Beginning a new phase

THERE are some who are rejoicing at the installation of the elected government of Prime Minister Jamali as the first step towards a more meaningful transition back to democratic governance. Others are sad over the partial and incomplete nature of this process which brought about a lame duck executive and a subordinate legislature. There is no excitement about the prospects of democracy in the country. But the new thing is hope, which matters.

A gruelling process of negotiations between formal and informal political actors after the October 10 elections reached a befitting finale in the context of the game plan of the military government. A breakaway faction of Nawaz Sharif’s party led by the Shujaat-Pervez Elahi duo became the kingpin of the establishment’s strategy to instal a pro-Musharraf government of elected representatives. Later, a breakaway faction of Benazir Bhutto’s party became the focus of its strategy to push Jamali across the line, dividing the house down the middle. De-institutionalization of politics has paid dividends in the short term. What happens to democracy in the longer run is a different matter.

The post-poll bargaining between the three leading contenders for power produced interesting patterns. The older mainstream parties were relatively more vulnerable to the government’s pursuit of a carrot-and-stick policy in order to win their members over to the PML(Q) side. These parties represent local interests defined by castes, factions and tribes. The two parties have operated as conglomerations of local stalwarts and not as hierarchically organized mega-constructs drawing on their institutional networks across the nation.

The MMA was more resistant to divisive manipulation from outside. As opposed to representational parties such as PPP and PMLs, the MMA is an alliance of mobilizational parties. Instead of local interests and reformist agenda of the former, the latter displays a commitment to a totalist approach to politics, aimed at systemic change. Considering that the military establishment stood in its way, the MMA’s parleys with President Musharraf remained inconclusive, despite the charm of the spoils of office. It was difficult to lure away any of the MMA’s component parties at such an early stage in the life of this alliance.

The first defections of the new era have already taken place. Is there more to come? How critical will be the role of defections in the post-election scenario? It seems that the relatively insecure position of Prime Minister Jamali in terms of his thin majority in the parliament would make his government adopt a persistent policy of creating factions in the rival parties and winning them over to its side. It is likely that this strategy will extend to the provinces, first to Sindh and Balochistan for the purposes of government formation and then to the NWFP for bringing down a government of an opposition alliance.

The dynamics of defection politics requires the support of law, or the absence of it, as in the case of the suspension of Article 63 of the Constitution which would have discouraged floor-crossing. Similarly, it needs patronage to flow in the direction of those who oblige. This can be cabinet portfolios, permits and licences for economic enterprise or straight money . Life under PM Jamali promises to be interesting in the weeks and months ahead.

The PML(Q) has pulled it through in the parliament. Winning 172 votes, as compared to Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s 86 and Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s 70, the new PM has been spared embarrassment at the start of his tenure. He got the ‘pragmatic vote’ of the PML(Q), National Alliance, MQM and assorted groups and factions which too call themselves parties. They are understood to be pro-LFO and pro-uniformed president. The two vote blocs of Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qureshi registered ‘principled’ opposition regarding the two issues.

There are moralists on the floor such as Imran Khan and Mahmood Achakzai. The former’s vote for the MMA reflects his public opposition to both the PML and the PPP leadership in the past. Some might call Imran Khan more principled than the principled. Mahmood Achakzai, who was declared winner after a second round of voting in 17 polling stations of his constituency, stood aloof during the elections for the PM. Was he disillusioned with the whole process of elections which almost cost him his seat in the parliament? Or is it symptomatic of the traditional rivalry between a Pakhtoon from the north and a Baloch from the south of Balochistan? Or is it a plain case of a conscientious objector-in-making?

On the opening day, the parliament got off to a controversial start. While the PM made a more or less correct speech as leader of the house, the speaker’s remarks about the LFO being a part of the Constitution created a stir in the parliamentary circles. These remarks can be ascribed to either teething problems of the new incumbent of the speaker’s office, or to a deliberate attempt at starting canvassing in favour of the arbitrary constitutional amendments put together in the LFO.

The PM faces a huge challenge in the form of formidable tasks staring him in the face. He needs to stay on the right side of President Musharraf to survive in office. That entails the problem of bringing the house behind him on controversial issues which include: the president’s powers to dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss the Prime Minister, acceptance of the National Security Council as a supra-cabinet body; and the president’s double role as head of state and the chief of the army. As leader of the house, the PM faces the daunting task of selling the agenda of the extraparliamentary forces to the parliament itself.

Quite a few MNAs belong to the new generation. A spate of disqualifications over the last three years, combined with the graduation clause of the LFO, have wiped out a whole generation of politicians from the electoral scene. At the other end, accommodation of madressah-educated contestants as graduates is expected to create new openings for Islamists in the economic field for getting jobs in the public sector. The job-oriented agenda of the MQM in particular and of the PPP and PML(Q) in general is likely to suffer in the new phase of politics in Pakistan.

The name of the game is diarchy. This is the classic Iskandar Mirza syndrome from the 1950s. According to this, the president makes and breaks governments by putting together coalitions inside the house through remote control or dissolves the National Assembly itself. Mirza self-confessedly put several coalitions in place after sending Choudhry Mohammad Ali, Suhrawardy, Chundrigar and Feroze Khan Noon home. Zia started and ended his rule by packing up elected assemblies in 1977 and 1988 respectively. Ishaq did the same in quick succession, in 1990 and 1993.

While Mirza was able to operate on the floor from outside, Zia, Ishaq, and later Leghari failed to bring about factional divisions within the mainstream parties. Therefore, they opted for throwing out the whole set-up with the help of the 8th Amendment.

What is the future scenario in Pakistan? The strategy of creating factions in political parties is already in place. This mode of politics has taken rebirth. At the other end, the LFO has restored presidential powers to dissolve the National Assembly. From the days of Iskandar Mirza onwards, three generations of politicians suffered from either in-house change or dissolution of elected assemblies. The new phase of parliamentary politics is vulnerable on both counts.

In spite of this, elections have produced hope all around. Public disapproval of the military government’s policies in a variety of fields has been expressed through a mandate for oppositionist parties and groups. Punjab and Sindh have brought the PPP back into the parliament in considerable numbers, as a strong opposition, to guarantee the move to civilianization of military rule by proxy. Similarly, the PML(Q) will be obliged to open up channels of interest articulation in its large constituency, which had been dried up for three years. The constituent parties of the MMA are expected to continue their vigilance against the arbitrary exercise of powers by the new government. It is expected that the new generation of public representatives will keep the Jamali government responsible and responsive to the public at large.

What a fall my countrymen!

IT was only a matter of time. And so it has happened. Earlier with Nawaz’s Muslim League and later with Benazir’s PPP and, upon its heels as it were, with Altaf’s MQM. Once giants in their own esteem, all the three political parties now lie broken and forlorn. What a series of falls, countrymen!

From the disarray of these parties some lessons should be learned. First, and the most depressing, is that not one of these parties had any durable political purpose or content. One would readily concede that, at its birth, the Pakistan People’s Party was a political movement that had a message and an objective.

The PPP started its journey with a constitution based on a recognizable principle. One may or may not agree with the major premise of its original political philosophy but a political philosophy it certainly was that gave the PPP’s arrival on the scene a meaning and a purpose. It promised to stand for the people and their good.

The original PPP also had a programme. It translated into three objectives symbolized by ‘Roti, Kapra aur Makan.’ — bread, clothing and house. Nobody can deny that a majority of the people are still far from assured of these basics of life. Nor can one dispute that these, together, signify the fundamental needs of a human being, anywhere, any time.

Since the PPP in its first incarnation had a message, and appeared to be in pursuit of its defined objectives, it produced wonders. Within no time the PPP became the name of a movement, then a revolution. It not only won an open election, it shook a deeply rooted Field Marshal who was merrily celebrating his so-called ‘Decade of Development.’ Then what happened? The founder and ruling leader of the PPP lost his way, forgot his commitment and came to supreme grief.

Nawaz Sharif was groomed for power by very different teachers for a very different kind of politics. He was a dictator’s blue-eyed boy. He committed himself to pursue that dictator’s mission. That was the solemn commitment he made as he was burying the dictator, with the burial rites being broadcast to the whole world. Nawaz Sharif thought politics was a sort of picnic. He played cricket with great gusto. Government was not his cup of tea. He was out caught behind.

His Muslim League’s fall is something that would remind one of the fall of Humpty Dumpty. It broke down and nobody would ever be able to put it together again. Once commanding the magic two-thirds majority in the parliament and carrying constitutional amendments through as if it was a Saturday afternoon’s net practice.

Today two-thirds of that party - same names, same faces — is the enemy of PML(N). They are not embarrassed. And they need not be embarrassed because they did not represent any political principle or purpose then. So they have not done any wrong. They stood for a man. That man is gone. They are free to become some other person’s men. Period.

The MQM did once have some declared objectives. They could be seen as partly political, partly personal. The MQM’s politics was rooted in no durable principle. Whatever the MQM thought it was, its driving force was not politics per se but grievance exaggerated into a wound. The other component was nothing but unthinking loyalty to a person.

Now the MQM loyalists can very well turn around and say they have not deserted their leader; it is the leader who has deserted them. So they insist that they feel free to go in whatever direction they please. They have a case. The clear lesson in this three-faceted phenomenon is that politics without some clearly defined principle and objectives is not politics, whatever else it might be. If these parties had principles, the absence of their leaders should have made no make-or-mar difference. They would not have looked and behaved like hapless orphans.

The stark fact that we face is that there is no definable politics in the country. The landscape is barren. It is the picture of desertification caused by long spells of non-political, in fact anti-political, military rule. This has been the blight that has destroyed the political culture to not only its root but its very seed.

The military rulers do not understand politics. And what they cannot understand they would rather put under a total ban. In the present picture there are four groups which claim to be political parties, which they are not. The largest is the PML(Q). What political principle or policy, programme or ‘ism’ does it stand for? The answer is none. This holds equally good for the PPPP and also for the MMA and the MQM.

Let us admit that in Pakistan we shall have to reinvent politics. Who is expected to do that? The answer is: the intellectuals of the country have to do this job. There is nothing peculiar in suggesting that intellectuals have to take this process in their hands and move on. All principled politics has come from the brains of intellectuals. Then it has caught the fancy of the people and become movements.

Most of those who consider themselves the intellectual elite of the country, and pooh-pooh politics as infra dig, have got it all wrong. The intellectuals of Pakistan must realize that it is their failure to provide political thinking that explains the country’s predicament. Hence this Chaudhri and Sardar and Mulla politics that has no input from either mind or morals. This is what has been the tragedy of Pakistan so far.

Changing political parties

THE practice of switching political parties is perhaps as old as the parties themselves. Pakistan’s political scene has witnessed the changing of loyalties in abundance.

The game of musical chairs initially orchestrated by governor-generals Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza remains a sordid chapter of the country’s parliamentary history. Prime ministers were tossed out of the revolving political door by both these top state officials by manoeuvring a change in the political loyalties of the MPs. Iskander Mirza went as far as to create a new political outfit named Republican Party after the then America’s ruling party overnight to show the door to the prime minister and install his new nominee.

When the wheel turned full circle and he found himself at his wit’s end in wheeling and dealing with the parties, he sent the government and the national assembly packing in October 1958. He found himself dispatched out of the country in less than a month though.

The practice of party defection also called horse-trading surfaced again during 1988-90 when the PPP made a strong bid to oust Punjab chief minister Nawaz Sharif. Punjab assembly members were ferried to secret destinations to keep them out of reach of the prowlers. Later there was a tit-for-tat attempt to end the PPP rule. Both events ended in fiasco.

The insertion of the 14th constitutional amendment in July 1997 by the Nawaz Sharif government was the first concrete step to stop this practice. However, this provision of the Constitution has surprisingly been kept in abeyance by the government while restoring the Constitution.

The amendment was incorporated in the Constitution by adding a new article 63-A which provided that a member elected on party symbol would be deemed to defect from the party if he commits (a) a breach of party discipline which means a violation of the party constitution, code of conduct and declared policies or (b) votes contrary to any decision issued by the parliamentary party to which he belongs or (c) abstains from voting in the house against party policy in relation to any bill. Such a member would be unable to retain his seat in the house through a procedure provided in the article.

Article 63-A has been retained in the Legal Framework Order with certain modifications making its application on limited but more substantive issues. A member will attract provision of defection if he (a) resigns from membership of his party or joins another parliamentary party or (b) votes or abstains from voting in the house contrary to any direction issued by the parliamentary party to which he belongs in relation to: (i) election of the prime minister or the chief minister or (ii) vote of confidence or vote of no-confidence or (iii) a money bill.

The LFO provision to exclude from party whip matters like party constitution, party discipline, code of conduct and violation of party policies is fraught with dangers of creating fissures in the party. There would virtually be free voting on all matters except election of the prime minister, vote of confidence or no-confidence and money bill. Such a situation would entail problems for the parties in the implementation of their election manifestos and in keeping the members under party discipline.

However, in certain instances a large scale defection of members or formation a major group in the party results in party split. According to the Indian constitution if the strength of such a group accounts for not less than one-third of the parliamentary party such members would not be disqualified.

Party defections or splits within the parties are not confined to this part of the world alone. The British parliament is also hit by defection of members from time to time. Three conservative party members of the House of Commons including Alan Howarth and Ms. Emma Nicholson defected to Labour and Liberal Democrats in October and December 1995. They were unhappy about the state of their party and had their personal frustration. The common thread was that no one at the top of the Tory party was listening to their complaints. However both took the step without having secured any promises about their future political prospects or seats. According to a report both said that they would not be standing again in their existing constituencies.

In 1994-95 two senators and over half a dozen congressmen as well as dozens of local legislators shifted from Democrats to the Republicans. A kind of change of parties at minor scale continues from time to time among the Senators and Congressmen.

According to the record of the British Parliament except for the House of 1964-66 and 1983-87 there is no other parliament from the year 1900 to 1997 that did not witness members changing parties, becoming independents or facing withdrawal of party whips. Even celebrated leaders like Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan faced withdrawal of party whips in parliament of 1900-1904 and 1935-45 respectively. In addition to the floor crossings, there are scores of instances of ex-MPs, after an interval out of parliament, returning to the house under a designation basically different from the one under which they had previously sat. The number includes W. Churchill who sat in the parliament of 1900-4 as conservative and remained Liberal from 04-1922. He again became Conservative in 1924. The number of the MPs changing parties during the tenure of the parliaments ranged from one (1950-51) to 30 (1981-82).

As many as 23 Liberal members broke with the party in the parliament of 1929-31 to form the Liberal National Group. A further six Liberals became independent Liberals while 15 Labour members under R. MacDonald formed the National Labour Group.

Only a few defectors have done better in subsequent elections in Britain. All but four of the 30 defectors to the SDP in 1981-82 were defeated in the 1983 election. The uncertain political future of the defectors is a big disincentive to the MPs with further political ambitions. According to a newspaper the most likely defectors are disillusioned and personally frustrated mavericks.

Defectors in America have also not generally proved popular with their new parties. Their uncertain political future is a big disincentive to the MPs with further political ambitions. Ordinary members of the new party see defectors with much more suspicion than the national leaderships.

In our country despite the low level of literacy rate, turncoats fade out fast from the political scene. A brilliant politician and lawyer from the NWFP, Syed Iftikhar Gilani, met a crushing defeat in the October 10 polls. He moved from the PPP to the PML-N and PML-Q. A former governor of Punjab, Mr Ghulam Mustafa Khar, has also paid the price for switching parties. Speaking to a television network the other day he made no bones about his being in political wilderness after leaving his party (PPP). Some others are,however, getting some very good false starts. But they find little respect among the general masses and their former as well as new party members.

What is NATO for?

In the end, they solved the problem of Alexander Lukashenko’s determination to attend the Prague summit of NATO by simply refusing him a visa.

Lukashenko, the president and in practice the dictator of Belarus, reacted in typical fashion by threatening the richer countries to the west: “Europeans...will crawl and ask for our cooperation on drugs trafficking and illegal immigration. If the Europeans don’t pay, we will not protect Europe from these flows.”

He would have preserved his dignity better if he had recalled Groucho Marx’s famous dictum: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” The same applies to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who was also refused a visa for Prague by Czech president Vaclav Havel after the US government alleged that he recently sold an advanced radar system to Iraq. But here’s the odd thing: they’d both join NATO if they could.

Seven former Communist nations — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria — are lined up to join the alliance at this summit, which will bring its membership up to 26 countries. Russia already has a permanent security partnership with NATO, though President Vladimir Putin is conscious enough of Russia’s dignity to stay away from a session that is admitting three former republics of the Soviet Union as members. Even China has recently expressed an interest in creating some kind of Russian-style strategic relationship with NATO.

Not bad going for an alliance that was supposed to lose its relevance after the reason it was originally created for — to oppose Soviet expansionism in the Cold War — lost all meaning with the collapse of Communist rule in Europe post-1989. So what is it actually for nowadays?

It’s easy to understand why the ex-Communist countries want to join: membership means they are part of ‘the West’ and no longer in the Russian sphere of influence. This is psychologically importance for Eastern European countries that spent decades under Soviet domination even though Russia is no longer a threat to them (and would probably join NATO itself if it could). But it hardly defines NATO: the seven countries that are joining this year have no more people than Spain, and a joint economic weight no greater than Belgium’s.

The bluntest description of NATO’s real purpose, uttered in 1949 by Lord Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary-general, was that it existed “for three reasons: to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” That made sense at a time when Europeans were afraid that the Soviet Union might attack, were equally afraid that the Americans might go home and abandon them to their fate, and still lived in fear of a reunited Germany.

But most of this is now ancient history. Germany has been reunited for ten years, but poses no threat whatever to its neighbours. The Soviet Union is long gone, and though Russia’s sheer size still makes it hard to imagine integrating it into NATO or the European Union, it is certainly not a threat or an enemy. So what is NATO for in 2002?

The official answer is that NATO is now America’s staunchest ally in the ‘war against terror’, and the West’s principal vehicle for military interventions beyond the North Atlantic area. It is, however, a somewhat decrepit vehicle for this purpose, as NATO Secretary-General George Robertson told a seminar in Brussels two weeks ago. “There are two million troops in uniform in Europe, half a million more than the Americans, but only a fraction are deployable,” he complained. Lord Robertson went on to point out that the US has 250 large transport planes to move troops around the planet, while the European members of NATO have just eleven. Other invidious comparisons of the same sort followed.

But there was an unasked question behind all this rhetoric: just why would the European members of NATO want to fly large numbers of their troops to the far corners of the Earth? The ‘war on terror’ would be the most common answer in Washington these days, but that doesn’t really make sense: terrorists are civilians living among other civilians, and conventional military forces are only rarely the appropriate instrument to use against them. Police forces and intelligence services are generally a great deal more useful.—Copyright

As EU faces new division

WHEN changes long prepared are finally put into effect, it is often the case that what was once seen as critical now appears mainly as a set of solutions to the problems of the past. Worthwhile though the changes may be, they do not answer many of the needs of the present.

That is certainly true of the expansion which Nato celebrated recently and of the enlargement which the European Union will embark on next month. The two processes will give Europe and the Atlantic community a formal unity very nearly complete geographically, a unity which was a dream only 20 years ago. But it comes at a time when the Atlantic alliance is uncertain of its role, or even of its importance, and when the EU faces new divisions and difficulties.

The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, described in a recent speech “the world of fairy tales” into which he was catapulted by the end of the cold war, and “the hard fall to earth” which followed. Havel’s has been an intense form, at the level of high office, of the common European and American experience. The hardest bump of that hard fall was represented by September 11, but there were many before it.

Just to take his own country, Czechoslovakia itself disappeared during Havel’s time as president, and its peoples went from wishing to embrace everything western to a glum sense that there is no alternative. Less than half of the citizens of the Czech Republic, according to a poll earlier this year, think membership of the EU will be a good thing.

Across eastern Europe the poll results are similar or not much better, and only a residual fear of Russia props up the higher figures in favour of Nato membership. Such negative trends are parallelled in western Europe, where there has been a widespread loss of interest in Nato, and where disenchantment with the EU is a fact of everyday life. Germans out for the weekend travel many miles to a small town which had the ingenuity to restore the deutsche mark as its local currency, a form of nostalgia tourism which may be partly a joke, but it is a joke with its serious side.

Polls east and west, of course, record the European propensity to complain and need some discounting. They may not be representative of what people will choose when it really matters, although we will have a better measure of that when eastern Europeans vote in their referendums on membership. But they are not reassuring.

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, presiding over the convention on Europe’s constitutional future, wants to make Europe a juridical entity, so that we will all be both citizens of Europe and of our own countries. But we would be dismayed if even a shallow sort of poll showed that 43 per cent of French, or German, or British, citizens did not think that France, Germany or Britain was a good thing.

But it is at this supposedly more secure level of national identity that worrying signs can also be seen. There is a new volatility in the politics of many European countries, a new weakness in their economies and a new wilfulness on the part of some European leaders. More than the usual political cycle is at work when long-established parties shrink overnight and when new parties and political alliances grow like mushrooms after the rain.

In Britain, there is an unnatural one-party dominance which recent Conservative Party troubles have confirmed and which the Liberal Democrats Party will not easily redress. In France, Chirac and the French right are consolidating on the basis of their accidental victory earlier this year, while the left, which should have been in government if there were any justice in the world, watches in irritation and perplexity.

In Italy, Berlusconi’s extraordinary takeover of the Italian state reached a new point this month when the legislature passed a law transparently intended to invalidate serious charges against the prime minister and his associates. In Germany, a substantial portion of the electorate, enraged by taxes that went unmentioned in the campaign, now sees Schroeder as having won his narrow victory in the elections by trickery. In Spain, the government’s attempt to solve the Basque problem by banning Batasuna has provoked a crisis not only there but in Catalonia as well.

What connects these rather different situations is the sense that politics in these countries is in a less than healthy state. It is true that in the Netherlands and Austria, on the other hand, normal politics is being restored after the new parties which shot into power there lost much of their support. But the overall picture across a number of major countries is still worrying.

The manoeuvrings on the international level to which these national developments have contributed are also disturbing. Schroeder, for instance, is to be criticized not for opposing US policy on Iraq, but for opposing it, as far as can be seen, without any sense of the weight of what he was doing. There were ways of reserving his position on Iraq which would not have discarded, as a result of a momentary electoral calculation, a half century of trust between the US and Germany. But that more discreet approach would not have cornered the extra handful of votes he thought he needed. Schroeder has gone on from that to discard Germany’s progressive position on reform of the common agricultural policy, his irresponsibility in that respect being shared by Jacques Chirac, whose purpose seems to be to push France’s short-term interests to the fore in every field. Tony Blair, whose rather clever balancing of good relationships with nearly every other western leader has been thus upset, has been wilful in another way, by following, or at least appearing to follow, a policy of unqualified support of the Bush administration.

Europe’s difficulties, at a more fundamental level, are the consequence of its uncertainty about what role America will play in its future. Throughout the history of the European project, the idea of America as the necessary partner, whether in security, trade, economic organization or culture, has always been present, co-existing with the drive to assert Europe’s interests and to define Europe “against” the US.

September 11 and now Iraq have divided Europeans in ways less obvious than the usual picture of Britain on side with the Americans and everybody else aghast would suggest. In Europe’s Mediterranean belt, for example, as well as opposition to American policy, there are views of the Islamic world and of the war against terror not that different from those of the American right. Giscard’s pronouncement on the inadmissibility of Turkey taps a broader reservoir of feelings about Europe’s essence.

The American role is blurred, too, in economics, because the European problem, after Enron, is that the welfare capitalism that was one of its greatest achievements is no longer working well, especially in Germany — but the Anglo-American “reforms” urged on it seem ever more dubious. Europe has never been less certain than at a moment which should have been its greatest triumph.—Dawn-Guardian Service.

Preaching democracy

BELIEVE it or not, the State Department has a division dedicated solely to converting dictatorships to American Democracy.

Harvey Cable is a member of the team and has just been sent to Afghanistan to show the new leaders how our system works.

I take you to Kabul.

Harvey is speaking to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. “You must have honest elections so the people will have faith in your country.”

Karzai nods and replies, “We’ve never had an honest election.”

“First you have to have foolproof voting hardware. I have been instructed by President Bush to supply Afghanistan with thousands of voting machines.”

Karzai says, “I read that they don’t work.”

“They still have a few bugs in them, but I’m sure you people will work them out. Now the most important thing in a free election is money. You can’t have an election without it.”

“How much?”

“Millions and millions of dollars. There is no such thing as enough money in a political campaign.”

Karzai says, “How do I raise it?”

“You’re the president. You go around the country and tell your countrymen that if they don’t give you money the other party will win.”

“Wait a minute,” Karzai says. “My people are poor and can hardly afford it.”

“That isn’t where the big money will come from. It will come from lobbyists.”

“What’s a lobbyist?”

“It’s someone who tells the elected officials how they should vote. For example, the lobbyist representing the opium industry will inform you how he wants you to vote on poppy subsidies. Lobbyists are what make the election process in America so fair.”

Karzai says, “I read in the Kabul Times that the American legislators voted not to allow anyone to give them money.”

Harvey says, “That was just a joke. Hamid, if you are going to have an honest election you have to know the difference between hard money and soft money. Soft money is the best because it’s given for favours. Congress passed a law against soft money, but it has more holes in it than there are caves in the Tora Bora mountains.”

“The trouble is we don’t have states. We have provinces and tribes ruled by warlords. I don’t think they would go for a free election or even give money to the candidates. How can we win an election against the warlords?”

“You can play hardball like we do in the states. If we don’t agree with someone in an American election, we put a dirty commercial on the air.”

“Like what?”

“You say Ismail Khan, your opponent from Herat, uses torture, rapes women and beats people who won’t vote for him. You’re only telling the truth.”

“I don’t mind making a dirty commercial, but there is only one trouble with that. We have very few sets to show them on.”

“I’m sure President Bush will give you all the television sets you need.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cable. You have shown us the way.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services