Keeping the process clean

ELECTORAL malpractice, more commonly known as “rigging,” is probably as old as democracy itself. To some degree, large or small, its presence is alleged in virtually all democracies. Many Americans still remember their gnawing doubts concerning the veracity of the vote count in Florida during the presidential election in November 2000. Countries of our subcontinent, the Middle East, and some in Latin America are especially notorious for fraudulent elections.

In its most blatant version, malpractice involves the breaking and stuffing of ballot boxes. Its milder forms include harassment of rival candidates and their supporters, resort to violence against them at polling stations, bringing pressure to bear on the voter’s choice, bribing individuals to secure their votes, “gerrymandering” of constituencies, tampering with electoral rolls and impersonation.

Candidates, their sponsors and agents, are usually the ones who initiate and carry out these malpractices. Much more reprehensible is the situation in which the government of the day rigs the election to the advantage of candidates it favours. Starting from the early 1950s, when provincial elections were first held, to the general elections in 1997, governments in Pakistan have resorted to corrupt intervention in all elections with the exception of those conducted in 1970.

We expect to have elections in less than two weeks. Some of the present government’s election-related moves may be billed as reforms, but others — the ones concerned with eligibility to contest — have been seen as directed against certain specific individuals and classes of persons. Critics have dubbed them as “pre-poll” rigging. They believe also that official discriminatory intervention in the electoral process continues and more of it is on the way. They have been expressing their apprehensions not only to the local newsmen but to foreign ambassadors, visiting dignitaries, and the European Union observers currently stationed in the country.

General Musharraf has made it abundantly clear that even though he has outlawed only their principal leaders and not the parties themselves, he has little use for the PPPP and the PML(N). Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Raja Zafarul Haq (acting heads of these parties respectively) may be relatively unassertive and open to presidential guidance, but the general does not want to have to work with them. It may later turn out differently, but at this time neither of these gentlemen can be relied upon to act independently of his party boss in exile. Admitted to high office in government, they will also want the general to “forgive and forget” the alleged misdeeds of their bosses. He would not want to be confronted with such a plea.

Regardless of his personal disposition towards them, the general is not worried about regional or ethnic parties such as the ANP and Muttahida Qaumi Movement or the Islamic parties, for, in spite of their tough spine, none of them is likely to secure a large presence in the assemblies.

If my remembrance is correct, General Musharraf called upon the people a few weeks ago to support the parties that supported his government. Was it right for him to make such an appeal? The answer would be clearly affirmative, were he a politician serving as prime minister. That he is not, which makes the propriety of his appeal a moot point. His government, however, has adopted a position on a related matter that might provide a clue. It says, and so does the Election Commission, that the Nazimeen are not to participate in the election campaign. Why not? They are heads of the executive in the district and tehsil governments and, as such, they are public officials.

But they are not career civil servants; they are elected officials; they are politicians. At their levels, and in their jurisdictions, their position is comparable to that of provincial chief ministers and, at the centre, the prime minister. If in the judgment of our present government it is wrong for the Nazimeen to take sides in the election, it should be doubly wrong for the Chief Executive (General Musharraf) to do so.

The Nazimeen, each in his own individual capacity, should be free to go out and campaign for a candidate of his choice. What is wrong for them — as it would be for a prime minister or the Chief Executive — is to use official resources and civil servants under their control to advantage a particular candidate. Is General Musharraf’s government doing so? As one might expect, it says it isn’t; the spokesmen of parties that are not squarely in its court allege that it is.

The Election Commission has sent out instructions that government officials are to stay out of the election process, and that the police are to protect all parties with the same solicitude. This action may have been prompted by reports that government officials were in fact acting as partisans. A few weeks ago press reports indicated that hundreds of officials were being transferred to new locations where they might be more effective in influencing the election results. The Commission said this must not be done, but it is not known how its instructions were treated.

The Commission itself is not entirely above reproach. It has been changing rules of the game, giving rise to doubts about the integrity of the electoral process. For instance, it had reportedly decided several weeks ago that votes would be counted, and the results announced, at the end of the day at each polling station in the presence of the candidates’ polling agents.

Then came the news that ballot bags would be dispatched from each polling station to the Returning Officer concerned, who would count the votes the next day and convey the results to the Commission. In other words, the bags would remain out of sight for more than a night (during which time something untoward might be done with them).

According to the most recent reports, votes will be counted at the polling stations and “provisional” results announced by the presiding officers there and then, while the “official” results would be announced by the Commission later. These abrupt changes in procedure relating to the most crucial stage in the process cannot but arouse misgivings about the Commission’s capability or independence, let alone its intentions.

One can be sure that if police officers and other influential officials do go out to influence electoral outcomes, the world will hear about it. But if the ISI and other secret agencies — well known for their manipulation of parties and elections in the past — quietly put a few hundred million rupees in the coffers of a favoured political party, their action may not come to light for quite some time.

Which are the parties towards whom the present government is well disposed? PML(Q) is clearly the foremost among them. The Sindh Democratic Alliance, and the National Alliance, consisting mostly of Sindhi groups but also including Farooq Leghari’s Millat Party, are also favoured. The two “alliances” are minor players in the electoral arena and they won’t have much to show for themselves. If they are able to draw votes away from PPP candidates in a few constituencies and thus secure their defeat, their mission will have been accomplished, regardless of who profits from it.

Its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, PML(Q) is the real “king’s” party. There have been reports of pressure, exerted by the government or those close to it, on likely winners in various constituencies to join this party and some of them are said to have succumbed. In other cases candidates of rival parties have been forced to withdraw from the race.

PML(Q) may do reasonably well even without significant government support. It will likely emerge as one of the larger groups in the next National Assembly, but not large enough to form a government on the basis of its own strength. We will have to settle for a coalition government. It could be a coalition between two of the larger parties, or a coalition between one relatively large and several little groups and unaffiliated (independent) members.

The little ones and the independents will demand rewards out of all proportion to the numerical strength they contribute. There will be “horse trading,” massive corruption, and political instability. Neither General Musharraf nor any other patriotic Pakistani can want such a state of affairs to develop.

It would be best for all concerned if the general and his officials left the electoral process free to go with the lay of the land, and let the “chips” fall where they might. Let the parties and their candidates run on their own steam and get what their merit and standing will bring them. General Musharraf should also stand aloof from the negotiations and bargaining that will take place in the post-election assembly for the formation of a government.

If his government rigs the election to enable PML(Q) to win a larger victory than what is otherwise coming its way, or if it manipulates the forces in the assembly to align with PML(Q) for the purpose of forming a government led by it, we will all be undone. The general, his prime minister, his cabinet, and their supporters in the assembly — indeed, the entire system of governance — will fall in disrepute.

It will lack legitimacy and, consequently, the capacity to govern. It will further deepen the existing divisions in the country. Having taken power through corrupt means, it will be in no position to forbid or even condemn corruption in other quarters. It will create crises beyond the capacity of any National Security Council to overcome. Would General Pervez Musharraf really want to be the head of a state that is precipitously going downhill, with a government that is constantly on the verge of collapse? Think again, general!

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

E-mail: syed.anwar@attbi.com

Doing away with corruption

IT wasn’t at all an edifying sight to see the president and chief executive of the country, a former president (Farooq Leghari), a hopeful future chief executive (Mian Azhar) and some other party chiefs pledge, in the presence of an official of the Transparency International, to rid the country of corruption.

It gave one a disquieting feeling as if an exposure by the Berlin-based organization weighed with the leaders of the government and parties more than their own legal and moral responsibility to control corruption.

Transparency International indeed got the credit for spotlighting the extent of corruption in Pakistan by putting it close to the top of the league of the corrupt countries in the decade of nineties and not much below in more recent times. But its view is based almost entirely on the experience of foreign contractors and suppliers in their dealings with government agencies. That is how Pakistan’s corruption index rose when large investments in the motorways and power stations were negotiated. Its later fall is thus, perhaps, to be attributed more to reduced foreign investment than to any deliberate effort on the part of the leaders. Corruption, it is said, is the obverse side of the coin of development.

Commissions or favours the ministers and bureaucrats receive in negotiating contracts may damage both national character and the economy but what hurts the common man is the bribery he confronts at every step. He is required to pay not to get an undue advantage but, more often, just to avoid harassment, injustice or delay. Thus it has become extortion — a degree worse than bribe. Tragically, bribe is no longer viewed as a perversion of integrity. It is a necessity or need for both its giver and taker.

For its wide gamut and many forms, the pithiest definition of corruption one comes across is “the abuse of public office for private gain.” The men responsible for making laws and running public policy in Pakistan have turned this definition on its head by legitimizing abuse.

The private gain the privileged classes make by abusing their office under the cloak of legitimacy has weakened their resolve to check bribery. In fact, they acquiesce in it. The irony of it all is that while corruption, patronage and nepotism committed in a big way are covered by law or policy or schemes, the bribery at lower levels and on a lesser scale remains a menace. This contradiction is best illustrated in the allotment of land. Taking a specific example, senior retiring officials in the 1990s were given plots in Islamabad’s I-8/3 sector which had a market value, on average, five times the retirement benefits the allotees earned in a life-time of service. Similar would be the ratio between their pension and the rental income of the house built on that plot. Though the intention of the scheme was to help the ill-paid officials, it made the gain derived from public office virtually legitimate.

There are other examples where the legitimized abuse of office, elective or bureaucratic, yields larger private gains. The one quoted above is the mildest form of this common practice. Seven plots even for an honest general may be one too many. Some civil servants are known to own even a larger number.

The lower officials for whom no such scheme was made because the land available was limited, could not be blamed if they resorted to bribery to fend for their retirement.

This is the nub of the problem of corruption in Pakistan. The politicians and bureaucrats, the judges and the generals all use their power and position to live beyond the means the public service provides, which, admittedly, are not adequate. The lower cadres are left to do the same through their own devices. Bribe thus has become the common tool of corruption hindering the access of citizens to justice and fare treatment.

The first step towards the elimination of corruption therefore should be not to make any law, policy or scheme which favours the privileged or powerful classes of citizens or public servants. Public servants should be compensated only through salaries and other benefits uniformly applicable to all. If just one reason were to be identified which destroyed the integrity and independence of the public servants, it was their urge to amass assets, especially plots, without being labelled corrupt. The politicians and bureaucrats colluded in devising such a system for mutual benefit.

Narrowing the area of discretion, eliminating government controls, licences and subsidies and having a smaller but better paid public service selected and promoted on merit alone are some of the standard remedies suggested for reducing the scope and scale of corruption. Their implementation is hindered by the overwhelming urge common to all governments to offer patronage and make personal gains. It was this very urge which led to nationalization, thereby widening the area not just of patronage but of corruption as well. It is this very urge which is preventing the privatization of the industry, banking and other services that remain under government control.

The government prepared the United Bank for privatization for three years and the State Bank invested Rs 20 billions in it to sell it only for Rs 12 billions. The delay in the other cases of privatization may yield similar results. The KESC, PIA, the Steel Mill and all the rest should be privatized now rather than invest more and wait for them to become viable. If Great Britain’s flag- carrier airline can be in private hands and if even Swissair can go bankrupt, national ego should not stand in the way of the privatization of PIA.

The thrust against corruption should begin by reducing the size of the public service and by raising the level of its competence and remuneration (both go together) and restricting its role to the enforcement of laws and keeping order. The involvement of public servants, including those serving in the armed forces, in politics and business has led to the creation of the Frankenstein monster of corruption and violence. Its daunting presence cannot be wished away papered over by ceremonial pledges and reaffirmations.

I sleep a little better

Probably one of the greatest lines in history was when Jack Valenti said, “I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.”

I asked one of Bush’s aides if he slept better with Bush in the White House.

He said, “Everyone sleeps better. Under Bush, we average four hours a night, and some of us even snore.”

“How do you feel about attacking Iraq with or without the UN?”

“We feel good about it. As our commander-in-chief, wherever Bush goes, we’ll follow him.”

“What happens if someone doesn’t agree with President Bush?”

“They are obviously ignorant and don’t understand the threat. If the president hears of anyone being against him, he’ll have Dick Cheney put sleeping pills in their coffee.”

“What about the members of congress who don’t want to go to war?”

“You’re talking about the doves and liberals and traitors?”

“I wasn’t thinking of them, but I’m glad you brought it up.”

“Mr. Bush knows about war and what it means to the American people. He wasn’t in the war himself, but his father was, and that is good enough for Donald Rumsfeld.”

“I imagine everyone sleeps better knowing that, war or no war, they will get a tax cut,” I said.

“The people in the top bracket have no trouble nodding off.”

“Why is Bush so intent on saber-rattling?”

“He wants Saddam to have to move every night so he will be groggy in a couple of weeks.”

“What about Osama bin Laden? Everyone in the White House must have nightmares about him.”

“We’ll find him — dead or alive — but we’d rather look for Saddam because he is so much easier to find.”

“You have all the bases covered. Everyone in the world dreams of changing the evil empire in Baghdad.

“By the way, when we sleep better, it is not for political reasons. “

“I should hope not,” I said.

“We sleep well because the president has his finger on everything in the country. He is on top of the economy, the environment, homeland security and raising money for his party.”

“When does the staff go home?”

“They have half an hour to go home, shave and take a shower.”

“Do they sleep during meetings in the White House?”

“They can if the president isn’t looking.”

“I hope the country sleeps as well as I am going to sleep tonight.”

He said, “Thank God for Valenti showing us the way.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

As the leaves begin to bleed: NOTES FROM DELHI

THE leaves of New Haven have begun to bleed. In a few weeks they will die, marking with their death the onset of the long dark winter that envelops the north of the earth. But here in America, nature will celebrate one last, glorious burst of energy, colour, radiance and joy.

Decline and fall are the natural end of the cycles of life, but never was a fall more resplendent than in the autumn of America. These leaves will dance their way to death with such grace, such beauty, such abandon. If only human beings could possess the courage of nature.

Every life then would burst with joy before being consumed by time. Instead, most of us dither, shamble, shuffle and sniffle our way to death, remote from our past, taunted by the present and terrified by the future.

Nature is a philosopher, and defeats time with its impunity. Autumn is the season of the last fling before the inevitable victory of that bleak horizon which has been with us from birth.

These leaves float towards a story. Omar Khayyam understood death, not because he was a poet but because he was a scientist, an astronomer who spent his nights with the mysteries of existence beyond the reach of a mere earth. Khayyam lived dangerously, because he refused the option of silence in a volatile age of despair, rebellion, confusion and insurrection in the Muslim world from Samarkand to Baghdad, and Damascus to Cairo.

His two famous contemporaries were Nizam ul Mulk, who wrote the classic treatise on Islamic polity and served as the vazir and anchor of the rising power of the Seljuq Turks; and Hassan Sabah, who turned assassination into a powerful political weapon that shook both the victorious Crusaders and the defeated Arab sultans.

Defying all predictions, Khayyam died peacefully in old age. He was once asked, as a young man of radical mood and tongue, whether he was afraid of death. He answered: “What is there to be afraid of? If there is nothing after death, then there is nothing to be afraid of either. You cannot be afraid of nothing. And if there is Allah then there is mercy...”

We are at Yale Law School for a seminar on the Silk Route in the 21st Century, organized by the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalization, and driven by Strobe Talbott and my old friend Nayan Chanda. Through two days academic minds weave through the game of snakes-and-ladders being played between Turkey and Kazakhstan, through the Caucasus and Central Asia.

It used to be a Silk Route. It is now the Gas and Oil Route, and infinitely richer. All the powers and superpowers have placed a grubby paw and oily hand on the region.

Academics offer propositions, summations, interventions and prejudice with a disarming display of objectivity.

One of them, who shall be nameless, offers the startling thesis that since the budget of three regions is less than that of Yale University, they have no right to define themselves as nations. The budget of India, I recall reading somewhere, is less than the budget of New York: should that disqualify us too?

The panels change with the topics. They sit on a podium of carved wood, more like a bench of the Supreme Court than a bench of the university, paid to judge rather than paid to think.

But the image is deceptive. Academics are mild and pleasant when taken away from a microphone.

A meal induces the best out of them. The finest of them are not averse to a nap, even on a podium. But get them into a debate over Armenia and Turkey or Georgia and Russia and the steel begins to clatter. We should all applaud the fact that academics are human.

Nature may go to sleep every winter. America goes to sleep every weekend. New Haven, where Yale is situated, goes into a coma. The Lord, when creating this world, gave man one day every week to rest.

American Television, when creating news, ordered two days of rest. Round the clock, Monday to Friday, you can get all the news, particularly about the baby beaten by her mother in Indiana, or the dog rescued from a cliff in Plainsville. But come the weekend and the world must wait till Monday again to blow itself up. Memo to all nations: There is no point in starting a war over a weekend. If it hasn’t reached American TV it isn’t news.

My only option was the indefatigable CNN, and CNN was showing some strange documentary. The most important item during a two-minute watch was on the crawler at the bottom of the screen.

The German army, it said, had forbidden its troops to have sex when in service. One dare not predict what celibacy will do to the German Army. A friend suggested that this must be because the generals wanted the soldiers to reserve all their potency for the enemy.

A good thought, deflated by the fact that Germany does not have enemies anymore. It exhausted its quota in the Second World War. Sex was permitted in that war.

Refer to Alan Clark’s superb account of Hitler’s offensive against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. The knapsack of each German soldier sent to this heady and deadly front included one condom. It must have been a reusable condom, made of special German steel. A small item in the papers tells me that German forces are going to replace the Turks as the lead contingent of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan by December. Is the celibacy order in preparation for Afghanistan? That would make sense.

Saddam Hussein needs Mata Hari to work for him in the United States. He has the New York Times. There is no need anymore to send out James Bond. All you have to do is to be pals with the editor.

The lead story in Saturday’s Times would, not too long ago, have invited a charge of high treason against both the journal and its informants.

It describes the contents of “a highly detailed set of military options for attacking Iraq” quoting officials of both the Pentagon and the White House. Which spy could ever boast of moles who had burrowed so deep. All Saddam has to do if he wants to know American plans for him is to read the newspapers.

The timing of America’s war against Iraq is going to be between January and February, when the weather is cooler and the nights are longer.

The heavy uniforms of the US army (particularly of those who will go in search of chemical weapons) is not designed for heat. And the longer nights give America an edge in warfare since it is armed with night-vision binoculars, unlike the Iraqi army.

The war will open from the air with swarms of B52s knocking out the command centres with 2000-pound laser-guided bombs. Once Iraq’s response-capability is neutralized, some 100,000 troops, with another 150,000 in reserve, would invade from Kuwait (Turkey is a reluctant partner this time around).

Once upon a time Sherlock Holmes would have been given a fortune, or at least a gong, to keep such war plans out of the hands of the Evil Powers. Modern journalism has made the mystery genre irrelevant.

Have finally discovered the essence of President George Bush’s Iraq policy. It was on television.

Being a news junkie, I kept surfing after daybreak on Saturday for some channel to offer something other than movies, cartoons and crazy faces.

The moving finger surfed, and having surfed, rested on Arnold Schwarzenegger. The hunk-chunk was dressed in Hamlet-black. He glowered at a skull, and delivered the first line of an immortal soliloquy.

“To be or not to be...” he began. Suddenly a switch in voice-pace. “I’ll take it!” he said, swivelled, threw the skull away, slashed with his sword, and strode on.

I imagine George Bush on his ranch, studying Dick Cheney’s skull as the two discuss Iraq. “To be or not to be...I’ll take it!”

The decision is made. The world is safe from evil.

Take this as you will... One consequence of 9/11 that may not become widely advertised is that local American Muslims (not the ones imported from India and Pakistan, that is) have begun to quietly reassert their faith rather than distance themselves from it.

An interesting story about African-Americans in a New York prison provides more evidence. David Miller, superintendent of the Eastern New York Correctional Facility (this is the age of politically correct nomenclature: in the bad old days prisons were called Sing Sing or Jailhouse Rock or whatever) says that attendance at namaaz by prisoners has gone up 50 per cent in the last year and some 150 convicts are attending classes in Arabic, the Muslim traditions and the Holy Quran.

The imam of the prison mosque, Yasin Latif, added: “It has been a significant awakening call. The Muslims on the fence at the time of the tragedy (9/11) felt they had to make a statement for the true Islam.”

The prison is next to the church of St. Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.