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Triumph of democracy
Polling in Uttarakhand |
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Ugly poll promise
US election wide open
Corrupt and clever
Democracy and deception
Window on pakistan
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Triumph of democracy
Though
elections in Punjab have usually been free from violence, and incidents of booth-capturing or rigging are rare, the Election Commission still did not leave anything to chance and made elaborate arrangements as Punjab went to the polls on Monday. Given the heavy politicisation of the police, the EC called in the Central forces to ensure a neutral and peaceful conduct of elections. Policemen and officials accused of favouritism were transferred with alacrity. This prompted Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to lodge a complaint of bias against Chief Electoral Officer Kusumjit Kaur Sidhu. Since no specific instances were given, it was dismissed right away. The police seized large quantities of unaccounted cash, liquor and other intoxicants. In fact, newspapers carried reports of people expressing happiness at the way the EC worked in support of the rule of law. The highest-ever turnout speaks as much of the confidence in the electoral process as of voters’ keenness to elect or reject candidates. As depicted by the media, youngsters, many of them first-times, came out in large numbers to cast votes, affirming their faith in democracy. Political awakening augurs well for society at large. Which party gains from the heavy vote percentage will be known only on March 6. The political parties also deserve praise for maintaining restraint despite provocative incidents at places and for seeing the poll exercise successfully through. Since personalities continue to dominate elections more than issues, the exchange of petty allegations and personal attacks were natural. It is indeed time for the political parties to introspect whether the politics of nepotism and appeasement is good for them or the state. Competitive populism has almost bankrupted the state treasury. There is a growing demand for the introduction of the right to reject for voters, some of whom did protest at lack of development in their areas by clicking the “no-vote” button. If the leaders refuse to see the writing on the wall, they would be the losers. In the absence of a competent leadership the state would lose too by missing out on opportunities for development.
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Polling in Uttarakhand
Bright
sunshine on the polling day in Uttarakhand proved skeptics wrong. They had been busy predicting that inclement weather would keep voters away. Even the polling percentage registered a healthy increase of over 6 per cent compared to the last Assembly election in the hill state. The higher turnout and the eagerness of the first-time voters, youth and women to exercise their franchise bode well for democracy and will keep the contestants on tenterhooks. The polling percentage, suggest some reports, would have been even higher than 70 if private vehicles had been allowed on polling day. Some people got stranded in the plains and failed to cast their votes. Disconcerting reports also spoke of the pernicious practice of paid news, Both the Election Commission and the Press Council of India will have to look into the allegations and ensure that partisan and paid publicity does not vitiate the poll process next time. Traditionally, higher polling has indicated the existence of fairly strong anti-incumbency sentiment among voters. But multi-cornered contests, presence of a large number of independent candidates and rebels in the fray seem to have made the exercise far more complicated and credible forecasts more difficult. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was on the defensive during much of the campaign period, and was hard put to explain why the party first eased out B.C. Khanduri from the Chief Minister’s chair before installing him back. Its record in office being nothing to write home about, the state BJP was forced to divert attention to ‘national scams’ in order to attack the Congress, which, in turn, blamed the BJP for scams in the state itself. While the mainstream parties busied themselves with their negative campaign, regional parties failed once again to make their presence felt. Although both Uttarakhand and Jharkhand were created together in 2000, the hill state has been politically more stable than Jharkhand. But neither has fulfilled the promise of a new beginning so far. The election result will, hopefully, drive home the growing impatience of people taken too long for granted.
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Ugly poll promise
If
the rate of reported cases of rape has grown eight-fold since 1971, when, for the first time, the National Crime Record Bureau began recording such cases, the sensitivity required to deal with such cases has also declined. The politics of vote is responsible for both trends. How else can one explain the atrocious election promise made by Mulayam Singh Yadav, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Samajwadi Party leader, to provide government jobs to ‘educated’ victims of rape? Though he subsequently denied making the statement, his denial is less than credible. In electoral politics, whereas victims of rape are used as objects of pity, the perpetrators of rape, who happen to be males and should be punished like criminals, often go unpunished. Indeed, it is safer to talk of rehabilitation of rape victims, by offering them money and jobs, ignoring the need for justice to be delivered to them. Because delivery of justice will require punishing the guilty, which may disturb the safe equations of election time. The political mind also believes giving dole is a better way of silencing the demand for justice. Had it not been for the din raised by National Commission for Women chairperson Mamta Sharma against this poll promise, the issue may have gone uncontested. For, this is not the first time that such insensitivity is shown in dealing with this issue. Under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, Rs 25,000 was promised to victims of rape, and the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, Gujarat, promised Rs 50,000 for the same. Both these attempts attracted more humiliation for the rape victims, some culprits married their own victims in the lure of money. And victims ended up paying money and their own dignity, in some cases, as bribe to prove that they were raped. Rape is a complex issue, and needs sensitive handling; using it as an electoral plank shows absolute lack of gender sensitivity.
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If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room. — Anita Koddick
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US election wide open ONLY a fortnight ago, with the Republican primaries in full blast, there was in the United States conspicuous consensus on two points: that the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, would be the Republican candidate, and that he would have little difficulty in defeating beleaguered President Barack Obama in November. During the last few days, however, the electoral scene has become utterly confused and uncertain. Those who were betting on the Romney victory now say that the election is “wide open”. To some, it is “wild open” – a description that has a point. For, the anger, together with vituperation verging on abuse and mutual personal allegations, just short of libel, has now become the dominant feature of electioneering that was already acrimonious enough. To be sure, mutual mud-slinging among the rivals in quest of the Republican nomination, principally between Mr Romney and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, is the most brisk. But the Republican Right is not wanting in taking pot shots at President Obama that are often racist. The Republican-dominated Congress is resisting the President’s every move even when it is manifestly in the interest of the American people. Consequently, Washington is well and truly in the grip of gridlock worse than any witnessed before. Even so, it is the virulent infighting among the Republicans that is muddying the waters. Indeed, what has brought about the depressing change in the political discourse was a sudden and unexpected surge in Mr Gingrich’s fortunes compared with those of the front-runner, Mr Romney, who had prevailed convincingly over all his rivals in New Hampshire. Mr Gingrich came third in the contest. But in the conservative state of South Carolina he scored a double-digit victory over Mr Romney. Moreover, public opinion polls indicated that he was about to repeat this performance in the cosmopolitan state of Florida. One poll indicated that not only would Mr Gingrich win Florida but also that among Republican voters he was likely to outpace Mr Romney by 37 per cent to 28 per cent nationwide. If this happens actually, there would be no better news for Mr Obama because every pundit and pollster agrees that the one Republican leader the incumbent President can easily vanquish is Mr Gingrich. For this there are good reasons. Although the former Speaker is a powerful orator and debater, and also has great financial backing (a Las Vegas casino magnate and his wife have between them contributed $10 million to the organizations backing him during the last fortnight alone), his past record, both personal and political, is blemished, to say the least. His second ex-wife has publicly castigated him for broken marriages and extra-marital affairs. Moreover, three decades ago, Mr Gingrich was censured by the ethics committee of the House of which he was once the presiding officer. To cap it all, his opponents have marshalled massive evidence to show that by peddling his huge influence in Washington he made at least $16 million though he “stayed within the law by just about half-an-inch”. This should explain why all of a sudden the Republican establishment has rallied behind Mr Romney in a bid to “crucify” Mr Gingrich. It certainly does not want to take the risk of Mr Obama returning to the White House. It has also advised Mr Romney to drop his “above-the-fray” style and attack Mr Gingrich so harshly that he would be driven to “characteristic angry responses” and thus alienate the Republican mainstream. Mr Bob Dole, a former presidential candidate and a senior member of the Republican establishment, launched the onslaught on the former Speaker, calling him a “one-man band who wants his way or highway” who must be stopped. “If we don’t want a pro-Obama landslide in November, we must endorse Mr Romney”. Other veterans of the Republican Party have joined Mr Dole. Mr Gingrich has intensified his attack on the “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-higher taxes moderate from Massachusetts”. Yet, he has also taken care to announce that he would carry on the fight until the party convention in August and that he would get the nomination and defeat Mr Obama. And this brings me to an exquisite irony of the current American situation. In order to get Mr Romney out of the way, Mr Gingrich and some others are attacking him for his record as a senior functionary of a private-equity company that is accused of making huge profits by destroying a large number of jobs. No less sharp is the attack on Mr Romney’s reluctant admission that he is paying less than 14 per cent tax on his vast income and wealth. This is something the Occupy Wall Street movement has been trying to say for a long time on behalf of “99 per cent Americans against the wealthiest 1 per cent”. Strangely, the movement hasn’t got any credit. On the contrary, it is being blamed for offering no suggestions for narrowing the inequalities and yet going on “dirtying” the cities. But now that the Republicans are accusing some of their own of being “vulture capitalists”, the Democrats are delighted and have seized the opportunity. President Obama latched on to the theme of growing inequalities and the need for “fairness” in taxing the super rich and in economic policies generally in his State of the Union address that was also an election campaign speech. He returned to this theme no fewer than seven times, emphasising that his “overriding goal was redistribution of incomes”. He stated that those earning a million dollars a year must pay at least 30 per cent tax. But he knows that Congress that hasn’t allowed him to abolish the tax cuts for the wealthiest announced by Mr George W. Bush in 2004 would not let him raise taxes on the rich. At present the Republicans with their comfortable majority in the House are filibustering the appointments of the heads of four essential agencies the President made during the Congressional recess without its “advice and consent”. No matter what they are saying about Mr Romney’s taxes, the Republicans are stridently opposed to higher taxes. The need of the hour, they argue, is reduction in government spending. They are blaming Mr Obama for promoting a “Class War” — there can be no bigger sin in American
eyes.
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Corrupt and clever The
corrupt in public services try to be clever, too; in fact, sometimes too clever. Thus, the search at the residence of a senior bank executive, in a case of disproportionate assets, resulted in the recovery, inter alia, of the completion certificate of the house he was living in, and which belonged to him. The document showed two storeys of the building to have been constructed as per the plan approved by the estate office. However, as on the date of the search, only the ground floor could be seen to be in existence. The accused, when confronted by the search party, retorted: “You have come too soon. Within the next five years, I would have got constructed the first floor also. A raid after that would have given me the benefit of the reduced cost on account of the anti-dated completion certificate.” (By the way, the accused, who was a large-hearted person, treated the members of the search party to a sumptuous breakfast. It is, however, a different matter that this misdemeanour earned them the ire of their senior offcers.) In another case, the search at the residence of an officer led to the recovery of about 10 tolas of gold jewellery of the wife, claimed to have been given to her by her parents at the time of the marriage. A cross-check with the property return filed by the officer immediately after the marriage showed that he had disclosed 80 tolas of gold jewellery to have been gifted to the wife at the time of the wedding. When asked about the discrepancy, he remarked: “I had to acquire the rest of it in the next 20 years. An investigative action after that would have enabled me to claim that the whole of it was a matrimonial gift to my wife.” The cake is, however, taken by the one who claimed during the trial of the case of disproportionate assets against him that the excess wealth was due to the earnings of his wife who carried on with prostitution without his knowledge. The wife supported him as a defence witness. However, during cross-examination, she testified that she did not file any tax-returns on the income (earned). The court rejected the claim and convicted the
officer.
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Democracy and deception In
his classic “The Art of War” written 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu advised military commanders thus: “In war, practise dissimulation and you will succeed.”
Deception has been a key element in strategy ever since tribes waged war against each other. Generals take a great deal of trouble to conceal their true intentions from their adversaries. Basil Liddell Hart’s masterpiece of military history, “Strategy: The Indirect Approach”, chronicled how great commanders have used deception to outmanoeuvre their enemies. So, using ruses to outwit a foreign foe is not just acceptable, but a job requirement for higher military command. However, what are we to make of generals who use similar techniques against their own political leadership? Over the years, the Pakistan Army has come to adopt a posture that faces both external enemies as well as real and perceived internal foes. By expanding its role to defend Pakistan’s ideological frontiers as well as its physical ones, it has become enmeshed in internal and regional politics to a degree very few other military forces have.
By becoming major players in domestic power politics, our generals have become sucked into a vortex of murky ploys that, apart from discrediting the forces they lead, also distracts them from their primary function. And by transforming domestic opposition into an enemy threat, they rationalise extreme, and often violent, action against members of civil society. Thus, in the name of national security and state ideology (whatever it is currently), dissenting nationalists and extremists are made to disappear, often never to return. Journalists are threatened, allegedly kidnapped and occasionally killed, as well as bribed. Politicians are blackmailed and browbeaten. Operation Midnight Jackal, mounted by Brig Imtiaz Ahmed (Billa) and Major Amir in 1989 to destabilise Benazir Bhutto’s government, is one example of the length the security agencies are willing to go to impose their control on the political system. The conspiracy was exposed, and its author, Brig Imtiaz, has confessed his role on TV. Asghar Khan filed a constitutional petition before the Supreme Court, requesting it to look into the allegations that the ISI had financed many politicians in the 1990 elections to block Benazir Bhutto’s PPP from winning. In response to the petition, Gen Durrani, the ex-director the ISI, gave details of the sums he had authorised, and the leaders who had been paid. Following these sensational disclosures, the Supreme Court has put the case on the back-burner despite continued demands that it be heard. But in their wisdom, their lordships have decided that other issues merit their attention more urgently than Asghar Khan’s explosive petition. Over the years, the security establishment has been aided by religious parties and the higher judiciary in its efforts to subordinate the political system to its own ends. The former views the army as a lever to further its politico-religious agenda as it has very little support among the electorate, as proved by its regular defeats at the polls. The latter tagged along willy-nilly, giving legal cover to a succession of coups. So, it was refreshing to hear the Chief Justice emphatically reject any possibility of granting yet another constitutional indemnity to a future military adventurer. During the ongoing tension over Memogate, it has become clear that the army no longer has the stomach for an overt coup. General Musharraf’s long rule has tarnished the military’s image, and the generals know all too well that they don’t have any answers to the country’s many problems. Much better to let civilians take the flak. And the global climate is not conducive to coups: a military takeover would have severe political and economic implications. In this context, the army’s ability to impose its will is limited: even though the generals loathe Zardari, they can’t easily get rid of him. Hence the steady build-up of pressure on the government through the mysterious Memogate conspiracy. But Mansoor Ijaz, the American businessman who first broke the story, remains a shady, discredited figure. For years, he has been vociferous in his attacks on the Pakistan Army and its intelligence agency. Indeed, he has gone to the extent of asking the United States to consider tough action against them in the wake of the Abbottabad raid last May. When he bombastically speaks of his intention to “speak truth to power”, he forgets that he is making his accusations under the protection of the real power in Pakistan: the military. We may never discover the truth behind the whole wretched story. But this is the nature of plots planned and orchestrated by secret services around the world. The one thing we do know is that it has greatly weakened this government, and has virtually forced it to concede to early elections. Given the army’s traditional antipathy to PPP governments, it would not shock us greatly to discover its hand in the plot. Certainly, the actions of the security establishment indicate that they have seized the opportunity offered by Memogate with both hands. Whether they were complicit or not, they have chosen to ignore Mansoor Ijaz’s earlier venom in their haste to hamstring the government and force its early exit. In this effort, they have the backing of much of Pakistan’s media and the chattering classes. An old friend, and one who normally opposes military intervention, gleefully took a bet with me that the government would be sent packing in a matter of days. But now that there seems to be a cooling off, he had better be prepared to pay up. However, whatever the outcome of the Memogate saga, the gloves are off, and the government has been fatally weakened. An insignificant foreigner with a dubious background has been allowed to destabilise an elected government. Once again, the army is in its full political mode. One way to restore its image of impartiality would be for the Supreme Court to take up hearings of Asghar Khan’s petition. This might help stop the army from dabbling in politics. But ultimately, it will only stay in its barracks if civilians begin providing good governance. — By arrangement with Dawn
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Window on pakistan The
provincial status quo in Pakistan has begun to be questioned. Why should there be the same number of provinces after over six decades of Pakistan’s creation? There is a strong demand that more provinces need to be carved out for different reasons. Some want reorganisation of the provinces for administrative reasons. Good governance will be easier to ensure if there are smaller administrative units. Some prefer the creation of new provinces to fulfil people’s ethnic or linguistic aspirations. Those who are opposed to any such idea argue that the issue is too sensitive to be handled at this stage, as it is the provinces that gave birth to the country that exists today. The status-quoists say that Pakistan has more pressing problems to take care of today than indulging in a debate for new provinces. This, in their view, may inflame passions in many areas. Yet the debate goes on. Last Saturday, Sindhi nationalists expressed their opposition to any change in the boundaries of their province by organising a strike (hartal) at many places. The strike call was reportedly successful. The Sindhi nationalists have been feeling uneasy after the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) of the migrants (muhajireen) from India recently tabled a constitution amendment Bill in Pakistan’s National Assembly, seeking the creation of new provinces owing to the changing ground reality. The Bill is aimed at amending Articles 1, 51, 106 and 239 of Pakistan’s constitution so that provincial boundaries can be altered. The constitution has it that provincial boundaries cannot be redrawn unless such an idea is supported by a two-thirds majority of the provincial assembly concerned. Despite the MQM’s declaration that dividing Sindh would be “an unforgivable act”, it appears that something is cooking in Karachi. Perhaps, the MQM believes that this is the time for having an Urdu-speaking province carved out of Sindh. According to Dawn, the PPP, the majority party in the Sindh Provincial Assembly, “has not opposed the Bill”. If the PPP joins hands with those campaigning for new provinces Sindh cannot remain in one piece. However, the PPP is more interested in getting Saraiki province carved out of Punjab. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani belongs to the Saraiki-speaking southern part of Punjab. He has reportedly asserted that the Saraiki-speaking area must become a province now when it has given Pakistan its Prime Minister. This will, in his opinion, lead to the fulfilment of the long-standing demand of the people of southern Punjab. But the PML (N) of Mr Nawaz Sharif is strongly opposed to the case for Saraiki province as this will amount to bifurcating the fiefdom of the former Prime Minister. He, instead, favours the revival of Bahawalpur state with provincial rights. However, it is feared that this may lead to similar demands from other parts of Pakistan which may become uncontrollable. The people of the erstwhile state of Kalat in Balochistan cannot keep quite if the status of Bahawalpur is changed. The PML (N) is also not averse to the demand for Hazara province in deference to the wishes of the Hindko-speaking people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (earlier called North-West Frontier Province). But this does not suit the scheme of things of the ANP of Wali Khan. Most newspapers have argued for great caution while handling the sensitive issue. But few have expressed their opposition to the idea of new provinces. The News said, “Perhaps provinces, districts and tehsils or talukas should exist purely on administrative lines rather than (due to) other considerations”. The Daily Times believes that “Referenda could be one method of ascertaining the opinion of the province and the area in question, as is the case in many democratic countries”. The MQM is campaigning for a full-fledged debate on its Bill in the Pakistan National Assembly. It should succeed in getting the issue debated as the PPP and the PML (N) do not seem to be opposed to such a course.
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