OPTIMISTIC about human ingenuity and creativity, the liberal disposition is not reluctant to change its surroundings because it believes that the existing order of things can be replaced by more satisfactory arrangements.

The conservative, on the other hand, believes that the status quo has resulted from the exertions of uncounted generations, each having built on the accomplishments of its predecessors. It cannot be replaced by a given set of individuals. If something has broken down, he will tinker with it, fix it, not throw it out.

It is common knowledge that many Americans are sick and tired of their present situation: rising prices, fewer jobs and shrinking wages, want of access to adequate healthcare and quality education, mounting unpaid bills, the danger of losing one’s home because of inability to make mortgage payments. Many millions of people in this country, presumably the richest in the world, do not have enough to eat. This situation has resulted from President Bush’s wrong policies and actions, the war in Iraq which costs $10bn every month, tax cuts for the wealthy and neglect of the majority’s pressing needs. America wants change.

Many political observers believe that, if elected, John McCain, the Republican candidate for president and a firm conservative, may make some peripheral changes but will for the most part retain Bush’s socio-economic outlook and policies. Mr McCain and his supporters want to dispel this image and insist that he is not another Bush. His running mate, Sarah Palin, has been calling him a change-maker, indeed a “maverick”. But this claim does not have many takers.

McCain, convinced that the free market economy is superior to other systems, will let it take its course without letting the government come in its way. He will reduce taxes on the wealthy on the reasoning that this will enable them to expand existing enterprises and establish new ones, all of which will create many new jobs. He will leave it to each individual to provide for his retirement, healthcare and education with minimal contribution from his employer or the government. He thinks this is upholding freedom of choice.

If elected, Barack Obama, a liberal and the Democratic candidate, is likely to make significant departures from President Bush’s dispensation. He will work to raise taxes on the wealthy and lower them for small businesses and middle-class individuals, extend health insurance to all Americans, improve public schools and make college education affordable for all those who want it, develop new sources of energy, build infrastructure, encourage local manufacturing of hybrid automobiles, withdraw troops from Iraq within a specified period of time, fight and defeat Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan and, if necessary, in Pakistan’s tribal regions, and open talks with heads of foreign governments currently opposed to America (such as Iran’s).

He favours government regulation of the economy to keep the barons of commerce and industry from exploiting their workers and robbing consumers, and to check reckless operations of the kind that have brought on the current financial crisis. He will extend regulation to all those domains where the public interest requires it.

Predictions of election results can go wrong. I remember that on the presidential election day in America in November 1948, pollsters, newspapers and radio stations expected Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, the Republican nominee, to be the winner. But after the vote count had been completed later that night, it transpired that President Harry Truman was going to remain in office for another four years.

Polls show that Obama is ahead of McCain. It is conceivable that a majority of voters will act contrary to the general expectation, but the likelihood is that Obama will be declared the winner on the evening of Nov 4. Some advances in bringing about the changes he has been promising may then be made. This will require enabling legislation which is the province of Congress. If the coming elections return a Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Congress will probably provide the needed legislative support. America will then be a nicer place to belong to and live in.

Change denoting something new should be distinguished from reform that comes from making the existing arrangements work more effectively. In a place like Pakistan both systemic change and reform are needed. The police and numerous other enforcement agencies are already in place and so is the relevant legislation. But domestic security and tranquillity are nowhere to be found because the law enforcers are not doing their job. They are incompetent, lazy, poorly paid or otherwise unmotivated to make the necessary exertions.

The same holds for all other departments of public affairs. Let us, for further illustration, take the case of our ‘sovereign’ parliament whose members have been insisting that they should be the ones to settle all major issues of policy. The two houses were recently called to a joint session to consider the grave threat to national security posed by extremists and militants and tell the government how to deal with it. They met for a number of days, heard a briefing from a general and another from Ms Sherry Rehman, the minister for information.

The opposition members complained that the briefings did not tell them anything they did not already know from reading the newspapers. But they did not say what it was that they wanted to know. On most of the days after the briefings the great majority of parliamentarians stayed away from the house. Over and over again the speaker had to adjourn the proceedings because less than 60 or so of the 442 members of the joint session were present. This state of affairs may have given outsiders the impression that parliament had no interest in being sovereign.

Beyond the more effective working of existing arrangements, there is the matter of making systemic changes. The parliamentary system of government is generally accepted. Remaining within its bounds, one may argue that the Senate should have the same authority and power as does the National Assembly. Then there is the persistent demand for provincial autonomy. All political parties endorse it but none of them has ever done anything to implement it when in power. The culture of Pakistani politicians does not require them to actually do what they have been pronouncing desirable. Those in the ruling elite do not want to be change-makers because the status quo suits their personal and class interests.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts.

anwarsyed@cox.net

IS Pervez Musharraf entering politics — or should he? The first part of this question is for Musharraf himself to answer; the second is for the people and the politicians to contemplate.

Last week some newspapers quoting the former president’s unnamed callers reported that his entry in politics was a settled question. Only a formal announcement remains to be made till he shifts from the Army House to his own country home — and that would not be long.

Yet another report, more in the nature of a rumour, about Musharraf going abroad to relax or to lecture was dismissed by the Sindh home minister who said he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country — as if it lay in the minister’s power. He has either spoken out of turn or was asked to voice the thinking of the party caucus.

Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi, who was Musharraf’s spokesman when he was at the peak of his power and again when he was down in the dumps, came out of his own retirement to speak for him when no politician did — not even any of his three prime ministers on whom no one but Musharraf could have bestowed that high office. There is no question of engaging in active politics, Qureshi said about his former master. To the contrary he is distancing himself even from the politicians he knew. Seemingly, it is the politicians who are keeping their distance from him.

Mr Musharraf himself has yet to confirm or deny the reports. But the hunch of most people is that he will join politics one day for, by temperament, he is as much a politician now as he was once a soldier. The surviving commando instinct in him is likely to mark his return to politics in the same way as it did when he captured power in 1999. He took everybody by surprise then and will so again.

In his current loneliness, a thought haunting Musharraf must be what went so wrong that he had to quit the presidential office when he was all set to enjoy it for another five years with less hassle and more golf and bridge. He too, like everyone else, might be blaming the mishandling of the chief justice affair. That indeed he bungled in a display of hubris. Surely, the two Pirzadas — Sharifuddin and Hafeez — could have counselled him to follow a more subtle course like the state counsels asking for the exclusion of the chief justice from every bench that was to hear, say, the petitions concerning ‘mysterious disappearances’.

The police jostling the country’s chief justice in full public view aroused widespread sympathy for him and anger against Musharraf but the cause of his downfall was the tinder he had been gathering from the very first day of his advent to power. It was waiting to be ignited. A humiliated chief justice showed it the flame. He became a hero though he was among the 13 judges who had validated Musharraf’s coup. By the same token Musharraf became a villain. Even the general elections held 11 months later which in common reckoning were free and fair could not rid him of that image.

Sooner or later time ran out on all of Pakistan’s rulers for none of them was able to fulfil the expectations of the teeming millions — more than half the population — who live in urban slums or dusty villages and have no job nor a piece of arable land to subsist on. It ran out faster on Musharraf for life became ever so insecure in his time and he didn’t even have a scapegoat. Men like Zafarullah Jamali and Chaudhry Shujaat couldn’t be one.

The coup-makers before Musharraf did not align themselves with politicians, not to begin with at least. Musharraf threw away that advantage by choosing some from among the malcontents of the government he had dismissed as his partners because he was wary of imposing martial law and designating himself as CMLA, though he acted in much the same way. That gambit was not worth the loss of his impartial image.

Musharraf then went on to compound his problems in more than one way. He demolished the country’s long-established, though not perfect, law and order system. The local elected officials replaced the career civil servants and the police was placed under the direct control of the ministers. The nazims on whom he relied to provide him a countrywide constituency remained loyal to their respective parties. The whole administration was thus swamped by politics. The nazims were not content to manage just civic affairs. They worked to promote the image and interests of the parties to which they belonged.

Meanwhile, Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’ gave in to extremism when his regime was threatened by moderate or secular forces. The Lal Masjid-Hafsa citadel of militancy couldn’t have come up in the heart of the capital without the encouragement its clerics received from the regime’s ministers and spooks.

Looking back it can be safely surmised that if Musharraf had not demolished the administrative and judicial structures nor succumbed to religious radicalism, foreign militants wouldn’t have been able to make our tribal areas their base of operations nor would have their bombers been attacking our garrisons deep inside the country.

When all has been said it remains to be acknowledged that while Musharraf was as much into extravagance and cronyism as any other head of government, his interference in the working of the government was much less. He might have put his power to some personal gain but did not plunder. No one talks of his accounts and villas abroad. His brother and son never appeared on the scene, much less cut deals. Mrs Musharraf remained a simple housewife like any other wary of an uppity husband.

He is much criticised for his policies relating to the economy and terrorism but his successors have not reversed but only strengthened them. Their attempts to rehabilitate the administrative and judicial institutions also look desultory and sometimes mere eyewash. It is too early for the people to miss Musharraf but that may not be too far away either. How far depends on how the politicians conduct themselves.

Every powerful ruler when forced out of office by noisy demonstrators or by scheming politicians or by the angry generals feels that the silent masses were still with him. Such was the feeling of Ayub Khan as of Z.A. Bhutto. Ayub became too sick to return to put his feeling to popular test. Bhutto had to be put to death for he surely would have. If Musharraf is spared their misfortune surely he will put his feeling to test one day.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

THE chief minister of Punjab is honesty personified when he reprimands his police force over the thrashing of people protesting power outages and overbilling. Mian Shahbaz Sharif also admits the situation in the province is far from perfect, and he is a busy man trying to sort out as many matters as he can before he goes to sleep — briefly, we are told — every morning.

There is no shortage of admirers in Lahore keen to describe the current Sharif rule as a continuity of the old Sharif terms, only better. Among other qualities, these followers point to the new intensity in the steps the Punjab ruler is taking for the well-being of his subjects. This intensity can be seen in no insignificant quantity in the police encounters that have returned to Lahore and other parts of the province ever since Mr Shahbaz Sharif established his government here.

According to figures from Lahore Capital City Police, there have been 32 encounters in the provincial capital during the last five months. No less than 25 ‘hardened criminals’ and three policemen have been killed in these face-offs. In some cases, the summary punishment has come after purported confessions by the criminals, leaving no doubt whatsoever that they deserved what they were handed out.

Journalists say, bar an aberration here and there, that these encounters are fake, whereas a senior police officer in the provincial metropolis has been heard roaring: “Criminals must either be inside the jail or in the grave.” With a resolve like this, it is only a matter of days before Lahore and the whole of Punjab are rid of law and order. What should keep us occupied nonetheless is the inventiveness, or the lack of it.

Kamran Shafi was last week sharing with Dawn readers his surprise at the unbelievable story conjured up by the Americans to implicate Dr Afia Siddiqui in an assault on secret US agents in Afghanistan. Around the same time the Lahore police were writing their own new edition of the ever-voluminous book about the law enforcers’ arbitrary disposing off of evil.

Reports say a 26-year-old man held in Lahore police’s custody in connection with the murder of a college student was killed in an encounter early on Tuesday, Oct 21. The details given out describe the deceased, Asghar, as a principal of a teaching academy. He had (allegedly) killed a student enrolled in the academy and buried his body in the institute’s compound.

The boy’s name was Mohammad Asif and his parents were said to be overcome with grief. So were all those who read the news displayed prominently by all local newspapers. But if the murder was shocking, the ‘mysterious circumstances’ in which the accused met his end smothered all prospects of a confirmation that the police had got hold of the right man. This could have come only through a (legal) trial of the accused. All we have instead is the police’s word which projects Asghar as a khooni darinda or bloodthirsty beast.

If the image-building was aimed at securing a nod from the general public, the move was successful. But this doesn’t make the explanation given of the encounter any more credible.

It goes like this: Asghar kills Asif and hides some of the personal belongings of the victim in a less frequented place not far from the academy. A few days after the accused is held, the police take him to the spot to recover Asif’s things. There is a scuffle in which the accused receives a bullet. He passes away in hospital.

Moral of the story: the Pakistani police are much better at finishing off suspects than their US counterparts. Moreover, the public here is the believing type and until and unless Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is restored, the people as well as those who run their affairs for them will have to find alternative avenues to get to justice.

Thinking along the same lines would reveal a conspiracy to make redundant judges who are willing to work with the incumbent federal government while the Naekian theorists would be justified in claiming that the justice system as practised by the Punjab police makes Justice Chaudhry surplus to the requirements of the government and citizens.

On a more serious note, the return of encounters to Punjab in a big way indicates a lack of learning on the part of those coming to power after a long exile. Equally unfortunate is the public acceptance of these encounters which, among other things, is reflective of a general brutalisation of the people’s psyche. Ask a person in Lahore and eight times out of 10, they will voice support for these encounters. It is only when they are told that an encounter doesn’t discriminate between a criminal and themselves that they see some value in the judicial system.

This is typical of a group which considers itself more secure than others existing at a safe distance. The suicide blasts were felt only after Lahore was hit directly and it is presumed that not many are listening when an email goads and challenges the people of the city to protest against an operation in Balochistan of which they are not a part. They are only worried about Pakistan.