IN recent weeks, the articulate sections of society in Pakistan have been speculating about political change in the country. The emerging point of interest relates to the question whether it is time for the incumbent government to go.

Political circles in general see in the relatively meaningless visit of President Bush a loss of credibility for the government. At the other end, the western borderlands of Pakistan have been in the midst of agitation and selective military operation. Both Baluchistan and North Waziristan have been the scene of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Yesterday’s allies of the Musharraf government, the MMA parties, are up in arms against it. Social and economic issues such as inflation, unemployment and general inaccessibility of the public to government institutions have created a widespread impression of a non-delivering state.

Opinion holders, both within and outside the government, maintain that the ruling set-up is more vulnerable than ever before. However, there is disagreement over the extent of the government’s perceived weakness. Those in and around the treasury benches as well as the government functionaries in general find it a passing phase. On the other hand, the opposition sees it as the beginning of the end of the regime and finds it a great opportunity to push things forward to its projected goal of democracy.

How far is India-yes-Pakistan-no syndrome of the Bush visit really operating on the ground? Pakistan’s envoy in Washington has already observed that this was not the time for strategic imbalance in South Asia, which is obviously perceived as the much-feared outcome of the Indo-US agreements in the coming years. In other words, the government shares the sentiment of disappointment with the public at large, even as it would shy away from endorsing it in parliament and the media.

How to continue to conduct the dialogue with India on an even keel after the Bush visit to South Asia? Islamabad finds it a frustrating experience in the absence of any movement forward in the direction of conflict resolution. At the same time, business groups, intellectual networks, NGOs, journalists, trade unionists, women activists, scholars and a host of others have been operating across the border in pursuit of a people-to-people dialogue.

These groups are operating along the lines of a potential disconnect between the perceived need to open up to India and the official diplomacy based on conflict resolution per se. Does it mean that the government is losing touch with the public mood? One wonders what kind of a shift in policy or profile is in the offing, if at all, to fill the widening gap between common aspirations and the establishment’s goals.

In the meantime, the government’s relatively tough stance on the issue of exchange of intelligence with Kabul has changed the profile of regional politics. The government took a calculated risk of giving a public snub to the Karzai government. Given the increasing Indo-Afghan friendship and Afghanistan’s entry into Saarc, this move provides a new direction to regional diplomacy.

Further west, the Iranian pipeline project is already in doldrums. This project may not see the light of day. At the other end, if the current Iran nuclear crisis deepens, it can lead to a strategic move against that country, either by the Security Council or by the US and its allies, or both. The public reaction in Pakistan can be expected to create enormous pressure on the government and its pivotal role in the US- led war against terrorism.

On the domestic front, the ARD opposition feels that it has been kept outside the system far too long. It is still reeling under the impact of the controversial elections for local bodies in 2005. It feels effectively barred from law-making and decision-making processes on top. It sees no let-up in public humiliation of its popular leaders living in exile for more than half a decade.

The opposition has often resorted to boycott of parliamentary sessions to register its protest against the perceived highhandedness of the government. The agitation against the Danish caricatures provided an opportunity to the MMA and other parties to build up a movement against the ruling set-up. The Bush visit further provoked the Islamic parties to go for public demonstrations. However, the opposition was not able to build a momentum for a sustained and large-scale agitation.

The Musharraf government has, by far, outmanoeuvred the three political groupings in the opposition. Its agreement with the MMA in 2003 helped it establish the National Security Council, endorse the presidential election through a vote of confidence in the elected assemblies and pass the 17th Constitutional Amendment. But MMA lost in the process by way of alienating the ARD parties and sections of its own constituency in and outside the NWFP.

The government has not kept it a secret that it has been negotiating a deal with the PPP on the one hand and the PML-N on the other. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, leaders of the two mainstream parties, have been far from shy in working out a formula with the government in order to stage a comeback. However, they are short on political capital inasmuch as they lack political initiative to launch public agitation against the government as a bargaining chip.

All this makes the oncoming 2007 elections the focus of the political agenda for both the government and the opposition. The government must hold elections before October 2007 in order to fulfil the constitutional requirement. Some PML-Q stalwarts have been blowing hot and cold on the issue, suggesting postponement of elections through extension in the tenure of the present parliament. The political opposition and civil society at large find it a mockery of the Constitution. Given the public mood making this option unworkable, this may turn out to be no more than a deliberate policy of spreading confusion in the opposition ranks.

The 2007 elections are gradually attracting the attention of the world media, the Commonwealth, the EU as well as the Washington community. President Bush’s remarks in Islamabad about these elections have been variously interpreted as a snub, a reminder or just an aside, depending on the position of the observer on the political spectrum. The demand for holding free and fair elections in Pakistan is expected to gain momentum in the following months, both at home and abroad.

Do the pro-government parties and groups have the potential to win the elections and form the next government without the overt support of the administration? With no political leader of a national stature nor an organizational potential to boast of, the PML-Q is constrained to rely on extra-political input into the exercise in mass voting. In this context, one can point to the worst case scenario of the total collapse of the Convention Muslim League in the 1970 elections. The recent elections to the Senate testify to the PML-Q’s acute dependence on the state machinery in this regard.

The opposition forces are struggling to make a decisive move in the direction of forming a strategy to win the 2007 elections. They face the challenge of ensuring the process to be free and fair. They are counting on the newly appointed chief election commissioner to be fair and independent.

The demand for a caretaker government can be acceptable to the government as a last resort. First, it will involve only the change of a prime minister and his cabinet without changing the real decision making dispensation led by the president. Given the marginalization of prime minister in the constellation of powers currently ruling Pakistan, a caretaker government should pose no substantive challenge to the latter. Another prime minister can be another official appointee unless the opposition can make a difference in this regard.

The moot question about the 2007 elections revolves around the return of the prodigal to Pakistan. What if Benazir Bhutto finally decides to come back as she and her party members have often indicated? In the short run, it will inject dynamism into politics, in the form of her possible arrest leading to agitation and public mobilization along the party lines. Over all, this will improve the electoral fortunes of her party, even as her personal wellbeing remains far from ensured.

Nawaz Sharif’s return is more complicated. Will the Pak-Saudi agreement allow him to come to Pakistan before the 10-year period as originally agreed upon? Was the transition of PML-N leadership from Nawaz to Shehbaz real or merely an eyewash? What kind of a deal will the two leaders-in-exile strike between them in a scenario of return to their country to fight elections? Will sharing power or rotating power be the dominant mode of understanding? It will be interesting to see how the two erstwhile adversaries — Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto — replay the 1988 scenario when the two martyrs, Zia and Z. A. Bhutto, shaped electoral politics from their graves.

Political observers face the challenge of analyzing how things are moving six years after the military takeover. Will the public fatigue with President Ayub during the 1964-65 election campaign and President Zia in the 1983 MRD movement, after each of them had completed six years in office, be a guide in this respect? Is the nation’s patience with living under a military-led regime running out at the end of a similar span of time? The government and the opposition are poised to disprove and approve this scenario respectively by adopting strategies to push forward their disparate agendas.

A COMRADE-turned-journalist, whose testimony sent Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary, to the gallows 75 years ago in March, wrote a letter before his death to tell why he became an approver. He, Hans Raj Vohra, worked with The Statesman, Times of India and the Deccan Herald and died in Washington 11 years ago. The letter was addressed to Sukhdev’s brother, Mathra Das Thapar, who, too, has since died.

The British tried Bhagat Singh and his two comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, for having shot dead a British police officer named Saunders. All three were found “guilty” and hanged on March 23, 1931. Vohra, who was recruited by Sukhdev, has alleged in his letter that it was Sukhdev who disclosed the revolutionary movement, from the beginning to the end, to the police.

Vohra probably fell prey to the usual tactics of the police. Even today the ruse employed by them is: “Your comrade has already spilled the beans. You may as well tell your side and we will try to get you pardon.” Something like that might have happened. In any case, Vohra’s defence was not convincing. How could a person with even a grain of commitment to the revolution turn into a stool-pigeon?

In his three-page letter, Vohra says: “I was arrested on the eve of Saunders’ murder. This did not surprise me. I was the most important and the most well-known student leader in town. At the age of 17 or so, I became the first secretary of the Punjab students movement which I tried to convert into a public forum for our revolutionary movement. I called a Punjab students conference which was astonishingly well attended. I proposed a resolution for complete independence for India when the Indian National Congress was contemplating dominion status. So, I put the students ahead of the elders.

“After my arrest, the burden of concealing the murder conspiracy, about which I knew everything, fell on my shoulders. When I was released on bail several weeks after the arrest, I had carried out my responsibility to the party successfully. The secret remained locked in my chest. I do not want to write about the ordeal in the police lockup lest you should construe that I am asking for mercy or that I am flattering myself.

“However, when I was arrested a second time, soon after the rounding up of Sukhdev and some other party members, I was presented a statement by Sukhdev which ran, I believe, into probably 100 or 50 pages, typewritten and foolscap. Secondly, I found that about eight or 10 members of the party and every senior member at that had become the king’s witness or approver as they call themselves.

“So I had to think things anew in the light of the following facts: Sukhdev, at whose command I had given up my family and whom I had accepted as my guru, had wrecked the party which he had done so much to create. It was an inexplicable situation, totally disappointing and terribly shattering of moral or the common purpose we had set out to serve.

“I cannot accept the explanation that he became nervous. This is so inadequate for a would-be hero of a story that it mocks his better side. He was a great organizer. He was selflessly devoted to the cause. He was a ceaseless worker. He was a convincing talker which is apparent as I joined the party at his behest.

“To this day, I do not know what precisely went through his mind that he burst like a Diwali balloon within hours of being arrested. I am absolutely sure that the police did not use any highhanded methods. If anything, the investigators were very respected and kind. Sukhdev voluntarily divulged every secret of the party. There was nothing important to keep although I did find a few things which he had forgotten to mention and which, therefore, I also withheld in my statement.

“Sukhdev’s performance presents two problems, none of which has been solved; (a) if he had no axe to grind, why did he make the statement?; (b) having made the statement why did he not take some advantage of it? As I have said, there is no rational reason for (a) except that his mind was like a tumbler of water. The tumbler cracked and the water overflowed.

“Having thus mentally evacuated himself, I guess, he was at peace. But his overflowing knowledge about the party, which he freely cast away, created problems for others. Mine has remained my companion throughout my life. My life is stunted and stained and there is nothing I can do to wash away the horrible marks so deeply etched in history. “I gave up the resistance to the investigating police for the following reasons: (a) my guru, I felt, had let me down together with the rest of the party. My portion of the story was relatively small and inconsequential as compared with what had been given away.

“I was consumed by helplessness and although it is easy to say that I would have received a light punishment, I could not risk going down with people I no longer respected. Secondly, it would have meant a total disruption of my life as I was in my final year of education. So I tried very deftly, without doing the least possible additional harm to the party, to extricate myself so that I could pick up the remaining pieces as best as I could.

“(1) I was able to abstain from giving any personal evidence of the murder, which I had seen organized and which I had seen being readied for a few minutes before the execution. I said nothing about it. So I was neither a witness to the conspiracy of the murder, nor of the murderer. (2) I also take such credit as I can for abstaining to mention anything about Durga Das whom I had recruited. I was able to do both because I found that Sukhdev’s statement had omitted them.

“You must also remember that I was the youngest member of the party. But I did understand the legal consequences of action. Even while giving evidence, I tried to do the least harm and possibly some good as Durga Das has often acknowledged to me... I have written this letter about my experience of the case much against my wishes.”

Vohra’s letter does not absolve him of his act of betrayal. The difference between Sukhdev and Vohra is underlined by the people’s response. The ashes of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were consigned to a shrine near Ferozepur where thousands of people flock to pay their homage even today. The crematorium at Washington where Vohra’s body was put to fire is not even known. Sukhdev is a hero.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

NOW it gets painful for George W. Bush. Iraq is wrapped around his presidency as tightly as Vietnam was around Lyndon Johnson’s. Bush keeps telling the country he has a plan for victory, but the polls suggest the public doesn’t believe it. Those big “Plan for Victory” signs at his rally in Wheeling, W.Va., this week read more like an exhortation than a statement of fact.

Bush has lacked the tragic sensibility found in many of our great presidents. He works so hard at his show of easy informality that you rarely sense the inner man and the anguish that must be there. Watching him, you know he’s wound tight even as he tries to act loose. The locker-room nicknames and the exaggerated Texas mannerisms are part of the enforced informality. The longer he stays in Washington, the more pronounced his Texas manner of droppin’ his g’s. It’s a kind of camouflage, but it’s wearing thin. This is not a president at ease.

When Bush speaks about the struggle of his presidency, it sometimes sounds as if he’s talking to the mirror. Take this week’s long, thinking-out-loud news conference: “I believe that my job is to go out and explain to people what’s on my mind. That’s why I’m having this press conference, see? I’m telling you what’s on my mind. And what’s on my mind is winning the war on terror.” He’s ready to lead, he insists; he has made a vow to the American people. To whom are these comments directed, if not himself?

The polls suggest that Bush is losing the ability to communicate effectively about the issue that matters most to him. He has a better story on Iraq than many people seem to appreciate: Iraqi politicians are in fact coming together toward a government of national unity; Iraqi troops are improving their performance; substantial reductions in the number of US troops are likely this year. But to many Americans, judging by the polls, Bush’s assertions sound like a broken record. His optimism comes across as happy talk.

Bush works hard to disguise it, but one senses the same inner conflict that afflicted Johnson as Vietnam began to go bad. In “The Best and the Brightest,” David Halberstam described LBJ’s torment: “He was a good enough politician to know what had gone wrong and what he was in for and what it meant to his dreams, but he could not turn back, he could not admit that he had made a mistake. He could not lose and thus he had to plunge forward.” But, recalls Halberstam, “instead of leading, he was immobilized, surrounded, seeing critics everywhere.”

It’s a dangerous situation. If Bush loses his ability to convince the country that his war aims make sense, America may be forced into a hasty withdrawal that will have devastating repercussions. To avoid this outcome and maintain its strategy of a measured handoff to Iraqi forces, the administration must bridge what in Johnson’s day was known as the “credibility gap.”

Bush could shake up his team and add new voices that can speak more convincingly to the public. Or he could reach out to moderate Democrats who support a bipartisan foreign policy, if there are any who haven’t been chased off by Karl Rove. Or he could give a larger communications role to the uniformed military. The generals won’t like being political frontmen, but they may prefer it to a collapse of support for the war.

On my most recent trip to Iraq, I took along a short book titled “Every War Must End,” written in the 1970s by Fred Ikle, who later became a defence official in the Reagan administration. It’s a haunting book, whose basic message is that starting wars is far easier than stopping them. “Cutting one’s losses, although a common notion in everyday life, appears to be a particularly difficult decision for a government to reach in seeking to end a prolonged and unsuccessful war,” Ikle wrote.

Ask senior military commanders what they think about Bush and they will tell you they love his toughness — but wish the White House could communicate its Iraq strategy better. Bush has tried. All the speeches and rallies and white papers of the past few months have reflected a recognition that the public will support the war so long as it feels there is a coherent strategy for victory. That’s why you hear the phrase “plan for victory” repeated so often, like a mantra to convince the public that American soldiers aren’t dying in a lost cause.

But it’s not working, and the president owes it to the troops, above all, to figure out a better way to communicate. —Dawn/Washington Post Service