POLITICAL parties in Pakistan began with the demand for restoration of democracy but ended up accepting elections which they know will not be free or fair. In fact, a US source has said that the polls have been already rigged. Electoral rolls are said to have been fudged. Candidates have been reportedly sieved through a mechanism supervised by the army.

The Election Commission, presiding over all arrangements, is considered partisan. Ballot-box security and the counting are still in the realm of conjecture. In the face of such charges, the election has a question mark against it.

Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of the PPP, may be more to blame than Nawaz Sharif for not agreeing to a common charter. But after his initial reservations Mr Sharif, leader of the PML-N, too came along.

Ms Bhutto wanted to be the prime minister. Nawaz Sharif’s reasoning was that he could not persuade his party, which was rearing to go into action after having remained in the wilderness for some eight years.

The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam chief, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who was out of tune was at least honest. He said from day one that he would never boycott the polls.

His reasoning was that “elections in Pakistan have never been held in a free and fair manner and there have been allegations of rigging in every election. We should accept the ground realities”.

This reasoning may have influenced the main parties. If the end is power, whatever one can get is good enough. The question would have arisen only if the parties had decided to fight for principles.

“I shall never accept the army and, like [in] India, it should be back in the barracks,” Nawaz Sharif told me at Jeddah some time back. Benazir did not mind working with President General Pervez Musharraf when I met her in Dubai. Ultimately, one accepted the army after saying ‘no’ and the other had in any case initiated talks with Musharraf long before her return. Still there was hope this time.

No democracy knows of the military having the levers of power although Pakistan has been governed in this way for more than four decades. Musharraf has openly said “that kind of democracy” is not yet possible in Pakistan.

The reason why I was optimistic was the serious discussions I heard in the camps of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on how to bring back democracy. The two leaders even signed a Charter of Democracy in London, “calling upon the people of Pakistan to join hands to save our motherland from the clutches of military dictatorship”.

I pin my hopes on the lawyers who were successful in having Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry reinstated. They are the ones who are continuing their agitation for “a tolerant, liberal democratic and pluralistic Pakistan”.

This class, not normally associated with braving police excesses and confinement to jail, is holding the standard of defiance aloft. The lawyers may ultimately put the political parties to shame and force them not to pick up a few loaves of power thrown at them. The lawyers have redeemed the country’s honour.

It is sad to see Musharraf getting away with the imposition of emergency and the dismissal of judges, including Chief Justice Chaudhry. This is because the people did not come out in the streets.

They were probably awaiting the call by the party leaders who were busy counting what they would gain personally. Hats off to Aitzaz Ahsan who has led the lawyers’ agitation and who has withdrawn his nomination papers from the Election Commission.

Pakistan has found in him a leader whose integrity is above board and whose acceptability is all over Pakistan. I have no doubt that he would be able to find space — probably a new party — for himself and persons like him if they do not compromise with the feudal elements which still dominate Pakistani society.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged, is popular even today because he raised the slogan of roti, kapra aur makan. Aitzaz will have to plug that line. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did another thing: he gave the country its 1973 Constitution.

I recall how hard he worked to forge a consensus. He brought round tall leaders like Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo from Balochistan, Wali Khan from the NWFP and Mohammad Kasuri from Punjab.

Unfortunately, the Constitution has been amended and re-amended by martial law administrators. But the manner in which Musharraf has defiled it beats all. He has amended it and has also laid down that he cannot be touched for doing so.

The next parliament is expected to restore the dignity of the Constitution.

How can the judges whom Musharraf did not like for their independence stay ‘sacked’? He destroyed the judiciary at a time when its independence was looked at with envy in democratic countries, including India. Apart from the judiciary, Musharraf has damaged the media.

The restoration of the judiciary and the media to their old glory is dependent on the outcome of elections. My fear is that the parties opposed to Musharraf will not be able to muster a two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution.

The ratification of his office as president is also dependent on a two-thirds majority. The PPP should not help him this time as it did in his election as president; the party abstained from voting.

However, Musharraf remains undaunted. His observation during an interview with The Washington Post gives an insight into his future plans. When asked whether there would be a difference after he had shed the uniform, Musharraf said: “The army is being managed by a chief of staff dedicated to the job and I will be the president of Pakistan.

If the two are totally in harmony, the situation is better.” And then he added in reply to another question: “I will appoint the chief.” Where does the prime minister, the elected representative of the people, come in?

Even after the managed polls, Musharraf will remain at the top with all the powers, including the charge of nuclear weapons. This is why the exercise of elections makes little sense. The parties will only lend credibility to the polls.

They may come to repent for having done so. True, Benazir Bhutto has warned that rigged elections may lead to a civil war and the balkanisation of the country. But her warning may not be heeded.

The lawyers’ agitation looks lonely at present. But it is fighting for principles, one of which is that the military is there to defend the country, not rule over it. Musharraf’s stand is known. Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani instils hope when in his maiden speech he says that the army depends on the support of the people. And he knows that people want to rule themselves.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

REMEMBER Sept 30, 1988? That was the day when Hyderabad experienced a bloodbath, just a few days before general elections in the country. Many may have forgotten the horror of that day but last Monday’s incident on Abul Hasan Ispahani Road in Karachi suggests that the ghost of ethnic violence has not been buried.

After a lull, the fear of ethnic strife in this mad megalopolis took birth again with the establishment of the Pukhtoon Action Committee followed by the revival of the Pukhtoon Qaumi Jirga last year. In the meantime, the Awami National Party’s youthful activists also began asserting themselves in the areas they regarded as their strongholds. The idea was to ‘symbolically secure’ them by hoisting party flags on roundabouts and grabbing land where they could.

The massacre in Karachi on May 12, when some ANP activists were killed, revived bitter memories of yore. As the election approached, there was a whispering campaign that the nightmarish days of the late 1980s and early 1990s were about to stage a comeback, any time. Seen against this backdrop, last week’s clash cast a dark shadow on the prospects of peaceful polling in some parts of the city.

Election 2008 promises to be a unique phenomenon in the political history of Pakistan. In the last elections held under Musharraf’s regime in 2002, the two main political leaders — Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif — had been kept out as they cooled their heels in exile. Today many are looking forward to the revival of (another controlled) democracy with which they link the coming elections. However, the campaigning is retrained. The government has put a ban on big rallies. Most of the political parties are also not interested in holding public meetings.

For instance, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has held no big rally so far. Its electioneering has been confined to erecting big and small hoardings with creative designs, eye-catching graphics and impressive slogans. Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto has launched her party’s election drive by going on a whirlwind tour of the interior of Sindh. But she has ignored Lyari due to time constraints. Ironically, Bhutto bagged more votes from Lyari than she did in her home constituency of Larkana in the 1988 polls. As a result the PPP’s election campaign in Lyari, where electioneering used to be enthusiastic and lively with deafening slogans and cultural activities like Leva dancing and singing, is not only lacklustre and dull but rife with internal rivalries and petty disputes.

The same is the case in other parts of Sindh. After her late father, Ms Bhutto has had the distinction of being the only real crowd-puller politician in Pakistan. But this time she has failed to attract the masses to her rallies not only in Hyderabad but also in Nawabshah, of which she is a ‘daughter-in-law’. Nawabshah PPP leader Ghulam Qadir Chandio ascribes the not-so-impressive attendance at the latter rally to lack of time, saying that the party had to make arrangements at very short notice — barely a week.

Severe cold and the wheat harvesting season are said to be other reasons for the poor attendance. Lame excuses. People walk on fire and abandon each and every thing to catch a glimpse of their messiah. But they know that the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had preferred the gallows over betrayal, is no more their messiah. Yey public hai yey sab jaanti hai.

If the people were not fully informed before, the gaps in their knowledge have now been filled by the electronic media. Thanks to TV channels, people get glimpses of the politicians in the corridors of power and their leaders in their drawing rooms. They not only keep an eye on their movements but also read their body language.

There is no reason for them to take pains to listen to the empty rhetoric of leaders who have nothing to offer except hollow promises and a few thousand petty jobs which will also go to those selected by their third-rate cronies. After these politicians come to power they will no longer be interested in seeing their voters. If anyone succeeds in getting the honour of having an audience with his representative after days of humiliation, he is rudely told: “Go and ask Benazir [not Mohtarma or BB] to provide your son a job. It was she you voted for, not me.”

Last week this scribe saw a cavalcade of four-wheelers near Kot Diji proceeding at super speed. It blocked the entire National Highway. Had my companion not been an expert driver, you would not be reading this piece.

GENERAL Tariq Majeed, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee, recently said that the military was prepared to defend the country and a role was being developed for it on more professional lines to enable it to meet the multiple challenges of security. This statement indicates that the new military leadership is ready to redraw the image of the armed forces.

It suggests that an attempt may be made to portray the military as an increasingly professional force rather than an organisation involved in politics.

However, this statement raises a number of questions about the future role of the defence forces. Considering the new challenges to national security the important question is, what role will the organisation play? More important, is it ready to play a limited role in governance?

There are two important developments which will determine the future role of the military. First, since the country is reviewing its relations with India at a strategic level, the level of external threat is bound to be reduced. It is hoped that the Kashmir issue, despite the failure of India and Pakistan to resolve it, will not remain central to the military-security discourse.

In the past couple of years there has been considerable movement on nuclear-deterrence-related confidence-building measures. The focus is on reducing the level of tension so that it does not spin out of control as it has done in the past. Negotiations are also being conducted on resolving secondary issues such as Siachen and the maritime boundary.

Even if the two countries do not resolve the main issue of Kashmir, the negotiators will be able to bring down the level of tension to a more manageable level. Clearly, the world and the region does not benefit from the India-Pakistan confrontation. The external mediators such as the US hope to negotiate a lower level of tension between the two neighbours.

The strategic rethinking in terms of relations with India needs to be integrated into the defence forces. The change at the top or at the strategic level has not permeated down to the operational and tactical levels. The bulk of the military and its intelligence agencies are still geared towards the external threat and perceive India as the most important, in fact the only, enemy. Anyone not favoured by the military is still touted as an Indian agent.

Surely, it will take some time before the new thinking permeates the other levels of the organisation. However, until that happens the military as an institution might suffer from a certain schizophrenia. Alleviating the problem will mean that the top command must clearly enunciate the role of the military and explain the new challenges to the organisation and the nation.

Second, the military is now confronted with the internal security problem posed by militants in Waziristan, Swat and Balochistan. Militancy is the greatest problem which the country faces and this has been reiterated on several occasions by Pervez Musharraf while he was the army chief and now that he is only a president.

Organisationally, the bigger challenge is to shift the focus of the armed forces from the external to the internal threat. This is a military which was trained to fight conventional medium-intensity conflicts against an external enemy.

One way of dealing with the problem, which the military has adopted at the moment, is to link the internal threat to the external threat. For the army, everything that is wrong with Pakistan today is due to India. The conflicts in Swat, Waziristan and Balochistan are attributed to India’s intelligence agency, RAW, which is said to be funding and supporting the militants.

The problem with this approach is that it will keep the men hanging painfully in the middle and probably more confused than before. Supporting insurgency operations in each other’s territory is an old technique used by India and Pakistan. One hopes that India realises that destabilising Pakistan will not be of strategic interest to the region and India in particular.

What is also necessary to understand is that if India were supporting all insurgents, the Pakistan military would have bled more than it has. The attacks conducted by the Balochistan Liberation Army do not indicate that they are getting a lot of qualitative support from external forces. With more help they would have managed more than what they are doing at the moment.

Since the bulk of the forces are geared towards internal security, the military’s role will have to be restructured accordingly. In the past few years, especially after 9/11, the Pakistan military seems to have concentrated more on its northern borders. Recently, after the crisis in Swat, some units were diverted from Kashmir to the northern areas which is in indicator of how the threat is shaping up.

The top management might consider giving the internal security role to the police and the paramilitary which can play the part better than the armed forces. And then there could be a ‘leaner’ but ‘meaner’ force to deal with the potential external threat. Mixing the two threats is bound to be problematic and taxing for the personnel.

If the top management wants the army to cater to internal security, this would amount to increasing the service’s presence in governance and politics. Dealing with internal security is not a simple role. The army would have to interact with internal management structures at the district, divisional and local government levels to tackle threats to internal security.

One of the examples of role expansion due to internal security pertains to India, where the army was given increased powers to deal with insurgency. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives the army an extensive and coercive role in governance.

While the Indian Army generally argues that it does not want to interfere in internal security, counter-insurgency operations are the only role which saves the largest service from downsizing.

A continued counter-insurgency role, however, means that the local population will be exposed to greater coercion. The army’s use in internal security presents a very brutal face of the state.

The question which General Tariq Majeed and his colleagues need to ask themselves is whether it would be fruitful to involve the military in internal security operations, especially in a country like Pakistan where people have a different memory of the armed forces. Here, the military is known for its political involvement, and now it has penetrated even further into society and the economy.

The best option would be to rethink the entire security paradigm with the objective of finding the right organisational mix for fighting internal and external security problems.

The emphasis must be on selecting options which would be popular with the people and would be owned by them more readily. The state must think beyond simple bureaucratic options to solving its overall security problems.

The writer is an independent analyst and author of the book ‘Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com