Whither Democracy? samina shah #35 Indonesia comprises thousands of islands (no one knows for sure how many), and hundreds of differing cultures. If there is freedom for Timor, why not for Bali? and Sumatera? and Sulawesi? and Kalimantan? to name just the bigger islands. Indonesia is an extreme example of the artifical and superficial nature of the nation state that we take for granted. The state must prove its value by being well managed, otherwise it becomes part of the problem.

In Search of the Moderate Muslim Godot #5 ``gave Pakistan about 15 years max to survive.``

I am intrigued by the frequent comment (over the past few decades now) that Pakistan will not survive. What happens if Pakistan does not survive? Will there be a sudden flash and a hole will appear on the ground where there used to be Pakistan? Or maybe there will be 8-10 different countries where there used to be one, some with nuclear bombs, some without. And each with it`s own little petty tyrant. Altaf ``torture cell`` Bhai in Karachistan, some Sindhi Wadera in Sindhistan, half-brain Nawaz Sharif the MardiMomin in the Lahoristan, Bacha Saqa in Peshawar, Mullah Omar in Baluchistan, and so on. Or perhaps India will try to exert control, only to find itself fighting a guerilla war that will make Afghanistan war against the Russians seem like a petty skirmish.

Or perhaps (at least as likely as the other scenarios) maybe there will be a flash - a flash of a nuclear bomb going off - a first in a a series of flashes in BOTH India and in Pakistan. And then only the unlucky (the ones doomed to die of radiation poisoning or it`s other longer term effects) will survive in both countries.

So, I am not sure what people mean when they say Pakistan wont survive. And why they have been saying this ever since I can remember - as I recall this was in fact a prediction Nehru made in 1947.

Whither Democracy? progressive #10 You continue to think of yourself as a muslim, I see, when you write ``This is Pakistani muslim People``. Read my post #461 on board ``Another one bites the dust`` and explain why you still think you are a muslim after having ridiculed (in a most vicious manner) the Quranic injunctions against respect for all religions. Among other things also listed on that post that betray your subhuman frame of mind.

A Letter Home ````ylh

I like Desouza...

he is a republican and he is proud of it...````

Dear YLH -- don`t drool.

Desouza is just another republican Gunga Deen -- an Indian uncle tom.

Benazir Bhutto in Sacramento Does anyone else read this mans column in Indian Express ?

http://www.indian-express.com/columnists/mush/index.html

Benazir Bhutto in Sacramento Shammi #6 Mona #113

Yes but WHO can they pick to replace Sonia ... the congress has not had any popular leader since Rajeev was assasinated ...

I really wish some successful Indians who have already had a great career would come forward to serve their country in politics.

For example I`d vote for Narayan Murthy (INFOSYS) in a heartbeat or Kiran Bedi - why is politics largely confined only to criminals, hard core ideologues and political dynasties? Don`t you think people like Abdul Kalam (is he being considered for President), Azim Premji and Dr Yusuf Hamedi (CIPLA Chairman and an Indian Muslim-Jew, go figure!) could help provide some political (or other) leadership to Indian Muslims?

In Search of the Moderate Muslim hamidm #426: Why doesn`t Abdul follow basketball, and support Hakeem Aloujowan. The guy fasts while playing in the playoffs. What about Kareem Abdul Jabbar? He didn`t do too bad.

Why not follow boxing? Muhammad Ali is the flavor of the month, all of a sudden. He was first put in jail, and is then asked to light the flame at the Olympics. Maybe the same thing will happen with Abdul.

But, the people in trouble in the USA will not be the Adbuls. Abduls have a clear direction in life. They don`t care whether they are on the US social security system, or getting zakat money in Pakistan. They want to destroy Israel, and anyone who supports Israel`s policies (which are actually more out of touch with US values, then even the ideas Abdul proposes; but for some strange reason, Yitzak, who looks even more odd than Abdul, with his round black hat and curly hair, is considered normal). The Abduls have already decided to take on the US, and are ready for the countereffects.

The real problem will be faced by the watered- down Abduls, i.e. the Muslims in the US who want to distance themselves from the Abduls (for all the right reasons), but may have ended up in no-man`s land. To the goras, they will always be Muslims, regardless of how many Red Wing games they attend. And to the Abduls, they will always be the, ``Munafiqeens.``

The US is one terrorist attack away from launching a legal assault against Muslims. Just like most societies, there was tolerance in the US society for one major attack, which has occured. If (or when, as the CIA has suggested that it is bound to happen) the next one occurs, it will result in a John Ashcroft vs. Abdul confrontation. Abdul is ready for the fight. But to John Ashcroft, all Muslims will be Abdul, even the ones who drink cold Buds at hockey games, and go out of their way to shave twice everyday to avoid the terrible beard.

What will happen to these Abdul-avoiding Muslims, after the next terrorist attack? If their skin color isn`t as pink as Ashcroft`s, they will get trampled from both directions. This group needs to be ready for such a situation. Either they need to be ready to change their religion, or they need to go easy on Abdul, and realize that when Ashcroft is on the move, the Abdul`s maybe the only group ready to stand up for them.

India’s Communal Gamble Harpreet #33 and #34: Your posts are like gold nuggets in a manure factory.

As for the article itself, it gives mediocrity a bad name. Mian sahib provides a bibliography to an article that provides as much new knowledge as one gets when reading the letters A, B and C. The message of the article (the west hates us) is as profound as the message of a village mullah on a Friday prayer.

India’s Communal Gamble ...it always takes two to tango...the hate cuts both ways...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/27/arts/27ANTI.html

Anti-Semitism Is Deepening Among Muslims

By SUSAN SACHS



Stay in a five-star hotel anywhere from Jordan to Iran, and you can buy the infamous forgery ``Protocols of the Elders of Zion.`` Pick up a newspaper in any part of the Arab world and you regularly see a swastika superimposed on the Israeli flag.

Such anti-Semitic imagery is now embedded in the mainstream discourse concerning Jews in much of the Islamic world, in the popular press and in academic journals.

The depictions are not limited to countries that are at war with Israel but can be found in general-interest publications in Egypt and Jordan, the two countries that have signed peace agreements with Israel, as well as in independent religious schools in Pakistan and Southeast Asia.

A Decision to Regret shankar #82: I would debate with the devil himself, IF I read what the devil wrote and IF the devil had something worthwhile to say. Jay (and a handful of other chowk posters, I may add) is a monotonous single-beat ``hate pakistanis`` or ``hate islam`` drum. I have stopped reading his posts.

This was the first post from progressive that I have read on chowk, but I will take your word for it that he has a ``hate indians`` bent of mind that parallels that of Jay. If I read enough of progressive`s posts, I will therefore probably stop reading them too, given what you say. But as long as I read someone`s post, and if that post seems within the bounds of reason, then I think you will agree that it is worthwhile to debate that post if one disagrees with the conclusions.

A Decision to Regret Urstruly #88 This was an original idea, I will grant you. So original that it caused you to swing like a pendulum from ``All Indians Bad`` to ``All Pakistanis Bad``. Whether or not you caught a Hamidm fish to bite the bait I shall not comment on, but the Hamidm fish is only one of the many kinds of Paki fish in the ocean.

This post is an exception to my rule to ignore your posts, since I am a fair man and would give credit to the devil (as I was explaining to shankar below) himself if I felt the devil had come up with something original and was not merely singing the same old tunes.

Right Burqa, Wrong Lips hamidm #105 ````.... and the economist is seldom wrong `` You seem to be a paid agent of the economist, or else have a deeper faith in writers in that magazine than you should. Here is one time I remember the economist was wrong: Soon after the 1971 war, it had an article which quoted approvingly of a western diplomat that ``Pakistan is a drowning dog, and soon its head will be under water``. The dog is still happily paddling around after 30 years, annoying the hell out of people like jay and company on chowk.

One thing no human being can do is predict with reasonable certainty what the next few months (or tomorrow, or the next few years) will bring. Certainly not on something as volatile as the pakistani political situation today.

Right Burqa, Wrong Lips progressive, you half-brain, dimwit (just joking, stop trying to smash your computer screen): address your posts to a similar idiot from the indian side (like harimau or arjun or tantramantrawhatever).

Run along now, play with people your own mental age.

India’s Communal Gamble In his latest column Ayaz Amir says:

“”After the historic referendum the political scene has shifted and is no longer putty or French plaster in General Musharraf`s hands. His cohorts could not manage a one-sided referendum. How will they manage a contentious and contested general election? One, moreover, likely to be dominated by the hated spectres of the PPP and the Nawaz League.

In a world not driven by paranoia or megalomania, a fiasco such as the referendum would call for a re-examination of priorities.

But nothing of the sort is occurring in Islamabad.

Far from sounding chastened, the general has spoken of a permanent political role for the armed forces while his trumpeters, Memon in the lead, continue to insist upon the transparency and fairness of the referendum.

__________________________________________________

They are even saying the coming elections would be as transparent as the referendum (oh, boy) - which is meant as an affirmation of good faith but sounds more like a threat.

__________________________________________________

In any case, the choices on offer are stark. The original theory was built on Gen Musharraf`s popularity:

``People tell me that I am very popular. I thought if I am really popular, I must go to the people.``

These are verbatim Musharraf quotes from an ARY interview.

On the coattails of his popularity the right sort of parliament would be elected in October. But the referendum has cast these happy forecasts into doubt. In its aftermath how can ``positive results`` be ensured?

Tongas on their own can`t do it. Nor can the patched-up quilt of a Quisling League deliver the kind of vote the general is banking upon.

Thus barring wholesale disqualifications or massive rigging, the military government is left holding the strings of an uncertain future.

Of course it can do the right thing by holding proper elections without regard to the outcome.

But this is hoping for the moon.

If such good sense could prevail in Pakistan we wouldn`t be in the mess we find ourselves in.(Dawn)

India’s Communal Gamble And here is our Irfan Husain with his personal experience of referundum and his incomparable analysis.

Hold the champagne

By Irfan Husain

As the official media bombards the nation with statistics indicating a massive victory in the referendum for General Musharraf, both the opposition and the public are questioning the validity of these claims.

Speaking for myself, all the polling booths I saw in Karachi last Tuesday were practically deserted, and I must have driven past at least a score of them on my way to and from work.

When I went to vote in the morning, there were half a dozen men in line ahead of me, and none of our thumbs were marked with any kind of ink.

Clearly, the sudden MQM boycott in Karachi had been highly effective in keeping voters away.

The pattern in the rest of the country was fairly similar.

However, the government managed to garner a heavy turnout in state organizations, factories and prisons. The problem is that public and media perceptions have been shaped by the forlorn polling stations and the bored election staff.

And in politics, it is perceptions that count.

Thus, in a stroke, Pervez Musharraf has suffered a sharp loss of credibility, his most precious asset.

Unfortunately for the general, the damage has been entirely self-inflicted.

Although his victory was a foregone conclusion, this referendum was always about the size of the turnout: Pakistanis remember all too well Zia`s farcical referendum of 1984 in which barely 5% of the electorate bothered to vote, and the government claimed that 60% of the voters had supported the dictator`s bid to hang on for another five years.

Now we are faced with a situation in which the results are again controversial with a corresponding loss of credibility.

According to newspaper reports and independent observers, many incidents of bogus voting were seen.

One young man claimed to have voted 18 times; a school teacher stamped 350 ballot papers because, according to her, she had been given a target of 500, but only 150 women turned up the whole day, so she made up the difference; scores of cases of underage boys voting at several booths were reported.

_____________________________________________

One reason it was so easy to stuff the ballot boxes is that as there were no competing candidates, there were no polling agents present to protect their candidates` interests.

_______________________________________________

With this background in mind, those in power should go easy on the champagne while celebrating this Pyrrhic victory.

Indeed, perhaps in a day or so they will count the cost of the whole exercise, and I do not mean the horrendous expenditure incurred on this entire surreal business.

Apart from the inflated numbers being put out by the Election Commission, Musharraf has suffered a serious erosion of respect and affection through his bizarre campaign. Most people wondered why he was aping the very politicians he professes to despise when he had no opponents.

Surely his long, convoluted televised speech in early April was enough to set the stage for the referendum: if anything, his rallies, with their forced requisitioning of public transport, their rent-a-crowd and their attendant inconvenience to the public, switched voters off.

Another major loss General Musharraf has suffered is that his long honeymoon with the press has come to an end. Ever since he seized power through a coup in October 1999, the independent print media has been highly supportive of the general and his reforms.

But this crude circumvention of the constitutional process to elect the president has alienated many of his supporters.

Predictably, the Supreme Court has legitimized the process, thus living up to its reputation in public eyes as well as in the legal fraternity.

Since September 11, General Musharraf has been the darling of the West. His support to the US-led `war against terror` won him many friends in Washington and other western capitals.

From being a pariah, he became a welcome friend overnight. This goodwill has stilled some American criticism of the referendum, but the western press has been almost uniformly hostile to the whole concept.

How long it will take for this disenchantment to work its way into policy will be determined in part by the needs of the battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but clearly, Musharraf`s image in the West has lost its sheen.

Both internally and externally, Musharraf was perceived as a straight-talking, well-meaning soldier who was very different from the politicians who have caused so much damage to both the economy and to whatever institutions that had remained intact.

In short, he held the moral high ground. But if the real results of the referendum are perceived to be at odds with those announced by the Election Government, a crisis of confidence could well shake the seemingly firm foundations of the military government.

Even assuming that the general has won by the stated majority of around 98% with a turnout of 44 million, what next?

With general and provincial elections due in October, a very strained relationship between the president and the elected prime minister and his party seems inevitable.

Indeed, given the low credibility of the Election Commission after the referendum, it is doubtful that the opposition will accept its supervision of the October polls.

The tensions and strains that will surface will hardly lead to a more stable Pakistan, although that is Musharraf`s goal.

Until the army chief announced the referendum three short weeks ago, most Pakistanis were quite happy to let him continue.

He had handled the economy well; he took the only sane route open to him in the aftermath on the terror attacks on the United States last September; and his generally liberal approach was welcomed by the majority.

But by opening the Pandora`s box of the referendum, he took a big gamble that might backfire.

One major cost we cannot quantify immediately is the unification of virtually every political party across the spectrum on the anti-referendum platform.

Now that Musharraf has openly stated his intention to stay for at least five more years and completely dominate the scene, he has left the entire political class no option but to oppose him.

In the words of an editorial in the current issue of The Economist of London:

``....It would be better, for clarity`s sake, for Mr Musharraf to remain the dictator he is, and step down when his job is done, than indulge in this bogus referendum.

Such exercises serve only to give democracy a bad name.`` (DAWN)

India’s Communal Gamble After Ayaz Amir and Khalid Hasan -- here is the Friday Times editorial on -- institutionalized cheating -- by the ``corruption crusaders`` of Musharraf Brigade.

Disgraceful

Editorial by Najm Sethi

(Friday Times)

To prove a point, one of our reporters cast four votes in the “presidential” referendum yesterday, all in favour of General Pervez Musharraf, in four different polling stations within a kilometre radius.

Another outwitted her by stamping six votes in the general’s favour.

The story is much the same across the country. One could vote as many times as one desired and many did.

This is adult franchise taken to preposterous limits for dubious ends. Think of it, 71 percent turnout of which 97.5 percent voted ‘yes’. So much for the credibility of the exercise.

If ever there was a case of deliberate institutional rigging, this was it.

No formal ID was required for voting. There were no constituency lists. The opposition wasn’t allowed to canvass votes against the referendum.

Billions were doled out to hire crowds for pro-Musharraf rallies and lug pro-Musharraf voters to the polling stations.

The number of polling booths was increased tenfold.

And the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 years so that millions of new voters without any memory of the military’s disastrous interventions in 1958 and 1977 could be added to the kitty.

Worse, much worse, tens of millions of low and middle level civil servants, factory workers, school teachers, peons, janitors, jail inmates, soldiers, paramilitary troops, policemen etc were ordered by private and public employers to shape up or ship out.

This is unprecedented even in Pakistan’s flawed electoral history.

Just think of it. Wardens ordering prisoners to stamp “yes” on ballot papers. Department heads taking roll calls and lining up subordinates at special polling station on the premises.

Policemen on the streets and rangers on border patrol, even as their votes were being stuffed in ballot boxes and winging their way to headquarters.

The most appalling aspect of this sordid affair was the despicable role of the private sector. Of capitalists, bankers, factory owners, school/college owners/principals, traders and businessmen ordering their employees to queue up for General Musharraf.

Of multinationals that went overboard in rustling up their workers. “Captive” voters in the hands of capricious elites. Disgraceful. If April 30 was a sad day for democracy, the complicity of civil society should not go un-remarked.

Why did General Musharraf go for an overkill when every pundit with even a remote memory of the farcical presidential referendum held by General Zia ul Haq in 1984 had advised against it?

The question of legitimacy haunts every dictator and General Musharraf is no exception, however benign his attitude towards the press or however cooperative his response to the international community’s war against terrorism.

Thus the common perception is that an overwhelming “yes” in the presidential referendum should give General Musharraf a degree of civilian legitimacy that is sorely lacking in him. This is buttressed by the fact that the Supreme Court of Pakistan has said that he is perfectly entitled to hold such a referendum. But the facts belie this argument.

The Supreme Court has not said that this referendum is a constitutional substitute for a presidential election.

In fact, it has left that issue to be resolved by the parliament that comes into being after the next general elections in October.

Nor does a referendum, however credible or successful, under a provisional constitutional order legitimizing a military coup (which is the legal umbrella under which General Musharraf is currently operating), eliminate the requirement for a parliamentary endorsement after the constitution has been fully restored.

Indeed, every action that General Musharraf has taken in the last three years will require a constitutional sanction by means of a two-thirds majority in the next parliament.

So what is the point of a referendum today if, in the ultimate analysis, General Musharraf’s fate lies in the hands of a parliament that is yet to be born?

The answer is that the referendum was never meant to be an exercise in acquiring legitimacy.

Instead, it is an attempt to flex muscle and browbeat intransigent political opponents to join the Musharraf camp so that a King’s Party or Alliance can be cobbled to win the next general elections and become a dutiful parliamentary appendage to President General Musharraf.

Indeed, General Musharraf admitted as much when he said that he was conducting this exercise because he wanted “to get the fence-sitters off the fence”, alluding to the many political stalwarts in the country who had not yet deserted the two mainstream parties led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Has he succeeded in his objective of ensuring, as he put it once, an “upper hand in parliament”?

No.

Whatever the government may claim, the opposition will certainly be emboldened by the referendum’s lack of credibility at home and abroad.

Indeed, an element of defiance could creep into the main opposition parties, forcing General Musharraf to adopt repressive policies, which in turn would hurt his benign image and undermine his credibility further.

The fear is that in the ensuing tussle for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis in the run-up to the October elections, General Musharraf may be erroneously advised to postpone the elections on some pretext or the other or try and rig them massively to thwart his opponents.

In the event, the loss won’t be his only. It will be Pakistan’s too.(FT)