An economic balance sheet

THE people of Pakistan are once again being allowed to take tentative steps towards democracy. Their representatives are being given a chance once again to prove their worth through improved performance. It is, therefore, relevant to evaluate the relative performances of political governments and non-political regimes. And the area of evaluation that is most relevant is the economy. Non-political regimes have generally claimed for themselves superior economic governance and accused political governments of poor performance. A comparative analysis is, therefore, in order.

Generally, the period under the regime of General Ayub Khan is said to be the golden period of economic development in Pakistan. Admittedly, substantial progress in agriculture, industry, power generation and communications occurred during the decade of the 1960s. A singular achievement during this period was the unprecedented scale of asset creation in terms of economic infrastructure and productive capacity.

Over the decade, per capita electricity generation increased nearly five-fold and the production index of manufacturing more than tripled. Unfortunately, investment gains were not accompanied by distribution gains, since the development process led to increased inequalities between income groups and between regions, particularly between the erstwhile provinces of East and West Pakistan.

While the decade produced the proverbial 22 families, which controlled three-fourths of non-agricultural wealth, the purchasing power of industrial labour declined by one-third. Not surprisingly, the percentage of people below the poverty line rose from 40 per cent in 1964 to 44 per cent in 1968. The class impact of unequal growth led to political upheavals, while the regional impact led to civil war and secession of East Pakistan.

The period of the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is viewed from two perspectives. There is a body of opinion at the lower strata of income which considers the 1970s as the actual golden period of development in the country. By contrast, opinion at the upper end of the income strata differs sharply. It is felt that the policies of the Bhutto government, particularly the nationalization of industry and finance, led to the “ruin” of the economy. Opinions are a product of interests and it is understandable that the interests and opinions of people at opposite ends of the income spectrum are different. An objective opinion needs to be formulated on the basis of the analysis of official economic data.

The Bhutto period commenced in the shadow of massive economic dislocation caused by a disastrous war and the break-up of the country. The subsequent nationalization of industry and finance too dented private sector confidence rather severely. However, economic growth was unaffected, as the focus of growth shifted to the public sector, where it accelerated. The GDP growth rates were relatively lower, but investment rates were high, particularly in economic infrastructure and large-scale capital goods industry.

Work commenced on such high-value projects as the Port Qasim, Indus Highway, Steel Mill, heavy electrical and mechanical complexes, etc. Macroeconomic data points to the sound health of the economy during 1973-77. An examination of public finance indicators shows that while revenues were rising at seven per cent per annum, current expenditure was growing at four per cent. There was a healthy current account surplus, which ensured a robust level of growth in development expenditure and gross fixed capital formation.

Despite high levels of development expenditure, debt management was rather prudent as can be seen from the fact that debt servicing as a percentage of revenues fell from 14 per cent in 1973 to 11 per cent in 1977. For a war-ravaged economy, the pace of recovery towards self-sustaining growth must be considered impressive. The economic policies also had a large element of egalitarianism.

The period saw the largest increase in housing provision to date, with the share of pucca housing in total housing stock more than doubling from nine per cent in 1973 to 20 per cent in 1977. The public investments in development projects and the resultant secondary economic activities created significant employment opportunities, with the result that the percentage of population below the poverty line declined from 47 per cent in 1970 to 31 per cent in 1979.

There was an important downside too. The period saw an unprecedented rise in prices on account of cost-push as well as demand-pull factors. The cost-push element in inflation was provided by the record escalation in international oil prices in 1973. The demand-pull element was the heavy investments in long-gestation projects. The inflationary pressures of above 20 per cent eroded incomes and resulted in widespread resentment, particularly among the middle class. This factor, combined with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s authoritarian style of governance, alienated large sections of the population, including labour, and enabled the traditional power elites to mobilize opposition to his government.

The period under the regime of General Ziaul Haq saw an improvement in GDP growth rates and continued decline in poverty. The determinants of good economic performance, however, do not reflect too well on the erstwhile military regime. One, the large infrastructure and industrial projects initiated during the political era came on stream in the 1980s and delivered large income flows for the national economy. Two, remittances from the Middle East began to peak from the early 1980s onwards. Three, large windfall gains began to be accrued on account of the war in Afghanistan. And four, large debts were incurred to finance the high levels of current expenditure.

An examination of public finance indicators between 1977-1988 shows that while revenues were rising at nine per cent per annum, current expenditure was growing at 12 per cent; with the result that, for the first time, the current account surplus was converted into a deficit. The high growth of current expenditure was largely preempted by defence expenditure, which grew at nine per cent per annum. This growth was largely debt-financed, as can be seen from the fact that debt servicing as a percentage of revenues more than doubled from 11 per cent in 1977 to 24 per cent in 1988.

Further, while the military regime benefited from the capital investments of the political era, it shifted expenditure priority from development to current heads; implying that the succeeding decades did not inherit newly created income-generating assets. At the same time, given that the increase in current expenditure during the military era was debt-financed, enhanced liabilities were created for the post-1988 period. The fiscal profligacy and irresponsibility of the military regime during 1977-1988 set the stage for the economic decline in the 1990s.

The political era re-commenced in 1988-89 and comprises two terms each under the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. The government of Benazir Bhutto inherited a revenue deficit of 2.5 per cent of GDP, budget deficit of 8.5 per cent of GDP, and foreign exchange reserves of about $ 400 million. It goes to the credit of the political governments that within two years, the revenue deficit was brought down to 0.8 per cent of GDP and the budget deficit to 6.5 per cent of GDP. Foreign exchange reserves crossed the one billion dollar mark in 1992 and peaked to over three billion dollars in 1994. A careful examination of macroeconomic data reveals that the economy actually performed fairly well up to 1996.

Although the GDP growth rate was lower, the average growth rate over the period 1989-96 was still in excess of five per cent and was as high as 7.7 per cent in 1992 and 6.8 per cent in 1996. Growth in investment was robust at over five per cent, with private investment growing at over 6.5 per cent annually. On the fiscal side, revenue mobilization ranged between 17 and 19 percent of GDP. The political era had commenced with a large debt hangover, which would have imposed a debt service burden in the years to come. However, the decision in 1992 to liberalize the financial sector aggravated the situation. As the loans contracted for in the 1980s began to mature, the debt service burden began to assert itself. Resort had to be made to contracting new loans to repay past debts. Given the financial liberalization, however, the new loans had to be contracted at high market rates to repay old low-interest loans.

As a result, interest payments as a percentage of GDP escalated sharply from 4.9 per cent in 1991 to 6.3 per cent in 1996. The rising debt service burden preempted resources for development expenditures, which suffered a steep decline from 6.9 per cent of GDP in 1988 to 4.4 per cent in 1996 and further to 3.4 per cent by 1999. Resultantly, the percentage of population below the poverty line nearly doubled from 17 per cent in 1988 to 33 per cent in 1999.

The economy began to show signs of a decline from 1997 and nose-dived in the aftermath of international sanctions following the nuclear test in 1998. Many macroeconomic and fiscal indicators began to deteriorate. While the revenue deficit crossed the Rs. 100 billion mark in 1998, foreign exchange reserves dropped to $ 1.6 billion in 1999. The sharp drop in development expenditure to 3.6 per cent of GDP during 1997-99 from the average of 4.5 per cent during the preceding three years caused the economy to recede into a contractionary mode and GDP growth collapsed to between 2.6 and 3.6 per cent during 1997-99.

The myth that the 1990s was a lost decade is not supported by empirical evidence, given that the economy performed well up to 1996. The decline of the economy from 1997 onwards can be blamed partly on the cumulative impact of constraints inherited from General Zia’s regime and partly on the political governments’ own economic management. The principal responsibility, however, lies in the political weakness of the governments during 1988-99.

Perhaps, the Benazir Bhutto government should have repudiated the agreement with the IMF signed by an out-going Ziaist regime barely a week before the elected government took office and renegotiated a new agreement. Perhaps, the Nawaz Sharif government should have resisted the pressure for financial liberalization. Both these failures contributed significantly to the economic problems that emerged during the decade and paved the way for the subversion of democracy.

(To be concluded)

Democracy’s return to the US

FOR a country that believes in the values of freedom and democracy, the US has been conspicuously lacking in these since 9/11. The stifling of debate and criticism over the past year has been on a par with that in Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia or even (shock, horror) Iraq. The only difference between them in terms of ‘toeing-the-line’ is that in the latter it is compulsory; in America it has been voluntary.

No more, though. After thirteen months of silence American voices are finally being raised to debate crucial issues and question the decisions of the Bush administration. These voices have been long overdue.

Ironically, the catalyst that opened the doors of free speech (at least partially) was not George, Donald and Dick’s reckless policies, but the Republicans’ decision to play politics with issues of war and national security. More accurately, their decision to use these for electoral gains.

The signs were clear for some time. Richard Gephardt, the Democratic house minority leader who has so far backed Bush’s anti-Iraq policy to the hilt, listed the signposts to politicization in a recent article in The New York Times. They include the Republicans (Karl Rove to be precise) saying as far back as January that ‘talk of war and terror themes could play to the GOP’s advantage in the 2002 elections’. Also a computer disc found in June that revealed a White House political strategy to focus on the war as a way “to maintain a positive issue environment”.

As elections loom closer, so the war has featured more prominently in the Republican campaign. Two days after the anniversary of 9/11, President Bush told reporters: “if I were running for office I’m not sure how I’d explain to the American people, say ‘Vote for me and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I’m going to wait for somebody else to act’.”

Bush was referring to Democratic concerns about union rights for people in the new Department of Homeland Security. Twelve days later, as Congress debated a resolution that would give Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq, he accused the Democrat-led Senate of being “not interested in the security of the American people”.

If that was not going to push the Democrats back into opposition, nothing was. It did. Tom Daschle, the normally restrained Senate majority leader, let rip in an emotional speech that combined anger at the President’s ‘outrageous’ assertion with the appeal: “We ought not politicise this war. We ought not politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death.”

But what else can the Republicans campaign on? Bush’s domestic record, successfully converting a budget surplus of $313 billion for 2002 (projected when he took office) into an expected deficit of $157 billion, is hardly one to boast about. Accounting scandals implicate senior administration figures and indicate a culture of corporate corruption.

Internationally (not that the insular American electorate worries much about such distant issues), he has not fared any better. His presidency was characterized before 9/11 for its unilateralism and unerring ability to break rather than mend international fences.

Post-9/11, he wowed Americans with his handling of the crisis and the war against terror. But what has that war achieved? Osama bin Laden, Mulla Omer and most of America’s other key suspects remain at large. Afghanistan has become a hotbed of lawlessness, warlordism and opium production (the very conditions that nurtured the Taliban and Al Qaeda). The Middle East and other Muslim countries are seething with anti-US feeling. In short, Bush’s war against terror has done very little to improve the security of the American people and very much to decrease it.

Little wonder Washington is beating the drums of war against Iraq: their noise might drown out awkward comments and questions about the effectiveness — economically, security-wise and internationally — of the Bush Presidency.

The Democrats should not confine their backlash to criticizing the Republicans’ politicization of crucial national issues. Now that they have rediscovered their role as opposition, they should question the issues themselves.

Two fundamental policy issues desperately need to be subjected to a national debate. Is the proposed war against Iraq justified? Is the new US doctrine of national security (based on pre-emptive action) wise? These policies, which have such far- reaching implications, cannot be left to the whim of the Bush administration.

Some Democrats are starting to question them. In a speech in San Francisco (seen by some as the start of his second presidential campaign), Al Gore made a distinction between the war on terror and that on Iraq, and warned that pursuing the latter would harm the former. He urged the US not to “jump from one unfinished task to another”. He also made a scathing attack on Bush’s international record: “In just one year, the president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network.”

A more subtle, but equally pointed, critique was made by Bill Clinton when he addressed the Labour Party Conference in the UK. “I still believe our most pressing security challenge is to finish the job against Al Qaeda.” Clinton reminded the conference that any war — no matter how precise the bombs — would claim innocent lives. And he warned of the “unwelcome consequences” of pursuing a policy of pre-emptive strikes against enemy states. Clinton went so far as to praise Tony Blair for being a restraining influence on Bush.

Gore and Clinton spoke the truth: the Bush administration’s policies are dangerous: they will erode the concept of rule of law, they will make the world a more turbulent, anarchic place, they should be stopped. Others in the international community have been saying this for months. But no one within the United States dared make these points, such was the air of moral righteousness that the government cloaked itself in.

This is the most fundamental change that will, hopefully, emerge as a result of the Republicans’ shameless attempt to win elections through war: restoration of the right to speak out. For how can an administration that plots its wars according to the electoral calendar, accuse others of being weak on terrorism or unpatriotic when they question its motives and policies?

Americans have been silenced by the shock of 9/11 for too long. They need to appreciate that questioning and criticizing the policies of their government is not unpatriotic or damaging to national security. Quite the opposite: to stay silent at such a crucial time would be the real sin.

Thieves of Dhaka: OF MICE AND MEN

“HONOUR among thieves” is a time-worn adage, although, with the decline in noble qualities and the general lowering of moral standards all over the world, it may be difficult to discern the quality of honour among thieves these days.

All of us pine for the “good old days,” and old-timers like me remember with nostalgia the time when thieves were thieves and not crooks and hoodlums.

Thievery used to be a wholetime vocation and was confined to persons who were devoted to it heart and soul. Apart from occasional (and unfortunate) stints in jail, they continued on the job day and night — mostly at night — and no honest thief ever thought of changing his profession. Now, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry is taking to thieving as a sideline, as if it were a hobby like stamp-collecting.

Industrialists in Pakistan who can very well afford to have power plants of their own, are stealing electricity from WAPDA. Traders steal the sales tax they owe to the state, and billionaire politicians with clout do the same with income tax. Government officers steal secrets from office files and sell them to whoever is interested.

Teachers steal question papers of university and board exams and make money out of them. Lawyers egg on all these amateur part-time thieves in order to promote their business of saving crooks. And maulvis try to get for free whatever they can lay their pious hands upon. It‘s all over the place, if I may steal the name of Omar Kureishi’s column.

I am sure it must be the same with Bangladeshis. A Dhaka report circulated some time ago by Agence France Presse said: “About 10,000 thieves have formed an association here and are offering courses to newcomers in this ancient occupation... It has a training school with 2,000 members, including pickpockets... Hijackers cannot become members, according to spokesman Ali Hossain... The association earns about 6,000 dollars monthly from fifteen areas of Dhaka which has more than eight million residents.”

I wish I could meet Mr Ali Hossain and ask him a few things. I should firstly want to know, out of sheer curiosity of course, to which branch of thievery he himself belongs — whether he is a cat burglar or pickpocket, or steals valuables from people’s houses by posing as a metre reader, or, if that is permissible, is a reformed hijacker. All these are minor points and would be meant to build up an air of chumminess between us. The real questions are the serious ones.

For instance, my main and most important query would be about the non-professional breeds of thieves mentioned by me in the third paragraph of this piece. Bangladesh too must abound in them, since the Bengalis and we were together for 24 years and were brought up in the same atmosphere of theft and plunder. My chief question to Ali Hossain would be: since you have formed an association of thieves, why keep these chaps out of it?

Is it that he doesn’t consider them genuine thieves because they have not taken to thievery for a living, to make both ends meet and to be able to afford at least one square meal a day, but merely to boost their already substantial incomes by unfair means? Does he consider them lowly pariahs because of this chink in their armour, this social weakness, which makes them unfit to sit with self-respecting veteran thieves? What is it?

I should also like to inform myself about some incidental matters. For example, how many courses, and of what duration, does the association run? After graduating and becoming full-fledged members what does one pay to keep one’s membership alive? If a chap is unable to make money at all from thieving, is there a system to keep him on the dole out of a welfare fund? If he dies on duty is his family looked after and his sons given free tuition in the training institute? I have always been interested in educational issues.

It‘s a pity that no one among the thieving gentry of Pakistan has ever thought of instituting a regular system of educating its young and incipient members. All of them have to learn through in-service training or through self-education based on their own spirit of enterprise. In some cases they take lessons from elders of the family who are already in business and don’t want their sons and nephews and sons-in-law to miss out on vital points and thereby cause a loss to the family concern.

I was wondering if there was scope for cooperation between the hoarders, profiteers and black-marketeers of Pakistan and the thieves’ association of Dhaka. The former are no doubt ambitious people who would be ready to avail themselves of a refresher course if the association would agree to organize it. The trouble is that, though they are in the same business, there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Our people may not find the methods taught to Dhaka thieves sophisticated enough. They’ll say this is what we teach our little boys when they are still in school. On the other hand, if the association were to send a batch of trainees to Lahore or Islamabad, and particularly to Karachi, they may not want to go back. The prospect of becoming instant millionaires would be too tempting for indigent Bengali thieves to give up, accustomed as they are to earning jut a few hundred measly takas in a whole day.

Not that anyone is going to take my suggestions seriously about cooperation among the top grasping class of Pakistan and the down-to-earth members of the Dhaka brigade. I only put it forward because I sincerely want more contacts between our two countries. But I suppose you can’t have any kind of understanding between the Bangladeshis who are honest enough to call themselves thieves and the robber Pakistani elite who are dishonest enough to think of themselves as gentlemen.

Defaming Islam

ONE of the high-water marks after Sept. 11 last year was President Bush’s leadership in urging Americans not to condemn Islam because of the actions of extremists in the name of their faith.

He set aside his war planning to visit the mosque at the Islamic Centre of Washington, where he reminded the nation that “Islam is peace” and admonished Americans not to take out their anger on innocent American Arabs and Muslims.

In an appearance before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Bush denounced the terrorists as traitors to their faith. The preachings of Osama bin Laden, he said, were a grotesque distortion of a great religion. And despite several highly publicized incidents of threats and lashing out at people thought to be Muslim, most Americans have heeded the president’s message, resisting the ugly lure of religious intolerance and hate.

The same, however, cannot be said of some key leaders of the religious right in America who are counted among President Bush’s closest political allies. And on their noxious mix of religious bigotry and anti-Muslim demagoguery, Mr. Bush’s silence is deafening.

We have in mind several religious conservative leaders who count Mr. Bush as one of their own. There is the Rev. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and successor and a participant in the president’s inauguration, who has declared Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.” And there is Christian Coalition founder and television evangelist Pat Robertson, who said that “to think that (Islam) is a peaceful religion is fraudulent.”

Mr. Robertson, in full attack mode himself, called the prophet Muhammad “an absolute wild-eyed fanatic ... a robber and brigand ... a killer.” And, in an appearance on the CBS programme “60 Minutes” set to be broadcast on Sunday, the Rev. Jerry Falwell completes the demonization of a religion by smearing the prophet of Islam as “a terrorist” and a “violent man, a man of war.”

These are not just the words of a fringe movement. The speakers are leaders among the religious right in America, a movement close to a president who speaks their language. Their embrace is mutual. It therefore falls to the president to break his silence on their gross distortion and to put some distance between their rhetoric and his own professions of tolerance. To avert his gaze from their actions is to permit the Falwells, Robertsons and Grahams to legitimize their own perverse teachings through their association with the president of the United States. If their words are not his, then the president must say so.—The Washington Post

From kleptocracy to khakiocracy: WORLD VIEW

WOULD tomorrow’s elections have been somehow more credible had the roster of candidates included a certain pair of former prime ministers, or should the exclusion of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from the electoral process be construed as some sort of a blessing for Pakistan?

That is a question many Pakistanis would be prepared to answer without blinking — or thinking. Some people find the pair’s absence as bizarre as the national side going in to bowl without Wasim and Waqar, and they tend to blame it on the umpire, who is accused of batting for the rival side, so to speak. Others see it as a form of natural justice, or at least as an ideal opportunity for less familiar faces to make their mark.

However, it’s often not particularly useful, or sensible, to see things in black and white, ignoring the shades of grey.

It could, for example, be argued that it is far from uncommon, under most forms of democracy, for potential candidates with a criminal conviction to be denied the privilege of electoral participation. On the other hand, it would be absurd to ignore the fact that in Pakistan the judicial process does not invariably deliver justice, especially to opponents of the clique in power.

By the same token, the argument that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif’s record in office should suffice to disqualify them from having any further say in the affairs of the state seems reasonably compelling until one ponders the question of who has the right to exclude them from politics. Ought a military ruler without a plausible constitutional mandate have the final say, or should the matter be decided in the court of public opinion?

The exiled pair’s comeuppance at polling booths across the nation would undoubtedly have afforded a great deal of satisfaction to General Pervez Musharraf — and to many other people as well. Poor governance combined with a hand-in-the-till mentality clearly does not deserve to be rewarded with further terms in office. Yet had there been any serious prospect of BB and Mian Sahib being relegated at the polls, the rigmarole designed to keep them out of the fray would have been quite unnecessary.

It seems almost absurd to wonder whether democracy can somehow be enhanced through military paternalism, with men in khaki determining the suitability of electoral candidates — behaving, to all intents and purposes, like a board of censors. Besides, even those who are sufficiently myopic to consider such a process kosher in principle must be confused about the criteria involved in separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, given that dubious pasts can be glossed over in the interests of swelling the ranks and enhancing the prospects of what has been dubbed the king’s party.

This, of course, is hardly a novelty. Every long-term military ruler has sponsored a similar faction. And it has always had the same name, thereby implicitly laying claim to some sort of continuity with the political organization led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The newest incarnation of the Muslim League has taken this tradition a step further by explicitly identifying itself as the Quaid-i-Azam group. Jinnah’s descendants would be perfectly entitled to sue for defamation, given the attempt to create the impression that the founder of the nation would have condoned any form of representative rule restricted by military diktat.

Perhaps a claim for relative novelty can be made on behalf of the present king’s party on account of the fact that it splintered off from what was already a king’s party. The irony is probably lost on Nawaz Sharif, who has never been known to confess to any embarrassment over the fact that he rose to political prominence strictly on the basis of military patronage and continued to benefit from the army’s support beyond the Zia era.

Sharif’s freedom of expression has, of course, been constrained in recent years by the conditions of his exile, but he was daring enough to grant an interview to the BBC last week, in which he claimed to have turned down an offer of accommodation from Musharraf. There have been rumours of a deal in recent months; it is hard to see how the incumbent regime could have justified a flip-flop without losing the remainder of its credibility, although there has lately been plenty of evidence of infirmity.

Given his political origins, Nawaz Sharif’s fulminations against dictatorship do not carry a great deal of weight, and the interview offered little evidence that he regrets anything that occurred during his rule — apart from Musharraf’s elevation to the helm of the armed forces. Interestingly, whereas he described his banishment to Saudi Arabia as God’s will, that context apparently does not apply to his ouster from power.

Benazir, who splits her time between Dubai and London, enjoys far better access to the media. It is not an opportunity that has been exploited terribly effectively or judiciously. The PPP leader has for years been threatening to fly back home, but Islamabad’s counter-threats that she would promptly be imprisoned appear to have sufficed as a deterrent. Which is perhaps fair enough: no one in their right mind would wish to end up in a Pakistani jail.

Benazir’s unrepentant arrogance is far more disconcerting. She admits to “a few mistakes”. Few? Mistakes? That breathtaking understatement is coupled with the admission that Asif Zardari “was not an angel” and may have mixed with the wrong sort of people. Responding to allegations about the accumulation of wealth from a Guardian interviewer a couple of months ago, she said: “What is wrong with having property? I am not an unpropertied woman.”

Proudhon’s “property is theft” may be too blunt an aphorism to confront her with, but if all the real estate she and Zardari own in various parts of the world was fairly obtained and their Swiss bank accounts contain no ill-gotten gains, would it really be all that difficult to offer conclusive proof in support of these contentions?

In the Guardian interview she also spouted some mystical nonsense — “I find that whenever I am in power, or my father was in power, somehow good things happen. The economy picks up, we have good rains, water comes, people have crops. I think the reason this happens is that we want to give love and we receive love” — and conclusively demonstrated her failure to understand the meaning of addiction when, asked whether she may be addicted to power, she replied: “If anything, it’s the opposite of addictive. You want to run away from it, but it doesn’t let you go.”

Benazir must, one imagines, have been less than thrilled to be described as “the great matriarch of the Pakistani political scene”, but let us return to the question of why she and Nawaz Sharif still tend to be viewed as potential prime ministers, why the PPP has been doing surprisingly well in opinion polls, why popular disenchantment has not so far decisively eroded their support bases.

It would be naive to blame it on the gullibility of the electorate. By and large, Pakistani voters have demonstrated time and again that they are nobody’s fools. That is why attempts by military dictators to legitimize their rule via referendums attract so much indifference. That is why Nawaz Sharif’s ‘landslide’ in 1997 was based on a pathetically low turnout. That is why parties which cloak themselves in confessional piety have consistently failed to make a mark at the hustings.

Disappointing results can generally be attributed to a severely limited choice, which naturally promotes a tendency to pick the lesser evil. That is not good enough, of course, and systemic flaws have obviously been exacerbated by the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of so many of our politicians. At the same time, the damage inflicted upon incipient democratic institutions by repeated military interventions ought not to be glossed over.

That is precisely what Musharraf has been doing. His frequent critiques — often reasonably apt — of his predecessors in power would have been considerably more credible if they had been accompanied by the acknowledgement that previous military rulers have also profoundly harmed the nation.

But that is by no means the only reason — perhaps not even the main reason — why the general has frittered away much of the goodwill he attracted in the wake of his unique coup-from-a-cockpit. Nor is his post-September 11, 2001 pledge of allegiance to Washington solely to blame. It is more because he has developed delusions of grandeur. The purported straight-talking of his early days has given way to ambiguities, equivocation and double-talk. In other words, he has developed a profile that resembles much too closely the existing dictatorial prototype.

Democracy processed through an allegedly decontaminating — but in fact contaminated — khaki filter. Elected representatives accountable to an army accountable to no one (apart from the Pentagon). Is that what lies in store beyond tomorrow’s rendezvous with the ballot box?

Perhaps. But all is not lost. Even semi-democracy can serve a subversive purpose in such circumstances — as Ziaul Haq discovered, to his dismay. Military rulers are ill-equipped to cope with the chaos that invariably accompanies the electoral process. The new parliament may turn out to be a lot less acquiescent than is presumed. New faces may emerge to challenge the debilitating status quo. The general’s roadmap may yet be redrawn sooner than anyone expects.

Perhaps. To sum up, one can hardly get any pithier than the bumper-sticker that the octogenarian American musician, Pete Seeger, loves to quote: “There is no hope... But I may be wrong.”

E-mail: mahirali@journalist.com