SORDID deals and bloody bombings seem to have set Pakistan’s power politics on a course which is unlikely to change in the run-up to the elections. Hopefully, and prayerfully, no incident of bombing should cause as much loss and anguish as the one on Oct 19. But the people should be prepared for tawdrier deals made at their cost.

This sense of foreboding is fostered by the bizarre, or flippant, comments made by the two most important political leaders of the day even before the dead of Oct 19 were counted and the injured received first-aid. Benazir Bhutto, perhaps, was being impetuous in pointing her finger at some unnamed people in the government for engineering the mass slaughter to eliminate her from the political arena. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s later, and studied, accusation that the gory drama was staged by Benazir herself to attract mass support and sympathy signals his overdue retirement from public life.

Both leaders should have been seen condoling with the bereaved and helping the wounded rather than seeking political gain from the horrifying event. As in America’s 9/11, national grief should have brought them together against the common enemy, the terrorists, rather than driven them further apart.

Most other comments, too, mirrored personal interest rather than public sentiments. Former president Farooq Leghari wanted the elections to be put off for a year to let the horror of the tragedy subside as well as the ferment caused by Benazir’s arrival.

Information minister Durrani sounded funny saying he would instruct the district governments to ensure political processions were not attacked. If 20,000 policemen and spooks armed with a variety of guns and gadgets could not prevent the attack of October 19 how would the district nazims be able to do so? This only a sanguine Durrani can explain. The Sindh chief minister Arbab Rahim who, and not Durrani, is responsible for law and order, is realistic in his apprehension that no procession will ever be safe in the future.

The real motive of Chaudhry Shujaat in proposing a total ban on processions and meetings during the election campaign could be to hide the depleting ranks of his Q League in the face of the emotional upsurge for Benazir. But his fear, as is Farooq Leghari’s, that public rallies might put polls in jeopardy is well-founded and should be widely shared.

Chaudhry Shujaat’s proposal makes eminent sense and not only pertaining to the fear of suicide bombings which neither the nazims nor the police can prevent. The point is that given today’s mass communication facilities it is no longer necessary to hold public meetings or take out processions to garner public support or to mobilise voters.

The country now has hundreds of newspapers and scores of TV and radio channels available to the parties to reach and influence the voters. Campaigns through the media would be more effective and cost less. Media publicity combined with the display of banners, posters and knocks at the doors should make public rallies unnecessary for canvassing. Benazir is already said to be contemplating more innovative and cheaper ways of reaching the voters.

In the celebrated fair polls of 1970, campaign meetings and processions were not banned but regulated by the district administration. It wasn’t a one-sided affair. The party or the candidate was required to notify the venue of the meeting or route of the procession and the district magistrate made the security arrangements unless it clashed with another programme already notified or if the venue/route was not considered suitable. The party then was required to choose another place or time.

The arrangement worked well through mutual consultation. Grievances were rare. Tempers sometimes ran high but under an authoritative and wholly impartial election commission (Justice Abdus Sattar of East Pakistan, later sadly killed by the Mukti Bahini, was the CEC) and a neutral provincial administration (then headed by Governor Gen Rakhman Gul), good sense invariably prevailed. Some contesting candidates — lawyer Hafeez Pirzada and Prof Ghafoor Ahmad were among them — are still around and should be willing to testify that the campaign and polls in Karachi were orderly and fair.

But that was 37 years ago. In today’s Pakistan, the election commission and administration both have weakened and the politics of vendetta admits of no fair play. Rallies, whether free or regulated, will remain vulnerable to bombing or lesser disruptions, even if the contesting parties abide by the law and the administration is vigilant.

There is no point of great contention here as a ban or regulation would apply to all. Timely and free polls should not be put at risk by noisy campaigns leading to violence. Postponing the polls, as suggested by Mr Leghari and some others, would carry even greater hazards. Militancy is rising and the authority of the government is waning by the day. Even three months is too long a period for the present squabbling government, under siege from the judiciary and extremists alike, to hold its ground.

Getting to polling day through an orderly campaign would be crossing just one hurdle. A more formidable challenge lies in making the polls credible by facilitating, or at least not hindering, the free participation of all parties and all classes of citizens. Such credibility would be lacking if: Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif are not permitted to return and lead their party; insurgency keeps simmering in Balochistan and armed extremists hold sway in parts of the NWFP; and voters belonging to any community are cast out of the joint electoral rolls for their religious beliefs.

Not more than one-third of the registered voters of the country ordinarily turn up to vote — even fewer in Balochistan and the tribal areas. What credibility would the much-awaited elections have if voter attendance goes down further because of boycotts, insecurity and discrimination? There is no need of a political roundtable for reconciliation. It is the duty of the chief election commissioner to ensure that every citizen who is eligible to vote and contest is able to do so unhindered by the government or by the militants.

The fairness of the polls already seems to be in jeopardy if press reports about the president’s thinking on the caretaker cabinet are correct, and if the nazims are also to stay at their jobs. Makhdoom Amin Fahim may be a gentleman but he is a party chief. Likewise Mustafa Kamal may be a good nazim but he cannot help but obey the party command.

If the president fails to rise above party politics and the chief election commissioner does not assert his authority, all hopes of elections leading to peace and stability will be defeated.Finally, the refusal of the government to associate an outside agency with the investigation of the Oct 19 bombing is a mystery. The local investigators lack skills and experience. These handicaps are in evidence already. Keeping ego aside they should welcome help from more experienced foreign professionals as surely the government would like the perpetrators of Pakistan’s worst crime to be unmasked. By opposing neutral investigators the government might be lending credence to the suspicion of Benazir and the definitive accusation of Chaudhry Shujaat.

WHAT is happening in Swat need not have happened, just as what happened in July at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad need not have happened. It is more about territory, about asserting control over the area and the people inhabiting it that one or the other cleric wishes to hold, all in a bid to depoliticise the people, which only serves the cause of the ruling establishment.

Leave such clerics to their antics and the area they wish to control will keep expanding, to the detriment of a democratic political process. Isn’t that exactly how the Taliban spread their wings in Afghanistan? Or, further back in history, the warring Sikh sub-tribes of Punjab in the 18th century until they had most of the existing Punjab, the Frontier and parts of Kashmir under their thumb? Both fought their wars and conquered territories in the name of their faith. The Taliban conquests could not endure because they were supported by the ISI; when that support was withdrawn after 9/11, the regime fell, as US-led foreign troops landed in Kabul.

The Sikh rule, by contrast, lasted for well over half a century, and that’s because even the mediaeval-minded and one-eyed Ranjit Singh had realised that the age to convert the conquered to the faith of the conqueror had passed. The Taliban rule, by comparison, lasted some five years, and as soon as Mullah Omar (coincidentally also having one eye in working order) made his famous escape on a motorbike, debauchery returned with a bang to reclaim the lost streets of Kabul. Talk about political myopia, shall we?

Under the spiritual leadership of the slain Abdur Rashid Ghazi’s next of kin and an equally firebrand prayer leader, the Lal Masjid is back to square one with its refreshed list of outlandish demands. But for this we also have to thank the Supreme Court, which in its ruling had directed the government to appoint a close relation/confidant of Abdur Rashid as the prayer leader, as if the mosque were the private property of the rebel cleric. Why? Keep looking for a logical explanation and you might find yourself utterly frustrated.

The mosque belongs to the government, even though the slain prayer leader must be given credit for encroaching on the adjacent public land and illegally building a madressah there. The mosque’s staff are on the government’s payroll, but that should give them no reason to appropriate land and use it for training militants or indoctrinating young men and women to take on society to enforce Allah’s writ — the maulana’s writ, more like it.

Now, the Lal Masjid prayer leader Amir Siddiqui has vowed to support the ongoing ‘jihad’ in Swat as a quid pro quo. Mullah Fazlullah, he says, had supported his slain uncle in his attempt to reconvert the teeming millions inhabiting the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, not least because he wanted to save them from hellfire in the hereafter. The truth is that if maulanas Abdul Aziz and Abdur Rashid Ghazi had been arrested the day they first broke the law, we may never have had the Lal Masjid inferno; nor indeed the Supreme Court ruling which has now led to further complications.

Akin to this is the bigger question of the government getting all jelly-legged about the Swat affair. You may ask as to under what legal framework it announced the intent to introduce Sharia laws and qazi courts in Swat to appease Mullah Fazlullah’s handful of supporters. Why is Islamabad, which is now ruling the Frontier province through its governor and the caretaker chief minister there, introducing this anomaly in an overstretched political system which is bursting at the seams? Just what is the government thinking, with less than three months to go before the next election?

Clearly, this is an attempt on the part of the civil-military bureaucracy to queer the pitch for the next elected government, the assumption being that worse come to worst, if a genuinely elected government has to be sworn in, its hand should be tied. Logic demands that anyone, bearded or otherwise, who not only challenges the writ of the state but also actively incites people to violence must be dealt with according to the law.

Are we really as ungovernable a people as the ruling establishment makes us out to be? Public apathy on the subject is responsible for the rulers getting away with what they have been. It is time for politics and the politicians to take on the challenge, go back to the people and refuse to be cowed by the threats hurled at them by those who wish to depoliticise the people. If Benazir Bhutto’s unexpected reception on Oct 18 by the people who had come to cheer their leader from across the country is any guide, all may not have been lost just yet.

I PROPOSE to discuss certain aspects of globalisation today. I shall leave its economic dimension alone and, instead, talk about the impact of globalisation on social thought, institutions and ways of living. It has come through intellectual contact between nations, exposure to one another’s education systems and literature, physical proximity and, more recently, exposure to the electronic media.

Leading men among the natives in many of the countries under western colonial domination began to learn, as far back as 100 or more years ago, that democracy offered a system of governance more conducive to the citizen’s well-being than any other. Some of them opted for democracy after they had gained independence. But even those who preferred authoritarianism built facades of democratic structures around their fortresses of governance. Of late, winds of change have been blowing, and democracy, both as an idea and as an operation, has become the norm in many places where it did not function before.

Along with democracy, concern for the individual’s fundamental rights has spread. First enunciated in the American Bill of Rights, they now form part of the constitutions of numerous countries. The United Nations adopted a charter of human rights way back in 1948 to which most governments subscribed. A number of countries have set up bodies to monitor the observance of these rights.

Moving on to other areas, we see that English is fast becoming an international language. It continues to be the main working language of the higher bureaucracy and judiciary in the Indian subcontinent. It is being taught as a second language in many other places, including Japan, China and Russia. This may be all for the good. But the trend has had a corrupting influence on the local languages, notably in Pakistan and probably India too.

Few in Pakistan can make a statement in their native language (Urdu or any other) on a serious subject without interspersing their speech with English words, phrases, and even whole sentences. Most people can’t even have ‘small talk’ without the aid of English vocabulary. During periodic visits to Lahore, I have come across domestic servants and others from the lower classes, virtually illiterate, who have picked up English words and phrases, which they are happy, even proud, to use in their Punjabi speech.

Men in much of the world, and women in several Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries, wear western dress. Western women’s clothes designed for spring and summer reveal a good deal of one’s figure and curves. I don’t know to what extent this trend prevails in places like Japan and China, but it has caught on almost all the way in the Indian movie and television productions where it has also spilled over to women in the upper-middle and upper classes. The trend is visible in Pakistan too, but not as much.

Needless to say, the impact of globalisation is uneven. Honour killings, and killing of brides who did not bring the expected amount in dowry, still go on in South Asia. A few months ago, I read of a man in a village near Layyah (Punjab), who had chopped off his sister-in-law’s ears and nose because she declined to give her daughter in marriage to his son. Another report had it that a man battered his wife to death because she had been late in giving him his dinner. But the drive for equality between women and men, which has been going on in the West for more than 100 years, has surfaced, and seems to be going forward in South Asia.

Many women in Pakistan have entered the workforce not simply as factory workers but in a variety of professions and occupations. As they become economically independent, bringing home a pay cheque, they are less and less willing to accept oppression from domineering husbands or in-laws. The divorce rate may increase as a result, but that may be an acceptable side effect.

Indian movie makers are freely borrowing themes, conversational styles, images of physical contact, combat and violence from western, especially American, producers. Indian classical and semi-classical music can still be heard in select places, but singing to a fast beat has invaded the subcontinent in a big way. Indian classical dance, part of the temple ritual, never had many takers in Pakistan, and young people who do dance prefer fast movement up and down and sideways.

Not many people in the West understand Indian classical music and dance. Ravi Shankar, the renowned sitar player, was popular with the more sophisticated and cosmopolitan audiences. Indian and Pakistani musicians who do the qawwali attract many more listeners, probably because the qawwali is sung to a fast beat and allows fast and vigorous dancing to go with it. The late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the great Pakistani qawwal, had become a craze in America and Europe and attracted huge audiences.

Missionaries followed western corporations, colonial administrators and armies in Asia and Africa, and a fair number of the natives converted to Christianity over time. Conversions virtually stopped following the end of colonial rule. Eastern religions have made a showing in the West.

A relatively small number of white Americans, Canadians and Europeans, and some three million American blacks, have converted to Islam. Once in a while, here and there, one may encounter a white person who has become Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Sufi or Bahai. But this is no more than a sprinkling. The overwhelming majority of the western people remains Judeo-Christian with little interest in eastern religions.

Courses in western history and civilisation, political and moral philosophy and analytical theory are taught as part of the liberal arts education in Asian and African schools and colleges. Eastern civilisations and philosophy are studied at some of the better known western universities but that is more of an exception than the rule.

Globalisation has touched food and eating habits only peripherally. Folks usually eat their own native food. Western food (broiled, grilled or roasted meats, boiled vegetables, casseroles and varieties of pasta) is available in high class hotels in Pakistan, for instance, but it caters to western visitors more than the local customers.

Hamburgers, fried chicken and ‘French fries’ are also sold, but they are not common. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Middle Eastern restaurants do brisk business in America and Europe. Indian and Pakistani dishes (curries and kabob) are popular with some British patrons because they have developed a taste for spicy food, but also because they are considerably less expensive than regular (bland) English food.

There is interaction between western and non-western societies. But for the most part influences are travelling from the West to Asia and Africa. Some observers in the latter societies are alarmed by this western ‘onslaught’ against their own ways of thinking and living, and they would like to stop it.

There is something to be said for their concern. But I am afraid ‘time and clime’ are against them. For better or worse, the tide flowing out of the West (which has shown itself to be more efficient, productive, prosperous and powerful than much of the rest of the world) is going to be extremely difficult to stop. The best we may hope is that these influences can be mingled and homogenised with the more dynamic and energising elements in our native traditions.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

anwarsyed@cox.net