Seven years after the coup

SEVEN years after the generals toppled an elected government, the nation finds itself hedged to a political system through which the military controls the nation’s destiny and the generals’ superiority over the elected, civilian leadership has been formalised. The army chief is also the head of state, and he, not the prime minister, heads the nation’s highest policymaking body — the National Security Council. In theory, of course, there is a democratic system in place — a lower house elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, an upper house representing the federation’s four constituent units, and elected governments at the federal and provincial levels. But all this has come into being not through a normal and fair electoral process but through a series of legal and constitutional decrees promulgated prior to the election in October 2002. It was an exercise in political maneuvering and constitutional manipulation, the aim being less to secure the people’s participation in governance and more to perpetuate a system in which the military would call the shots. This was done through wholesale amendments in the Constitution in the form of the Legal Framework Order that queered the pitch for the military’s presumed and potential rivals, denied an even playing field to all political parties and groups and ensured the success of those on the military’s right side. An amendment has laid down that no one could become prime minister for more than two terms and another has revived the notorious article 58-2b, which authorises the president to sack an elected government and dissolve the parliament.

There were other rope tricks and contrivances too, like the shibboleth that accountability has become. While the accountability process did indeed catch some big fish, including some retired generals and admirals, it often appeared from the way the accountability laws were applied selectively that the regime was using corruption as a weapon to sort out its opponents. However, the most blatant part of the political witch-hunt on the eve of the last election was the way the military persecuted the two mainstream political parties. While the PML-N’s top leadership had gone into exile as part of a deal that also involved a friendly country, the PPP found itself at the receiving end of the military’s anti-Bhutto legacy since Zia’s days. The absence of the top leadership of these two mainstream parties from the electoral arena created a vacuum which, as the election results showed, helped obscurantists and regional parties, whose policies and orientation lacked a broad national perspective. The National Assembly that came into being after the October 2002 election was thus open to manipulation. A rag-tag coalition consisting of politicians known to be corrupt and time-servers became the ruling party, and the bribe of ministerial office and the threat of prosecution for graft helped secure the loyalty of many turncoats.

Four years after the election, Gen Musharraf is still the army chief and head of state. He rescinded his promise to shed his uniform on the pretext that the MMA had not kept its part of the bargain by abstaining from a vote of confidence in him in parliament. That excuse must have come in handy for him, for the general has repeatedly said that his continuation as army chief was necessary to be able to tackle many of the nation’s gargantuan problems. This is flawed logic. No one can solve the nation’s problems except the nation itself through its duly elected representatives. In fact, what constitutes national interests cannot be left to an oligarchy with vested interests; it is the nation’s representatives at various tiers of government, their spokespersons in parliament and their leaders in the cabinet who alone are in a position to respond to the hopes and aspirations of their constituents and frame policies that have a nationwide appeal and relevance.

We are now on the threshold of the next national election. If Pakistan is to qualify as a member of the international community of democratic nations, the elections in 2007 must be truly transparent. Let all parties and politicians contest without any constraints on their unhindered participation in the electoral process. As for corruption, democracy has a built-in, self-correcting mechanism that continually purges itself of base material. We have the example of neighbouring India which has its share of corrupt politicians and which Transparency International recently called the most corrupt country in the world. But no government in India has used corruption as a pretext to postpone elections or to subvert the democratic process. There are other countries, too, in Europe, the Far-East and Latin America where corruption scandals have never been allowed to come in the way of the democratic process. Let the Pakistani nation itself conduct grand accountability exercises in the form of fair and free elections at regular intervals and purge itself of corrupt elements in politics.

There are some achievements to the present regime’s credit: the economy has received a boost following 9/11; no matter how fragile, peace appears to have been restored in North Waziristan and Wana; in Balochistan the possibility of a political solution in the wake of Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death appear to be brightening up; and the press continues to be free. But all this is overshadowed by the all-encompassing and dismal reality that the nation is still under a quasi-civilian, quasi-military dispensation. The year 2007 will mark Pakistan’s entry into the ranks of the democratic nations provided two vital questions are answered in the affirmative: will President Musharraf discard his uniform, and will the military hold a general election that will be truly fair and free?

Oil spill threat

IF there was any further evidence needed to prove how authorities never learn from past experiences, it can be found in the manner the capsized oil barge offshore Karachi is being handled. Granted that the severity of the problem is nowhere near the one seen two years ago when the Tasman Spirit debacle took place and posed problems of oil spill and marine pollution. But it was expected that authorities would have learnt from that episode and would be prepared for any future eventuality. This is especially so in view of the elaborate report prepared by the Pakistan Merchant Navy Officers which investigated the Tasman Spirit oil spill. Not only did the report castigate the Karachi Port Trust for mishandling the whole affair, it also pointed out that KPT’s management lacked technical expertise for such rescue operations. That should have prompted the KPT into hiring experts for training its personnel to be able to handle similar mishaps in the future. But nothing of the sort was done and now Karachi is once again faced with the threat of an oil spill, while authorities had to bring foreign experts to help it handle the problem.

Experts believe that to reduce the risk of an oil spill, it is best to lighten the barge’s load of furnace oil in its tanks before it can turn the vessel to an upright position. Since the salvage operation can take up to two weeks, one hopes that the process is begun at the earliest to prevent any further damage to the environment or marine life. Since dead fish have begun to be washed up to the shore, it is hard to rule out a threat to marine life. A health advisory was issued warning people to avoid seafood whereas the Sindh environment minister said that one could consume seafood. This is rather confusing. While it is important not to create panic, there must also be clear advice on what residents can and should not do until the leakage of oil is stopped.

Feudalism, literacy and democracy

“DEMOCRACY in illiterate, feudal, tribal, parochial societies has a serious downside. People are not elected on pure merit; they rise in the political hierarchy because of family connections and family resources”, says President Pervez Musharraf, summing up the political problem of Pakistan, in the final chapter of his book “In the Line of Fire”.

His solution to the problem is “if you want democracy, you must be responsible enough to vote for the right people. If you don’t, then don’t belly-ache about the poor quality of parliamentarians and ministers”.

Is the process of having a real democracy as simple as that? Will choosing the ‘right people’ usher in and sustain a real democracy? And how to make the right people do the right things and not the wrong things they tend to do influenced by an excess of power?

To begin with, people can choose the one to vote from only the available candidates. In a feudal order the candidates rise in the political hierarchy because of family connections and financial resources. In such a system when a father becomes a member of the National Assembly or the Senate, the son becomes a member of the provincial assembly. Many of the women members are relatives of the political leaders and feudal lords talk of having quite many nieces and nephews in the assemblies.

While they are in office, they look after their feudal interests more than the needs of the masses who may or may not have elected them. Bogus voting in the rural areas does much of the tricks. If the will of the people were to prevail in the elections and not of the feudal chieftains, feudalism would be in decline. An Islamic society also demands that but that has not happened in the last 60 years.

In fact feudalism has become stronger as military officers and senior bureaucrats also tend to become large landowners and identify themselves with the traditional landlords and have inter-marriages with them. But they did not become landlords by buying the land at market prices but by acquiring land from government through allotments at highly concessional rates.

Mir Zafarullah Jamali, soon after becoming prime minister, declared there was no further need for any land reform as the land reforms that has preceded him had done the needful. There is time for the consolidation of the land holding, he said. Enlightened elements in the country disagreed with him, but they did not agitate.

President Musharraf has spoken of the tribal system which blocks democracy. The supremacy of the tribal order and the preeminence of the tribal sardars is too well known. The frontier province, with its sprawling tribal areas, and Balochistan are strongholds of the tribal sardars. We see their might in the North and South Waziristan now. But democracy and the tribal order cannot coexist forever.

President Musharraf has spoken of illiteracy as a major deterrent to democracy. Neither the feudal lord, nor the tribal chief is interested in getting their people educated. In fact, the two are antagonistic to each other. Education, enlightenment and social equality undermine the tribal supremacy. They cannot co-exist. Hence, many feudal lords see schools as something they would like to see in their rivals’ territory, while preferring ghost schools in theirs. Tribal chiefs and feudal lords are opposed to girls education in particular, while some of them have given higher education to their daughters.

If there has to be democracy and self-government in the tribal areas, adequate facilities for education should be provided. And ghost schools in the tribal areas is a mockery of education and waste of precious public funds including aid funds as was the case under the much-misused Social Action Programme. If Pakistan has to have a real democratic order, a far higher priority should be given to education and the four per cent of the GDP earmarked for education should actually be spent on that.

It has been argued that land reforms resulted in continuous fragmentation of lands which stands in the way of mechanised farming and modern methods of crop maximisation. The solution to the problem, it is said, is corporate farming, using the latest technology. Much has been said about corporate farming and its blessings, but little has been done in reality.

For corporate farming a great deal of investment has to be made and several feudal lords in an area have to pool their financial resources and invest them collectively instead of buying more pajeros and Mercedes or acquiring property abroad. But the feudal lords with their mutual rivalries are not prepared for such collective enterprises and would not make large investment of their own. The feudal lords have not gone in agro based industries in a significant manner. More has been said about the development of this sector than what actually has happened. This is a major employment-generating sector but the feudal lords are not excited over it.

As long as our society is predominantly feudal and tribal, with their weight felt all around, we cannot have real democracy. So when elections are held we have a choice of feudal lords to pick from and as far as the interest of the masses are concerned, one feudal lord is not very different from another basically. Our people may not be educated, but our leaders have been. Many of them had gone to the Oxford University. But when they become ministers, they do not bring the benefit of that education to the administration.

In fact, we had far more rulers who were educated abroad than India had after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But they did not bring any enlightenment to their rule and enable the people to benefit from that. Even the Nawab of Kalabagh was an Oxford graduate as was Nawab Akbar Bugti. The fact is there was no compulsion on them while in office to conduct themselves as enlightened rulers. So the foreign education was lost on them. Nor were they asked to account for their conduct and lavish public spending after they left office.

President Musharraf speaks of a parochial society as a deterrent to the development of democracy. The political divide between Muslims and non-Muslims had been bridged at last through the joint electorate. But otherwise the divisions among the 160 million people in Pakistan are too many. There are provincial divisions, racial or ethnic splits, sectarian divides and differences based on caste or Biradari.

All these distinctions come to play against the candidates during elections and restrict the choice of candidates by political parties and by voters during the time of elections. Quite often a voter casts his vote for negative reasons as he does not want the other, better, candidate to win.

Choice of the parties to issue their ticket is also restricted by the fact that there are not enough good candidates for the many political parties in the field. So they may have to choose the bad against the worst when issuing the tickets. If the parties were a few in number, they would have better candidates at their disposal and the voters can respond to such candidates better. And proliferation of political parties and unsuitable candidates is an anathema to real democracy.

The senseless increase in the number of parties should now be discouraged if we want to have meaningful elections and a real democracy. And we should have a system of electoral rerun with the finally winning candidate having more than 50 per cent of the votes, if we want a more representative democracy.

Under the present system whoever gets even 15 per cent of the votes caste can win his seat as there are too many candidates. That is a mockery of democracy or free choice. So we must have a provision for an electoral rerun of the two candidates with the highest number of votes below 50 per cent as in France or even Brazil.

If the political parties do not choose the right kind of candidates, such candidates can contest as independents. But the problem is the elections are becoming more and more costly, mobilising a team of election workers, feeding and taking care of them. Getting all the election literature printed and organizing a fleet of vehicles is a very expensive exercise which few independent candidates can afford.

Even major political parties find they cannot afford such expenditure on their candidates and focus their resources more on their top leaders’ campaign. Hence the parties look for “winning candidates” which means rich candidates willing to spend money on their elections. They would rather have a bad winner than a good looser. The result is we have assemblies with too many feudal lords and industrial barons from the cities.

Imran Khan of the Tehreek-i-Insaaf, a political novice, when he contested the elections left it to voters to reach the polling stations themselves on election day. The voters waited for the transport to come but it did not. So they gave up casing their vote.

For all the expenses on the elections, there are rigid rules but they are not followed in Pakistan nor in many other countries including the West. It is often explained away by saying their friends and relations spent the money on them voluntarily and it was not part of the election expense.

So our electoral system is riddled with old follies as well as new evils. Above all the elections are only the first step among many to a democratic system. Good governance and fair justice for all and meeting the basic needs of the masses should be a major objective of a popular government.

And when feudalism and tribalism and parochialism are the major stumbling blocks in the way of real democracy along with illiteracy, it will remain much farther away. That is all the more so when successive governments have not made sustained efforts to break down these road blocks and open the road to authentic democracy.