THIS article is not directly about the action that this government ought to take with regard to President Musharraf — whether it should move quickly to push him out of office, or wait for him to stumble, fall and tender his resignation, as many have suggested and many hope.

Although the answer to this question will be found in the article, it is more important to think about the nature of politics at this juncture, when a newly installed democratic and popular government is still struggling to find its feet amidst multiple challenges and crises.

What sort of politics should be undertaken by those who feel that their actions are meant to strengthen not just the current political process, but also the more substantive process of democratisation? Should they, as many supporters of the current government suggest, wait and see and give the new government even more time to consolidate and fulfil its popular and democratic mandate?

Or, should political action be one which continues to advance the democratic process, raising critical issues, on the assumption that the slower and the longer the process of the supposed consolidation of the new government, the more difficult it will become to undertake far-reaching and substantive changes? Strong and marked differences exist, where one set of analysts and actors suggest that we ought to strengthen the existing government, not weaken it by too much ‘agitation’. Others feel that the longer we wait, the more difficult change will be.

The process of democratisation in Pakistan, has been odd, to say the least. Since October 1999, for the most part a military government and a military general in uniform were actively supported by civil society actors, representatives of NGOs, corporate and business heads, technocrats, much of Pakistan’s elite — both westernised and indigenous — and even by political parties and supposed champions of democracy.

No general can survive in power for seven or eight years without accomplices, compromisers and apologists. Opposition to military rule in Pakistan has had neither a broad nor democratic base, and has, for the most part, been largely personalised. Opposition to Gen Zia by Benazir Bhutto and to Gen Musharraf by Nawaz Sharif underscores this point.

Nevertheless, despite this highly personalised and accommodative form of politics in Pakistan, one cannot deny the ideological moorings of both leaders in this example either. The enlightened moderation of Gen Musharraf suited Ms Bhutto, as Zia’s social conservatism was well articulated by an earlier incarnation of Nawaz Sharif. Nevertheless, one must emphasise the point that the problem of Pakistan’s two leading so-called democrats was not that they were not willing to work with a military general in power, but that they were not willing to work with a particular general in power.

We do need to be reminded that after all a uniformed Gen Musharraf was ‘re-elected’ as president of Pakistan in October 2007, precisely because the party in government today did not vote against him. Clearly, democracy was never an issue, acquiring power was more important.

And it is not just the political leaders who have not been democratic. The conscience of many liberal, enlightened, so-called democratic civil society representatives and technocrats is also tarred with support for an anti-democratic military general. There are too many types and categories of people to name in this long list, but the point is that military regimes are not responsible alone for bringing about military rule or martial law. There are too many enlightened and liberal honourable and leading members of society who have worked with — and continue to work with — anti-democratic forces.

To expect democratic politics from such a powerful constituency is perhaps wishful thinking and folly. The fact that many who supported the earlier anti-democratic dispensation have suddenly found a voice of conscience is hard to believe. Many are jumping ship only because they see one ship sinking and another adrift. There seem to be few principles or issues of ideology involved in the politics of many who now claim to be champions of democracy. Pakistan’s politics is one of opportunism, not of opportunities.

What role, then, does one play if one prefers to work for the broadening and strengthening of the formal democratic process as well as for the process of democratisation, regardless of whether it is a military general in power, his civilian surrogates or even a genuinely elected government?

At the moment, while the elected government needs to be supported, it also has to be pushed into further action to remove those numerous individuals and groups who continue to hinder the further democratisation of society. If the Feb 18 elections were a call for radical change, that change has to be far fuller than any indications suggest. Without doubt, the new government has made some difference — although it has also had to give in to powerful elements who always support military regimes. The longer the delay in taking action regarding the president and the judiciary the more difficult it becomes.

It is more than 100 days since the elections were held, and after a resounding defeat for anti-democratic authoritarian forces, each day of delay continues to work in their favour and strengthens them. By not advancing at the moment when the establishment was in crises and at its weakest, elected forces have weakened their own position, losing both the goodwill of those who elected them and by allowing their adversaries the time and space to regroup.

While the elected representatives in parliament are busy coming up with their numerous constitutional packages regarding the president and the judiciary, those who feel that the government is dragging its feet on substantive and urgent issues need to push harder on the elected government to take action quickly. The June 10 call by the lawyers needs to be actively supported, though sadly, partisan party politics is undermining this broad democratic movement.

Those who are playing party politics are alienating themselves from the larger democratic process and need to realise that winning elections is merely one of many planks to strengthen democracy and democratisation. Importantly, each day in the delay in completing the two most important items of the Feb 18 agenda and strengthening democracy only reinforces anti-democratic forces who sit waiting on the sidelines. It is time to push ahead, not hold back.

JEFF Kennet, the former premier of the Australian state of Victoria, is not alone in commenting on the legacy of the Howard years as “Australia is a lot wealthier, more confident and entrepreneurial with people trying hard to be financially independent. But it is also more conservative, less compassionate and tolerant.”

Anglo-Australia’s attitude towards the Muslims in its midst has oscillated from exclusionary hostility, which heralds the ‘hate stare’, for people of a different ethnicity (the ‘periodic breaches of trust’ that signify incidents like the Tampa affair, the post-Sept 11 world, the Bali episode) to a simplistic admiration of the culture of the other (good Islam, strong family values).

Some of the hostility has been attributed to former Prime Minister Howard’s long innings of ‘dog whistle politics’. In the past six years, Howard had frequently stressed Australia’s “dominant cultural pattern comprising Judaeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and the institutions and values of British political culture”.

Some of his pronouncements were problematic for the idea of multicultural Australia: for instance in a Christmas time address to the Australian parliament he emphasised how lucky they were to follow the “best religion in the world”. Howard also caused a lot of eyebrows to be raised in 2006 when he spoke out about how ‘confronting’ he found the Muslim women code of dress. He was also on record for warning minority groups in Australia to either follow the Australian way of life or face deportation.

Though public groups in Australia did react to Howard’s statements and there were angry petitions deriding what his statement said for their nation, for others this proved a quasi-political licence to feel comfortable in their prejudices against ‘the others’ amongst them, even though we live in the relatively more ‘enlightened’ days of Rudd.

Threats to the ‘Australian way of life’ were reflected in the coverage of the Ashfield rapes in Sydney. Many commentators strongly condemned the ethnic bias in the mainstream media coverage in employing scare tactics. Of course, it didn’t help matters when the barrister defending the Muslim brothers argued that his client should be given a lesser sentence partly because “he was a cultural time bomb whose attacks were inevitable, as he had emigrated from a country with traditional views of women”.

Mainstream newspapers prominently displayed the justification provided by the eldest of the four brothers that it was only since he had gained a “better understanding of Australian culture”, that he knew that rapes were wrong. Unfortunately, such statements don’t die down, and are constantly ‘recovered’ by xenophobic groups who explain why they don’t want Muslims living amongst them.

In the recent events in Camden can be seen shades of the riots on the Cronulla beaches in 2005. The Cronulla riots too had started as a clash over ‘ownership’ of ‘public space’ — the beach, with the local community playing proprietor. Though it was the culmination of an issue that had been irking Cronulla since the late seventies and concerned weekend visitors taking over their beaches, the rioters’ chants of ‘No more Lebs’ and singing of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ (a quasi-national anthem) gave racist and nationalist tones to the whole episode. In Camden as well it was articulated as a clash over ‘loss of agricultural land’ and ‘the Australian way of life’.

The Camden council and some members of the Camden/McArthur Residents’ Group have been at pains to explain what they identified as environmental and planning problems and challenges to the particular character of the town (the same reasons behind why they successfully contested McDonald’s from opening there). However, there are locals who have not shied away from declaring that they had ‘terrorists’ amongst them. “They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses.”

For argument’s sake, one can contest these fears. It would suit undesirable elements more to slip away into an urban jungle than a small community where everyone knows their neighbour’s business. A representative speaking for the Sydney-based Quranic Dar Tahfez el Quran society also explained that it was to Anglo Australia’s benefit that young Muslims attend recognised schools with a structured curriculum and trained teachers rather than have their minds manipulated by shady individuals teaching them in garages and backyards. The Quranic society also expected non-Muslim student enrolment in the institution, thus the space could have served as a social institution allowing inter-communal exchange.

Laura Beth Bugg who works on architecture and community use has cautioned us about viewing ‘planning’ and ‘zoning’ as value-free terms. When council members speak about new developments not melding into the plans and character of the region, it translates as their not melding into the dominant ‘Anglo Saxon’ soul of the area.

Bugg writes in The Sydney Morning Herald that “Despite repeated attempts by Camden’s mayor, council members and planning officers to convince everyone that the decision on the Islamic school would be made ‘on planning grounds alone’, in situations such as this where a community is characterised by deep divides in worldviews, ethnicity, religion and social status, decisions are never reducible to traffic flows, zoning and heritage vistas … and despite commitments to multiculturalism at the federal, state and local level, local governments’ attempts to embrace it have been spotty and often non-existent.”

It is a paradox of the times that while there have been incidents of racism against Muslims in the public space in the recent past, the period has also been marked by Australian homes switching on their television sets to see more Muslims faces on community television. And it has been encouraging that at least one has taken a very Australian take on the events in Camden. For the past month the talented presenters of the ‘Salam Café’ show have run a brilliant satire of a Bangladeshi maulvi contesting the upcoming mayoral elections in Camden.

Some might criticise it as an exercise of deprecating self-humour, however the black humor employed in the electoral campaign of the hapless mullah is intelligent. It is a response to Anglo Australia’s demand for Muslims to adopt Australian values — this when the very definition of Australian values continues to remain problematic. But confidently exhibiting one’s ‘Muslimness’ in the public space and adopting humour as a public relations tool will hopefully go a long way in tackling some of the paranoia regarding Muslim communities.

THEY have already been on the best-dressed - and worst-dressed - celebrity lists. Profiles of each have been written in all the key news magazines and their backgrounds and parentage thoroughly scrutinised. Their minor scuffles with controversy have been pored over - a plagiarised cookie recipe and an ambiguous statement about national pride to date.

As their husbands search for vice-presidential candidates, Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are readying themselves for the strange supporting-role approval contest that comes with being America’s First Lady.

The term itself may be anachronistic - Jacqueline Kennedy said she dreaded becoming one: ‘It sounds like a saddle horse.’ There is no official job description, though puritan values and good housekeeping are unspoken expectations. The presidential spouse should support her husband - no longer is there any possibility they will be anything but a ‘she’ - and involve herself in some carefully chosen charity, non-political preferably.

But for Cindy and Michelle, both clever and successful, and both mothers, this political showbusiness means very different things. Last week the heiress Mrs McCain, 54, was in Coronado, San Diego, sorting out the beachfront apartment she and her 71-year-old husband have just bought near the beach hotel made famous in the film Some Like It Hot. Mrs Obama was on the campaign trail with her husband, getting a foretaste of the nasty attacks she can expect if he wins the nomination after Tuesday’s final Democratic party primary polling in South Dakota and Montana.

Cindy has already been here. The only child of a wealthy Arizona beer distributor, she was targeted by proxies for George W Bush, then Texas governor, during her husband’s first presidential campaign in 2000, who leaked news of her past addiction to painkillers and, inaccurately, of her husband’s alleged black love child (the couple have a daughter adopted from Bangladesh).

In one sense, the two candidates for First Lady could hardly be more different: Michelle Obama, black lawyer, Princeton and Harvard educated, raised in a tiny Chicago flat; Cindy McCain, highly strung, bottle blonde second wife, a former rodeo queen from a privileged family in the white state of Arizona. If they have anything in common it is their fiercely-guarded priorities - their children come first. Michelle’s time spent on the campaign trail is determined by her getting back to her girls by bedtime whilst Cindy considered asking her husband to quit politics when their daughter Bridget was hurt by political slanging.

‘The job description is up for grabs,’ says Sally Quinn, author, hostess, and wife of former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. ‘Cindy McCain would be a more traditional First Lady. Michelle Obama, believes Quinn, would be a more proactive presidential spouse. She recently suggested that, if she became First Lady, she would take on women’s and family issues she has heard from women on the campaign trail.

She is honest and frankly diminishes her husband’s mystique with comments about his bad breath, big ears, domestic failings (he doesn’t put the butter away) - or saying he’s not the ‘next Messiah’ but ‘he’s just a man’. If Obama wins in November, Michelle would not only be the first black First Lady but also, at 44, one of the youngest since Jackie Kennedy. Cindy McCain’s supporters say her blond hair and impeccable Stepford Wife appearance mask an earthy fortitude. She and her husband live apart (she in Arizona; he in Washington) but whether she’s negotiating to clear Angolan minefields, or planning trips to highlight mass killings in Darfur, she is committed to her philanthropy and drawn, like her fighter pilot husband, to intensity. Cindy suffered a stroke in 2004 and has made no secret of her misgivings over her husband’s decision to run a second time. ‘This isn’t her dream,’ said Quinn.

When John McCain suggested a second run in 2006, his wife ignored it and half hoped the idea would go away. ‘Life was good, I was alive from the stroke, and I thought, “My gosh, let’s just enjoy life a little bit”,’ she said. With two sons in the military, her husband told her, it was something ‘he wanted to do badly’.

If Mrs McCain seems remote and steely - she refused to release her tax returns until put under pressure - it’s because she often is. At rallies, she says, she’s often thinking about things she has to do, or is on the look-out for trouble. ‘I’m looking at the faces and sometimes I’m spotting troublesome spots.’

The closest the women have come to an exchange was last January when Michelle Obama remarked she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life ‘because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback’. Cindy McCain picked up the theme, saying she too was proud of her country. She now says she later regretted the remark.

But ‘one thing Americans don’t want is Bill Clinton as first spouse’, Sally Quinn said. ‘What’s he going to do? Obviously, he would be very much involved.’ This, she said, may be at the root of Hillary’s troubles. ‘If you vote for Clinton, you are voting for the Clintons.’

For the two leading candidates’ wives, the White House offers much scope to pursue their causes even if tradition dictates they must be seen to be decorating, arranging Thanksgiving dinners, bedecking the Christmas tree and reading fairytales to visiting children.

Cindy McCain says: ‘I would continue doing exactly what I’m doing. Nothing would change. I would just probably do more of it, which would be great.’

Both, especially Mrs Obama, could turn out be highly effective in presenting a new face of America abroad. Quinn said: ‘The Obamas are authentic. They know they are role models, but they’re not going to do things for image. Michelle is going to do what she thinks is going to be the most effective and do the most good. And that could mean a lot of outreach.’

Despite the importance of being seen to be conventional, the role of First Lady is not fixed. ‘You can make it anything you want,’ said Quinn.

––The Guardian, London