Prolonged indecision

PANDIT Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of India) practised yoga by standing on his head. Perhaps that was the only way he could make sense of our subcontinental politics.

Had he been alive today, blood would have rushed uncontrollably down to his head as he witnessed his beloved Congress party cohabiting in an unlikely Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition, first with the Communist Party of India to come into power, and then with the Samajwadi Party to remain in power.

After watching angry members of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party throw bundles of soiled notes on the floor of the Lok Sabha as evidence of corruption by the UPA to win over their supporters, Nehru might have found it as difficult, as his Congress will do in the future, to walk upright again.

For the first time since the mid-1970s, there is a direct parallel between the political scenarios prevailing in his India and in our Pakistan. Then, two democratically elected and (give or take a few slaps) popular leaders ruled — Mrs Indira Gandhi in New Delhi and Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Islamabad. Both had a sufficient majority not to be held hostage to the caprices of coalition politics. Today, both in the Lok Sabha and in our National Assembly, coalitions of unlikely partners prevail.

Compared to us, a three-legged India would seem to be home and dry, at least until the next general elections which have to be held before May 2009. We in Pakistan, however, are rapidly sinking into a political quicksand of our own making.

The most recent cavity was the announcement on Aug 5 by the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N that, casting aside their differences on a common approach to the economy, inflation, power and food shortages, our shrinking foreign exchange reserves, flight of capital, population indiscipline and the timing for the restoration of the judiciary, they stand united in a joint determination to remove President Pervez Musharraf.

Parliamentarians and lawyers from both sides of the fray are searching in our constitution for those satanic verses, those darker provisions that, if invoked, could remove an already disrobed and disarmed president. Newspapers and TV channels have become cemeteries of short-lived analyses on which is the best way of removing Musharraf.

Should he be impeached, and if so, on what constitutionally unassailable grounds? Should those grounds be confined to alleged misdemeanors during his current term of office (i.e. since November last), or can the chargesheet against him, like the Chinese scroll used as a theme at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, be uncurled to reveal misdemeanors stretching over the whole span of his period of self-authorised governance?

Had Musharraf ever been inclined to go, October 1999 would have been the month, for that was when he had been dismissed as the chief of army staff by the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. Once Musharraf had survived that attempt to dislodge him, the date of his final departure has always remained in his own hands. It would appear that he is as determined today as he was in 1999 to fight back, to contest an impeachment under the shield of the 1973 Constitution.

His opponents hope, however, that, frightened by the spectre of impeachment, he would ‘chicken out’ and resign. That would have saved them the bother of having to amass sufficient votes in the provincial assemblies for resolutions requesting the National Assembly and the Senate to institute formal impeachment proceedings against him. The race to oust him has begun, and with it the bidding. Who will vote against him, and at what price? Who will vote for him, and what cost?

Meanwhile, the parliamentary proceedings have been moving at a pace that parallels the tempo of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary. The more ardent proponents of both causes are irked at the slowness in achieving either. It is almost as if the hare and the tortoise seem now to be running at the same speed.

Centuries ago, citizens of Rome stood on a day in March 44 BC outside the Senate and watched their elected senators assemble for a session that ended with the assassination of Julius Caesar. Their modern equivalents — the citizens of Pakistan — are being made to witness the slow execution of a former chief of army staff-cum-president by a firing squad consisting of elected parliamentarians, using ballots instead of bullets.

At this juncture, it surely no longer matters whether one is for Musharraf or against him, for any political party opposing him or against it. What matters to every citizen of Pakistan today is the state of Pakistan and the office that symbolises the unity of our republic — i.e. the presidency. We have allowed it to be debased and reviled. It is time, all the more so after the recent Independence Day celebrations on Aug 14, to heed Quaid-i-Azam’s tearless laments from the silence of his grave.

President Musharraf must be receiving a barrage of advice from those close to him, and those who now wish they were never close to him. While he is a man who prides himself on making his own mistakes, he might like to take consolation from the words of another similarly besieged army general many years ago. US General Douglas MacArthur was relieved by President Harry S. Truman in 1951 for insubordination.

MacArthur had written almost as if addressing his fellow Pakistani general: “The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle — the roar of the crowd on the one side — and the voice of your conscience on the other.” And for Musharraf’s opponents who have declared war on him, a separate phrase of advice: “War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.”

Can any country, especially one that is at war within itself, afford the price of such prolonged indecision?

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China, India and us

IN 2004, I was invited as a visiting professor to teach a course at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. I taught a course on the political economy of the development of South Asia, to postgraduate students, many of whom were second-generation, US-born Indian and Pakistani Americans.

Washington D.C. is not known as a town which has a very vigorous and exciting academic environment or reputation, perhaps with the exception of SAIS, despite the fact that it houses some quality universities.

Since it is the seat of government, it is known more for its non-governmental policy input and influence. It has numerous ‘think tanks’, an oxymoron if ever there was one, all of which are involved in research, policy and advice, which produces an environment very different from that of a university campus.

While the quality of research and output from many of these think tanks is quite good, though highly varied, the nature of enquiry varies markedly from the way research is conducted and produced in universities. Perhaps the one clear difference is that think tanks focus on perceived ‘problems’, find policy ‘solutions’, and are seldom shy of giving authoritative advice to their own government as well as to other countries.

Moreover, the output from such think tanks involves far greater input and suggestions from those who themselves are involved in making policy, while the university environment allows the production of a far wider canvas of knowledge, both theoretical and applied.

In 2004, at the time when President George W. Bush was seeking re-election, whenever a discussion would take place about South Asia or Asia or the world more generally, one would constantly hear of China’s success and how it had emerged as a great global economic and regional political power. In 2004, often India would be added on as a potential economic power as well, but always as an afterthought.

Pakistan at that time was always marginal to the main arguments related to progress and development, and while the US had occupied Afghanistan and there was a war going on on Pakistan’s borders, the US administration’s main interest was Iraq. During this period, Pakistan was a stable country being ruled by a military general well supported by President Bush. Many analysts had written at that time that the Nov 2004 US elections were as critical for President Bush as they were for his friend, Gen Musharraf.

Having just spent another few months lecturing and doing research in the US, I observed that the two most marked changes that have come about in Washington’s perception in this regard are as follows. India is no longer seen as another possible giant like China, but is always mentioned alongside China, as ‘China and India’. Half the world’s energy problems, its environmental problems, food shortages, etc. are (incorrectly) blamed on the high growth in ‘China and India’. At the same time, both China and India, and no longer China alone, are also seen as possible solutions to many of the world’s problems.

It is worth mentioning that in 2008 the term coined earlier for the four major emerging economic powerhouses, Brazil, Russia, India and China — BRIC — was seldom used and replaced simply by China-and-India. Moreover, the new China-India equation is also grudgingly being recognised and accepted as a shift from the world hegemony and dominance of the US, perhaps towards a multi-polar world sometime soon in the 21st century.

The rise of India to the equal status of China contrasts sharply with the perception of Pakistan today. In the few months that I was in Washington, Pakistan was almost always mentioned with regard to the war on terror. There were seldom any positive views expressed at seminars and policy debates about Pakistan. It was always on how to curb the rise of Talibanisation, to end the growing insurgency, and little else.

Moreover, senior State Department officials, as well as other policymakers and even US academics, treated Pakistan as some subservient dominion of the US, where questions of Pakistan’s sovereignty were disdainfully dismissed. Quite often senior policy analysts would make the prediction that ‘Pakistan won’t last very long’, but would quickly add: ‘but we won’t let that happen’.

On one occasion when I asked Mr Negroponte whether he thought that Pakistan was paying an excessive price in terms of the ‘blowback’ of US action on its borders and whether he thought there was a difference in how Washington and Islamabad viewed the war, he replied that this was Pakistan’s war as much as it was America’s and that they were working on this jointly. Prime Minister Gilani echoed something quite similar when he visited Washington recently.

I do not for a moment believe that the US is responsible for how poorly Pakistan’s image, based on its reality, is projected globally. Unlike many people who find blame for Pakistan’s ills in either the US administration and its dismissive policy towards Pakistan or the IMF or the World Bank, I have always felt that Pakistan’s leadership and its elite are responsible for where we are. Just as much as both China and India have framed their own destinies, so has Pakistan. In an era of globalisation and emerging regional and world powers, all countries are influenced by global and regional powers, trends and pressures. Yet, the leaders of China and now India, use those influences and possibilities to their advantage.

Pakistan, however, is a sad story, too familiar to those of us who continue to live here. By blaming foreign powers or multilateral agencies, or as now, by increasingly looking towards them for salvation in the form of aid or assistance, we merely play out the script that they write for us. Only if it were to be recognised that the causes for Pakistan’s problems, failures and crises are to be found in Pakistan itself, where those who have been in power or have access to it have been responsible, only then can one work towards any possible correction.

Grip on the medal table

THE US used to air such complaints against the once-dominating Russians and East Germans. Now they are to be heard à propos of China, the latest threat to America’s supremacy at the Olympics. How to compete against opponents who have the financial resources of a centralised state behind them and, if these are not enough, are ready to cheat as well?

This questioning, recurring every four years with the calendar predictability of the Games themselves, was at full throttle on Wednesday as China tightened its grip on the medal table in Beijing. After six days of competition, it led the US by a humbling 22 golds to 10, the most widely accepted yardstick of Olympic prowess, and was ahead by 35 to 34 even in preferred method of reckoning here, counting the overall total.

The latest complaints were to be heard after China’s women (or should that be prepubescent girls?) completed a historic gymnastic double over the Americans, winning the team gold a day after the country’s men had done the same.

Once upon a time, doubts used to surround childlike Eastern-Bloc gymnasts, amid dark mutterings that they were maintained in their sylph-like, super-flexible condition by drugs that held back the onset of puberty, even though the girls had reached 16, the minimum age to compete.

Now the US, conquered by a group of girls with an average height of 4ft 9in and an average weight of 77lbs, is openly challenging that last premise. “One of the girls has a missing tooth,” complained Marta Karolyi, in charge of the US team, suggesting that the young lady in question was still shedding her baby teeth. She had no proof, Ms Karolyi admitted, “but it could be true. That doesn’t give us an even playing field. Certain countries go by the rules and certain countries may not.”

Rigid enforcement of Olympic rules, assuming of course they have been breached in this case, would help level the gymnastic field. But there are no rules governing state support. Here, too, US officials insist the advantage is tilted against their country’s team, one of the few that receive no federal government support. Instead, it depends on an annual $150m from commercial sponsors, domestic fundraising, and a share of the revenues of the International Olympic Committee.

“When you’re talking about competition at this level, it requires financial support,” said Darryl Seibel, spokesman of the US Olympic Committee (Usoc). But the funding available to his team was “probably not even in the top five” among national Olympic committees.

The obvious solution of course is money earmarked by the federal government, given that China has 370,000 children in state-financed sports schools alone. And Mr Seibel dropped a heavy hint that Usoc would indeed be lobbying Washington for funds.

And if the US is routed by China in the 2008 medal count, it may yet happen. After all, was it not a US president who, when the Soviet Union had sent a man into space, vowed that an American would be standing on the moon in 10 years? That promised was spectacularly fulfilled. In athletics too, the result might be similar, with the unfettered assistance of the state.

But that is not the American way, and nor is it likely to be. The plain fact is that the nation only rediscovers its interest in most Olympic sports every fourth summer. Michael Phelps may for a fortnight own the most famous name in the land. But for the rest of the time, even a medal-rich discipline like swimming is not on the country’s radar.

The same goes for the blue-riband events in track and field, where American athletes traditionally dominate. Apart from the summers of presidential election years, the only occasion a US sprinter makes the headlines is when he’s caught using drugs. Money in US sport is a function of TV audiences, with American football, basketball and baseball in the vanguard.

Maybe everyone should cool it. The real medal champions by one measure are not the Chinese, the Americans or the Russians, but Armenia.

Calculated by medals per head of population, Armenia with three (bronze) medals for its three million population, leads the field, followed by Georgia, and then Australia (with 16 medals for its 21m inhabitants). To win this championship, China would have to amass over 1,000 medals, a tall order even for their system.

— The Independent