THE February elections were expected to end an agonisingly long uncertainty. However, they have only added to it and prolonged it.

The anxiety was that the polls would not be fair. (They were — when measured against our traditionally low standards of fairness.) But it was the apathetic, confused voter who denied the country the stability it pined for.

As in the past, the majority of voters stayed at home; in fact their number this time was larger because of the fear of violence. The judgment and party affiliation of those who turned up to vote stood subverted by the tragedy and turmoil that preceded the polls and that have been unceasing since.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who was to be the star of the long-awaited electoral extravaganza (in fact we owed it to her), the understanding that she had earlier reached with President Musharraf, the deal she had cut with Nawaz Sharif, a sudden and steep fall in Musharraf’s authority and, finally, the unrelenting rise in food and fuel prices combined to have a negative impact on the polls.

Leaving other factors aside, the elections surely would have resulted in a more authentic government and a more cohesive opposition had Benazir Bhutto lived to lead the campaign. The Q-League too would have fared better had Musharraf not chosen to humiliate a defiant chief justice and had his spooks not beaten up the enraged lawyers. An untimely death and unbounded hubris thus combined to blur the prospects of democracy.

The post-election scene is fraught with many anomalies. The heads of the two largest parties are not parliament members nor, perhaps, will they be for the next five years. Their hand-picked nominees — leader of the House i.e. the prime minister, and leader of the opposition — obviously will not be able to act with the confidence and authority which they must exercise at a time when parliament would be seeking to assert its supremacy over the executive by curtailing the powers of the president and also the role of the army in administration.

A particularly bizarre paradox of the current situation is that some parties, most significantly the PML-N, which are in the ruling coalition, refuse to deal with the president. They don’t even talk to him or break bread with him. For them, he is not legitimately elected. No less bizarre is their similar stance towards the incumbent chief justice and other judges. Yet they have to acknowledge that constitutionally the president is part of parliament and they must defer to the superior courts even if they consider their judges to be imposters.

Dealing with the judges is turning out to be a task trickier than handling the president, and not just because Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif view their credentials differently. With two sets of judges each claiming legitimacy for itself, any executive or legislative intervention to settle rival claims can lead to internecine conflict which surely would further impair the image and writ of the highest court of the land when the avowed purpose is to strengthen it.

Alternatively, if all judges were to be accommodated (which is being hinted as a possible solution) it would hold Pakistan out as a country which has little rule of law but the largest supreme court in the world. (The US has just seven and India 11 judges). It would also position the court centre-stage vis-à-vis partisan politics.

The contention of Mr Zardari that the independence of judges can be ensured only through a constitutional package, and that of Mr Nawaz Sharif that a National Assembly resolution would suffice, are being greeted with general cynicism because of their past attitude, particularly of Nawaz Sharif, towards the judiciary. (Recall the time when one bench of the court was issuing a writ and another was cancelling it, and Rafiq Tarar’s night flight to Quetta with a bulky briefcase!)

The need of the moment is for the legal community to join hands and take the judiciary out of the clutches of party politics while putting its own legal house in order.

In a situation of conflicting opinions where Fakhruddin Ebrahim feels that the judges ousted by Musharraf’s emergency order can be recalled by a mere resolution of the parliament and an equally learned but less involved Hafeez Pirzada contends that it can happen only through a constitutional amendment, the lawyers and judges can surely decide amongst themselves what is just and in the best interest of their profession.

Having done that, the bench and the bar together can propose the constitutional protection that the judiciary needs to be independent at all times and in all situations, especially when approached by a coup-maker for the cover of legitimacy. They have to be wary of politicians who speak of judicial independence only when their own freedom and assets are threatened.

By taking their affairs into their own hands, the judges and lawyers would save the liberal forces (represented by the PPP, PML, Pagara’s FML, ANP and MQM) from falling apart and looking for allies among the religious radicals. That would amount to giving them the oxygen that they desperately need now when they are in their death throes.

It is hard to guess what Mr Zardari’s dream of a changed and just nizam (system) is. But when on the ground the law and order situation deteriorates, economic hardships grow, terror spreads and the writ of the government shrinks by the day, his promise of a new system gives little comfort. Pir Pagaro’s prophecy that whatever system exists will collapse in three months is indeed scary. The fault, Zardari sahib, lies not in the system but in the people who run it.

Pakistan’s best years of peace and reconstruction were under the 1935 Government of India Act which the great Jinnah told some doubting army officers at Quetta in June 1948 was ‘our constitution’ which they must study and respect. Since then, we have witnessed a series of systems, one extinguishing the other, but no peace. Jinnah then was terminally ill and Liaquat Ali Khan ran the country — imagine, with just seven ministers.

PRIME Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s recent decision to restore student unions came as a pleasant surprise to some of us but it may have been bad news for others. The latter’s disapproval does not spring merely from unexamined conventional ‘wisdom’.

It is based partly on philosophical positions concerning society, governance and the mission of colleges and universities.

One of my friends, a professor, said the other day that the restoration of student unions would merely add to the horrendous problems the country already has to contend with. It would further destabilise its governance and disrupt the good order of educational institutions. Many others with whom I have discussed the issue share the same apprehension.

It is said that students, like everybody else, should mind their own business, which is to acquire knowledge and pass examinations testifying that they have done so in a specific field of study with a certain level of accomplishment. This is the purpose for which parents send their children to places of learning and spend a considerable portion of their earnings to that end. Students are in good faith and honour bound to devote themselves fully to the attainment of this objective and to the exclusion of extraneous pursuits.

In this train of reasoning student unions may be acceptable if their agenda and operations relate primarily to their constituents’ educational needs and the related infrastructure: things such as tuition and other fees, the institution’s instructional resources, adequacy and availability of textbooks, state of the libraries, classrooms and furniture, experience in public speaking, transport services, student housing and eateries.

Critics will tell us also that these are not the concerns that engage the interest of student leaders. They prefer to act as if they are politicians. They seek to dominate the student body and end up forming rival groups and converting their union into a political organisation. They and their rivals choose to affiliate with politicians and parties outside the campus. They set up student wings of external political parties (e.g. Jamaat-i-Islami, PPP, PML, MQM, ANP) on campuses, receive funds from their respective principals and recruit supporters for them.

Political conflicts are played out on the city streets. The means of waging them (rallies, processions, placards and slogans, boycotts, strikes and physical fights) are replicated on campuses. This politicisation of the campus disrupts its educational process and distracts students from their principal mission.

This description of political activism on campuses is not entirely unfounded. There is, however, a lot more to this matter than it allows.

First, it is not politicisation as such but the style of waging politics, especially resorting to coercion and violence, that is objectionable. Second, politicisation of students has gone on in the Indian subcontinent since long before independence. It was encouraged by national leaders. The Congress party, the Muslim League and several other political groups had their student wings. They maintained their offices not on campuses but out in the city. Interested students enrolled as members and workers. It is a well-known fact that Muslim students and their organisations played a vital role in the movement that culminated in the establishment of Pakistan.

The presence of political parties, including the ruling party, among students, both within and outside campuses has continued unabated after independence. If student politics is noisy and tumultuous, it is because conventional politics outside is the same. If politicians at the national, provincial and local levels become civil, student politicians will probably follow suit.

At the time of this writing, politics in Pakistan seems to be moving in that direction. If this trend continues, and if student unions are restored, it is likely that civility will make its way into student politics as well. But even if it must be assumed that ‘boys will be boys’, it seems to me that a bit of noise and tumult may have an enlivening effect on campus life. It will be something we can all live with.

I am inclined to think that, as in society at large, the emergence of politics on campuses is not only inescapable but in fact should be welcomed. I do not accept the objection that it will add to the problems confronting the country. Life, even in the best of circumstances, is loaded with problems and all of us, if we are to be successful, must learn to deal with them. Educational administrators cannot be an exception to this general rule. They too must learn to cope with the problems that arise in their domain.

The banning of student unions from time to time since the advent of Ayub Khan has not produced the desired result. Politics did not disappear from campuses; it simply went underground and did its work covertly. It became more difficult to oversee than it might have been had it been allowed to operate out in the open. The union as such went out but political organisations under different names surfaced. Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba (IJT), for instance, ready and willing to use force, continued to harass campus administrators and dissident student groups.

It may be that Prime Minister Gilani wants to revive student unions because he shares our view of the universality and inescapability of politics. It is possible also that he wants to re-enliven the old association between his party and students. The PPP, beginning with its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has usually seen it fit to profess concern for students as well as peasants and workers, and sought their support. Its show of concern has touched the young people’s idealism and many of them have responded to its call.

I agree that students should mind their business but my idea of their ‘business’ goes beyond memorising the specifics of a certain branch of knowledge (names, dates, events, facts, figures, systems of calculation and measurement, data processing and analysis). It includes the general improvement of one’s mind.

Education enables one to make connections between trains of thought and learn to be at peace with complexity. The business of life includes mutually satisfactory interaction with other people, efforts to improve the environment in which we live and exercising power to direct human affairs. In a manner of speaking all of this forms a part of politics. Appropriately understood politics is the art of defining, creating and maintaining a good society. Students, with their idealism, are well situated to envisage the contours of such a society.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, was until recently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwarsyed@cox.net

TIME is running out for the great south Asian boast. By the end of this year, according to a new year prediction by Sri Lanka’s army chief, Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka, his guerrilla opponents — the Tamil Tigers — would be “extinct”.

They and their demands for a homeland for the Tamil minority would vanish from the field, and after 25 years of war the island and its Sinhalese majority could enjoy peace again.

An end to Sri Lanka’s bloodletting is certainly overdue. The country has become the last sick man of the region. In Nepal an almost equally long civil war stopped 18 months ago when intelligent compromises produced agreement to reform the constitution. In Pakistan, after nearly a decade of army rule, elections in the winter produced a partial return to civilian control; the country’s re-empowered politicians have just struck a peace deal with militant leaders in the fractious border provinces.

Comparisons are never exact, and Sri Lanka differs from Nepal and Pakistan in numerous ways. Since gaining independence from Britain it has had an uninterrupted history of parliamentary rule. Its system of land tenure is not feudal.

But on the pattern of many other democracies, the country’s elected politicians have not responded well to the legitimate demands of ethnic, religious, and regional minorities. Tamils turned to violence and terrorism after years of frustration. Many went to the extreme of advocating secession after becoming convinced that a fair share of power was unreachable in a unitary state.

The current government is not the first to believe it could defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are properly known. Earlier administrations had similar ambitions but eventually realised they were futile and ruinous. The death toll has already reached 70,000. No wonder independent observers treated Fonseka’s victory boast with horror. No wonder, too, that India’s embassy and western diplomats were appalled a few days later when Fonseka’s political master, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, abrogated the internationally brokered ceasefire. Its Scandinavian monitors had to leave.

The government based its military hopes on a serious setback for the LTTE in eastern Sri Lanka. Colonel Karuna Amman, the guerrillas’ regional commander, defected to the government side four years ago and his forces received logistical and financial support to attack their old colleagues. The government dumped Karuna after he fell out with other breakaway commanders, and he came to Britain on a false passport, for which he received a nine-month sentence in January.

Following the logic of asymmetrical warfare, the Tigers have responded to the offensives by reinforcing their old strategy of sending suicide bombers to kill civilians — more than 20 people died in an atrocity near Colombo last week.

Western governments and other traditional aid-givers have repeatedly warned Sri Lanka that there can be no military solution. The US Congress recently cut off military aid, except for air surveillance. The EU has to decide in a few months whether to renew Sri Lanka’s trade preferences. President Rajapaksa is ignoring the barrage of criticism.

He has made two trips to China, and this week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, was in Colombo with a promise of GBP1,000m in soft loans and grants.

It is hard to see any chance of a shift in this bleak picture. Many observers believe the LTTE leadership has become so battle-hardened that it feels more comfortable with war than having to prepare for a reasonable discussion of constitutional reform.

Last weekend’s losses have at least forced Fonseka to dilute his boasts. On Sunday a defence ministry statement quoted him as saying the battle will “take a decisive turn before the end of this year”. That is a long way from predicting the Tigers’ extinction in 2008. The bad news is that it means the government intends to stay on the warpath into next year, and perhaps beyond.

—The Guardian, London