THE political scene in Pakistan is becoming murkier and murkier. The state structure is coming apart at the seams and the people, a majority in any case, seem to have lost faith not only in the traditional custodians of power but also in the state. Even in themselves.

The factors contributing to an all pervasive pessimism, a kind of resignation to an unavoidable doom, can easily be identified. The most significant of these factors is a near total loss of hope for good governance.

The authoritarian model is fast losing its apologists because it has forfeited the sole claim advanced time and again in its defence — that it could provide a more effective administration than a democratically constituted authority. It not the alternatives do not inspire confidence.

Indeed, one particular alternative causes fright and revulsion to the visibly depleted body of democratic-minded citizens. Absence of palatable political options breeds frustration and cynicism and ultimately leads to extinction of hope. A critical question facing anyone interested in reclaiming the waterlogged state of Pakistan is the discovery or forging of a credible political option.

Political parties are still considered the only legitimate agents of national salvation. Hitherto they have been spared criticism from friendly quarters in the belief that this would help the anti-democratic power groups in their ceaseless mission of demonizing political parties and their leaders. Whatever justification there ever was for offering a hot-house environment to political parties, it is perhaps time the advocates of democratic norms had a frank dialogue with them, particularly with the principal pretenders to the gaddi (the throne).

They have often been told that they share the blame with the known wreckers of constitutions for depriving the people of a democratic order and its fruits. That is not enough. The exchanges between political parties and their critics in civil society (of which they undoubtedly form the vanguard) now need to cover a much wider range, for the objective should be nothing less than evolution of a democratic political culture.

Out of the numerous issues on the agenda, we are concerned at the moment with only the political parties’ capacity for a rational appreciation of the objective reality. The remaining issues may be taken up in due course.

The political parties are not known for their ability to comprehend the challenges to their survival. After several rounds of fighting for mutual annihilation, they have perhaps begun to realise that they are not the greatest enemies of one another and that they should join hands against a common adversary that has often exploited differences among them to further its own narrow interest. However, a correct appreciation of the strength of the entrenched establishment seems still to be lacking. Also, the need to resist cooption by extra-democratic custodians of power is apparently not clear to all political parties.

It should not be difficult for any political worker to appraise the balance of political forces. Of the three parties that matter — the people, the regime and the political parties — the people may be potentially stronger than the regime but they have been made weaker by the failure of political parties to win them over to their side. The opposition parties’ challenge has failed to materialise because they have alienated the masses. They should not expect any substantial progress towards democratisation unless a way is found to revive the people’s interest in politics.

This task was found easy in the past whenever a regime was tottering on the brink of its collapse. It may not be easy in a situation such as the present one, when the establishment is considering itself invincible largely because of a pat of approval from its external patrons.

The political parties too have tended to depend on external forces to win the battle for democracy for them. It is necessary to stop the process of self-delusion on this score. No foreign country is going to pressure the regime to restore democracy beyond what the people can themselves achieve through their struggle, at least a demonstration of credible intent to struggle.

The leaders of the international community do not attach top priority to the Pakistani people’s right to democratic governance, because, for one thing, the latter’s entitlement to what is considered every community’s basic human right is believed to be doubtful and, for another, Islamabad will remain a strategic ally of the West in whatever enterprise is high on its agenda. It is possible that the regime is counting on the so-called war on terror or for the conquest of lands infested with terrorists to continue for a decade if not longer.

Those who wish to join the struggle for restoration of democracy should be prepared to find yesteryear’s champion of democracy on the opposite side. The erosion of rule of law and the growing contempt for human rights norms in the West have put struggle for national liberation and democratisation at a serious disadvantage. At the moment the regime is throwing feelers that it wishes to expand its popular base by absorbing some elements that are at present opposed to it. Whoever walks into the proverbial spider’s web will commit suicide as a political entity. An extra-constitutional regime’s innate hostility to democratic politics and active political parties is not erased by its acquisition of a political party or group for use as a fig leaf to cover its illegitimacy. The political parties created by Pakistan’s autocratic rulers turned into dust as soon as the hand holding the strings became dysfunctional. This principle is unlikely to lose force now or in the future.

The groups and individuals weighing possibilities of joining the establishment in the hope of securing their future beyond the coming general election need to remember that authoritarian outfits do not care for the future of anyone except themselves. They must not ignore the growing number of people who are convinced that a free and fair general election is impossible in the existing circumstances. The position will not change if the present cabinet of absentee ministers is replaced by another band enjoying an arbitrarily coined title of a caretaker authority.

All parties, groups or individuals moving into the ruling camp at this stage will not only put a cross on their long-term political prospects, a much worse consequence of their action will be confusion in public mind about the illegitimacy of the general election.

It may be useful to reflect on the historical experience that authoritarian regimes do not seek partners, they only recruit surrogates. The political elements expecting favourable accommodation in the ruling camp should not ignore the evidence that indicates futility of such an exercise. The brigade of loyal politicos identified as the king’s party certainly has some leverage with the establishment and it can spoil the new converts’ celebration of baptism into the power group, especially at election time as the instruments of electoral manipulation will largely be in its hands.

Once political parties are convinced that democratic governance cannot be achieved through one-sided compromises (in favour of the incumbents), they should be able to adopt appropriate strategies and tactics for the realisation of democratic aspirations of the people. These strategies are not available at drugstores; they will have to be crafted by political parties through a democratic consensus-building process involving their followers.

FIRST, let’s lay down the mother of all caveats. The conventional wisdom says Democrats are about to win control of the House of Representatives and could well take the Senate too. But, and here’s the mega-caveat, the conventional wisdom in Washington is often very, very wrong.

Cast your mind back to election night 2004, when the US media anointed President John Kerry. The warning this time is that Republicans might be fewer in number, but more motivated and therefore likelier to turn out. Note, too, the reports that White House strategist Karl Rove, the election wizard famed as George Bush’s brain, is in cocky mood. In the contests that matter, Rove reckons Republicans have the money and the machine to win.

So Democrats and their friends should approach next Tuesday’s congressional elections with low expectations: that way, they won’t be disappointed. Then, in the appropriate frame of mind, they can ask the question that matters: what difference will a Democrat win make, not only to the United States but to the wider world?

There are a handful of policy specifics, including a promise to raise the minimum wage, but the party’s election programme is stunningly short on detail. It sets out six, general goals — Six for ‘06 is the not very snappy slogan — and runs to just a single page.

But that’s not the point. For a Democratic victory would change the terms of trade of American politics. The precedent is the year the Republicans swept the House, ousting the Democrats who had ruled there for an unbroken 40 years. The Republican landslide of 1994 did what landslides are meant to do: it re-made the terrain. From that point onwards, the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had to navigate around a landscape shaped by Newt Gingrich and his conservative revolutionaries.

Gingrich set the agenda; Clinton could only react to it. He was reduced to protesting that he was still “relevant”. The result was that the president had to drop forever what had been his signature ambition — the reform of America’s hideously unjust system of healthcare — and slash the welfare system for those without work.

Democratic success next week could mete out the same fate to George Bush. Since 2000, Republicans have been able to define the terms of debate. Bush, sitting at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, has been able to count on a reliable amen corner at the other. A Democratic House would force Bush onto the defensive; if the Senate were also to fall, he would be crippled. The Bush presidency is already in its final phase; double Democratic success next week would all but end it.

Take two examples that matter most to those outside the United States. One is climate change. Democrats are not great on it, but they exhibit less of the wilful denial that characterises the Republicans. They would at least give the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern a hearing when he crosses the Atlantic to make his case for a cut in carbon emissions — even if they, like the Republicans, can’t bring themselves to propose green taxes on anything.

The second critical matter is Iraq. The Democrats’ brief policy document, A New Direction for America, calls for “the responsible redeployment of US forces” with “Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country”. Those are, admittedly, words that could be uttered by Bush or Donald Rumsfeld. They too say American troops will stand down as Iraqis stand up. But “responsible redeployment” at least hints at a different impulse: to get the hell out.

Now it’s true that Democrats have a double credibility problem in this area. Almost all of them voted to authorise the use of military force in Iraq: they feared what the Republican attack machine would do to them if they didn’t. Second, House Democrats may huff and puff all they like about troop withdrawals but that is not a decision for them to take. The constitution gives that power almost exclusively to the commander-in-chief. If Bush insists on staying the course in Iraq, there is little the House of Representatives can formally do to stop him.

But where the constitution ends, politics begins. For both houses of Congress wield a crucial power: the right to hold hearings into the conduct of the administration. For six years, Bush has been spared the ordeal of congressional investigation. While Clinton saw his every move subject to televised inquiry by hostile Republican committees, subpoenaing witnesses, demanding sensitive documents, Bush has operated with the lightest of scrutiny.

As of January 2007, when the new Congress is sworn in, that could change. Suddenly, Democrats would chair the pivotal foreign affairs committees. They could instantly establish the kind of sustained inquiry opposition MPs vainly sought in Westminster on Tuesday, subjecting the likes of Rumsfeld and others to fierce, public cross-examination.

It would require some careful positioning. Democrats would have to focus on the honesty of the initial case made for war, arguing that they were misled, that they would never have voted for invasion had they known the full truth. This is a debate Britain aired during the Hutton inquiry, but until now the US has lacked a formal outlet for such an examination. If the polls are right, Capitol Hill is about to be that outlet.

And Democrats will press the issue for all it’s worth. Surveys show that the war is one of the core questions of the current midterm campaign: one poll saw voters ranking Iraq a single percentage point behind the economy in their list of most important issues. (Troublingly, perhaps, for Democrats, that same UPI-Zogby poll found the number one determinant for voters was the “values, morals and character” of a candidate.)

A win in an election billed as a referendum on Bush’s foreign policy would embolden Democrats to keep up the pressure: it would have confirmed Iraq as a seam worth mining for political advantage. There would be high-grade allies too, now that several senior Republicans, among them John Warner, chair of the senate armed services committee, have joined the chorus lamenting the Iraq war.

That process would have two long-term effects. First, a sustained assault could blunt at last the enduring Republican edge on national security. Since the cold war, the Republicans have been able to cast themselves as the party of strength in international affairs. That advantage, carefully nurtured and hardened by Rove and Bush, has cost the Democrats dear, helping to keep them out of the White House in all but three presidential elections over the last 40 years.

If a new Congress puts the Republicans on the defensive over Iraq, and over the entire Bush approach to foreign policy, that would yield a major political dividend. Watch for Senator Hillary Clinton to follow the process with interest: she would like nothing more than the Republicans to be stripped of their traditional national security armour ahead of 2008.

The more important effect will be on what Bush does next. He could still embark on another crazed venture abroad, even in the face of opposition from the House, but it would be harder. Political reality will force him to operate within new constraints. —Dawn/Guardian Service

IT IS heartening that at long last, the importance of the issue of autonomy of provinces is being recognised also by the ruling parties in the government.

During the last session of parliament most political parties had expressed their intention to move a bill to amend the Constitution for decentralisation of power and securing maximum autonomy for the provinces. Some time ago, the information minister reiterated the resolve of the federal government to amend the Constitution for providing autonomy to the provinces.

The federal minister for parliamentary affairs has also confirmed that the government is considering the transfer of 35 subjects on the Concurrent List to the provinces and that a parliamentary committee has been constituted for finalising proposals on maximum autonomy for the provinces.

The aforesaid resolve and thinking on the part of the federal government is indeed a positive development in the right direction. While one appreciates this decision to amend the Constitution for the said purpose, it must be pointed out that the government has not yet announced a time schedule for these direly needed amendments. Further delay on this score is not advisable and it might not be possible for the present National Assembly to pass the amendments, in its remaining short tenure.

It is pertinent to mention here that most of the subjects retained at the centre are, in fact, in violation of the Constitution. The federal government must show its sincerity on the issue of provincial autonomy by handing over all those subjects to the provinces which it is not authorised by the Constitution to retain. Hence, without even amending the Constitution, the federal government can transfer a substantial amount of autonomy to the provinces.

The extent of the executive authority of the federal government is prescribed by Article 97 of the Constitution which clearly provides that it shall extend only to matters with respect to which the Parliament has the power to make the law.

The Fourth Schedule under Article 70(4) of the Constitution has specified matters on which Parliament is competent to make laws. On the other hand, Article 142(c) clearly prohibits the Parliament from legislating on matters not enumerated in either the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent List.

The two Articles 97 and 142 read together clearly stipulate that: (i) the federal government enjoys unrestricted executive and legislative authority only in respect of matters specified in the federal legislative list; (ii) legislative authority with conditional executive authority is also enjoyed by the federal government in respect of matters specified in the Concurrent List; and (iii) executive and legislative authority in respect of matters not enumerated in either of the lists, meaning residuary powers/matters, vest exclusively in the provinces.

A scrutiny of the two legislative lists shows that business and functions of some of the divisions or ministries are not specified either in the Federal Legislative List or in the Concurrent List — for example, rural development, local bodies, co-operatives, food, agriculture, livestock, housing, sports, youth affairs, minorities etc. Logically, such matters and subjects are beyond the scope of executive authority of the federal government and the legislative authority of the Parliament.

Consequently, performance of executive functions in respect of these subjects by the federal government is without the sanction or support of the Constitution and a clear encroachment on the powers and functions of the provinces. Therefore, in the first instance, the divisions and ministries in the federal government which have not been specified in the said two legislative lists should be transferred to the provinces, without any reservation or further delay.

The second category of unnecessary divisions and ministries in the federal government are in respect of those matters where, though they appear on the Concurrent List authorising legislation by the Parliament, the executive authority to implement these laws is conferred on the provincial governments. Article 97 has clearly restricted the executive authority of the federal government only to matters in respect of which Parliament has the power to make laws. This authority is further clipped by the proviso under Article 97 which prohibits the federal government, unless expressly authorised by the Constitution or any law, from exercising its authority in any province on a matter in respect of which the provincial assembly has also the power to make laws.

The federal government can exercise executive authority only in respect of matters in the Concurrent Legislative List, if the laws expressly authorise it. The right approach then is to transfer such ministries and divisions and all the functions and affairs relating to them to the provinces — for instance labour laws, criminal laws, family laws, health, education and laws relating to subordinate courts etc.

The transfer of so many divisions and ministries to the provinces as suggested above would not only result in huge savings and substantially reduce the non-developmental expenditure but would also satisfy the letter and spirit of the Constitution as well as demands for provincial autonomy.

It may be recalled that autonomy for the federating units was one of the primary considerations for the creation of Pakistan. This is evident from the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and the commitments made by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in many of his speeches.

It was the ill-conceived and imprudent policies of the unelected ruling elite which blindly believed in a strong centre and denied autonomy to the provinces and a sense of having a share in power and participation, particularly East Pakistan which resulted in the national tragedy of the breakup of Pakistan in 1971.

We are now facing serious threats to our unity and integrity for the reason of denial of autonomy to the remaining federating units of Pakistan. It is strong federating units and not a strong centre that can guarantee a strong united Pakistan. The sooner we provide the maximum possible autonomy to the provinces the better it will be for the country.

The writer is a former senator and secretary-general, HRCP Email: hnhadv@cyber.net.pk