PEOPLE in Pakistan will go to the polls on Jan 8 after a brief campaign period of just over a month. Not everyone will have noticed that there is another election campaign under way half way across the globe in the US where polling is not even due until Nov 4, 2008, when Americans will elect their 44th president.

However, various aspirants to the White House have been vigorously campaigning for more than a year already, braving scorching summer heat and winter snows to reach their constituency.

Unlike Pakistan, the first contests in America will decide which two candidates will represent their parties — Democratic and Republican — in the general election in November. The principal focus of the campaigns at this time is on two states where the voting starts earlier than anywhere else. Iowa and New Hampshire are both relatively small states but exercise a disproportionately large influence on the electoral process.

This year the elections will tread some unfamiliar ground. While in Pakistan the political leaders of the main parties are all long-familiar figures, the main contestants in America are new faces who have not been involved in politics previously at a national level. The two politicians with the most realistic prospects of capturing the Democratic Party’s nomination are Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, a woman and an African-American respectively.

Both are first-timers in each category. Not that a woman or a black candidate has never run for the highest office before, only that they were never considered creditable or serious candidates. The Republican Party has surprises of its own. A relatively obscure Baptist Christian preacher, Rev Mike Huckabee, from a small southern state has recently surged forward in the polls in Iowa on the strength of his religious background, eroding the lead of another candidate, Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon. The Mormon faith is an offshoot of Christianity but some sects do not even accept Mormons as Christians.

The contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is most exciting to watch. Clinton, a well-regarded senator, already has national recognition, oversaw until recently a well-choreographed campaign and comes across at national debates as confident, bright and well prepared. The popularity of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, especially among the black electorate, is one of her major strengths. She is also drawing increasing support from large segments of women who think that it is past time that the country should have a female president.

The notion of women as heads of government is no longer alien. After all Britain, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Israel, to name a few, have had female prime ministers, and they performed no worse than their male counterparts. Clinton, however, suffers from a nagging suspicion that she is excessively ambitious, lacks warm human emotions and holds no strong convictions. She has also been severely criticised for her vote in the Senate authorising the president to attack Iraq.

For months Clinton had maintained an aura of invincibility in the two early primary states, prompting many to believe that her nomination as the Democratic candidate was all but assured. Surprisingly, in recent months her lead has evaporated as Obama has overtaken her in the Iowa polls.

Barack Hussein Obama, the only black senator, does not have much experience in elective office, nor are his achievements in the Senate considered remarkable. Nevertheless he is a highly charismatic figure and brings to the contest a fresh face and a record untarnished by political manoeuvres. His multiracial heritage and exposure to several cultures in his youth is also an advantage, as they can be seen as a plus when reaching out to other nations and people of different religions.

Some of Obama’s strengths, however, have become his vulnerabilities which his opponents are exploiting to spread false rumours about his early life. As described by Obama in his bestselling book, Dreams from My Father, he is the son of a Kenyan father — of the same name as him and who ostensibly was a Muslim — and a white, Christian, American mother who were married briefly.

His parents divorced, his mother was remarried, this time to an Indonesian student, and the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama attended a local school for four years. Although he is not shy of his Muslim ties, he has categorically stated that he is a Christian and not a Muslim. Yet, a smear campaign continues on the Internet implying that he is a closet Muslim who as a child attended a madressah in Indonesia where Taliban-like extremism was taught. Some right-wing Islamophobes hope that in the post 9/11 climate the mere suspicion that he is a concealed Muslim will ensure his defeat.

Another extraordinary feature of the current campaign is the degree to which religion has permeated politics. Several commentators have highlighted the contrast between Europe and America in the 21st century. While Christianity is losing its hold on the European population, as evidenced by huge, grand cathedrals built in the Middle Ages that are now devoid of worshippers, in America religion has assumed an increasingly greater role in public life.All candidates now openly express their piety and devotion to their faith and attempt to outdo each other in this respect. The phenomenon is recent, as there is supposed to be an iron-clad separation between religion and affairs of the state in this country. The US constitution in its first amendment prohibits state support for the establishment of a religion, a stipulation clearly articulated and reinforced by Thomas Jefferson, the third US president.

Much of the recent invocation of religion can be attributed to the increasing influence of the fundamentalist Evangelical Christians who oppose modern scientific dogma, such as the theory of evolution. They also represent a significant voting bloc in several states and could prove decisive in a close election.

How will the final outcome of the US elections affect Pakistan, especially with regard to the substantial financial aid it receives? The consensus is that for the foreseeable future it will have no significant impact whichever party wins. While the vast majority of Americans are now opposed to US involvement in Iraq, there is overwhelming support for the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and recognition of the crucial role that Pakistan plays in this existential struggle.

Less certain, however, is how American voters will react to female, black and Mormon candidates, and whether they will approve of the heavy infusion of religion into the electoral process.

A WORLD BANK economist of Pakistani origin recently observed during a top bureaucrat’s elitist dinner that he had never seen so much despondency in the drawing rooms of Islamabad before. I could not help responding that to me it was a sign of hope, beaming with optimism.

If the thick-skinned, insensitive top bureaucracy could ‘feel’ for matters other than personal advancement and express such feelings, however privately, this held a promising prospect for a maturing polity.

Historically, the demand for public good — democracy, governance, equity, justice — has rarely been voiced by the vast majority of the patient people of this country. Public good has been the supplier’s benefaction; it has been doled out in a manner, in a measure and at a time considered appropriate by the establishment — the sole supplier of governance. Demand for public good, though, has been used by political parties as propaganda at opportune times to acquire public support in their quest for a share in government, trying to grab the small crumbs of political authority (and opportunity of loot and plunder) on offer by the establishment.

The masses were long desensitised due to impoverishment and disempowerment — economic, political and social. Extracting their daily bread from the jaws of feudal and capitalist monsters was their only concern. Their energies were so consumed in mere physical survival that reactions to other denials would be stifled. On the other hand the elite were generally callous and insensitive as perpetuation of their social, economic and political status has been directly linked to patronage from the rulers. However enlightened the elite may have been, they were less than moderately interested in voicing their perceptions of the social lot of the majority.

Over the decades, therefore, the citizens’ demand for freedom and justice has been too feeble to influence the suppliers of governance who closeted themselves in strongly protected chambers of authority, insulated from the plight of the subjects.

But the last full nine months of 2007 revealed a new Pakistani civil society — ripened and blossoming, vibrant and bursting into activity. It has been persistently demanding public good and integrity of institutions. Months of demonstrations have been sustained. Dissent today is being practised and is fashionable.

The most important phenomenon is the composition of these dissenters. They essentially comprise the elite middle classes, enjoying the socio-economic benefits of education and vertical social mobility. Traditionally these were people quietly going about their businesses, trying to meander their way forward, and upwards, in a labyrinth of corrupt public services. Historically they kept apolitical public faces, lest they annoyed the facilitators of financial nourishment.

Suddenly this year they seem to have broken away from the shackles of caution, pragmatism, convenience and individual security and appear to be enjoying a tryst with good citizenship, mindful not only of their rights but also of their obligations. Civil society is coming of age.

Commentators and sociologists have attempted dissections of the anatomy of this dissent. Some have lamented the lack of numbers — these have been in scores and hundreds and not in thousands and hundreds of thousands. The absence of representatives of the majority — farm and industrial labour, urban and rural poor — has been noticed and noted. As usual conspiracy theories as to the why and how of these displays are in abundant circulation. And we cannot, and need not, accept or reject any of these theories. In a country where so much secrecy shrouds ‘public’ affairs, anything is possible. But is that relevant?What is relevant is that the privileged of this country are willing to stand up and be counted. It is not the feudal lords and the fascists parading their rented subjects, for some demand, acclaim or celebration. It is the educated and financially stable who have discovered freedom of conscience. In the past they may have been prisoners of their own well-being, vulnerable to the stick of the state and happy with the carrots laid their way. Even the students joining the recent dissent come from affluent backgrounds and prestigious schools, and are not the dogma-driven goons traditionally claiming all campus power.

Institutions in Pakistan have not been attacked, or denuded of authority and integrity, for the first time. But never before did civil society react with such vehemence and steadfastness. How has the change come about?

No doubt the poorly managed, and sometimes totally unnecessary, events engineered by the government provided an opportunity and precipitated a reaction. But the moment was admirably — and miraculously — seized by the lawyers, the most vocal members of civil society and perhaps the most organised. They provided a platform which beckoned every stakeholder to participate in their demand for freedom of the judiciary. The historian of tomorrow will recognise the role of Aitzaz Ahsan in a deft display of leadership that triggered the unleashing of the public voice. Today he stoutly stands atop the high moral ground, for adoration and emulation as a role model. But events and the lawyers found a civil society ready and willing for this moral uplift.Credit for this vibrancy of civil society goes in no mean measure to the policies and person of President Musharraf between 2000 and 2006. Wittingly, or perhaps unwittingly, he provided space and strength to civil society. Perhaps he regrets that now, as convenience rather than conviction may have compelled his overtures. An enlightened civil society was courted as an alternative to obscurantism.

A more independent civil society is also a result of the economic policies of that period which were shaped and moulded by international events and donors’ influence. An enlarged electronic media with initially unregulated private enterprise has tremendously strengthened and emboldened civil society.

Privatisation, hectic consumerism-based economic activity and well-funded NGOs have created a new class of social elite whose economic sustenance is not directly linked to state largesse. These comparatively younger members of civil society are naively undeterred by the stare of the agencies. Will they discover their naďveté to their grief? Maybe the genie is out of the bottle now. To the shock and dismay of the establishment and the stunned disbelief of the common man, civil society promises a future for this country.

In spite of the superpower’s intentionally circulated designs for pruning Pakistan’s geography; in spite of our political bosses discarding the grey and dividing us between black and white; and in spite of our politicians considering us ordinary pawns in the game of power, if this country will survive in the form known to us, it will be due to a vigilant, vibrant and vociferous civil society compelling the entire citizenry to guard the substance of our existence.

The politicians are quick to notice these winds of internal change. Already political leaders are masquerading their understandings and deals with the establishment behind articulate demands that are in harmony with public feelings — be it support for rule of law, inviolability of the judiciary or public accountability.Let the future rulers of this country — civil or military, feudal or populist, indigenous or imported, real or planted — beware. It may not be a matter of weeks or months (the next government may wear the same designer label as the last), but in no more than a very few years the demand for freedom, good governance and institutional integrity will be impossible to suppress.

EID-UL-AZHA was less than a week ago, but so far as police constables are concerned, especially those belonging to traffic police, they were already in a state of Eid euphoria because of the extra income the festival brings for them. The spirit of camaraderie is very strong among this fraternity, because fighting crime is no joke.

Those who are entrusted with the duty of enforcing law and order have to have cohesion in their ranks and exemplary mutual understanding among themselves. That is the best way to get good results, both for the government that employs them and for themselves personally. It won’t do to have a weak link in the chain – the coward, the betrayer – for the welfare of so many guardians of the law may depend on how bravely a policeman conducts himself in the face of threat or temptation.

Let me tell you a story, no piece of fiction, but a report appearing in a newspaper. It was stated that some time ago the entire staff of a city police station, except one solitary constable, was found one night watching a movie in a local cinema. It is obvious that the latter must have ratted on his colleagues simply because they didn’t take him along. There is no doubt that his Quisling-like act amounted to letting down the whole police force.

You may think I am being sarcastic. Honestly I’m not. I have been genuinely pained by this man’s behaviour. Imagine, stabbing so many of his colleagues in the back. So far the only quality that our police could justifiably boast of was that they stood by each other through thick and thin. What was that motto of The Three Musketeers? “One for all and all for one.” Even if a policeman in Punjab was foolish enough to be caught for murder, the rest would make sure that his service prospects were not harmed.

After this incident I shouldn’t be surprised if the morale of the Punjab police falls by a few degrees and disunity ruptures its ranks. In a poorly paid force where most of your time is spent in looking for money on the side to feed your wife and kids properly, it’s a great consolation that if anything happens in you the spirit of brotherliness in the force will ensure your family’s welfare. After this great betrayal by one lily-livered constable how can you expect that spirit not to be adversely affected?

This black sheep should have taken a leaf from the book of the Sindh Police which is not only a model of rectitude and integrity so far as brotherhood is concerned, but also maintains cordial relations with its professional rivals – the notorious jungle dacoits. I am sure this man must have read the recent news-report about how some police officers of four police stations in Sindh attended a dinner party thrown by dacoits in a forest. No constable could even dream of informing the DCO or SP concerned that this had happened.

After all, what was there to backbite about? The dacoits were simply having dinner laced with imported whiskey and enjoying local dance and music. The news report did not say whether the host was one individual dacoit or whether it was a cooperative effort. This did not matter much; what was remarkable was that no one went and gave away the show to the district bosses. Actually there was nothing remarkable in this too. It only becomes mentionable in comparison with the perfidious act of the police turncoat who betrayed his colleagues.

There is another aspect which perhaps senior police officers outside Sindh may not be able to appreciate properly. Suppose some mean fellow had gone and spilled the beans, imagine how much the SP or the DIG would have felt hurt. He would have thought, “Here is a nice chap. Calls himself a dacoit and doesn’t even have the decency to invite me to a bash like this which he is holding in my jurisdiction.” I shouldn’t blame the police officer concerned if he cut the dacoit with a steely glance of non-recognition the next time they met in the forest. Never break a policeman’s heart. After all a policeman is a human being first and a guardian of law afterwards.

This esprit de corps, this respect for tradition of fraternity is really all that is left of the once flourishing police-dacoit relationship in Sindh too. They say that things are no longer the same there. The old culture is slowly dying. One remembers the good old days when, not so long ago, all the well-known dacoits of the area were invited to the wedding of a police officer’s son in Sindh, and after the dinner, the host was seen helping his honoured guests to wash their hands.

He stood by with a towel while a subordinate police officer poured the libation from the lota. You can’t beat good manners. This was narrated to me by a dear friend whose father had been in the Sindh police for a long time, and he has also mentioned this incident along with other relevant details in his recently published autobiography.

Instead of reviling their brothers-in-arms in Sindh for knowingly carrying on with dacoits, police officers of the other provinces should try to improve their own performance so far as personal virtues are concerned. Those who attended that dinner in the forest may not recall the occasion after some time, but the base act of the weathercock in the City Police Station will be written down in police annals as something not to be forgotten or forgiven. In fact I would advise that the two stories be included in the syllabi of all police training schools in the country for the edification of new recruits.

THE Purbi ditty went ‘Churchill bara larraya thero, O se German hara jaye’ (Churchill is a great fighter, the Germans are losing against him). Never mind if Churchill was beating the Germans with a ‘bit’ of assistance from the Americans and the Russians.

Churchill, with nothing to give but “blood, toil, tears and sweat” when he took over as wartime prime minister of England, lifted his country from certain defeat to victory and nothing can take away from him the credit for this achievement.

Yet, despite his resoluteness and doughtiness during the war, when it came to governance the old war dog turned out to be a true-life people’s man. Immediately after the war, the newspapers started to write that the wartime prime minister must make room for a peacetime leader. Churchill, for whom a government with no newspapers was worse anarchism than newspapers with no government, remained stoical.

Churchill was referring to his country’s free newspapers when he said he would rather have newspapers and no government than the other way round. Were he alive today, he would say the same for government and newspapers in Pakistan.

There is no method to change of governments in Pakistan, no knowing when and how a government will change, who will succeed. The only constant is the antipathy of all governments to newspapers. Churchill would not know what to make of all this, especially of newspapers that are not free to inform and are under pressure from the rulers to be their voice more than the people’s.

All those who have had a crack at ruling Pakistan and cracked the country in two, and seem ready to crack it some more, also had a crack at newspapers in their time. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto shut down six in 1995. Nawaz Sharif as prime minister harassed a major newspaper group for not sacking the 16 journalists on the list provided by him, and he had the editor of a Lahore English weekly picked up by a security agency. His interior minister, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, weighed down on the Dawn group’s Herald magazine. The list of harassment of newspapers can go on. For rulers of all hues and shades in Pakistan, to suppress newspapers is the first rule of governance.

Those who mock and ridicule the international media watchdogs for getting all steamed up every time the government cracks down on the smallest newspaper need to ponder their own, and the rulers’, abysmal ignorance of the place of newspapers in present-day governance. For Musharraf to incorrectly state in an interview that there is a ‘code of conduct’ for the media in the US like the one imposed by him in Pakistan highlights the need for the ministry of information to keep itself, and the rulers, informed and abreast of media-government relationships in the modern world.

The press has come to be regarded in the world as the fourth pillar of state after the legislature, the judiciary and the executive, except in Pakistan where even the legislature and the judiciary have remained unhinged as pillars of state.

The Churchillian idea seemed to be that newspapers which inform are as important as a government which performs, and more important than a government which does not perform. If this idea is extended to developing countries with low literacy levels, then the independent and free electronic media would be included in the equation.

The history of press freedom in Pakistan is deplorable. There has not been even a marginal difference in the level of media freedom, or repression, between the harshest military regime and the supposedly democratic civilian governments. For the rulers, newspapers are a nosy hindrance to their ‘freedom to rule’ and therefore ought to be on a tight rein.

It is all very well to say there are now several TV channels versus one as before, but how has this helped the people gain their right to information? Unlike the one state-owned channel whose prime role has been to serve as drummer, horn-blower and crier to all who have ruled Pakistan, when the new channels tried to be different by informing, investigating and analysing they were shut down.

Given a choice between a government and no free newspapers and independent TV channels, or free newspapers and independent TV channels and no government, it is not hard to guess what the people will vote for.

If there are any doubts on the above, let the free newspapers and independent TV channels be allowed to file nomination papers to stand against the assorted PMLs, the PPP, MQM, JUI and any or all comers in the Jan 8 elections.

The writer is a retired corporate executive.

husainsk@cyber.net.pk