| 10 November 2004 | Wednesday | 26 Ramazan 1425 |
Denationalization: why this delay?
Local bodies must flourish
Back with a vengeance?
Speaking on a PTV current affairs programme on November 1, just before the polling started in the US elections, I had the temerity to suggest that the expected increase in voter turnout would mean a Kerry victory and the election results would not be available for at least some days because of the expected litigation in key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Both predictions turned out to be wrong, the first more decisively than the second.
However, there is a small consolation for me that a whole host of election pundits - American, European, Arab and East Asian - are similarly embarrassed.
The day after the election, I had to go on air again to acknowledge that not only had Bush won what appeared to be a decisive victory, with a clear 3.5 million majority in the popular vote, but that riding on his coattails the Republican party had increased its seats in the Senate to 55 and had similarly increased its majority in the House of Representatives. Mercifully, I was not asked at that time to explain what had caused this turn-around or the absence of rancour at the election booth that had been expected to lead to litigation.
I say mercifully because at that time there was little data available to determine exactly what had happened beyond the fact that the exit polls, based on which Kerry had early in the day started preparing his victory speech, turned out to be wrong.
Apparently, the Republican Party had advised its supporters not to reveal anything to the media and many, therefore, while leaving the polling booths gave evasive or incorrect answers. Even today, after looking at the countless analyses by American experts and the statements of Democrats and Republicans it is difficult to say exactly what single factor brought about the change.
It is true that according to all sources 22 per cent of the voters - if exit polls can be trusted - said that the issue of moral values was the most important determinant of their vote and that 80 per cent of such voters favoured Bush. It could be true that the heavy preponderance of Bush voters in this group came because in 11 states there was the proposal to ban same-sex marriages by amending state laws and this was an issue on which the Republican candidate was deemed to have better credentials than Kerry.
It is also true, however, as the chief Republican strategist pointed out that Bush increased his support in other groups substantially. It is probably true that the Americans were hesitant to vote for a change in leadership during a wartime situation, but it is also probably true that many Americans chose to believe that Bush was right in claiming that the war in Iraq was a war against terror and that the war against terror could be won by military means.
At the same time, it is statistically evident that in the state of Ohio, whose electoral votes were crucial for the Bush victory, a switch of some 65,000 votes out of a total of four million plus votes would have been enough to ensure a Kerry victory in the electoral college despite what would have been a decisive defeat in the popular vote.
It is also statistically evident that the country remains polarized. In that context, the change from a 49-49 split in 2000 to a 51-48 majority for Bush in 2004 does not necessarily reflect a significant shift, according to apologists for the Democrats, and may mean no more than the fact that the Democrats had failed to put up a charismatic enough candidate.
Whatever the true explanation for the Democrat debacle, the world must see the result as showing that the impact of the trauma suffered by the American people on 9/11 still lingers. The war against terror will remain the highest foreign policy priority. The doubts and misgivings the rest of the world entertains about Bush policies will be addressed but only in terms of style.
As one American observer puts it, "There will be a change in tone, perhaps, but on core principles you will not see fundamental shifts." If Bush does not resort to military means and the doctrine of "pre-emption" to resolve the issues of the perceived threat to American security emanating from Iran and North Korea, it will not be for lack of domestic support but because of the ground realities.
The pursuit of unilateralist policies again will have domestic support. The contemptuous rejection of the UN Secretary-General's warnings about the ill consequences of a military assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah bears ample testimony to this. As I write, the assault on Fallujah has commenced. Operation "Phantom Fury" has belatedly been renamed "Al-Fajr". Much is being made of the fact that Prime Minister Allawi has approved the military action and that the Iraqi forces form a substantial part of the assault force.
There has been a downplaying of the report that in one 500-man company of the 3,000 strong Iraqi force more than half the soldiers refused to participate in the operation. This operation would probably have gone ahead irrespective of the election results but there is no doubt that Bush felt more confident in ordering it after the elections gave him what he sees as a mandate for firm wartime leadership.
Similarly, the guarded endorsement that the Europeans received from the Americans for their effort to offer economic and political concessions in return for an Iranian pledge to suspend its uranium enrichment programme remains in place but now a formal written demand has been made that the Europeans must be prepared to refer Iran's case to the Security Council if these negotiations fail. Perhaps such a demand would have been made in any case or was implicit in the guarded endorsement but the election result seems to have reinforced the hard-line posture.
There is no doubt, however, that the Europeans including the French will have to rethink the degree to which Iranian demands, legitimate though they may be, can be accommodated in the face of opposition from a newly re-elected American president.
It is significant that Foreign Secretary Straw found it necessary to state categorically that even if negotiations failed, there was no question of any military action being taken against Iran to enforce the demand for the suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment programme.
On North Korea, there is now little chance that the Bush administration will offer the North Koreans the bilateral negotiations and security assurances that they are desperately seeking as the price for the suspension of their nuclear programme and the opening of their facilities for inspection. The six-party negotiations will continue and the Japanese and the South Koreans will offer some economic assistance, but efforts to persuade the Americans to enter into bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans will probably be abandoned.
In both Iran and North Korea, there is little likelihood of military action not only because of the ground realities, and certainly not because of international opposition, but because the American military is far too stretched to allow for any such military operations.
In South Asia, business circles have welcomed the new Bush term. Pakistani businessmen seem to believe that the rapport between Bush and Musharraf will ensure that the aid programmes will continue. This reaction, if the Bombay Stock Exchange is a good barometer, is mirrored in Indian business circles.
The direct benefit from American assistance apart, there is the feeling President Musharraf will not have to look over his shoulder, with regard to the international reaction to the internal political scene, as he seeks to curb extremism within the country and to eliminate foreign insurgents from the Pak-Afghan border areas.
What is perhaps less realized is that the Bush administration will place even more onerous responsibilities on Pakistan's shoulders with regard to the situation in Afghanistan and will do little in the Middle East that can help Pakistan's internal battle against terrorism and extremism. In Afghanistan, it would appear that the Americans are going to be pressing their Nato allies to take on a greater role in the battle that Karzai will need to wage against the extreme Taliban and the warlords (in that order) and will draw down the forces they currently have in Afghanistan.
The battle against the Taliban will need greater cooperation from Pakistan in which perhaps the first step was the Pakistan-US coordinated operation in Shakin across the Pakistani border in the South Waziristan area when Pakistani troops used newly supplied communication equipment to identify targets for the American operation against the Taliban and possibly foreign insurgents in the area.
This is all to the good from Pakistan's perspective. The destruction of the extreme Taliban, the return of the moderate Taliban to the Afghan mainstream and the consequent creation of room for the Karzai administration to curb and eventually eliminate the warlords is a prime Pakistani national interest. Pakistan should, and hopefully would, do every thing it can to further this objective even if there is no American encouragement or pressure.
The problem, however, is that even while business sentiment in Pakistan may have favoured Bush's reelection, the man in the street still sees Bush as anti-Islam and as a crusader intent on using the pretext of the war on terror as a means of humiliating the Muslims and imposing unjust solutions on them. Yasser Arafat's departure from the political scene has left the Palestinians without a leadership that commands wide popular support.
Even if internal dissensions are resolved it is unlikely that a joint leadership or a single leader can emerge with the courage to accept what would essentially be an unjust settlement and a truncated Palestinian state. The Palestine problem will linger exactly as the current hard-line leadership in Israel desires, and by so doing, will exacerbate anti-American feelings in Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world. This will make much harder the task of securing popular support in Pakistan for the internal battle against extremism and equally the rendering of assistance to Afghanistan in eliminating the Taliban extremists.
The silver lining for the Pakistan government is that the Bush administration's financial support for Pakistan will not only continue but will probably increase. While it will continue to offer President Musharraf unstinting support, there will also be an American effort to facilitate reconciliation between the present administration and the mainstream political parties.
The Americans, in private conversations, have made no secret of their view that the internal battle against extremism is best fought by providing a popular alternative to the fanaticism preached by the religious parties. It is likely that Deputy Secretary Armitage during his current visit to Pakistan will privately welcome the moves that President Musharraf has made in that direction and will offer to assist further in the process.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.
Denationalization: why this delay?
While the Sindh education department has dragged its feet over issuing the notification of the cabinet decision to transfer the St Joseph's and St Patrick's colleges (SJC and SPC) to the Catholic Board, some quarters have continued to protest against the move.
Statements issued by the nazim of Karachi and the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA) have created much uncertainty. Why they are trying to stall the move is intriguing, especially when the arguments advanced by them do not carry weight.
To take up the government's role in the matter first. It is either intimidated by those who oppose denationalization or vested interests in the education department are working against the policy of their seniors. The cabinet took the decision to hand back the colleges on July 28, 2004. But for over two months, the notification was not issued. Issuing a notification is normally a procedural act which is necessary to formalize the government's decision and facilitate its implementation.
The notification was at long last handed over to the representatives of the Catholic Board in mid October. It was undated but stated that it would be effective from October 1. It is significant that all along the protests continued and now the demand is for the revocation of the notification.
Meanwhile, the committee which was set up to see to the practical side of the transfer is still not functional. But the Sindh education minister, Dr Hameeda Khuhro, has consistently declared that the government will proceed with the denationalization of the two colleges. The Catholic Board was required to hand over a list of its teaching staff to the education department.
If one were to study the arguments advanced, it is plain that those opposed to the transfer of the colleges to their former owners have been trying to fudge the issues to mobilize public support. Let us take up their arguments. The nazim, Naimatullah Khan, in his letter to Dr Hameeda Khuhro explicitly termed the nationalization policy of 1972 "a mistake". But denationalization would be "a bigger mistake", he categorically stated.
However, he has failed to explain convincingly why the colleges shouldn't be returned to their owners. The nazim has also objected on technical grounds saying that after the devolution of the education department to the CDGK, he should have been taken into confidence and consulted before the change in status of the two colleges was effected.
He added that denationalization would bring "miseries" to the students, the teachers and the non-teaching staff. He doesn't explain how. But the stand taken by the SPLA is that the privatization of colleges would make college education beyond the reach of middle class families. It has also challenged the government's authority to transfer the teachers who are government servants to the private sector as was agreed upon initially between the government and the Catholic Board.
To win a wider audience and enlist its sympathy, critics of the denationalization move have given it an ideological hue. If education has to be universalized then it must be nationalized too, so goes the argument. This is the mantra which is blindly repeated on every occasion. No attempt is made to analyse the damage caused to the education system in Pakistan by the nationalization policy of September 1972 and the factors responsible for it.
Theoretically speaking, nationalization may have appeared to be a sound strategy to tackle the problems which plagued the education sector in the early seventies. But nationalization didn't produce the desired results and the nazim of Karachi has admitted that. It is now argued that when the SJC and SPC are privatized they would become inaccessible to the poorer sections of society by virtue of the "exorbitant" fees they would charge.
The fallacies in these arguments have been pointed out several times by those who know the inwardness of the situation. Yet the SPLA and their cohorts have resorted to distorting facts to give some strength to their weak claims. Hence it would be worth reiterating the basic facts to help clarify the situation. It is also important that the education department, which begins to waver on the issue every time the teachers' agitation becomes loud, should place the denationalization issue in its correct perspective.
The first thing to be made clear is that school education is the fundamental right of every citizen in Pakistan and it is the state's duty to ensure that every child born in this country is provided primary and, if possible, secondary education of a reasonable standard free of cost or at affordable cost. The government has failed miserably in this respect as the state of the public sector schools testify to.
Their deteriorating standards and the resultant falling enrolment have provided the leeway to the madressahs which breed religious extremism and the private schools many of which have become avenues for rampant commercialization. The solution to this problem lies in uplifting the public sector schools to such an extent that they become competitive and attract children who seek good education.
The votaries of nationalization, who cry themselves hoarse every time a college is handed over to the private sector, misrepresent the state's duty vis-a-vis education. It is the natural process of the survival of the fittest that only the better students who pass out of school gain admission to college, the professional colleges and the universities. At this level a mix of private and public sector institutions would enable the government to improve its own colleges. At the same time, a system of scholarships and freeships and students loans could be instituted to help the indigent who excel in their studies finance their higher education if needed.
Even today, the need is more to upgrade the existing colleges rather than expand them indiscriminately. The teachers can play a significant role in this process by attending to their students, giving them the best education possible and re-establishing the rapport between the students and their teachers as they did in the years of yore. It is a falsification of the truth to say that the denationalization of SJC and SPC will deprive the students of modest income families of college education. As far as colleges and higher secondary schools in the public sector go, their capacity is enough to meet the present requirement.
This year 83,000 candidates had applied for admission to the First Year in government managed institutions under the centralized admission policy. All were admitted except the E-graders. After the admission process was over the nazim announced a list of 19 colleges and 35 higher secondary schools where seats were still available.
It is again a myth to say that only the SJC and SPC offer good education. True, the staff of these institutions when they were nationalized had the traditions of professionalism and a commitment to knowledge and ethical values to draw upon. In fact, in the case of the St Joseph's Sister Mary Emily who was the principal in 1972 was appointed the head and continued for another 10 years when she retired after getting one extension. It goes to the credit of her successors if the college continues to be the best in Karachi in terms of academic standards as is claimed by the SPLA and the city nazim.
Anticipating the legal implications of the move, the education department gave the teachers of SJC and SPC the option to stay in the colleges after they are privatized or accept a transfer to another college. The entire teaching staff has asked for a transfer to another government college. Hence why should they worry about the security of their service. In fact they can prove their mettle by transforming the colleges they are transferred to into model institutions as they claim they had done to the SJC.
The SPLA, which has been agitating on several fronts, has said that there are 500 teaching posts in Karachi that have not been filled and there are college buildings lying vacant because there is no staff to operate them. Hence transferring the teachers and allowing the SJC and SPC to recruit their own staff would solve many problems.
It has now been reported that the teachers' refusal to work under a private management will cost the government Rs 30 million per year and amounts to a change in the terms of nationalization as decided in the cabinet. This is a strange argument. After all the government was paying these teachers their salaries, whatever the sum came to. It can continue paying them as before and use their services to make many colleges operational.
The ones who should normally have been worried are the students who want to continue their studies in these colleges. They have been assured that they will not be disturbed and they will be charged fees at the old rates for this academic year. Further negotiations will be held between the minister of education and the Catholic Board to ensure maximum concessions for the students. Then why this delay?
Local bodies must flourish
I am sure that if today President Pervez Musharraf were to withdraw his support to the highly popular system of devolution of powers to the grass roots level that he introduced four years ago, it will greatly delight its two opponents - provincial politicians and the bureaucracy in the districts.
When the President's military government announced its intention of introducing the devolution scheme, and then determinedly implemented it, it was the first time in the history of Pakistan that any government, civil or military, elected or caretaker, became serious about the subject. Since the birth of Pakistan, successive governments had talked about decentralization of authority and raised false hopes at the level where the common man has some participation in the affairs of this blessed land, but they made sure never to go beyond making promises.
What to say of municipal or councillor level, federal regimes have tended to appropriate the powers of even elected governments in the provinces, much to the chagrin of the latter. The excuse has always been coordination, though the actual motive was to concentrate authority in the hands of federal ministries headed by senior officers. Pakistanis of all shades and classes love to acquire and exercise power and make a show of it.
Let me give you a minor example. In 1972, as Director, Public Relations, Punjab, I dealt with declarations of newspapers. Suddenly the then federal government (of the PPP) decided that no district magistrate was to validate any declaration without its approval. So I told the next applicant who came to me with the intention of bringing out a newspaper, "Sorry, I am no longer empowered to authorise the DM. There is a gentleman by the name of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Islamabad. Please go to him."
While the local government system is firmly in place today, it continues to be criticized by its opponents (the provincial legislators and bureaucrats) that it is serving no purpose and that hopes pinned in it have proved to be false. The latter charge may be true to some extent, but it is so because these opponents are determined to sabotage it and make it a failure, notwithstanding the interest of President Pervez Musharraf in it and the obvious good it is doing to the masses. Who says you can't act against the wishes of the COAS President in this country?
The very idea of devolution was radical, even revolutionary, for nothing of the kind had ever been done in Pakistan during the last 52 years. What would be taken as something normal in developed democracies of the West, assumed the proportions of an earth-shaking decision in this country, which, according to its opponents, would destroy the administration in the districts. They raised their hands in horror and exclaimed, "Imagine what's going to happen with the commissioner, the DC and the AC not there to set matters right?" I wonder what Britain does without their equivalents.
Hats off to Pervez Musharraf for sticking to his guns. He said he was willing to look at any number of amendments and changes, provided they were made to improve the system and not to put it in reverse gear. This put a damper on all those opposed to the new scheme. Significantly even ministers, both federal and provincial, were against devolution and were supported by MNAs and MPAs because transfer of authority lower down, to the nazim and councillor level, reduced their importance.
People who want things to improve in their area have stopped running after members of the legislatures, who were hard to find anyway, while the councillors are easy to get hold of. Now the term "elected representatives of the people" applies more to those chosen by the people at the local government level than to the old johnnies.
Of course the other great advantage is that the common man does not have to run to the provincial capital or to Islamabad to obtain sanctions which, in other democratic countries, are the responsibility of country (district) authorities or even municipalities. We claim to follow the British system of government, but if you read a London newspaper you will find that Whitehall has hardly anything to do with the day-to-day administration in the countries. Even law and order is handed locally.
If you read about local government in Britain you will find that many important subjects are handled by the counties and districts themselves, and they go to the central government only when they impinge on national policy or raise a dispute. For example, education up to the secondary level, including technical and art colleges, is a local responsibility. So are planning and development, land acquisition, traffic and passenger transport, roads, building regulations, the environment, art galleries, parks, playing fields, swimming baths, etc.
Health was taken away as a central subject in 1974, and for each region, Area Health Authorities have been made responsible. The committee system (as in our legislatures) is widely used to expedite disposal of work and has been found to be more informal and quick. Incidentally, the public and the press have a right to attend meetings of the committees.
Apart from the Metropolitan Police Force for Greater London and the smaller London Police for the so-called City of London, every county has its own force under its Chief Constable. They are not controlled by the county administrations but are at their beck and call for dealing with crime and keeping law and order, and each is controlled by a committee of two-thirds councillors and one-third magistrates.
Something that will be of almost personal interest to every citizen in Pakistan are the words that relate to an important aspect of a policeman's responsibility. They say: "Although a constable must obey the lawful orders of the Chief Constable, and is liable for disciplinary proceedings if he does not, he is not bound to obey if ordered by the Chief Constable to make an arrest which is manifestly illegal."
With us, half the arrests made by the police are manifestly wrong in the eyes of the law. That is why there are so many habeas corpus and bail applications before the courts. Let us hope the changes brought about by President Pervez Musharraf's military regime in the working of the police help to improve matters.
The local bodies could have performed much better had they been allowed to operate honestly. It is now to be seen whose patience runs out first - that of President Pervez Musharraf, the creator of the system, or that of its opponents. I think one can safely bet that the President is not going to give up.
Back with a vengeance?
What, one could have been forgiven for thinking, is the world coming to? As Yasser Arafat, the man who for nearly four decades has embodied Palestinian aspirations for independent statehood, lay dying in a Paris hospital, Americans voted in record numbers to retain a born-again president.
There's no obvious connection between the two events, except that in some quarters it is assumed that a Middle East initiative will figure prominently in the Bush administration's second-term foreign policy. At least Tony Blair will be nursing that hope during his journey of obeisance to Washington this week.
For more than a couple of years now, the US and Britain have helped to sustain Ariel Sharon's self-serving fiction that negotiations with the Palestinians would be pointless, because there is no one to talk to. Whatever Arafat's flaws - and there can be little question that his stature had diminished since his days as a wandering guerilla - no other Palestinian leader could authoritatively have submitted to the compromises he was willing to risk.
More pliable leaders may not have been hard to find, but they wouldn't have been able to carry the majority of Palestinians with them. The Palestinian Authority's ineffectiveness and corruption attracted a great deal of ire, and as its head Arafat was the focus of resentment. But even Palestinians opposed to his Fatah faction of the PLO acknowledged Abu Ammar's value as a symbol of their nationhood - and his victimization by Israel in recent years militated against the impression that he had sold out.
From a Palestinian point of view, Arafat's decision back in 1988 to recognize Israel and to restrict the demand for a homeland to the West Bank and Gaza, about one-fifth of historical Palestine, was a monumental concession. However, Arafat usually also knew where to draw the line. He was widely excoriated in the West for turning down the package offered by Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, which was described as the most Palestinians could reasonably have hoped for.
But Arafat knew that a territory divided into bantustans would be both unviable as a sovereign state and unacceptable to his compatriots. Nor was he willing to yield on the right of return, the dream that has sustained the Palestinian diaspora through so many decades in the wilderness.
Over the past week or so, Arafat, who has often been criticized - with some justification - for his dictatorial style, has attracted flak for leaving behind no designated successor. There's an element of hypocrisy in this line of attack, and beyond that there is the fact that the PLO's worthiest second-tier leaders have all been assassinated by Mossad - in Tunis, Amman, Damascus, Beirut, wherever they were exiled. Needless to say, outside the Arab world such actions have never been characterized as terrorism.
It is unlikely in the extreme that Israel, currently bent upon denying Arafat his wish to be buried in Jerusalem, will radically revise its attitude towards an Arafat-less Palestinian Authority. But the argument for improved prospects of progress is anyhow not contingent on the leadership question. It is based on the assumption that second-term US presidents are more interested in making their mark on history than in pandering to vested interests or wooing the electorate.
The implication here is that George W. Bush will not wish to be remembered only as the chap who messed up big time in Iraq: an Israeli-Palestinian solution could be sufficiently momentous to overshadow that disaster. Therefore, the theory goes, he will be willing to put pressure on Sharon to achieve an outcome acceptable to all the parties concerned - which in turn would improve his cachet in Europe as well as in the Muslim world.
That's a neat little theory. Unfortunately, it is posited on the assumption of rational behaviour. The Bush administration is driven by ideology, not rationality. There was no rational basis for the invasion of Iraq. And even Sharon's Israeli supporters would be disinclined to designate him "a man of peace", as the US president did not very long ago. Besides, Sharon's Gaza plan - including the effective annexation of the West Bank - enjoys Washington's imprimatur. Above all, let's not forget that neoconservatives tend to look at the region through Likudite eyes.
Seen in this light, what's the greater likelihood: a just settlement of the Palestinian question or just another act of insanity, such as an Israeli attack, with a wink and a nod from Washington, on Iran's nuclear facilities?
And that, of course, isn't all. The world has entered its most dangerous phase since the Cuban missile crisis. The old balance of terror has been replaced by the imbalance of terror. No nation even comes close to rivalling American firepower. And last week's election result means that for the next four years, the finger on the button that can unleash that firepower will belong to a certifiable fanatic.
Why have the people of the United States recklessly hurled this insult at the world? If too many of them don't really give a damn about the world except as a source of raw materials and a battleground, the question nonetheless remains: Why have they done this to themselves?One must not forget, of course, that about 56 million Americans voted against Bush. A large number of them did so specifically because they wished to curtail his disastrous presidency, rather than out of any overwhelming desire to see John Kerry in the White House. And many of them are distraught at their own failure. They recognize what four more years of Bush could mean for their nation and for its place in the world.
It's also worth noting that not everyone who voted for the Republican incumbent has a very high opinion either of his administration's aggression against Iraq or of the president himself. I know he's a nutter, one elderly African-American woman told a foreign correspondent, but I'll vote for him because I've seen what he's like while Kerry's a stranger to me.
There must have been others like her, potential Kerry voters put off by the Democratic challenger's perceived aloofness or his reputation as a social liberal. But it's hard to imagine what Kerry - or, for that matter, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark or any of the other Democratic hopefuls - could have done to woo such waverers and, more important, to motivate the tens of millions who couldn't be bothered to vote at all.
Yes, as a result of concerted efforts by both sides of politics, the turnout was higher than in recent years. All the same, more people didn't vote than voted for either candidate. The fact that such a substantial proportion of people appear to have given up altogether on the political process is an indictment of the American political system, but it can hardly serve as an excuse for Bush's clear-cut victory.
Machiavellian presidential adviser Karl Rove's masterstroke in 2004 was to deliver the evangelical vote, as part of a strategy that has been in play for at least two years. Bush's speeches have been littered with buzz words that strike a chord with Christian fundamentalists, many of when appear to have been convinced that the president rules through divine guidance.
The lies routinely spouted by the administration's mouthpieces can evidently be ignored. And the evangelicals' reading of the scriptures is as selective as that of their Muslim counterparts: "Thou shalt not kill" applies to American foetuses but not to Iraqi, Afghan or Palestinian children. These folk fervently believe in Armageddon, and they expect Bush to arrange it.
In that they may not be disappointed. Because the president himself possesses the same bent of mind, and the neoconservative fanatics in charge of the nation's international agenda also have faith in showdowns. Just to be on the safe side, though, they made sure that the renewed assault on Fallujah as well as the Iraqi emergency were postponed until after election day.
There will be domestic showdowns, too: on abortion, on contraception, on gay rights, on civil liberties, on social security, on creationism. On matters such as a woman's right to choose, the US invariably finds itself on the same side as Iran and Saudi Arabia at international forums. In its rural heartlands, the US has always been a fairly primitive society. Add to that a primitive president, and you have a recipe for regression the likes of which haven't been experienced for at least a century.
There are no reasonable grounds for counting on a more conciliatory and less polarizing presidency. There may be some changes in the cabinet, but they will not lead to moderation. On the other hand, new appointments to the Supreme Court will almost certainly result in a long-term conservative majority on the bench.
The substantial minority of Americans who would probably want to rescue their nation from the clutches of nascent fascism have their task cut out. Whether they are up to it is less clear, even though they can rest assured that much of the world will be on their side.
What can one say to the misled majority who compounded their folly of extending Bush's lease on the White House by handing him complete control of both houses of Congress? I am reminded of a cartoon by Martin Rowson published in The Guardian earlier this year. It showed Bush and Blair on Normandy Beach, clutching a piece of paper that said: "List we forget - Iraqi war dead". Behind them, the ghost of a Second World War soldier paraphrases Cicero to intone a cry of anguish that could just as well apply to most, if not all, Bush voters: 'O tempora, O morons!'
Email: mahirali2@netscape.net