THE most fundamental characteristics of autocracy in the present age of democracy are: a) absence of a political watchdog to oversee the working of the Executive; and b) reduction of the mandatory general election into an inconsequential ritual. Last week the Pakistan establishment took long and firm strides to fulfil both of these conditions.

No serious student of politics has had any doubt about the intimate ties between the political party supposed to be in power — PML-Q — and the head of the state. However, it was generally considered inexpedient to shout about this affair from housetops. That is, till last week when in an unprecedented display of godfather’s affection for the ruling party President Musharraf gave an audience to its Punjab branch and tendered advice to its central executive.

No secret was made of the president’s directive to the PML-Q to restore unity in its rank so that it had no difficulty in winning another term in office next year. Also, consensus (among parties that matter) emerged on two basic issues: that Ch Shujaat Husain will stay on as the PML-Q chief regardless of the party elections due to be held soon, and that the party had resolved to get Gen Musharraf elected President of Pakistan for another term and, most probably, without requiring him to hang his uniform.

Although questions of respect for political propriety have long ceased to be raised in Pakistan, many were intrigued by the president’s show of concern for the PML-Q’s future and his open support to it in next year’s general election. The reason is the presidential initiative amounted to an authoritative verdict on the party’s incapacity to move forward without its comprehensive insurance by the presidency. Further, the PML-Q is not without experts in its councils (Mr S. M. Zafar and Mr Wasim Sajjad to name only two) who could have told Gen. Musharraf that patronage of a political party was mandated as part of his duty neither in his capacity as president nor as the Chief of the Army Staff.

The risks in confirming the PML-Q’s status as the king’s party were fairly obvious. The clamour the country’s democratic fringe was bound to make could be ignored with customary haughtiness, but the trouble was that patrons among the big powers could misunderstand the matter. Obviously this risk was considered less decisive than the urgency of propping up the PML-Q outfit. The only explanation is that the party did not feel confident of victory in 2007 and even if did its confidence was not shared by the presidency.

Indeed, the president’s decision to openly involve himself with the affairs of a political group must be seen in the context of the PML-Q’s recent shopping in the political bazaar. An opposition stalwart was persuaded to convert to the ruling party for a seat in the Senate, the office of a district Nazim and revival of a commercial project. Another opposition MNA was rewarded for defection with the office of a minister of state. A former opposition MNA was made senator after he discovered the importance of joining the PML-Q.

Despite this record of happy hunting, it was considered necessary to make the president’s intervention public, perhaps in the hope that the trickle of support to the ruling party will develop into a flood by the autumn of 2007. We are quite familiar with the election-eve phenomenon of a great spurt in the popularity of a political party that is the designated victor before the polls.

Whatever the reasons that impelled the president to issue writs to the PML-Q, the effect on the polity is unlikely to be healthy. At least that is what history tells us.

Pakistan came into being at a time when the defects of allowing a single person to be the head of a political party as well as the chief of the government formed by it were being very seriously debated. There was a broad agreement that constitutional formulate regarding the distribution of powers among the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary could not be adequate in new democracies and therefore strong political parties were necessary to keep a watch over their governments. Pakistan’s acceptance of this formulation was revealed in two developments.

The Quaid-i-Azam, who became governor-general and president of the Constituent Assembly in August 1947, resigned as head of the Muslim League four months later. Ch. Khaliquzzaman functioned as head of the PML for some time before Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan ruled it was necessary for him to be head of government and the party both, in a complete reversal of the position he had adopted some time earlier. From then on nothing could stop the decline of the system of government’s answerability to the party as well as the erosion of the democratic credentials of the political parties.

Within a short time the party became the handmaiden of the executive. Whoever became prime minister also inherited the League presidentship (if the government was formed by the PML). As a result Pakistan chose to free the executive of the nuisance of a party watchdog and the transformation of Pakistan into an authoritarian state under a democratic facade was expedited.

The military rulers had little interest in resurrecting the political parties’ watchdog role, except for Ayub Khan, who was obliged to take over the leadership of his faction of the Muslim League but kept the party subservient to the executive. His successors in uniform preferred elimination of political parties altogether. The most amazing part of the story is that even governments of political parties (PPP, PML and PML-N) too relied completely on executive authority and kept the party apparatus idle except for some criminal adventures.

It will be said that the hold of parties over their governments has disappeared, or at least weakened, across the world. The present crop of politicos in India, for instance, may not have even heard of the Kamraj plan which was devised to reaffirm the identities of government and party as two distinctly different political entities and reinforce the authority of the party to hold the government to account.

The political parties in the USA have always been merely fund-raising machines for their presidential candidates and in Britain political parties are heard of only during annual conferences. But then in both these countries the party representatives in legislatures function as party outfit, and the executive cannot take them for granted. The supersession of political parties in a country such as Pakistan is extraordinarily dangerous as it does not have any substitutes’ (such as assembly parties capable of standing up to chief executives).

In a country like Pakistan, denial of a political party’s role, especially when it enjoys majority support in elective bodies, not only creates space for autocracy, it also affects the efficiency of the state’s legislative and executive organs. If members of legislatures and ministers are not chosen on the strength of their work for political parties but receive offices as favour from the executive, they can never appreciate the needs and aspirations of the people nor can they realize the demands of their offices because their overriding concern is to keep the dispenser of favours in a favourable frame of mind.

The longer a country allows its executive to supplant representative political apparatuses, the deeper into the mire of autocracy it will sink.

It will not be fair to say that Pakistan’s frequent deviations from democratic governance has entirely been due to elimination of party control over governments, but it can safely be asserted that the executives success in making the party subservient to its whims and caprices has been one of the major factors in the consolidation of autocratic rule in Pakistan. The reasons are many and the principal one is that democracy requires debate, consultation and consensus at as many forums as possible.

On the other hand, autocracy finds safety in reducing and, if possible, eliminating all forums of political debate and consultation. Thus we find authoritarian regimes keen to have as little debate in parliamentary organs (if they are allowed at all) as possible and making sure that no non-official forum is allowed to develop a tradition of political discourse. In this scheme of things political parties cannot escape petrification. The latest demonstration of the ruling party’s subservience to the executive clearly means that a return to a functional democracy is not on the establishment’s agenda.

Announcements that nobody should have any doubt about General Pervez Musharraf’s staying on in the presidency for another term and the extraordinary effort being made to ensure PML-Q’s victory in the general election amount to determining ‘positive results’ even before the electoral process has begun. Wherever it is possible for a state establishment to predetermine election results, its system has never been accepted as democratic. The world has known several models in which every adult citizen has the right to vote and polling is regularly held and the result was victory by a heavy margin for the incumbents. Neither such elections nor these states are accepted as democratic.

Unless something radical happens and the establishment can be dissuaded from carrying out its plans for the general election, the verdict on Pakistan will be no different. After all, elections have meaning only as mechanics of change; if all chances of change are plugged in advance, election becomes a bad farce.

That the effort to protect the authoritarian nature of the Pakistan regime should be made at this particular time of Pakistan’s history is doubly regrettable. The establishment’s advisers seem to have learnt nothing from the misfortunes of governments that tried to extend their tenure by aiming at electoral victory greater than the one that brought them into power in the first instance. One example may be sufficient.

In Ayub Khan’s first national assembly the opposition was considerably strong; it forced the absolute ruler to restore the fundamental rights chapter of the Constitution, accept the right of political parties to be represented in the assembly and of national assembly members to be ministers. In the election to the second national assembly the establishment went in for an overkill and the opposition was reduced to a small rump. That great majority did not help Ayub Khan in surviving the challenge not only to his presidency but also to his political engineering. And Z.A. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both fell because they had “heavy mandates” and not for want of such exalted position.

The messy thing that democratic governance is happily depends on non-intervention by the executive. Those who wish to make it conform to barrack culture will end up destroying not only representative government but much else.

HAD US Vice-President Dick Cheney declared during his visit to Kazakhstan last week that “in many areas of civil society — from religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties — the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of the people,” human rights groups would have cheered.

But he said that in Russia, a few days earlier. What he told Kazakhstan’s dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was that “all Americans are tremendously impressed with the progress that you’ve made in Kazakhstan in the last 15 years. Kazakhstan has become a good friend and strategic partner of the United States.”

Admiration for Kazakhstan’s progress is not actually a leading conversational topic in the United States. The man whom the “Financial Times” recently and memorably described as “the Bush administration’s Lord Voldemort” was merely engaging in a little useful hypocrisy, or so he imagined. The question is whether it really is useful.

Cheney’s blunt condemnation of the Russian government’s behaviour certainly roused a vehement reaction in Russia. President Vladimir Putin’s drift towards a “soft dictatorship” has the support of most Russians, who are still smarting from the anarchy, corruption and poverty of the first post-Communist decade under Boris Yeltsin. Now the anarchy has been suppressed, the corruption is better hidden, and the economy is growing, so the Russian media’s bitter response to Cheney’s strictures really did match popular attitudes.

Under a headline reading “Enemy at the Gate”, the Moscow business daily Kommersant, normally a critic of the Kremlin, said that “the Cold War has restarted, only now the front line has shifted.” “Komsomolskaya Pravda” asked: “What is Russia to do? Evidently it needs to strengthen links with Belarus and Central Asia. And get friendly with China, to counter-balance this Western might.” Over-reactions, of course — there is no new Cold War — but Cheney’s criticisms would have been more credible and less offensive if he were not so obviously applying a double standard.

Kazakhstan is expected to become one of the world’s top ten oil producers in the next decade. It is a close ally of the United States, even sending a small contingent of Kazakh troops to Iraq. But Kazakhstan is not a democracy (though it observes all the forms), and Nursultan Nazarbayev is not a democrat.

When Dick Cheney became Secretary of Defence in the administration of the elder George Bush in 1989, Nursultan Nazarbayev was already the First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party. By 1990 he was president of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and a member of the Soviet politburo in Moscow. And by the end of 1991 he was the president of an independent Kazakhstan and a keen advocate of the free market, as if his Communist past had been merely an adolescent foible.

Fifteen years and three “elections” later, Nazarbayev is still president of Kazakhstan, re-elected only last December with a 91 percent majority in a vote that foreign observers condemned as fraudulent. His daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva, who controls the Khabar media conglomerate and leads the “opposition” Asar party, is widely expected to take power when his current seven-year term expires in 2010. (“I can’t swear it will never happen.” she says coyly.)

Nazarbayev’s regime does not boil people in oil like that of his neighbour in Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov (who was First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party in 1989). It is not as megalomaniacal as the regime of President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan, who has renamed the month of January after himself, April after his mother and May after his father. (Niyazov became First Secretary of the Turkmenistan Communist Party in 1985.)

Among the six ‘Stans, Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan is only the third- or fourth-worst dictatorship, but it is a far less democratic and tolerant society than Putin’s Russia. So why did Dick Cheney castigate Russia’s imperfect democracy while saying not a word about Kazakhstan’s shameless travesty of the democratic system? Oil, obviously, but how could he be so ignorant of Nazarbayev’s priorities?

Senior oil company executives know that you sometimes have to kiss the nether regions of local potentates in order to make the deals happen, but they generally only deliver the osculation when it seems fairly certain that the deal will really go through as a result. This one won’t.

What Cheney wants out of Nazarbayev is commitment to pipelines that will move Kazakh oil and gas to Europe by routes that do not cross Russia — which means pipelines under the Caspian Sea. But what Nazarbayev wants is a solid American offer that he can take to the Russians so that he can demand a higher price for his gas exports to them through the existing pipelines. He will also take it to the Chinese and suggest that they build pipelines to bring his oil and gas to China. He has been playing the game at least as long as Cheney, and he holds a better hand.

Nursultan Nazarbayev is holding out for the best price, and the winning bid is unlikely to come from the United States. Cheney’s kow-towing to Nazarbayev is as futile as his chiding of Putin. And although his hypocritical moralising about the shortcomings of Russian democracy probably has little direct effect on the calculations of a strategist as cool as Vladimir Putin, it does poison the relationship at many other levels. That still matters, because Russia is coming back as a force in the world.—Copyright

SOUTH ASIA is home to nuclear devices which will kill millions if used and poison many even if never used as it is possible that radioactive waste material could sneak into the food chain or leak in an accident. But even more dangerous than the nuclear bomb is the population bomb and the fact that our population figures are galloping fast. It is one of the indicators to categorise a country as a failed state.

The man who sounded the alarm over population was born, rather surprisingly, during the apparent serenity of Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) England. His name was Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) and he spent his entire life in academia — fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge (1793-1804) and then professor of history and political economy at Haileybury College (1805-1834). For such a man to come up with the grim theory that “population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” was somewhat unexpected because he himself had witnessed neither milling crowds nor hungry people nor water shortage — all the things we fear now.

Yet Malthus was right. If the world sustains a huge population today it is only because science has come up with sources of increased food supply he never dreamt of. But the resources at our disposal — especially water — are finite and the time will come when the world will simply not be able to support so many people.

So what can Pakistan do about this? First, let us give credit to Ayub Khan for having begun the spadework on family planning. If the fertility rate is down (from 3.66 per cent between 1961-1972 to 1.9 per cent in 2005) it is because of these initial steps. But much more needs to be done so let us begin by examining the impediments in the process.

The first impediment is the interpretation of Islam, at least on this particular issue, by religions opinion makers. Slogans saying; ‘family planning is murder’ and ‘Every human being brings his own sustenance’ were displayed in major cities as soon as the Ayub campaign started. The village maulvi would counsel fatalism while the intellectuals of the Jamaat-i-Islami, probably reacting to western cultural hegemony, were sceptical of the whole family planning project. Maulana Maudoodi’s famous book The Birth Control (1964) argued that family planning was a plot against Islam and would encourage sexual promiscuity. The Deobandi establishment, unmindful of the fatwas of their own school, also remained against family planning. The ordinary people, getting such conflicting messages, veered in the direction of their traditional fatalism. They had always wanted more children and now they felt that religion was on their side on this count at least.

The westernised bureaucracy used perfectly secular reasons to advocate family planning. That there were Islamic reasons for doing so was never made common knowledge though, of course, here and there a few scholars nodded their heads solemnly and affirmed that there were. These reasons are as follows.

According to Jabir bin Abdullah, the narrator of a prophetic tradition: “We used to practise coitus interreptus (al-azal) during the time of Allah’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, while the Quran was being revealed. The Prophet (PBUH) came to know about it but did not forbid us.” This particular tradition is authenticated by both the major collections Bukhari and Muslim. Another tradition pertains to the same practise with women captured in war. Based upon these traditions the makers of law declared that one could have intercourse without intending to produce offspring.

However, there is a Quranic verse saying: “kill not your children for fear of want. We provide sustenance for them and for you, the killing of them is a great sin” (Surah 17:31). Because of this some people said that al-azal was like murder. This opinion was refuted by Hazrat Ali as follows:

“(a human life is not created) before the completion of seven stages (of reproduction), being a product of the earth, then a drop of semen, then a clot, then a little lump of tissue, then bones, then bones clothed with flesh, which then becomes like another creation.” Hazrat Umar, who was present, said “you are right. May Allah prolong your life.”

In short, the verse from the Qur’an, which is often produced in arguments against family planning, refers to the killing of live children and has nothing to do with preventing the birth of children.

The doctrine of al-azl was supported by the Hanafi, Maliki, Hanbali and the Shafi’i; schools of Islamic fiqh (the law). Among the Shias, too, it has support among the Zaidi, Imami and other schools. There are minor difference among the jurists, of course, but the general principle is conceded.

In India, during Aurangzeb’s time, 500 ulema agreed that al-azl was permissible. Shah Abdul Aziz, a religious reformer, also agreed with this interpretation. More recently, all major Islamic scholars have agreed that it is permissible. Internet sources give the names of scholars from all over the Muslim world, including Al-Azhar, who agree that it is allowed. Participants at several conferences Rabat (1971); Banjal, Gambia (1979); Dakar, Senegal (1982); Aceh, Indonesia (1990); Magadishu, Somalia (1990) agreed that all forms of family planning were permissible.

That the official machinery has not made al-azl a household word by now is a shortcoming of officialdom. However, if the will is there, the concept can be used to refute and overcome the misinterpretation of Islam which is so common in our society.

There is, however, another impediment in the path of family planning. Our society is male-dominating and males are preferred over females. Boys provide security against attack, cattle-lifting, abduction of the women of the family and so on. Moreover, it is through them that the family name is carried on. They provide food and security in old age. Thus, people have many children in the hope of having more sons and, therefore, greater security.

Our westernised, urban opinion-makers either do not know or remain insensitive to these realities. They blame the common people for having more children. That this attitude is insensitive, arrogant as well as wrong does not occur to them. Thus the doctors who talk to villagers in Urdu — which is a discourtesy by itself if the doctor knows the villagers’ language — in superior tones about the virtues of family planning are themselves an impediment in the way of reducing population.

First, they blame the individual whereas it is the system, made by urban elites like themselves, which is to blame. Second, they do not realise that social life — including beliefs, attitudes, values etc., — will only change if there is education and a higher standard of living. If the state has not spread education and modern values everywhere the failure is that of the state’s ruling elite and not of the common people. They are the victims of the population bomb for they are the ones who will drink even polluted water while the elite has bottled water and private wells to fall back upon.

The fact is that when education — especially female education — spreads, fertility decreases. This has happened in many countries of the world. The other fact is that when incomes rise, people produce less children. They start spending on lifestyle, education of children, clothes etc whereas these are mere luxuries when one is desperately poor.

The third relevant fact is that when both these things happen, people stop depending on their children and population decreases. Now these are social changes which only ruling elites bring about. Thus, instead of being critical of people who produce too many children, one should be critical of policymakers who have not ensured that there is an equitable distribution of resources wealth, among the common people of this country.

The consequences of the population explosion are too horrendous to think of. Just imagine, if the present population growth continues, there will be 202.11 million people in Pakistan in 2025. What we need is a zero or, even better, a negative growth rate for several decades. So if we are to engage with this problem seriously we must make use of such Islamic concepts as al-azal to overcome opposing religious impediments. And even more importantly, someone has to start investing in education, social security, the reduction of poverty and the empowerment of women. These are not fashionable shibboleths — these are the basic necessities for survival itself.