Plain Words
New government and the challenges
IT is too early to speculate about the next government and its chances. Polls ended on Monday evening, and not all the results are available at this writing. One settles for unavoidable challenges facing the state, leaving reflection on its prospects for next time.
Remember the earlier accusations of pre, during and post-poll rigging? Few believe that so long as President Pervez Musharraf remains in charge a free election is impossible. Since his own future is at stake, Musharraf was bound to ensure a victory for his friends. Opposition parties assume that the poll results can only confirm his plans. There are sure to be charges of rigging; people have to examine such claims.
The election's circumstances have to be noted. There were severe shortages of wheat, flour, pulses, meat, electricity, gas and almost everything of daily use, and the prices went through the roof. Many accuse connivance of erstwhile rulers with hoarders and profiteers.
Some claim that this government was of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. It achieved the goal of enriching the rich by making the poor poorer. Can the next government meet the challenge of bringing down, or even holding, the prices of electricity, petrol, other utility charges and foodstuffs? Unless it brings the inflationary pressures down, the stability of the economy can be destroyed and, combined with possible political agitations, it can lead to catastrophe.
The government is being formed amidst a badly fractured politics. There are three major parties and three or four quasi-major parties, each important in a particular region. Common solutions to common problems that are galore are sure to remain elusive. While some are temporary, other problems are of longstanding nature. Fundamental ones have never been resolved. All demand attention, and major political parties differ on the solutions. There is much acrimony, and distrust of one another.
There is the immediate question of what to do with detained judges and lawyers. Reforms to undo what Gen. Musharraf did on November 3 last are urgently needed. Constitutional distortions need to be amended away. Gagging measures against electronic media and press need immediate withdrawal.
Innumerable "disappearances" and the two insurgencies call for immediate corrective action. In this context, former Gen. Pervez Musharraf should be held accountable for illegal actions and constitutional deviations and distortions. The choice of doing the right thing, or settling for continuing with President Musharraf in order to oblige America and Nato powers and the army, is a false one.
Associated with the foregoing is the Pakistan military's dominant role. Politicians gullibly say that the army should be sent back to the barracks. Examined closely, only one major politician says this today; it is PML (N) that may be trusted to ensure that the army goes back to barracks. This process will not be easy. It may be long.
Opposition politicians frequently exploit the army's itch for power because it is always in need of more resources. Which is why it takes over and uses power-hungry politicians. This has to be prevented. A convention has to be evolved whereby politicians and generals do not socialise.
Islamic extremism of the Taliban and al-Qaeda kind, now making waves in Pakistan's northwest and major urban centres, is an urgent problem. A national strategy has to be evolved. Bound up with it is the need to review Pakistan's Afghan policy, involving reassessment of relations with America. Islamic extremism is basically a problem for Pakistanis to sort out.
No one is, or can be, against Islam in Pakistan. But the kind of Islam now being thrust upon the country is not the Islam to which most Pakistanis subscribe. It is a sectional one, and that too of a very small segment. Major religious parties have adequately represented Islam for most Muslims. They have sufficed since the colonial period. There is no new conflict over Islam. That is the starting point. After that, the issue has to be sorted out through democratic reforms, providing economic justice and development to tribal areas, to begin with.
The second big question, never resolved, is about regional nationalisms. In theory, its solution is known, easy, and is there; accept the federal principle. But the Pakistan Federation has been highly centralised, and provincial governments are scarcely more than municipalities.
The real power rests with the centre in terms of who actually makes important decisions and exercises taxation powers. Except the fiction of provincial taxes, Islamabad keeps the real taxation in its own hands. That is not acceptable to political opinion in Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan. Sindh has been restive; three or four uprisings and military crackdowns have taken place in Balochistan, and the ongoing political turmoil in the NWFP's tribal areas is related both to the New Islam and the violation of federal principle.
The question was theoretically resolved in 1973 through Z.A. Bhutto's Constitution. But the problem here is that he and his successors never lived by this Constitution. A patchwork of emergency and dishonestly intended constitutional amendments has controlled this 1973 Constitution. Two military dictators have disfigured it one way, and one prime minister having a "heavy mandate" tried to amend it another way. Happily, he now thinks it was a mistake.
The issue can be resolved if Islamabad, GHQ and feudal gentry accept the federal principle by enhancing the Constitution's provisions for provincial autonomy.
Who can forget the rampant feudal mentality and the growing absentee landlordism? Sthe solution for feudal mentality is the untrammeled working of democratic dispensation over time. Actual enjoyment of fundamental human rights is the precondition. But it is not the only one. The rich-poor divide and social insecurity of the majority need to be drastically reduced.
As for the rich-poor divide, the first thing to do is to change the decades old economic paradigm that originated in Washington Consensus. Pakistanis should evolve their own economic paradigm specifically for Pakistan. Ensuring steady economic development with a humane face is the requirement. The first priority is ending mass poverty upfront.
The old trickle-down theory of development has produced the current volatile condition. It has been a fraud, and what trickles down is poverty. Pakistan is rich enough in economists to write a new set of objections.
A review of Pakistan's Afghan policy cannot wait. The lingering one actually aims at dominating Afghanistan sometime to make it serve Pakistan's security ends by adding strategic depth to it. This has failed. It will now put Pakistan in confrontation with America and Nato among others.
Anyway, it is morally wrong and politically dangerous. Reassessing it will entail a new relationship with America. There is no call to become inimical to America. It is too big and powerful a country to alienate or be close to. Let Pakistan and America remain friends but maintain a distance, and emphasise economic and cultural cooperation. Also involved is a new India policy based on primacy to regional cooperation and strengthening Saarc. If necessary, bring in China and Iran into it to make it co-terminus with most of southern Asia, leaving aside the Gulf Sheikhdoms and SE Asia that are too different to be a part of Saarc and are US-dominated withal.
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