Five years of Musharraf regime

How to weigh those achievements. The President and Prime Minister claim credit for having stabilised the state finances, certified by over $ 12 billion monetary reserves and IMF-WB's chits of good economic behaviour. Their political achievements -- betrayal of Taliban, joining President Bush's Afghanistan campaign and War on Terror, carrying on a war of terror of his own etc -- have won praise from Bush, Powell and American generals.

How can the people judge a government can only be by assessing what it delivers? What has Musharraf-Shaukat Aziz duo delivered? Government claims have been noted: economy's stabilisation and turning around; it has been ready to take off now -- for all of three years, though this take off has not yet happened. Or people would have noticed it. What the ordinary people see is a big economic deficit for the nation: despite government claims, prices of daily use commodities keep rising steeply. The other side of this inflationary picture is the shrinking Rupee. Something has happened in the year 2004 that the upcreep of prices of all these years has spectacularly escalated, with prices of food items having risen by over 14 per cent. Not that the other prices are not steadily rising. Then, there is the rapidly growing poverty. It has no agreed figure, of course. The government claims it is around 34 to 35, while international organisations talk about 40 to 45 per cent and random non-official surveys suggest 50 to 60 per cent of population being actually below the povertyline. It manifests in growing mass unemployment, with social evils that result from poverty.

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Government claims of economic successes are genuine in terms of the quasi-religion of free markets. Country's economy managers are fanatical devotees of this religion. While heavy de-estabilisation results from inflation as also in unending depreciation of national currency, they see no problem. It is not a managed float of the Rupee. The daily descent of the Rupee is intentional -- letting the market determine. WB, ADB and many other countries are giving large amounts for poverty alleviation. Mind you the original formulation alleviation and not eradication. In distant future, a desired 10 per cent growth rate would somehow reduce poverty to an acceptable level. Acceptable to whom? To the government, of course. The people have to put up with daily happenings. They should somehow remain content that everything is honky dory; don't they see the monetary reserves are at $ 12 billion?

The President and the Prime Minister continue appealing for cooperation -- for what? In fighting terror and improving law and order -- by becoming responsible for their own security. At least the residents of Karachi metropolis have started buying their own security, though the three major crimes -- robberies, car jackings and kidnapping for ransom, not to mention a growing rate of murders -- are still growing at a rate that would be unacceptable in Chad. People who go to mosques are now frisked before entering the holy portals; far too many sectarian attacks on various mosques and Imambaras keep taking place. There has been recent growth in terror attacks all over the country. They bespeak the government's primary failure of maintaining law and order, let alone anything more like the rule of law. The point is that crime graph is rising rapidly all over the country.

The government is bravely battling the holy warriors of yester years in South Waziristan and elsewhere in the country. Foreign militants were the people brought in by ISI and CIA to fight the godless Commies in Afghanistan in 1980s. What the contribution of that Jihad is well-known: Klashnikov and heroin culture, sectarian terrorism and rise of crime syndicates as well as enrichment of religious political parties with suspected narco funds. The Americans may have won a famous victory over the Soviets but Pakistan is still paying for it.

Islamabad's War on Terrorism against domestic sectarian terrorists and those holy warriors in South Waiziristan, has not yet been won; this war has not impaired the ability of terrorists to strike at the time and place of their choosing. Well over 170 Pakistani soldiers have died in South Waziristan. The terrorists' spectacular attacks on minority targets in Multan, Sialkot and Lahore show that the victory is still far. But the spectacular rise of crime began when the Soldier of Islam, Ziaul Haq ruled and has kept on growing through the controlled democracy of the 1990s. What does it show?

It is government's inability to perform its primary function of maintaining law and order and providing justice to its citizens. Pertinently the crime's growth has registered a steeper rise in the Musharraf years. The government expenditure on security has been rising steadily year after year. Indeed Pakistan has been a national security state par excellence. And yet security is what the citizens actually lack. They fear criminals. As for the security establishment, the people fear its corruption even more. More than half the dacoities in Karachi are not reported to the police for the fear of a second robbery -- extortion by the police. The question is persistent: Why is Authority failing in its primary duty of maintaining order and administration of justice. The only valid answer is: Authority is unable to tackle this problem because it lacks legitimacy.

There is yet another category of terrorists. They are regional nationalists, especially active in Balochistan and at the tri-junction of three provinces of Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab. They are fighting for their right of having more autonomous Provincial Governments. This war has gone on for long and the government intends building a series of military cantonments in Balochistan. Emphasis is on Mekran coast where a new deep seaport (Gwadar) has been built. The locals are furious that all the new jobs are expected to go to people from outside -- from Punjab not to put too fine point on it. This is a persistent and growing disaffection; it is like a slow-burning fuse of a wider conflagration. Worse can be feared. And yet no political approach or healing touch is in evidence, though Pakistan's future can be affected critically.

People do ask the question about the political system's legitimacy. Do the people own it as their own? Do they regard it as responsive to their needs? Has it been made with their help and for their purposes? The answer to all these related questions is in the negative. That is the heart of the tragedy.

The 'system' is headed by a government servant, still on Army's active list who took over through a coup d'etat. After the coup he has draped himself in democratic raiment. He held a laughable referendum and proclaimed himself a validly elected President of Pakistan for five years, although he had already moved into the President House by pushing Rafiq Tarar out. Then, he enacted many far-reaching constitutional amendments that echoed what other military dictators had always wanted: absolute power in the showpiece political system to foreigners. He held an election on that basis in which most votes were secured by PPP and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League.

Thus elected parliament has had its legitimacy widely questioned for the fairness of the polls and spooks' role in it. The government formed to represent it was by an entirely new party comprising mainly defectors from Nawaz League and over 20 from the PPP. Even so its original majority was of one vote, though it later accumulated more defectors. The system runs the country the way Gen. Musharraf wills it. All can see it is a one man show. That saps their confidence in the usefulness of the entire political game. A wave of cynicism has overtaken the populace.

Background for the rise of the crime rate is this: When petty criminals see the top general can seize power because of his firepower, why should not others do the same in their restricted spheres by harming the weak? It is these two deficits -- in economy and political system -- that are responsible for most ills. For one thing the political system is neither straightforward Martial Law -- acknowledged emergency step outside the law altogether -- nor it is simple democracy without adjectives. It is an ugly hybrid.

There is a contradiction: despite a basically authoritarian regime, the press and media are relatively free. This is superficial and relative freedom. It does not prevent the information overlord Shaikh Rasheed Ahmed from threatening the entire media with a terrorism of government's own. Perhaps this is so because (a) the press did struggle and managed to acquire a degree of independence over a long period; and (b) the system is a hybrid, neither the fish of Martial Law nor the fowl of democracy nor good red herring of the rule of law. Even so the media's relative freedom is under serious threat.

People ask questions: what are they getting in return for the taxes they have anyhow to pay? What does the government deliver? Since its delivery is so unsatisfactory, the people do not respond to what it says or wants. They also ask what price will Pakistan pay for this military takeover? They saw to the loss of East Pakistan as a result of Ayub Khan's takeover and the present conditions as a legacy of Zia. What will Musharraf cost despite the US need of him today?

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.