OPPOSITION parties in Pakistan have been voicing certain demands in support of which they would like to launch mass movements. Components of the ARD and MMA have of late been threatening to resign their seats in parliament as a protest measure if their demands are not promptly conceded.

As one might expect, some of these demands are legitimate but nevertheless hard to meet; others are unviable, arising from a misunderstanding of the democratic parliamentary system, while still others are ambiguous or simply extravagant and, therefore, unlikely to go anywhere.

The threat of resignations from parliament, en masse, is not to be taken seriously. Such a move will nor produce much more than headlines in the domestic and foreign media, a few supportive editorials and columns. It may further reduce the credibility of the Musharraf regime and its “democratic” credentials. But any pressures it generates will not be enough to force him to go away. He, on his part, may deflate the opposition’s move by declaring his resolve to hold the next election on time and make it “free and fair.”

Consider also that members of parliament will not see anything substantial coming their way in return for their loss of salaries, allowances, subsidized housing, privileges and perquisites, resulting from resignations. Declarations to the contrary notwithstanding, a good deal of reluctance to resign on their part should be expected.

The MMA and PML (N) want to launch mass movements to force General Musharraf to step down from the offices he currently holds (president and army chief). I see little prospect of either of them being able to initiate and sustain street power that is menacing and enduring enough to force the general’s submission. A month or two before October 2007, when the next general election will become due, he may announce his intention to give up his army post, and agree to take his chances as a candidate for the office of president when his current term expires. But this prospect is contingent upon several conditions which we will explore another time.

The opposition wants the army to leave the country’s politics alone. This will not happen while the president is at the same time the army chief. He takes domestic and foreign policy issues to meetings of his corps commanders on a regular basis. Thus, they become involved in governance primarily on his, not necessarily their own, initiative. This state of affairs has taken many years to reach its present level. Getting rid of it will likewise take time.

It should first be understood that so long as the political system itself is fragmented, internally incoherent, personalized and essentially undemocratic, and therefore weak, external agencies will continue to move in to fill the power vacuum thus created. The generals’ inclinations and preferences are not by themselves the only compelling factor in this regard. The willingness, sometimes eagerness, of the politicians to seek the army’s intervention for settling their rivalries, to the satisfaction of this side or the other, must also be considered. Their pleas to the military arise primarily from their own inadequate commitment to democracy and the rules of the game it prescribes.

At their recent meeting in Dubai (March 10) Mr Shahbaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto declared that they would not repeat the “mistakes” they had made in the past. These “mistakes” included not only corruption, and persecution of political opponents, but also a variety of deals they made with the military brass, employment of intelligence agencies to rig elections and to put away adversaries. We hope Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto, as well as other politicians, will include this “mistake” among those to be avoided.

The opposition spokesmen want the 1973 Constitution, as it prevailed before General Musharraf’ coup, to be restored. In other words, they want the Seventeenth Amendment and the scores of PCOs (presidential constitutional orders), which it protects, to be repealed. There can be little doubt that the changes the general inserted served to mutilate the Constitution. But nor can there be doubt that the Eighth Amendment and the hundreds of other changes that Ziaul Haq placed in the Constitution had the same effect.

The amendments made during the regimes of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were, for the most part, needless when they were not pernicious. If a revision of the Constitution is now deemed to be feasible, and if it is to be attempted, we may just as well repeal all of the seventeen amendments made to date and return to the original text, which the diverse political forces in the country had almost unanimously adopted.

The opposition wants to establish parliamentary supremacy in the nation’s governance. This is doubtless a worthy goal. It is currently not being honoured: the president, and not the parliament’s designees (the prime minister and his cabinet), makes all the major decisions. But I am not sure the proponents of parliamentary supremacy have an accurate understanding of its meaning and implications.

Doubts on this score arise partly from the opposition leaders’ frequent assertion that they should have been “taken into confidence” before the government reached a certain decision. They say also that decisions should be made by “consensus.” One gets the impression that, in spite of their formal exclusion from the government of the day, they feel that they should be treated as effective participants in its decision-making process. This cannot be.

Majority rule, not government by consensus, is the democratic way. “Taking the opposition into confidence” is a good idea if it means that issues should be brought to parliament, the government’s proposed policies explained and debated, and the opposition’s suggestions, if sensible, accommodated. Some of this consultation can be, and perhaps is, done in committees before bills come up for their final disposition on the floor. In any case, the final authority to make decisions belongs to the government, and while the opposition is entitled to a respectful hearing, it is not entitled to having its way. It is present in the house to criticize the government, not to govern.

The opposition wants the next elections to be free and fair. Once again this is an entirely legitimate demand. There may, however, be some doubt as to the efficacy of the arrangements proposed to ensure fairness. The opposition would like to see the present regime replaced by a “caretaker” government, under whose general authority the elections would be held. Upon first encounter, this sounds like a good idea. But further reflection may suggest that, unless accompanied by certain other conditions, the proposed government may not be able to deliver. We have had caretaker governments in the past (those headed by Mr Meraj Khalid, Mr Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, and Mr Moeen Qureshi), but none of them is known to have produced fair and free elections.

Second, the opposition is asking for an independent and “powerful” — or, let us say, competent — Election Commission. Its “independence” means that its chairman and his colleagues will not be amenable to external pressure, and that they will not want to allow anything unlawful to be done. Competence means that they will have the means of stopping anything unlawful from being done. Independence may be a function of their will and conscience. Let us say that the requisite frame of mind can be found and summoned in the service of this great cause.

But competence is not a matter of their internal disposition. It relates to the magnitude of the task at hand, that is, the size and power of the forces arrayed against their mission, determined to evade or defeat the law, and perpetrate electoral fraud. Given our past experience with elections, it may be safe to say that the scope and power of these forces are huge and no election commission is likely to have the means equal to the task of controlling them.

A related problem may be noted in passing. The opposition had been taking the position that it should be “consulted” about the appointment of the next CEC. General Musharraf recently appointed Qazi Mohammad Farooq, a former judge of the Supreme Court, to this post. Mr Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, secretary general of PML-N, greeted the appointment as the general’s first move towards pre-poll rigging. His reason for saying so being that the opposition had not been consulted before the choice was made. Farhatullah Babar (PPP) and Ilyas Bilour (ANP), on the other hand, maintained that the appointee was nevertheless a man of impeccable integrity. It should be clear that “consensus” on the choice of a CEC is not likely ever to materialize.

Opposition spokesmen and many other observers have been saying that the next elections will not be credible unless leaders of the “mainstream” parties, that is, Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto, are allowed to return and participate in them. Musharraf says they will not be let in, because they were guilty of corruption and other malfeasance when in power. But he may be persuaded to change his mind.

It may be said that many others who were similarly guilty have been holding high offices in his own government, and that his opposition to Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto is arbitrary and not principled. The case of Nawaz Sharif is fairly uncomplicated in that the general had already pardoned his alleged offences. There should be no legal difficulty in allowing him back. But criminal cases, genuine or bogus, are pending in courts against Ms Bhutto and one may wonder what is to be done about them. These cases could be withdrawn. Alternatively, Ms Bhutto could be granted bail, allowed to contest the elections, and the disposition of the cases against her left to the next government.

At this point in this discussion I should like to submit that, regardless of Nawaz Sharif’s and Ms Bhutto’s future roles, the “ground realities” of Pakistan’s electoral politics must change if the next elections are to be free and fair. Who can change them? The generals? The answer to this question is complex and I will have to defer it to next Sunday.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US.
Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

THE assurance given by the new chief election commissioner that the next general elections will be fair and free do not dispel the deep-rooted cynicism that they will not be. History is on the side of the cynics. No election, national, provincial or local, since the fateful polls of 1970 has been free or fair, not even to the Senate.

The point at issue is not the intention but the ability of the CEC to implement his assurance. The odds are all arrayed against him. The signals coming from the parties who would be involved in the electoral process point towards boycott, rigging, violence and, if Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain were to have his way, postponement.

The holding of polls preceded by the preparation of electoral rolls and delimitation of constituencies is a huge and complex administrative exercise. Under the Constitution, the CEC and four members of the Election Commission have to be serving or retired judges of the superior courts. Their qualifications and experience, obviously, do not match the task given to them which is made even more difficult when the contending parties are all set to disrupt or pervert the process in its various stages.

The advantage that the judges as a class at one time had over other public servants in being more independent and less amenable to pressure and inducements is, woefully, no longer there. The integrity of character is now more of a personal than an institutional virtue.

The parliament and the president, therefore, should now consider amending the Constitution to make the people from public life and other professions also eligible for appointment as CEC and members of the commission. Such an amendment, however, may give rise to yet another controversy but a law enacted to make the CEC and the members more effective would not.

Under the constitutional provision as it now stands (Article 220), the executive authorities of the federation and the provinces are duty-bound to assist the CEC and the commission in discharging their functions. If they do not, the Election Commission can issue a direction which has to be enforced and executed as if it was issued by the High Court.

A weak mechanism, it has rarely been seen in operation in the past. By the time the commission’s direction is examined and executed by the executive authorities, irregularities committed at thousands of polling stations across the country become all but irreversible. Rigging or disruption of polls may not stop altogether but would surely be contained if the executive officials conducting the elections were to be placed directly under the control of the Election Commission for a specified period before the polls and until such time the results are compiled and notified.

The general elections, if held on schedule and not put off, are still 16 months away. The plans to boycott or rig them, however, have already been set in motion. Leading the forces of boycott is the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmad. His partner in the MMA religious alliance, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, however, is still contemplating boycott as one of the options. At the other extreme is Akhtar Mengal, the unofficial spokesman of the triad of Baloch sardars, who feels it is time for armed struggle and not for street protest or polls. A boycott is hardly expected to be peaceful either.

More real and menacing, however, is the threat of rigging. Notwithstanding what the president, prime minister and CEC might have to say to the contrary, no one is inclined to believe that the official machinery will not be used to secure majority, may be two-thirds, vote in the National Assembly for those parties which, in turn, would elect Gen Musharraf as president once again. The actual rigging takes place on polling day either by stuffing the ballot box or by falsifying the count. To make the victory credible, however, the official machinery comes into motion much earlier to demonstrate mass support for the party in power.

The herding of crowds for the ruling party’s conventions by the police and other official agencies is an established feature of Pakistan’s political life. Every party does it in its own time and the people, too, have learnt to put up with the inconvenience it inevitably creates. A furore is caused only when the police go berserk (as it indeed did before the Muslim League’s convention at Lahore last Thursday) impounding every bus in sight.

The buses that escaped the swoop went into hiding and the stranded passengers were left to trek and curse all the way to their destinations. They wouldn’t ever vote for the official parties nor, perhaps, would the people whom the impounded buses carried to the convention but that is a problem to be tackled on polling day.

The scale of the crowd-herding effort for the Muslim League’s Lahore convention, the old-timers would recall, was exceeded only by the convention of its forerunner 40 years ago at Peshawar. By the rigged official count, then a million people were brought to Peshawar to prove Ayub’s popularity among the masses though he was to be elected by his basic democrats.

Ayub Khan could never recover from the effects of that rigged convention just as Z.A. Bhutto couldn’t survive the rigged ballot. Rigging has been lethal both for democracy and its perpetrators in Pakistan. It is unlikely to be any different in the future.