supported America in its war of independence, Alexander Hamilton, one of America's founding fathers, wrote:
"Indeed the rule of morality in this respect is not precisely the same between nations as between individuals. The duty of making its own welfare the guide of its actions is much stronger upon the former (the nation) than upon the latter; in proportion to the greater magnitude and importance of national compared with individual happiness, and to the greater permanency of the effects of national than of individual conduct."
Turning to domestic affairs, we see that persons will be found in all societies who allege that politics is "dirty." Even when it does not refer to outright corruption, the adjective ("dirty") denotes a certain amount of deviousness, secretiveness, ambivalence, or want of candour among politicians. It is taken for granted that most of them will not do what they say, and that they will not say what they really intend.
We do not look for political morality when dictators of one kind or another rule. Morality becomes particularly relevant in democratic systems of governance where the people judge their government's performance not only in terms of the benefits it delivers but also according to their notions of right and wrong.
Here then is some good news. Several well-known politicians, belonging to the PPP, PML (N), ANP, Tehrik-i-Insaf, and spokesmen of certain human rights organizations and the Lahore High Court Bas Association met for a "seminar" in Lahore on August 4. Mr Jehangir Badar, secretary general of the PPP, proposed that the country should have a political code of ethics. Mr Zulfikar Ali Khosa, Punjab president of PML (N) and Mr Ehsan Wyne, the ANP secretary general, supported Mr Badar's move and the group adopted the following code:
(1) democratize the internal organization and workings of political parties; (2) promote political tolerance; (3) reject victimization of opponents and dissidents; (4) protect constitutionally mandated institutions; (5) forego alliances with non-democratic forces; (6) oppose electoral rigging of all kinds; (7) respect the collective wisdom of the people as expressed in their vote; (8) involve the people in the policy-making process.
Mr Jehangir Badar's sponsorship of a code of political ethics may have come as a pleasant surprise to those who have known him for a time. Just as unexpected, but nevertheless welcome, is the stress on morality in Mr Shujaat Hussain's farewell address to the nation (August 24). Speaking in a philosophical vein, he said history had taught that moral values were mightier than political power.
He then went on to offer the even more curious view that those who were morally strong could not be politically weak. He condemned maligning of political foes and the levelling of false charges against them. He invited all to struggle against falsehood, fraud, hypocrisy, and injustice.
Let us first see how falsehood figures in politics. It is, of course, bad, but note also that in politics all lies are not equally blameworthy. In democratic polities it is considered reprehensible to make a false statement on the floor of parliament. If the requested information is not to be given, government spokesmen will say it is against the public interest to give it out. Alternatively, they will be ambivalent, obscure, or humorous in their response. Lying is more common in foreign than in domestic affairs.
No government will, for instance, admit that it has spies, saboteurs, or assassins working in unfriendly countries. And, at home it will not admit that the "encounters" in which its agents killed certain undesirable persons were fake.
It is common enough among politicians to exaggerate their virtues, overstate their opponents' weaknesses, and make lavish promises during an election campaign. If a politician cannot deliver all of the good things he had promised, he is not to be denounced as a covenant-breaker. But he is surely to be condemned if he made promises that he never had any intention of keeping. Where parties manage elections for the most part, a candidate will do well to contest on the basis of his party's platform and keep his personal promises to the minimum.
Morality is like a seamless web so that if one stays away from falsehood, one will probably get to be virtuous in other respects also. In Pakistan lying as such is not the most grievous of the political vices. In my reckoning, harassment of opponents tops the list.
It takes several forms: dubbing them as unpatriotic; putting them away under preventive detention laws; instituting bogus criminal cases against them that may remain unsettled for years, imposing upon them huge expenses in lawyers' fees and the toil of running from one court in one city to another court in another city. The last of these practices is just about the most despicable. Yet, successive governments have resorted to it with increasing frequency.
The proper way of dealing with political opponents in a democracy is to take them to the court of public opinion; to recall to the people one's record of accomplishments while in power, project one's programme for the future, show how well these shine as compared with the other side's performance, and thus to win the next election. But this course of action calls for a great deal of hard work, which our politicians in power do not want to do.
It is so much easier to sit back and have the police and other officials make life miserable for their adversaries. It means also that they do not really value the democratic processes of governance. Jehangir Badar and Shujaat Hussain must do some introspection and, keeping in view their own past conduct, re-examine their commitment to democracy.
That the parties should democratize their own internal ranks and workings is doubtless a great idea. But will they do it? The great majority of them in Pakistan have not held internal elections for a very long time, and in many cases never. I remember that soon after independence PML did hold elections for party offices in NWFP when Abdul Qayyum Khan and the Pir Sahib of Manki Sharif were contesting for the top slot. But I remember also that each side accused the other of fabricating basic party membership rosters.
One does hear occasionally of a party's plans to launch a membership drive, but I doubt that any of them (besides the Jamaat-i-Islami and a couple of others) maintains updated membership lists. Without these lists elections cannot be held.
The American practice in this regard would seem to merit attention. In the first place, holding of elections is a responsibility of the state, not federal, governments, which have delegated it to the town or country governments. A person goes to the town clerk's office to register as a voter and indicates whether he/she is a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. The clerk records this information and makes party membership lists available to whoever wants them. These lists are used for party elections at local and state levels.
Something similar might be done in Pakistan. The law might require periodic party elections, and a designated local government official might function as the keeper of party membership lists. Instead of enrolling members and collecting membership fees and maintaining the relevant record, party leaders might ask potential members to go and record their party affiliation with the town clerk.
Left to themselves, managers of party politics may wish to retain their present practice of appointing, rather than electing, persons to party offices. One may wonder why, given her claims of popularity with the masses, Ms Benazir Bhutto got herself named as the PPP's chairperson for life. What would have been wrong with standing for the office every five years? Surely she would have won each time she contested. Could it be that deep down, in the inner recesses of her mind, she too does not really have much use for democratic procedures and processes?
As I have said above, the law should require parties to hold internal elections, and the ones that have not done so should not be entitled to nominate candidates for elective public offices. Party elections being an event in public view, it should not be difficult to ascertain whether or not a given party has held them.
Electoral fraud can be banished if the politicians in power will refrain from it. Their post-election behaviour, including their interest and endeavour in vitalizing institutions, will depend largely on their understanding and/or acceptance of the true end of politics. Far too many of them in Pakistan think that the purpose of their participation in politics is self-aggrandizement, not public service. Having written on this subject before, I shall not dwell upon it now.
There are other recommendations coming from Jehangir Badar and Shujaat Hussain. But I think if the ones discussed above materialize, the others will get implemented as a byproduct, and we can have reasonably clean politics.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net.
Politics and governance
The mantra of merit and good governance ever on the lips of the president, and now repeated more emphatically by the prime minister, has yet to find a practical expression in their actions. In fact, so far they appear to be in a state of wilderness. In chasing the extremists too - their third undertaking - the government seems trapped on a treadmill.
Not many in the lot of 60 ministers would pass the test of merit. The justification for the large size of the cabinet - that they are all needed - given by the prime minister in an interview to this paper published on Thursday is not at all plausible. He would hardly get to know them during his three-year term, much less evaluate and coordinate their activities.
As a private sector manager, he surely subscribes to the theory, and must have also practised it, in his banking career that in order to be efficient, an organization must be lean. He should view the government of Pakistan no differently. Along with the ministers, the bureaucracy, too, will expand and in larger proportion. Thoughtlessly promoted officials, like their ministers, will rise to their level of incompetence to fill the higher posts created - that is the well known Peter's principle.
Sheikh Rashid, the minister who speaks for the government, could not have been taken seriously when he dismissed the concern of the pressmen over the burden the enlarged cabinet will impose on the exchequer. The salary of a minister may be a modest Rs. 40,000 per month but the cost of maintaining him in office with his perks, personal staff and security can be close to a million. The cost, nevertheless, must be viewed not for its burden but the resentment it would cause among the growing ranks of the unemployed amid vast poverty.
It would have gone down well with the people and also enhanced the credibility of the prime minister if he had conceded that the number of ministers was a political necessity, and not a requirement of good governance, and that they were foisted on him by the bosses of the parties they represent. Also, that the responsibility for their calibre and character lay with those bosses and all that he could do was to get the best out of them without having them on each other's toes.
Though the prime minister in an interview on the BBC last Wednesday claimed that the people on the streets of Pakistan looked more content and prosperous than the people in the neighbouring countries, the World Bank contradicts that. The average income of an Indian in terms of buying power, the Bank's 2004 report says, is Rs. 630 more than that of a Pakistani.
The report of the Mahbubul Haq Human Development Centre, that is closer to ground realities, puts the gap at Rs. 950. That was in the year 2002. Considering that the rate of economic growth in the intervening two years has been faster in India than in Pakistan, the gap should be even wider today.
Thus, while the common man here may be more extravagant, his Indian counterpart can buy more goods and services with the money he earns. Since the World Bank and the Mahbubul Haq Centre both cannot be wrong nor the prime minister's observation be faulted, the inescapable conclusion is that a good deal of Pakistan's income and wealth goes either untaxed or is wasted instead of being saved for investment in productive assets.
The emphasis on good governance is thus well placed, but the policy and other measures adopted to improve it have worsened matters. This calls for attention to the triangular conflict among the federal, provincial and district governments aggravated by the Legal Framework Order (incorporated in the Constitution as the 17th amendment) and the new administrative system introduced by the devolution plan.
The National Reconstruction Bureau is too dogmatically committed to the new constitutional and administrative scheme to take a detached view. Its opponents, or vested interests, are also have their own prejudices but it is obvious that it is not working. It has brought politics and administration at all levels under great stress adding to the misery of the common people while the politicians and officials vie with one another to protect or extend their turfs.
The task of an objective review of the system needs to be assigned to a panel of experts and prominent citizens who are not committed to it nor are known to oppose it. They should be guided by the opinion and experience of the people alone.
To create an atmosphere conducive to peace and progress, the style of governance must change radically. The "slight" change the prime minister speaks of would make little difference. Regrettably, Mr Shaukat Aziz, though a finance and management specialist, has started his prime ministerial career on a note no different to dyed-in-the-wool politicians - Mr Jamali and Mr Shujaat Hussain - before him.
The consolation that his umra retinue was smaller than that of his two predecessors is more than offset by his larger ministerial horde. While Mr Aziz talks of a "paradigm shift" - whatever this may imply - for the ordinary people, the more things change the more they remain static. His trip to Saudi Arabia has been described as very successful - so it has always been with others. The hope, however, remains that this time round it would also bring some Saudi investment to Pakistan and that this success would not be limited to the opening of a bank branch in the Kingdom.
Mr Shaukat Aziz's personal relations with the leaders of all parties in the parliament may be cordial, as he claims they are, but that would not be enough to carry them all the way over three years. The religious parties constituting the MMA with whom his two predecessors felt on ideological and sentimental affinity are now set on a divergent, hostile path. In looking for new friends, Mr Aziz should be cognizant of the fact that the real threat to his government arises from the political elements left out of parliament.
He should, therefore, attempt a reconciliation with regional nationalists and the rumps of the original PPP and Muslim League. Succeeding, he would reduce tension and mollify feelings of vengeance and, at the same time, consolidate middle-of-the-road political forces to defeat the militants and reactionaries.
A more potent and immediate threat to the stability and continuity of the present order, however, is fast breeding in the urban slums - the prime minister's gut feeling to the contrary notwithstanding. His initiatives - new or old - to end poverty, therefore, should not wait for the "trickle-down effect" of the large investments which are yet to come.
Special projects should be designed with the poor and their habitats kept in mind. Following the theory put across by the Harvard professor C.K. Parhalad, the new government should treat the poor not as victims or as a burden but recognize them as "resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers".
The "trickle" will be too little and take too long. It hurts and scares to see hordes of able-bodied educated youth in despair looking for any job. The holders of master's degree employed as primary school teachers consider themselves lucky. One minister less means subsistence jobs for 200 unemployed. Forty ministers less will provide jobs to 8,000 and improve governance in the bargain.
The clash of power and economics
Pakistan's political scene is getting disturbingly murkier. There are ominous signs that the present military regime is heading steadily towards an enigmatic and inevitable dead-end, like its predecessors. Engulfed as it is in a forced and acrimonious marriage of convenience with the Bush administration, whose own fortunes are in jeopardy, and a self-staged surrealistic Machiavellian drama which no one, except the direct beneficiaries, gives any credence to, it seems to be running out of both time and space for manoeuvre.
When he suddenly made his appearance on the political scene, General Pervez Musharraf was perceived as a reluctant interventionist and his coup d'etat as an unpremeditated response to challenge the army's supremacy by an overambitious and palpably unscrupulous politician. Despite the memory of General Ziaul Haq's failed promise of returning the country to democracy in three months, some were even conned into believing that his promise for extending that timeframe to three years, at the insistence of the Supreme Court, was genuine.
He did keep the promise but in a most questionable and high-handed manner, as evidenced by the steep slide into a dictatorship, from the referendum for his presidency, borrowed from General Zia's book, though less artfully, to the turn-over of three puppet prime ministers in three months. With this last episode, the general has definitely overstayed the welcome that he received on that fateful night five years ago. The political landscape that he had promised to change by getting rid of the political deadwood and corrupt politicians has become even more decadent and depressing and cluttered with more of the same.
The regime is fast running out of options to find civilian allies. Its latest gambit to install Mr Shaukat Aziz, a former international banker groomed by US and Saudi financiers, is aimed at not only giving an aura of political stability, but also ensuring the supremacy of the military in domestic politics, while providing a credible civilian face acceptable to those on whom the regime depends heavily for support, both domestically and abroad.
However, this gambit is also likely to fail, sooner rather than later. Any hope that the country will get back on the democratic rails under this regime is not only forlorn but futile. The regime seems destined to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions, ambitions and follies, especially if the US government's disenchantment with the services rendered in the War on terror increases and its frustration in the quest for key Al Qaeda leaders mounts further.
General Musharraf and his colleagues have lost a God-sent opportunity to disabuse the military of the accusation of constant interference in domestic politics and to allow democratic institutions to take root and flourish, rather than being weeded out every ten years and replaced by cactus militarus. Instead of imposing the half-baked ideas of the National Reconstruction Bureau on governance and decentralization, they would have been much better served by allowing a consensus on the major issues facing the country to be built through dialogue and discussion among various political, social, regional and professional groups. The latter could indeed have included the military, without giving it the commanding role that is its wont.
The setting up of an independent and neutral election commission and ensuring the independence and integrity of the judicial system, would have been some of the more salutary contributions which the October 1999 coup leaders could have made and with which they would have greatly assuaged the search for the inevitable exit they have been groping for. Instead, they have chosen to overstay their welcome and enlarged their mandate to the extent that now they have become a significant part of the problem that they set out to solve.
The military's ostensible raison d'etre for continuing its firm hold on the governance of the country and allowing only the minimal and peripheral powers to the executive and legislative branches of the government, even though it has had a direct hand in choosing their key personnel, rests on several factors. First, it derives from its emphasis on the country's security interests for which it has arrogated to itself the sole responsibility. The basic premise of its existence, making the "Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power" (to borrow the powerful phrase from the American Declaration of Independence, levelled against the British monarch) is completely alien to democratic principles.
This indeed has been the core problem with its adamant insistence on the formation of the National Security Council, which is nothing but the military's Trojan horse to control the civil government. The unwritten job description of the council's secretary-general, a civilian crony of General Musharraf, seems to give high priority to engaging in political intrigues on behalf of the military.
The second alibi for the military's reluctance to return to the barracks was provided by the 9/11 terrorist act and the well-publicized telephone call from Colin Powell delivering Gen Musharraf President Bush's ultimatum for deciding whether he was "with us or against us". After some initial prevarication, based on the reluctance of the hardline elements in the military who controlled the ISI and were deeply involved in supporting the Taliban, Pakistan was forced into acquiescence and agreed to give all-out support to the United States under the guise of logistic assistance.
Gen Musharraf's decision was welcomed the world over as brave and by most people in Pakistan as sensible, except by the religious right which was rightly perceived not to be a serious threat in itself. However, it did introduce a basic contradiction in Pakistani politics. While it provided the military an additional reason for its continued presence in the political arena, it became vulnerable not only from the religious right, but also from the fleeing Taliban and Al Qaeda elements who found refuge not only in the border areas, which had always provided safe haven for them, but also in the urban centres, where they had political sympathizers who could help in creating trouble through hired assassins and committed fanatics.
Those who thought that the military would be able to cut down to size the fundamentalists and will help usher in an era of a modern, secular and forward-looking polity were also disappointed, as the military keen on prolonging its tenure, adopted an ambiguous attitude towards the religious parties and allowed them to form governments in two provinces.
The third reason for the military's continued involvement in domestic politics is the ongoing process of negotiations with India, which recommenced last January at the initiative of Mr Vajpayee, after a long lull and considerable prodding of both countries by the US. The military does not trust the civilian government to undertake these talks for fear that they may compromise on the most critical and strategic issue of Kashmir, which it views as the 'core' issue.
It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that the Indo-Pakistan relationship cannot be normalized without taking a broader view of the political realities that have emerged in the past half a century and the challenges that face South Asia at large. The military's narrow and strategic view of Kashmir as the core or the first among equal issues is unlikely to lead to any long-term detente with India. It also serves to strengthen its resolve not to give up its continued stranglehold on domestic politics.
The extended period of military rule in Pakistan - spanning over half of its existence - has had the debilitating effect of diminishing consciousness of the benefits in democracy in the public mind in Pakistan. The repeated dismissal of civilian governments on charges of corruption, irresponsibility and other allegations, never conclusively proved, has bred deep cynicism about democracy and elections, which provides a powerful glue to the stability of military regimes. The fact that the tradition of political dissent in Pakistan has historically never been strong has also served to corrode the evolution of democracy.
One of the claims of the present government is that the media has never been more free than at present and this is cited as an evidence of democracy. To a large extent, the claim is true, although superficially so. However, there is a difference between the past and present methods of suppressing dissent. In earlier dictatorial dispensations, as well chronicled by the recently-departed and much-mourned, Zamir Niazi, the dissenting voices were overtly suppressed and silenced by gagging the media to make the chorus of approval more clearly audible. The present regime does not need to do that as its infinite power acts as a deterrent to any political threat, which it has managed to ruthlessly curb with impunity.
By making an example of a selected group of politicians, who themselves do not enjoy much public esteem or are unable to mobilize the little public support they do have, the rulers have had a cake-walk in silencing others with less blemished credentials. The callous manner in which the opposition's candidate opposing Mr Shaukat Aziz was denied his appearance in the parliament will go down as one of the most shameful episodes in the annals of parliamentary democracy and refutes the regime's claim for any respect for democratic norms or civil liberty.
Occasionally, as in the case of the young woman reporter whom the police in the capital city denied the opportunity to register an assault charge against a minor bureaucrat, the journalists are also reminded that they can take the rhetoric about the freedom of the press too seriously only at their own peril. Even this figleaf for legitimacy, often acclaimed as an unprecedented achievement by the rationalizers of this regime, is in jeopardy as the government seems ready to gag the press by extending the scope of the already infamous Defamation Ordinance.
An undemocratic regime does not have to issue explicit orders for brutality to its underlings - as the Abu Ghraib incident testifies - the atmospherics created by the regime ensure that any undue questioning of the government's arbitrary policies will be dealt with appropriately and the underlings, if caught, will be left off the hook.
Indeed, the political culture being imbibed these days is beginning to resemble more and more that of the US which sets the tone for conformist uniformity and 'group think' by declaring 'if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists'. The way in which the regime has been able to quell opposition against Mr. Aziz, a political non-entity until now in the two feudally-dominated constituencies, by cowing down the voters with veiled threats and use of official machinery and feudal power, as recorded by HRCP observers, shows how well the regime has learnt the methods of its US mentors.
A frequent refrain of General Musharraf's public addresses is to castigate his critics as cynics and 'pseudo-intellectuals' who are oblivious of the 'national interest', which he and his regime presumably have the exclusive prerogative of defining.
IF there is one thing common to every political change in Pakistan's chequered political history, it is the chorus of unbridled sycophancy that greets the incoming wheeler-dealers, often accompanied by a litany of complaints against the ousted incumbent. The brazenly foretold 'election' of the new prime minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, both inside and outside the Parliament, provides an added occasion for the display of such sycophancy, notwithstanding the considerable outrage at the methods adopted to elect him.
The capital city was reportedly decorated with outlandish banners and posters applauding his victory showing Mr Aziz as the newest national hero. Since the intensity of the adulation and praise showered on the new appointee is often inversely proportional to the person's suitability for the job, Mr Shaukat Aziz should be thankful if the chorus on his appointment has not exceeded his expectations, primarily because of the aura of jealousy among his peers, many of whom were keen aspirants for his job and, as King's Men, are likely to be engaged in infighting now.
(To be concluded)