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Guest Column
Touchstones
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ground zero
For PM wannabes, no getting away from the past India needs an integrating PM, not a divisive one. So far Modi has not reassured the minorities that if he becomes PM they need not have any fear of being targeted or discriminated against. Raj Chengappa In the past week, most opinion polls predicted that the tally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the General Election would cross 250 seats, fairly close to getting a simple majority of 272 seats. If that be true, then the strategy of Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate, of promising better governance and faster economic growth for the country is working.
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Leaving Musharraf’s fate to court works for all In Pakistan’s political history March 31 will go down as a day when unprecedented accountability of a military ruler was initiated, without bloodshed and in a court. Nasim Zehra
Musharraf’s arrival proved every bit the nightmare all had dreaded. A politically more aware Pakistan was not benign towards a former military ruler, accused in the Akbar Bugti killing and hounded for Lal Masjid, etc. Multiple platforms of dialogue have prompted questioning beyond Constitutional parameters: Aren’t Musharraf’s colleagues in the PPP and now in the PML-N Cabinet? Why overlook Musharraf’s original sin of the October 1999 coup? Why does the government seek dialogue with the killers of 50,000, yet trial for Musharraf? The Army has become restive, claiming the trial now is humiliating and threatening its former commander. This compounds the fault-lines.
Although unlike previous military rulers Musharraf was charge-sheeted under Article 6, appeared in court and was kept under house arrest, he was treated with kid gloves. While political leaders with lesser crimes have been jailed, treated as criminals and even hanged, Musharraf was appropriated by his parent institution and kept under its protection in the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology. The army has since sought a road map for Musharraf’s exit, as have PML-N pragmatists like Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Defence Minister Chaudary Nisar. Unsurprisingly, disagreement between the PML-N’s pragmatists and political activists has persisted even over trying Musharraf. The activists led by the ministers for Railways and Defence argue that the PML-N’s commitment to democracy demands that a military ruler be tried under Article 6. The pragmatists led by the Prime Minister’s brother Shahbaz Sharif believe the government needs to focus on improving governance and strengthening the economy, not get entangled in the trial of a former military ruler. Initially it had seemed that the Prime Minister agreed with the pragmatists. Last August, echoing the government’s position, Information Minister Parvez Rashid had said in my programme on Capital News that “if the government has to choose between stopping a dog stealing the milk and preventing our child from drowning, it would save the child.” He had been asked about the government’s response to the lawyers’ petition filed in the Supreme Court pleading that the government be asked to file treason charges against Musharraf under Article 6. The minister was clear that we would “politely” state ‘our priorities’ to the Supreme Court, i.e., to not get entangled with the treason case. But then the government calculated that trying a former military ruler would boost its democratic credentials. The Special Court’s March 31 order seems to have set the stage for Musharraf’s departure from Pakistan. After charge-sheeting Musharraf under Article 6 and allowing him to speak in his own defence, the court was adjourned till April 14. The court order read as a sympathetic interpretation of the law. Charged under Article 6, Musharraf was a free man and the court would also consider his plea for absence from subsequent hearings. On Musharraf’s request to visit his mother in Dubai, the order stated that removing Musharraf from the Exit Control List (ECL) was the government’s prerogative. Despite the court order, the Prime Minister refused to remove the former military ruler from the ECL in “public interest.” Perhaps the thinking within the PML-N activists was why take the responsibility for what could politically backfire. Let the court ‘bell the cat’, since Musharraf’s team was taking the case to higher courts. PML-N pragmatists too must realise that by allowing Musharraf to travel abroad on a higher court’s order would be politically risk-free for the government. It is unlikely that the government will block Musharraf’s legal route to travel abroad. His return too would then be the court’s responsibility. If Musharraf leaves on a one-way ticket, the government will have made no compromises in trying a military ruler in court. Meanwhile, in Pakistan’s political history March 31 will go down as a day when unprecedented accountability of a military ruler was initiated. Avoiding the anarchy and bloodshed of the horrifying Egyptian brand of what is paradoxically called the Arab Spring, accountability of a military ruler has been initiated in the precincts of a court. More importantly, outside the court the political verdict on the touchstone of democracy has long declared the former general a loser. The writer is a Pakistan-based TV anchor.
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Touchstones
The reason that I bring this up is that currently the incumbent President, a Democrat, is at the fag end of his second term and after dramatic turns and twists in the Primaries, the nominees of the two major parties (the Democrats and the Republicans) are wrestling with each other to gain advantage at the time of voting. The drama is so eerily like the one that I watch on our news channels every evening that I cannot but help reflect on what makes our elections different from theirs. For one, each American candidate has to raise his/her own money to run campaigns. Of course, parties contribute to this but the bulk is raised by fundraisers and individual contributions that are transparently displayed. The campaign is run by an army of dedicated staffers, ranging from expensive spin-doctors and pollsters to college rookies who just want to be part of the drama. Every speech, interview, media comment and dirty trick is meticulously documented and scrutinised and used as valuable feedback. And so on….
Cut now to what is happening here: election funds are the most opaque and ridiculous fraud perpetrated on the electors. Read the declaration of assets by the candidates and you will understand why this is an area that needs radical reform. The mind-numbing amounts that are being spent by political parties on travel, rallies and media coverage alone could run this country for many years. Similarly, while all our political parties have dedicated teams of election managers, they are more likely to concentrate on slyly supplying booze and money to the electorate than working on the tenor of speeches and the feedback from the press and voters. For several weeks now, the media has been talking of a groundswell in support of one party. Yet, rather than concentrating on how to counter this, the rival party buries its head deeper and deeper in the sand. So much for the two campaigns and the difference of styles. Let us come now to the American equivalent of our PMO: the West Wing. The first thing that strikes one is the refreshing lack of sycophancy among the President’s closest staff members. They all speak as equals and, whether it is office staff such as secretaries and assistants or whether it is the Chief of Staff to the President (the equivalent of our PMO’s Special Secretary). They have violent arguments with each other and often take a divergent line from the President on issues. What is even more astonishing (for those of us who have a completely different picture of what happens behind the closed doors of the PMO), is that the buck stops with the President. Never is a staffer sacrificed to save a veiled presence who cannot be named or exposed. The American President speaks regularly to the people and his Press Secretary is among the most important members of his team. Do not let me even draw comparisons with our PMO here! In fact, in a recent episode, the Press Secretary looks a colleague squarely in the eye when he suggests that the President throw his weight behind the Democratic nominee and says, ‘The President took an oath to protect the Constitution, not the Party.’ I wanted to stand up and cheer. At the time of the 2009 elections, I once had a very enlightening conversation with a well-known political scientist and commentator who writes regularly on political matters, particularly Indian elections. We were talking of corruption and why parties with known corrupt antecedents are still elected by voters. He told me that matters were not so different in the US in the last century. Businessmen and mafia dons had bought up entire assemblies and controlled political decisions with the power of their money. What happened to change this, I asked. The rise of the middle classes and FDR, he replied. It required the political will of one brave politician and the disgust of the electorate to clean up the system. It will happen here, he had said then, when the middle class rises against the system and we have a brave politician on top. Let us hope that 2014 will be that watershed election and India gets the kind of honest and dedicated parliamentarians she so desperately needs today.
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A
year ago in March 2013 Pakistan’s former military ruler General Parvez Musharraf landed in Karachi with the mistaken notion that a bright political future awaited him. Many had tried to dissuade him from boarding the flight to Karachi. On the eve of his departure from Dubai, the UAE Foreign Minister’s special envoy dissuaded him from leaving. Nawaz Sharif had conveyed to Musharraf through a common UAE friend once in Pakistan that he would be tried. Army chief General Parvez Kayani also tried dissuading him. But the former general, misguided by some of his former political allies and indeed by his own political ambition, undertook the fateful journey.
FOR the past several months, as I was largely house-bound, I have been hooked to the TV. This means that I have wasted many hours listening to senseless debates, rousing speeches by campaigning netas and other such worthless programmes. However, the one TV serial that I look forward to each evening is called ‘West Wing’. Winner of countless Emmy awards, it was first beamed more than a decade ago and deals with the part of the White House that houses the famous Oval Office of the American President and his staff. It is riveting drama, for not only is it brilliantly scripted and acted, it raises moral and ethical issues that lie behind political decisions and public policy. This is not to say that it does not also reveal the slimy underbelly of American politics: the running battle between the President and the Senate, the hustling and lobbying by powerbrokers who promote vested interests, and the natural human frailties that beset even the best politicians: families, children and friends.