A new political tone?

Is there any hope that Mr Shaukat Aziz, whatever he may be able to achieve in the economic field, will also be able to improve the political tone in the country? Whether or not the new prime minister, elected by the National Assembly on Friday, has a political background, politics he will have to do. What kind of politics he adopts will be both interesting to watch and will be the measure of the man as a leader.

The pattern we have set in the past five decades and more requires wholesale changes. This is not just a matter of averting military intervention - which is of course a sine qua non for any kind of democratic and political progress. But it also relates to a will to run a parliamentary system that is responsive to people's wishes and needs, is tolerant, inclusive and based on a commitment to civil and human rights.

The beginning of Mr Aziz's term was not in this respect very auspicious as he spoke to a half empty house. The entire opposition walked out as the government resisted a move to have Mr Javed Hashmi, the detained PML-N leader and the ARD nominee for prime minister, brought to the house. Permitting Mr Hashmi to be present would have been seen as a mollifying gesture to the opposition and proved perhaps a step towards lessening the intractability that has dominated parliamentary proceedings so far.

We have to have decency and humility in politics instead of arrogance. Politics has to be recognized as a legitimate activity necessary for the nation's development and not dismissed, as it has too often been by military rulers, as an irritant barely to be tolerated. Contempt for politicians and politics has been so sustained and venomous that it has percolated into the psyche of the people, and whenever the damage done by military rule is brought up, there is almost always a riposte pointing to the venality and authoritarianism of political leaders.

For a change in such attitudes, it has to be clearly recognized that the country's systemic weakness is due not to a failure of the political leadership but to the ambitions of military and civilian bureaucrats to control the country's domestic and foreign policies. Politicians, particularly those drawn from the feudal classes or classes aspiring to become feudal, have contributed to the collapse, but the ultimate responsibility should be traced back to the 1958 'revolution'.

Mr Aziz comes unencumbered by feudal baggage. His outlook should be that of an ordinary modern, civilized individual - though only time will tell how these values withstand the compulsions of power. He has a chance, provided he is given the space for it, to establish that he and his cabinet members do not consider themselves to have a monopoly of either wisdom or patriotism.

Apart from day-to-day governance, his first priority should be to see how the legislature, despite all the handicaps, can be made to function in a more meaningful way. This means that parliament and parliamentary procedures should be given due respect. The presence of the prime minister in the house on a regular basis alone should be able to make a valuable contribution.

The government can always bulldoze its measures through parliament, but if the opposition is consulted, allowed to speak its mind, and its proposals are objectively considered, we will get more durable laws that are based on consensus. At some point the distortions that have crept into the Constitution will also have to be jointly addressed by the government and the opposition.

President Pervez Musharraf invokes 'national interest' as justification for the actions he has taken since the 1999 coup. Even if this point is conceded where some of the decisions made post-9/11 are concerned, 'national interest' is an ill-defined concept and is in any case not immutable. The 'national interest' can demand one thing at one time, another at another.

It is in our interest today -- and for the future -- to unhesitatingly embrace the norms of a liberal, democratic society based on rule of law. The new prime minister should be given the leeway to chart out a political course that takes us out of a state of constant confrontation at home and abroad.

The ARD has managed to survive the many pressures exerted on it, not least the spoiler's game practised for a while by the MMA during the prime ministerial contest, but the opposition as a whole too has to agree on a minimum programme to strengthen democratic institutions. Where the ruling PML under Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain will figure in all this is an important imponderable.

Athens 2004

Medals are, with rare exceptions, where the money is. The Athens Olympic Games have sprung no surprises at the top of the table. The United States, China and Russia take the first three positions in the honours list followed by Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea and Romania. The Athens Games, costing all of eight billion dollars, have been the most expensive in the modern Olympic era.

It remains to be seen whether small or even medium-sized nations will ever be able to host an extravaganza whose cost is only going to rise in the years ahead. The 2004 Games were marred by several dope scandals, headed by Costas Kenteris, the Greek 200-metre Olympic champion four years ago. He opted out after missing a drug test. A Ukrainian rower was deprived of a bronze medal after testing positive for a banned drug. Similarly, a Hungarian weightlifter had to be thrown out of the competition for refusing to take a drug test. There may have been others involved in the sordid affair.

What about South Asia? The main interest in India and Pakistan revolved round field hockey where the former ended seventh while the latter finished fifth. This is a far cry from the days when India and Pakistan dominated the sport. There is no doubt but that hockey standards have been on the decline in recent years, and both India and Pakistan have had to hire foreign coaches. It is a matter of some consolation that Sohail Abbas emerged as the leading scorer in the tournament, converting as many as 11 penalty corners, but he missed quite a few. Field and track events are in the pristine Olympic tradition and it was here that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were nowhere to be seen. Team events such as hockey are, strictly speaking, non-Olympic.

It would have been better by far if a South Asian athlete had returned home with a bronze rather than a hockey side with a minimum of 25 players and officials winning a gold medal. It is amazing that a vast region of 1.5 billion people should have done so poorly in Athens. People in Pakistan, India and even in Bangladesh are so obsessed with cricket that nothing else matters for them. Something needs to be done to make the South Asians realize that greater honour may lie in arenas other than those of cricket and hockey.