Voting For Change

Ayaz Amir's first article after his election (he won with the single largest vote in entire Punjab i.e. 100,000+).

Retreat into folly or the dawn of wisdom?
Islamabad diary

Friday, February 22, 2008
Ayaz Amir



"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" --Cromwell dismissing the Rump Parliament in April 1653.

No words are more apt to our present situation. Pervez Musharraf (what had we done to deserve him?) has been the biggest disaster to hit Pakistan since that other great saviour who in his time bestrode the national scene, Gen Yahya Khan. To Yahya at least goes the credit of doing his demolition job in two and a half years. Musharraf has been at it for 3-4 times that period, his extended demolition job shaking the country to its foundations.

But is he listening? The people of Pakistan have given him and his army of flunkeys the order of the boot but he wants to soldier on. Yahya wanted to continue as president even after the loss of East Pakistan. Musharraf wants to cling to the presidency no matter how comprehensive his humiliation on Feb 18.

Bleeding hearts and assorted do-gooders, of whom there is no shortage in this country, are pleading with him to do the decent thing and quit. They might as well be pleading to the mountains. He'll go, that's for sure, but he'll have to be taken to the exit door kicking and screaming. Pakistan's self-declared 'strongmen, cardboard affairs most of them, washed their hands off a sense of dignity a long time ago.

But let's not bother ourselves too much about someone who is already yesterday's person. The country has to step into the future because the past is no option at all. The call to restore the deposed justices is getting stronger. The Black Coats will not rest until that is achieved. That is the best medicine Musharraf can get. Meanwhile if he chooses to twist in the wind, let him.

But what's with our politicos? Haven't they learned their lessons? Why did Asif Zardari have to go calling on the American ambassador? It's easy to say Musharraf should cultivate a sense of dignity. How about our leading political lights cultivating a sense of propriety? Musharraf's great fault was he couldn't think for himself and allowed our American friends to do his thinking for him. Which only goes to underscore the irony that just when the people of Pakistan are showing Musharraf the exit door, another bunch of politicos are receiving political tutorials from our American godfathers.

Come on, comrades, enough of these games. It is the people of Pakistan, not citizens of America, who have given the PPP the commanding position in these elections. Time our leaders learned to listen to their own people. Flirting with America at this time is simply the wrong signal to send. Circumstances have pushed Zardari into a position where the nation expects him to conduct himself like a statesman. Power games divorced completely from principle are the last thing the people of Pakistan want at this point.

So what should happen or, in Lenin's evocative words (which still have a fire to them after all these years), 'what is to be done'? No need to invoke the higher gods of mathematics to arrive at the conclusion that the PPP and the PML-N should come to a broad understanding about how jointly to shoulder the burden of restoring democracy and erecting a stable political order. Being the largest party the PPP should form the government at the centre, even if it doesn't have a majority. The PML-N should support this government but not sit in it. The PPP should rely on PML-N support rather than on the support of dubious allies (whom there is no point in naming).

The PML-N should form the government in Punjab and the PPP should support this government but without demanding any ministries. We can thus have unity of command (remember the phrase?) both at the centre and in the largest province, Punjab. The PML-N's natural choice for Punjab CM will be Shahbaz Sharif, although I hope this time round he relies less on the Punjab bureaucracy (one of the surest roads to hell) and more on his own party.

The PPP having won a majority in Sindh should form the government in that province, with or without drinking from the poisoned chalice of the MQM. Although I suspect it will continue with the time-tested tradition of choosing the most pliable yes-man (another Abdullah Shah) as chief minister. The ANP plus whichever party it can get on board should call the shots in the Frontier. Why not Asfandyar as CM? His party the ANP has always been a great one for resounding but vacuous rhetoric. Time it got down to the less exciting but more important task of administration.

The Q League, if it survives in any form, can try its hand at governance in Balochistan (and make a hash of it).

Sounds too complicated? It really isn't. Provided Zardari keeps his head and doesn't kowtow to American advice too much (the Americans having their own agenda and wanting Pakistan to remain stuck along the Afghan border), and provided Nawaz Sharif doesn't get too desperate to augment his strength by reaching out to every Q League turncoat available in the political bazaar, there's no reason why this extended coalition arrangement should not work.

We need the politics of peace, not the politics of confrontation, best achieved by the two parties working in tandem rather than at cross-purposes. As for Musharraf, he is best ignored. If he hasn't the sense to plan his own exit, he leaves himself no choice except to endure a form of Chinese water torture. If he is so inclined, who is to stop him?

Zardari and Sharif should concentrate on the essential tasks of governance, but without getting into each other's hair. A national government (which means both parties sharing cabinet positions) will be a disaster because there will be too many horses galloping in different directions, and we don't have a Churchill or a de Gaulle to preside over one. So a minority PPP government at the centre sustained by PML-N support is the next best alternative.

National minister of comic relief can be everyone's favourite holy father, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, tragically rejected by the voters of D I Khan (he's made it to the National Assembly via another constituency in Bannu) but still in a position to elicit a smile whenever his name is mentioned. The MQM, Musharraf's hottest ally, has some mental adjustment to do after the generalissimo's discomfiture. But this should not be too difficult a task for party supremo, and undisputed king of the long-distance telephonic address, Mr Altaf Hussain, who has a reputation for political flexibility.

But what if our American friends have their way and prevail upon Zardari to keep his distance from Nawaz Sharif? The PML-N should still play it cool, forming the provincial government in Lahore and giving voice to popular aspirations at the centre, becoming the great champion of the rule of law and the restoration of the judges but without injecting any acrimony into national discourse.

The last thing we need at this juncture is a descent into the chaos of the 1990s. Let both parties display maturity although it still must be said that the greater responsibility devolves on the PPP because it is in most danger of being yanked around by the Americans.

We must learn to think for ourselves. The Americans are in a mess themselves and their great agenda for Pakistan is that we should remain part of their mess, which is their idea of how best to conduct 'the war on terror'. Pakistan's political leadership is on trial and the next few days will show whether it has learned from its experiences and mistakes at all or, as a nation, we are destined to keep repeating the follies of the past.

Email: chakwal@comsats.net.pk

(http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=97566)

#523 Posted by SR on February 23, 2008 10:53:06 am


why else would al Lah not strike you down with a thunderbolt.


The reason I haven't struck down allah with a thunderbolt is for his entertainment value...

Re: # 400

Bulleya

A good analysis indeed. As you say the main factor in favour of the N was hatred for Mush and Nawaz Shareef posed the real opposition to him. But the question is how can N put through its agenda in the present set-up with Mush wielding the sword of 58(2)-B coupled with his hand-picked SC.

What a scenario this Pakiland is presenting today is beyond comprehension - with the CJ, Iftikhar Choudhary, languishing in house arrest along with his family while Nawaz Shareef, apparently, the most deadly opposition to Mush is vying for power.

Re: # 518 proxy servers

Thanx...

(I always suspected you HH had some usefulness ... why else would al Lah not strike you down with a thunderbolt...?)

I take no pleasure in saying this. Islam and democracy are incompatible. It is like holding the Mein Kampf as the guiding light for the majority of the citizens, and then wanting to have democracy. It is a contradiction in terms.

Reminds of the poor Bangladeshis. The well meaning amongst them (and there are many) want a Bengali language "revolution" in their country. They insist on speaking correct Bengali on their TV channels. But when naming their children, they HAVE to resort to bedouin names - never a Bengali name.

It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.

link

#487 dost_mittar:

[A Muslim man can marry a non-muslim woman without her converting to islam as long as the contract (nikah) stipulates that the children would be raised as muslims.]


Exactly.

or try this(as usual, make sure the line breaks/spaces inserted by chowk are removed.)

https://aniscartujo.com/webproxy/default.aspx?prx=http://www.youtub e.com

#488 Posted by SR on February 22, 2008 10:00:50 pm



My ISP has notified me that Pakistan government has banned YouTube from Pakistan because of "objectionable material" on it. This objectionable material is not of the political variety. It is religious.


Try a free proxy service.

http://www.freeproxy.ru/en/free_proxy/cgi-proxy.htm

Have you tried searching "getting around youtube blocking" on google?

#495 Posted by tahmed32 on February 23, 2008 2:50:01 am


the motto of "unity, faith and discipline"


prophetboy, the new motto has jihad by the way of allah at the end...

#514 Posted by tahmed32,

Agreed.

#515 Posted by tahmed32,

Reverting to Sahiwal was however correct. That was the original name.

#513 As do many other Pakistanis. Lyall actually had a hand in establishing the development that became Lyallpur (as I recall reading somewhere). Shah Faisal was just that - a king of a foreign country. In Rawalpindi, Topi Park became Ayub Park..and now Ayub is hardly a hero. Murree Road became Reza Shah Pehlavi Road - and is still Murree Road, and Shah Reza is disgraced.

zeemax: I also think you are wrong in comparing ANP to MQM - the former stood with the Pakistani people in their struggle against dictatorship. The latter came out with guns and killed peaceful demonstrators in support of the dictatorship. This sets the two groups completely apart - ANP (like PML and PPP) has earned the right to be part of the democratic system, while MQM (like PMLQ which bashed the heads of lawyers taking to the streets, and MMA which sat on a fence) have earned no such right. And indeed, both MQM and PMLQ harbor individuals who committed crimes (including the murders of May 12) they should be charged with.

Fortunately, the clear victory and unity and wisdom shown to date by PPP, PML and ANP make it possible for the democratic forces in Pakistan to move forward while letting the individuals from these anti-democracy and pro-dictator groups (MQM, PMLQ and MMA) to now take the few seats they have in the NA and PAs. Shameless as they are..

#512 Posted by tahmed32m

I still call Lyallpur, Lyallpur.

zeemax #507 Changing historic names (as ANP is proposing to do in case of NWFP) is used by political parties who are focussed more on show than on substance in an attempt to get cheap popularity. In doing so, all they do is destroy a sense of continuity with the past. So for that reason alone I dont think this name change is a good idea. And your point about NWFP being more than just pakhtoons is quite valid.

Aside from this though, I think the ANP has come a long way. Its teaming up with PPP to form a coalition in NWFP (as it has now agreed, per Geo) represents I think a very positive move - it channels pakhtoon nationalism into something positive, namely pakhtun pride in their heritage (as every people have a right to be) combined with unity with the nation at large as well. The fact that ANP also replaces MMA in NWFP is a good thing too. :-)

Pakistan reborn?
William Dalrymple

Published 21 February 2008

5 comments Print version Listen RSS Confounding all predictions, the Pakistani people have clearly demonstrated that they want to choose their own rulers and decide their own future. There is a consensus from Lahore to Karachi


It has not been a good year for Pakistan. President Musharraf's sacking of the chief justice last spring, the lawyers' protests that rumbled on throughout the summer and the bloody storming of the Red Mosque in June, followed by a wave of hideous suicide bombings, all gave the impression of a country stumbling from bloody crisis to bloody crisis. By the autumn it had grown even worse. The military defeats suffered by the Pakistani army at the hands of pro-Taliban rebels in Waziristan, the declaration of a state of emergency and, finally, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto led many to predict that Pakistan was stumbling towards full-scale civil war and possibly even disintegration.

All this has of course been grist for the mill for the Pakistan-bashers. Martin Amis, typical of the current rash of instant experts on Islam, wrote recently: "We may wonder how the Islamists feel when they compare India to Pakistan, one a burgeoning democratic superpower, the other barely distinguishable from a failed state." In the run-up to the elections, the Washington Post, among many other commentators, was predicting that the poll would lead to a major international crisis.

That the election went ahead with no more violence and ballot-rigging than is considered customary in south Asian polls, and that a new government will apparently come to power peacefully, unopposed by Musharraf or the army, should now give pause for thought and a calmer reassessment of the country that many have long written off as a basket case.

Certainly, there is no question that during the past few years, and more pressingly since the death of Benazir Bhutto on 27 December last year, Pakistan has been struggling with an existential crisis. At the heart of this lay the central question: what sort of country did Pakistanis want? Did they want a western-style liberal democracy, as envisaged by Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah? An Islamic republic like Mullah Omar's Afghanistan? Or a military-ruled junta of the sort created by Generals Ayub Khan, Zia and Musharraf, and which has ruled Pakistan for 34 of its 60 years of existence?

That question now seems to have been resolved, at least temporarily. Like most other people given the option, Pakistanis clearly want the ability to choose their own rulers, and to determine their own future. The country I saw over the past few days on a long road trip from Lahore in the Punjab down through rural Sindh to Karachi was not a failed state, nor anything even approaching the "most dangerous country in the world".

It is true that frequent shortages of electricity made the country feel a bit like Britain during the winter of discontent, and I was told at one point that I should not continue along certain roads near the Bhutto stronghold of Larkana as there were dacoits (highwaymen) ambushing people after dark. But by and large, the countryside I passed through was calm, and not obviously less prosperous-looking than its subcontinental neighbour. It was certainly a far cry from the terminal lawlessness and instability of post-occupation Iraq or Afghanistan.

The infrastructure of the country is still in many ways better than that of India, and Pakistan still has the best airports and road network in the region. As for the economy, it may be in difficulties, with fast-rising inflation and shortages of gas, electricity and flour; but over the past few years the Pakistani economy has been growing almost as strongly as that of India. You can see the effects everywhere: in 2003 the country had fewer than three million cellphone users; today there are almost 50 million. Car ownership has been increasing at roughly 40 per cent a year since 2001; foreign direct investment has risen from $322m in 2001 to $3.5bn in 2006.

Pakistan is clearly not a country on the verge of civil war. Certainly it is a country at the crossroads, with huge economic and educational problems, hideous inequalities and serious unresolved questions about its future. There is much confusion and disillusion. There is also serious civil unrest, suicide bombings and an insurgency spilling out of the tribal areas on the Afghan border. But judging by the conversations I had, it is also a resilient country that now appears to recognise democracy as its best hope. On my recent travels I found an almost unanimous consensus that the mullahs should keep to their mosques and the military should return to their barracks, like their Indian counterpart. Much violence and unrest no doubt lie ahead. But Pakistan is not about to fall apart.

* * *

Elections in south Asia are treated by the people of the region as operating on a quite different basis from those in the west. In Pakistan, as in India, elections are not primarily about ideology or manifesto promises; instead, they are really about power and patronage.

For most voters, elections are about choosing candidates who can outbid their rivals by making a string of local promises that the electors hope they will honour once they get into office. Typically, a parliamentary candidate will go to a village and make promises or give money to one of the village elders, who will then distribute it among his bradari, or clan, which will then vote for the candidate en bloc. To win an election, the most important thing is to win over the elder of the most powerful clan in each village. As well as money, the elder might ask for various favours: a new tarmac road to the village or gas connections for his cousins. All this costs the candidate a considerable sum of money, which it is understood he must then recoup through corruption when he gets into office; this is why corruption is rarely an important election issue in Pakistan: instead, it is believed to be be an indispensable part of the system.

According to the conventional wisdom in Pakistan, only one thing can overrule loyalty to a clan, and that is loyalty to a zamindar (feudal landowner). Democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning has historically been the social base from which politicians emerge, especially in rural areas. Benazir Bhutto was from a feudal family in Sindh; so is Asif Zardari, her husband and current co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), as also is Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the most likely candidate for prime minister. The educated middle class - which in India gained control in 1947 - and even more so the rural peasantry, are still largely excluded from Pakistan's political process. There are no Pakistani equivalents of Indian peasant leaders such as Laloo Prasad Yadav, the village cowherd-turned-former chief minister of Bihar, or Mayawati, the Dalit (untouchable) leader and current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Instead, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan, the local feudal landowner could usually expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. As the writer Ahmed Rashid put it, "In some constituencies if the feudals put up their dog as a candidate, that dog would get elected with 99 per cent of the vote."

Such loyalty could be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars are said to have private prisons, and most of them have private armies. In the more remote and lawless areas there is also the possibility that the zamindars and their thugs will bribe or threaten polling agents, then simply stuff the ballot boxes with thousands of votes for themselves.

Yet this is now clearly beginning to change, and this change has been give huge impetus by the national polls. The election results show that the old stranglehold on Pakistani politics that used to reduce national polls to a kind of elective feudalism may finally be beginning to break down. In Jhang district of the rural Punjab, for example, as many as ten of the 11 winning candidates are from middle-class backgrounds: sons of revenue officers, senior policemen, functionaries in the civil bureaucracy and so on, rather than the usual zamindars.

The Punjab is the richest and most developed part of rural Pakistan; but even in backward Sindh there are signs of change, too. Khairpur, on the banks of the Indus, is the heartland of exactly the sort of unreformed local landowners who epitomise the stereotype painted by metropolitan Pakistani sophisticates when they roll their eyes and talk about "the feudals". Yet even here, members of the local middle class have just stood successfully for election against the local zamindars.

Nafisa Shah is the impeccably middle-class daughter of a local lawyer promoted in the PPP by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s; she is currently at Oxford doing a PhD in honour killings. She was standing in the same constituency as Sadruddin Shah, who is often held up as the epitome of feudal excess, and who went electioneering with five pick-up trucks full of his private militia, armed with pump-action shotguns.

As you drive along the bypass his face, complete with Dick Dastardly moustache, sneers down from hoardings placed every 50 yards along the road. In the past week the local press had been full of stories of his men shooting at crowds of little boys shouting pro-Benazir slogans. Shah was standing, as usual, for no fewer than three different seats; this time, however, to the amazement of locals, the PhD student and her PPP allies have all but wiped out Shah and his fellow candidates of the PML-Functional, so that Shah himself won only in his own home town.

Even the most benign feudal lords suffered astonishing reverses. Mian Najibuddin Owaisi was not just the popular feudal lord of the village of Khanqah Sharif in the southern Punjab, he was also the sajjada nasheen, the descendant of the local Sufi saint, and so regarded as a holy man as well as the local landowner. But recently Najibuddin made the ill-timed switch from supporting Nawaz Sharif's PML-N to the pro-Musharraf Q-league. Talking to the people in the bazaar before the election, his followers announced that they did not like Musharraf, but they would still vote for their landlord:

"Prices are rising," said Haji Sadiq, the cloth salesman, sitting amid bolts of textiles. "There is less and less electricity and gas."

"And what was done to Benazir was quite wrong," agreed his friend Salman.

"But Najib Sahib is our protector," said the haji. "Whatever party he chooses, we will vote for him. Even the Q-league."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because with him in power we have someone we can call if we are in trouble with the police, or need someone to speak to the adminstration," he said.

"When we really need him he looks after us."

"We vote according to local issues only. Who cares about parties?"

Because of Najibuddin's personal popularity, his vote stood up better than many other pro-Musharraf feudals and he polled 38,000 votes. But he still lost, to an independent candidate from a non-feudal, middle-class background named Amir Waran, who took 59,000 votes and ousted the Owaisi family from control of the constituency for the first time since they entered politics in the elections of 1975.

* * *

If the power of Pakistan's feudals is beginning to be whittled away, in the aftermath of these unexpectedly peaceful elections there remain two armed forces that can still affect the future of democracy in the country.

Though the religious parties were routed in the election, especially in the North-West Frontier where the ruling religious MMA alliance was wiped out by the secular ANP, their gun-wielding brothers in Waziristan are not in retreat. In recent months these militants have won a series of notable military victories over the Pakistani army, and spread their revolt within the settled areas of Pakistan proper.

The two assassination attempts on Benazir - the second one horribly successful - and the three recent attacks on Musharraf are just the tip of the iceberg. Every bit as alarming is the degree to which the jihadis now control much of the north-west of Pakistan, and the Swat Valley is still smouldering as government troops and jihadis loyal to the insurgent leader Maulana Fazllullah - aka "Mullah Radio" vie for control. At the moment, the government seems to have won back the area, but the insurgent leaders have all escaped and it remains to be seen how far the new government can stem this growing rebellion.

The second force that has shown a remarkable ability to ignore, or even reverse, the democratic decisions of the Pakistani people is of course the army. Even though Musharraf's political ally the PML-Q has been heavily defeated, leaving him vulnerable to impeachment by the new parliament, the Pakistani army is still formidably powerful. Normally countries have an army; in Pakistan, as in Burma, the army has a country. In her recent book Military, Inc, the political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa attempted to put figures on the degree to which the army controls Pakistan irrespective of who is in power.

Siddiqa estimated, for example, that the army now controls business assets of roughly $20bn and a third of all heavy manufacturing in the country; it also owns 12 million acres of public land and up to 7 per cent of Pakistan's private assets. Five giant conglomerates, known as "welfare foundations", run thousands of businesses, ranging from street-corner petrol pumps and sprawling industrial plants to cement and dredging to the manufacture of cornflakes.

As one human rights activist put it to me, "The army is into every business in this country. Except hairdressing." The army has administrative assets, too. According to Siddiqa, military personnel have "taken over all and every department in the bureaucracy - even the civil service academy is now headed by a major general, while the National School of Public Policy is run by a lieutenant general. The military have completely taken over not just the bureaucracy but every arm of the executive."

But, for all this power, Musharraf has now comprehensively lost the support of his people - a dramatic change from the situation even three years ago when a surprisingly wide cross-section of the country seemed prepared to tolerate military rule. The new army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, who took over when Musharraf stepped down from his military role last year, seems to recognise this and has issued statements about his wish to pull the army back from civilian life, ordering his soldiers to stay out of politics and give up jobs in the bureaucracy.

Though turnout in the election was low, partly due to fear of suicide bombings, almost everyone I talked to was sure that democracy was the best answer to Pakistan's problems, and believed that neither an Islamic state nor a military junta would serve their needs so well. The disintegration of the country, something being discussed widely only a week ago, now seems a distant prospect. Rumours of Pakistan's demise, it seems, have been much exaggerated.

William Dalrymple's latest book, "The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty (Delhi, 1857)", published by Bloomsbury, won the 2007 Duff Cooper Prize for History



Timeline to the vote

6 October 2007 General Musharraf wins most votes in presidential election. The Supreme Court says no winner can be announced formally until it rules whether the general was eligible to stand while he was still army chief

18 October Exiled former premier Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan

3 November Musharraf declares emergency rule - caretaker government is sworn in

9 November Bhutto placed briefly under house arrest

28 November Musharraf resigns as army chief. Sworn in as president for second term

29 November Chief election commissioner announces elections are to be held on 8 January

15 December State of emergency lifted

27 December Benazir Bhutto is assassinated at rally near Rawalpindi

2 January 2008 Elections postponed till 18 February

18 February Parliamentary elections. Low turnout amid fears of violence

19 February Musharraf's party concedes defeat