Pakistan: Power Construct and Leadership demands

Nasim Zehra

One, the balance of power in Pakistan's power construct has greatly shifted towards elements that constitute Constitutional democracy. The elements include political legitimacy, popular vote, independent judiciary, constitutionally granted public and state authority, elected offices and independent media. The March 9 2007 lawyers and citizens resistance marked the beginning of this shift, the results of the February 18 election exhibited the shift and the February elected parties alliance reinforced this shift. A corollary of this shift has also been the weakening of the Extra-Constitutional forces functioning outside of the parameters of the original Constitutions.

 

Two, as a consequence of this shift balance of power three elements operating supra-Constitutionally or with the help of supra Constitutional authorities have either been considerably weakened or have retracted from the extra Constitutional spaces they occupied. First the army which has institutionally begun to retrace its steps towards its constitutional role; second the former general now Parvez Musharraf's political authority and his time as the all authoritative supra-constitutional figure is up and third PML-Q created and patronized by general Parvez Musharraf and the agencies has been trounced at the polls. Also reportedly PML-Q's elected members of the Senate, national and provincial assemblies are busy forming forward blocs.

 

Three the president's vastly diminished or vanished political authority has incapacitated him administratively to take any step to challenge the authority of the elected parliament. With the legitimate political ascendance of the elected parliamentary forces the president cannot use the Constitutional powers he acquired since 1999 through Ordinances and Constitutional amendments. With the army's obvious inclination to steer clear of politics retired general Musharraf, holding a controversial presidential position, has no cards with which to begin another round of power contest between the popularly elected parliamentary forces and the Vice-regal forces.

 

Four the joint movement of Pakistan's major parliamentary forces towards Constitutional democracy greatly reduces the ability of agencies and the GHQ to puppeteer a new anti-democracy play. At this juncture of Pakistan's political history as genuine political forces work together according to consensus-based 'rules of the game' no IJI or MMA can be created. With PPP having wisely given a stake to all elected forces in a new setup and with PML-N determined to only play the democratic game, there are no politicians willing to play the B team for the presidency. Even the 93 independent parliamentarians voted into the national and provincial assemblies are looking towards the winning parties not the presidency.

 

Five the emergence of lawyers-led organized and determined citizens' groups which seek accountable exercise of State and government power and demanding restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary is significant. It has contributed to the creation of an effective democratic deterrence against the unhindered functioning of supra Constitutional forces within Pakistan's political space. The media, popular political forces and overseas Pakistanis have been a key element in this uniquely evolving Pakistani democratic deterrence. This democratic deterrence has worked to prevent the widespread rigging planned for the Election Day, as even conceded by Pakistan's Attorney-general in his telephone conversation. It was this democratic deterrence that also forced general Musharraf to roll back whatever plans he had made in November for imposition of a longer term emergency, postponement of elections and squashing media freedom. Washington had no choice but to acknowledge the emergence of this democratic deterrence against extra Constitutional forces and also seek an early end to emergency.

 

Six Pakistan's power parliamentary forces appear relatively more capable of resisting external pressure keen to influence Pakistan's political future and the power scene. For example Washington's advice to PPP to keep the "Islamist" Nawaz Sharif out of a future ruling coalition and to the elected parliamentarians on not insisting upon the restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary, was not adhered to. Similarly Washington's advise that the elected parties work with president Musharraf and US president's phone call of support to president Musharraf will not greatly alter the way various political leaders view president Musharraf.  

 

Seven, the Musharraf era is over yet his political future and exit scenario is dependant on his personal decision, on the parliament's decisions and the street factor. Were the president not honor his own promise of respecting the public's verdict on his political future or the thumping failure of his eight year long political experiment and not resign then the politicians have the option to use their parliamentary strength to weaken him. As the  

PPP leader Amin Faheem has already stated that if the president were to get a vote of confidence from the new assembly his party can work with him. However the likelihood of a vote of confidence seems very unlikely. Some political forces within and outside of the parliament will continue to demand Musharraf's exit. His moral authority to stay on ended the day the people defeated his political party.

 

Eight the struggle for the restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary has greatly contributed to strengthening the struggle for rule of law in Pakistan. Whatever the public articulation of the PPP there is clear agreement between the PPP and the PML-N that restoration of the judiciary is a priority item for the two. However with various opinions on how the restoration can Constitutionally take place an immediate Task Force on Restoration of the Judiciary will have to be immediately set up to give specific recommendations on what is the quickest and the most effective way forward on this. While the lawyers' movement and the broader street strength gathered on the restoration matter will continue to exercise pressure on the parliamentarians, the elected political leadership cannot take any outside of a wisely guided consensus position evolved by a Task Force. Setting deadlines for restoration is an unwise approach but keeping the politicians on their toes through political pressure is needed.

 

These factors make for a clear and demanding path to a genuinely democratic Pakistan. Key issues including the president's future and the restoration of the judges need to be resolved. Instant resolutions may not be available. Patience without detouring from the Constitutional path is essential.

 

Pakistan is transiting from a khaki-led quasi-democracy towards a genuine Constitutional democracy. Power realignments are taking place and we stand at the edge of a new democratic dawn. The democratic forces are ascendant but not quite rooted yet. The democratic process has begun but the return of Constitutional authority to the elected parliament has yet to begin.

 

This is a hopeful yet precarious period. The challenge for Pakistan's parliamentary forces is to convert this shift in Pakistan's power construct into permanent ascendancy of the parliament in accordance with Pakistan's 1973 Constitution. It is time for responsible and thoughtful action not reactive behavior. The objective of the ascendancy of the parliament, of an independent judiciary and the presence of a consensus president are largely shared by the overwhelming majority of the elected forces. All elected political leadership and energy must be geared towards achieving these objectives remaining within the discipline of the Constitutional parameters and the confines of the parliament. All eyes are on the two key parties the PPP and the PML-N and also on important regional parties including the ANP and the MQM. Only jointly can they successfully respond to the many challenges- economic, political, internal security, distributive justice and foreign policy- that confront Pakistan.

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Pakistan reborn? by Dalrymple - New Statesman

Published 21 February 2008

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

The flawed boycott mantra?

The flawed boycott mantra?

Thursday, February 21, 2008 Raza Rumi Much has been said on how the election results are a referendum against the policies of General Musharraf. While there can be little disagreement with this, there is a clear lesson for Pakistan's urban intelligentsia that had been screaming about the futility of this election. True, Pakistan's troubled polity will not transform overnight, nor will the endemic civil-military imbalance dissipate in the air with the formation of the new civilian government. But this is the magic of electoral politics -- it allows the least risky path to a civilian transition. The road ahead is messy we know, but that is the only road that a fractured polity can tread. The classic failure of the Pakistani urban educated will not go unnoticed. Led by the rhetoric Imran Khan, the delusions of the lawyers' movement and the rake opportunism of Qazi Hussain Ahmed and General Hameed Gul, the boycott chanting individuals and groups should re-examine their standpoint and ultimately their "politics." Unwittingly, they took the risky path of de-legitimising the main political parties that have had the roughest time during the Musharraf years. This was also the time, which the electorate vividly remembers, that Qazi and his allies were feasting on the fruits of power in two provinces and were de facto beneficiaries of the establishment. Not to mention that Mr Imran Khan was campaigning for the general during his referendum. The urban classes term the mainstream politics as "feudal" and the participants "uneducated." This has to change, lest the opinion leaders are relegated to the dustbin of history. This dustbin already contains some rudiments of political streams, not to mention the left parties, such as the one headed by Mr Abid Hasan Minto, harping on the boycott mantra and middle-class pretensions over the National Reconciliation Ordinance. In a country of 160 million people with strong traditions of democratic yearning, the process of change cannot be articulated outside the mainstream electoral politics, however faulty the political parties. This is the biggest lesson we have learned. Mian Nawaz Sharif who was lambasted for his pragmatism now stands vindicated. And, above all, the vision of Benazir Bhutto, who was attacked left right and centre for insistence on the electoral route, stands validated. There could not have been a better tribute to her legacy. The PPP may or may not be able to form the government, but that it led the process towards a peaceful, democratic--even quasi-democratic--transition is something that will be recorded in not so unflattering terms by history. By prevailing on Mian Nawaz Sharif not to leave the field vacant, the PPP also takes in some measure the ironic credit of the near-glorious comeback of the PML-N in Punjab. Another myth, fuelled by this flawed "politics," traced the rise of Islamism in the North West Frontier Province due to General Musharraf's backing of the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan. What could be farther from the truth. The ANP and the PPP have bagged all the key seats, including those in areas where the spill over of war on terror was intense. The people of the Frontier, before sorting out the mess in Afghanistan through jihad, want peace and an end to the imposed parochialism of the clerics. The erstwhile sponsored face of Islamism -- the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal -- has been routed. The people of NWFP have rejected outright these rentier clerics that use Islamisation for power and pelf. There were many who said that Benazir Bhutto's rhetoric against fundamentalism would be counterproductive; and the results from NWFP and Balochistan speak otherwise. That she could say it so forcefully is partly why she was forced to sleep in the enigmatic precincts of Garhi Khuda Bux. These elections are also a slap on the face of the global corporate media (and their backers, the global military machine) that had painted Pakistan as a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and, dare I say, terrorism. And the global campaign on declaring Pakistan as the most dangerous country was nothing but trappings of an ignorant and imperial discourse. In the final analysis, the people and the ousted political parties are the biggest winners, while the Musharraf paradigm has been trashed. Sadly, Pakistan's naïve intelligentsia has also received a jolt as its boycott mantra will rest in peace along with the "true" democracy project and the rent-seeking devolution plan. The electoral defeat of Daniyal Aziz says it all. The lawyers' movement and its ardent supporters in the Pakistani urban bourgeoisie may consider reflecting on and devising ways whereby the incoming parliament is not de-legitimised or unduly pressured. The much abused rule of law is meaningless as a concept without political struggles and parties; lest we would like it to be reduced to debating clubs and internet groups or worse to "letterhead" parties, a phrase that our maverick Maulana of the MMA has added to our political lexicon. If the forthcoming parliament is painted as a sell-out just in case it does not deliver on the shopping list of the boycotters, this would be tragic. Reform is a frustrating and slow process that if derailed in Pakistan takes a decade to resume. Our present plight is a testament to this historical cycle. Ultimately, the causes espoused by the urban groups and lawyers' movement could only be negotiated and articulated by a sovereign parliament and a responsible executive that is answerable to the electorate. Mercurial benches at the Supreme Court or overzealous TV talk show hosts, important as they are, cannot replace this imperative. The writer blogs at http://razarumi.com, http://lahorenama.wordpress.com and edits http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com Published in the NEWS

"Routing the Islamists benefits Pakistan - and Canada"

February 20, 2008

 

NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE

 

TAREK FATAH

The Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080220.COPAK20/TPStory/?

 

 

Democracy is bringing a change in Pakistan that will have far-reaching consequences not just for its people, but for the rest of the world. The forces of the mullah-military alliance have been dealt a decisive blow. However, while the focus thus far has been on the national elections and the drubbing President Pervez Musharraf's ruling party appears to have taken, a far more significant development - one that has implications for our troops in neighbouring Afghanistan - deserves our attention.

 

On the day Pakistanis went to the polls to elect a new parliament, they were also electing four provincial governments - and none was more important than the vast North-West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, ruled by pro-Taliban Islamic fundamentalist parties since they swept to power in 2002.

 

Home to Pakistan's vibrant Pashtun minority, the NWFP provided safe haven to the Taliban and jihadi extremists of al-Qaeda for the past six years. While the Taliban quietly enlarged their areas of influence, the province's Islamist government provided the soft support by making life hell for religious minorities and working to eliminate women from the public domain.

 

The historic secular Pashtun nationalism that had celebrated peaceful civil disobedience since the 1920s was replaced by Saudi-inspired radical jihadi terrorism and suicide bombings. On Monday, however, the Pashtuns of Pakistan rose to the occasion and apparently defeated the provincial Islamist government and most of the mullahs who had been holding the area hostage.

 

The secular Awami National Party, led by Afsandyar Wali Khan, the grandson of the late legendary peace activist Bacha Khan (also known as the Frontier Gandhi) is now poised to form the next government in Peshawar. In one day, the people of Pakistan achieved through the ballot box what U.S. President George W. Bush's military might failed to accomplish in six years of fighting the Taliban.

 

Leading up to the elections, the jihadi extremists targeted the ANP and assassinated a number of their candidates. ANP activists - highly visible for wearing their red caps - became the Taliban's primary targets. There was a reason: The Islamists had managed to convince the Pashtun population that their historic national struggle was the same as the international jihad of Osama bin Laden. The ANP, however, stood in opposition to this jihadi ideology. Deeply religious and practising Muslims, ANP supporters have their roots in the kind of secularism where religion and state are kept apart and the use of Islam as a tool of politics is considered an insult to Islam itself.

 

In 2002, the Islamist gambit succeeded and the ANP was wiped out, unable to win a single seat. Six years later, it has come back with a roar, with a message to Osama bin Laden and his jihadi terrorists: Not in our name.

 

The ANP is most likely to form a coalition government with the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party; this will be welcomed by the people of the province, who have been held hostage for so long. The challenges to undo the damage done by Islamists will not be easy, but the Pashtuns are a patient people and among the most politically mature in Pakistan.

 

At the federal level, the PPP, with a plurality of the vote and the largest number of seats, has offered to form a coalition government with its rival, the Muslim League of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. These steps bode well for Pakistan and, as odd as it may sound, also for Canada. We have more than 2,000 troops next door in Afghanistan, and one of the PPP's promises is to ensure that Pakistani territory is not used as a haven for the Taliban and the jihadis. Perhaps this change in Pakistan will allow our troops to focus more on needed development and reconstruction than face the death traps laid by an elusive enemy that had its bases in Pakistan.

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Tarek Fatah is author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, to be published in March.

Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

The author analyzes the diverging aspirations that separate the Islamist from the Muslim, and the Islamic State from the State of Islam.

Pre-order today at Amazon.com or Chapters.ca

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U.S. Ponders Next Steps in Pakistan After Election Results - NYT

February 20, 2008

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration was scrambling Tuesday to pick up the pieces of its shattered Pakistan policy after the trouncing that the party of President Bush's ally, President Pervez Musharraf, received in parliamentary elections.

The United States would still like to see Pakistan's opposition leaders find a way to work with Mr. Musharraf in some kind of power-sharing deal, administration officials said, but that notion appears increasingly unlikely given how poorly Mr. Musharraf's party did in the elections, against strong showings by the Pakistan Peoples Party of the late Benazir Bhutto and the party of Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister.

"Musharraf is obviously a poison pill," said Daniel Markey, a former South Asia expert at the State Department under President Bush. "He is fading out. The question is, what happens next?"

Senior officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House were privately reaching out to Pakistan's victorious opposition parties, while trying hard "not to look like we're jumping on anybody's bandwagon," a senior Bush administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

The administration first tried to promote a power-sharing deal last summer, between Mr. Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto, but neither side proved amenable enough, and the deal collapsed after Mr. Musharraf imposed emergency rule, suspended the Constitution and dismissed the Supreme Court.

Despite those actions, and despite Ms. Bhutto's assassination in December, the Bush administration still has not given up on the idea that a democratically elected Parliament would share power with Mr. Musharraf.

Nor has administration officials given up hope that there would be some way to construct a coalition that will keep Mr. Musharraf in power as president.

"What we will urge is that those moderate forces within Pakistani politics who now have a seat at the table, so to speak, in winning seats in the Parliament, should band together, should work together for a few goals that are in the interest of Pakistan," said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman. "We are going to continue our work with President Musharraf and whatever that new government may be on goals of our national interest."

President Bush has resisted calls within his administration and from Congressional critics to limit his dependence on Mr. Musharraf, given his decreasing popularity in Pakistan.

But administration officials say Mr. Musharraf remains the administration's preferred Pakistani leader, considering his record of cooperation with American-led counterterrorism operations. Until the day of the elections, administration officials were still hoping that Mr. Musharraf's party would eke out enough votes to allow the power-sharing plan to go forward.

Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to Ms. Bhutto and a professor at Boston University, said the United States must not make the mistake of continuing to put its relations with Mr. Musharraf ahead of the wishes of the Pakistani people, who have largely repudiated his political party at the polls.

In Pakistan's case, Mr. Haqqani said, Mr. Musharraf is doubly weakened because his election as president is disputed, having occurred during the state of emergency in which the news media was muzzled, the judiciary was curbed and thousands of opponents were jailed.

"Why is this man so important?" Mr. Haqqani asked.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who was in Pakistan for the elections on Monday, issued a statement saying that the voting presented "an opportunity for us to move from a policy focused on a personality to one based on an entire people, to move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy."

Pakistan has never been more important for the United States than it is now, considering its internal instability and what American officials say has been a resurgence of operations by Al Qaeda from havens near the Afghan border. Bush administration officials have been trying to balance an insistence that Pakistan move toward democracy against Mr. Musharraf's warnings that more openness might lead to unrest that would allow Al Qaeda and the Taliban to operate more freely.

Administration officials said Tuesday that no matter who takes in charge in Pakistan, fighting terrorism should remain a top priority.

"At the end of the day, we hope that they continue to work with us as partners in counterterrorism," the White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino told reporters aboard Air Force One during President Bush's trip to Africa. "The threat from extremists is just as grave and very immediate for the people of Pakistan."

American officials had hoped that a power-sharing agreement would relieve the growing pressure for Mr. Musharraf's ouster. Pakistani experts said that given the election results, that pressure is unlikely to ease.

A Clear Verdict in Pakistan

Hassan Abbas

Guardian, February 19, 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk

The verdict is clear. Pakistan has shown the door to the mullahs and delivered a stern warning to Musharraf. Pakistan has backed the opposition to Musharraf's despotic handling of the judiciary, his high-handedness against independent media and his political cronyism. As a result, Musharraf's future looks bleak, while Pakistan gets a fighting chance to puts its house in order.

The drift of the voters is not unexpected, but few trusted the state machinery to conduct largely fair elections. Pre-poll rigging was in full swing till the end, caretakers' partiality towards pro-Musharraf parties was obvious and the Election Commission's neutrality was in doubt. While a string of suicide bombings haunted voters, ordinary Pakistanis have shown that they still believe in democracy. Voter turnout was low but the message of the electorate is clear.

Musharraf's hopes for a hung parliament that would have given him a chance to continue to manipulate the political scene have been proved wrong. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), though far short of a simple majority, has emerged as the largest political party. A sympathy vote in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination only had a moderate impact, though her death certainly dealt a fatal blow to the prospects of the pro-Musharraf Muslim League (PML-Q) playing any role in government. Her own Sindh province, however, paid due tribute to her by giving a majority to PPP in the provincial assembly.

The Muslim League faction led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif received the second highest number of votes in the national assembly and the highest number of seats in the Punjab assembly, a reward for taking a popular and laudable stand in favour of the deposed judges and constitutionalism. Sharif will have to stick to this agenda, however, if he wants to remain relevant to Pakistan in the future. Contrary to many western fears, this faction of the Muslim League is not overly conservative or Islamist, and has moved towards the centre in recent years.

The most significant victory of all was that won by the secular and Pashtun nationalist party, the Awami National Party (ANP) in the volatile North-West Frontier Province. The religious alliance MMA stands routed in the province which emerged as its heartland in the 2002 elections. Its poor governance record, flirting with Musharraf and significant internal divisions led to its downfall. Just as significant is the ANP's rise.

This is a resounding response to the spate of suicide bombings and politics of violence. For instance, in Swat, which was in the eye of the Islamist militancy storm recently, the ANP won comprehensively, establishing that ordinary Pashtuns are not supportive of extremist forces.

One other factor worth taking into account is the success of women candidates in 12 national and provincial constituencies. There are separate women's seats allocated in all legislatures to be filled through indirect vote, but in many important urban as well as rural districts, major parties fielded women candidates. Most of them won - a healthy trend in a country where in some rural areas women were stopped from voting by their male "guardians".

Despite all these positive trends, however, Pakistan's problems are far from being over. It is going to be an uphill task to form a stable, focused and accountable government dedicated to the wellbeing of the people. Developing a consensus among coalition parties (most likely, PPP, PML-Nawaz, and ANP) in the centre and then sticking to it will be a challenge in itself. In a country where palace intrigues have historically started fermenting within months of a new administration taking office (mostly orchestrated by intelligence services), the early period will be the most challengng of all. Religious extremism can also raise its ugly head at any time, as the suicide bombers and extremists are not going to change their worldview just because liberal and progressive forces did well in the elections.

As for Musharraf, he is living in a fool's paradise if he thinks he is going to be a father figure to the next prime minister of Pakistan. The new government will be under tremendous public pressure to bring back the deposed judges, and that could sound a death knell for the Musharraf presidency. For the army, which is distancing itself from Musharraf already, institutional interests, saving prestige and influence, will be more important than rescuing a president who continues to shoot himself in the foot. The west in general - and Britain and the US in particular - must show patience while democratic forces settle; at least as much patience as they showed with military dictators. This is the very least that the people of Pakistan earned yesterday. 

An overlooked natural ally in the war on terrorism: the Pakistani people.

February 16, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
In Pakistan, Islam Needs Democracy

By WALEED ZIAD
Islamabad, Pakistan

WHILE it's good news that secular moderates are expected to dominate
Pakistan's parliamentary elections on Monday, nobody here thinks the
voting will spell the end of militant extremism. Democratic leaders
have a poor track record in battling militants and offer no convincing
remedies. Pakistan's military will continue to manage the war against
the Taliban and its Qaeda allies, while President Pervez Musharraf
will remain America's primary partner. The only long-term solution may
lie in the hands of an overlooked natural ally in the war on
terrorism: the Pakistani people.

This may come as a surprise to Americans, but the Wahhabist religion
professed by the militants is more foreign to most Pakistanis than
Karachi's 21 KFCs. This is true even of the tribal North-West Frontier
Province — after all, a 23-foot-tall Buddha that was severely damaged
last fall by the Taliban there had stood serenely for a thousand years
amid an orthodox Muslim population.

Last month I was in the village of Pakpattan observing the
commemoration of the death of a Muslim Sufi saint from the Punjab — a
feast of dance, poetry, music and prayer attended by more than a
million people. Religious life in Pakistan has traditionally been
synonymous with the gentle spirituality of Sufi mysticism, the
traditional pluralistic core of Islam. Even in remote rural areas,
spiritual life centers not on doctrinaire seminaries but Sufi shrines;
recreation revolves around ostentatious wedding parties and Hollywood,
Bollywood and the latter's Urdu counterpart, Lollywood.

So when the Taliban bomb shrines and hair salons, or ban videos and
music, it doesn't go down well. A resident of the Swat region, the
site of many recent Taliban incursions, proudly told me last month
that scores of citizens in his village had banded together to drive
out encroaching militants. Similarly, in the tribal areas, many local
village councils, called jirgas, have summoned the Pakistani Army or
conducted independent operations against extremists. Virtually all
effective negotiations between the army and militants have involved
local councils; in 2006, a jirga in the town of Bara expelled two
rival clerics who used their town as a battleground.

The many militant outfits in the frontier regions are far from a
unified popular movement. Rather, they are best characterized as
ethnic or sectarian gangs, regularly changing names and loyalties.
More often than battling the army, they engage each other in violent
turf wars. For many of them — some with only a handful of members —
"Taliban" is a convenient brand name that awards them the status of
international resistance fighters. It is not uncommon for highway
bandits to declare themselves Taliban when stealing tape decks from
vehicles.

The Taliban franchise that has battled the army for months in the Swat
Valley is held by an outfit whose founder marched thousands of local
youths to their death in a campaign in Afghanistan in 2002. Upon
returning, he virtually solicited his own arrest by Pakistani
authorities to escape the vengeance of the victims' families. The
group is now led by one "Mullah Radio" who, armed with an FM station,
preaches that polio vaccinations are a Zionist plot and that the 2005
earthquake was retribution for a sinful existence. A worrisome crank,
yes, but hardly Osama bin Laden.

The big problem — as verified by a poll released last month by the
United States Institute of Peace — is that while the Pakistani public
condemns Talibanism, it is also opposed to the way the war on
terrorism has been waged in Pakistan. People are horrified by the
thousands of civilian and military casualties and the militants'
retaliatory attacks in major cities. Despite promises, very little
money is going toward development, education and other public services
in the frontier region's hot zones. This has led to the belief that
this war is for "Busharraf" rather than the Pakistani people.

Naturally, Washington must continue working with Mr. Musharraf's
government against extremism. But we also need a new long-term policy
like the one outlined by Senator Joe Biden last fall that would
strengthen our natural allies and rebuild faith in the United States
at the public level.

This isn't just wishful thinking. Interestingly, the Musharraf era has
heralded a freer press in Pakistan than ever before. Dozens of
independent TV channels invariably denounce the Taliban, while
educational institutions are challenging the Wahhabist ethos. My
conversations with Pakistanis, from people on the street to
intellectuals, artists and religious leaders, only confirmed that
after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, anti-militant sentiments
are at a peak.

This is where the lasting solution lies. As Donya Aziz, a doctor,
former member of Parliament and prominent voice in the new generation
of female leaders, told me: "Even now, as the public begins to voice
its anti-militancy concerns, politicians across the board are seizing
the opportunity to incorporate these stands into their political
platforms."
What can America do? Beyond using our influence to push the government
to expand democracy and civil society, we need to develop close ties
with the jirgas in the violent areas. The locals can inform us of the
best ways to infuse civilian aid. (According to Ms. Aziz, "the
foremost demand of the tribal representatives had been girls'
schools.") We should also expand the United States Agency for
International Development's $750 million aid and development package
for the federally administered tribal areas.

If next week's elections are free and fair, it will be an encouraging
sign for Pakistan. But as far as Washington is concerned, this should
constitute only the first stage of a broader policy intended to make
average Pakistanis see the United States as a long-term partner. In
the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, American popularity soared as
American aid helicopters — widely called "Angels of Mercy" — soared to
the rescue. If we can bear in mind that our long-term interests are
the same as those of average Pakistanis, the challenges of fighting
the militants and rebuilding credibility may not be as daunting as
they seem.

Waleed Ziad, an economic consultant, is an associate at the Truman
National Security Project.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/opinion/16ziad.html?ex=1203829200&en=8e3e0f128b76dac3&ei=5070&emc=eta1

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Voting For Change

 Analysis by Beena Sarwar

 

 

KARACHI, Feb 19 (IPS) - With unofficial results for Pakistan's general elections heralding

Major upsets for President Pervez Musharraf's allies, the message was loud and clear: despite the pre-poll manipulations and irregularities voters have rejected the politics of hate and religious extremism.

Though final results are yet to be announced, the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N), led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated on Dec. 27, have emerged as the two largest parties -- routing the pro-Musharraf, Pakistan Muslim League - Quaid (PML-Q).

Sharif and Asif Zardari, widower of Bhutto and leader of the PPP, are now discussing the possibility of forming a coalition government.

Some 45.6 percent of the electorate turned out to vote, according to the Election Commission (EC), confounding predictions of poor voter turnout expected due to the high levels of pre-poll violence coupled with the move by several political parties to boycott the polls.

The elections have been unprecedented on many counts. The election schedule was announced on Nov. 20 during the emergency rule imposed by Musharraf, then army chief as well as president. On Nov. 3, 2007, Musharraf essentially conducted a coup against himself, commented Mohammed Hanif, head of the BBC Urdu service at the time: "Faced with increasing demands to give up his position as military chief and confront the complexities of civilian rule, Gen. Musharraf decided to topple President Musharraf."

Musharraf had initially indicated that the elections would be held under emergency rule but faced with intense international and domestic pressure, he lifted the emergency on Dec. 15, but not before he had taken oath as a civilian president and made as many as 15 amendments to the constitution that gave this office more powers.

Musharraf also sacked nearly 60 members of the higher judiciary, including Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar M. Chaudhry, because they refused to endorse the emergency and were known to be opposed to his election as president while still army chief. Sharif and other politicians have said that the prime objective of the new government would be to reinstate the sacked judges.

Citing widespread irregularities and manipulations by the ruling party, organisations like the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan announced that there was no point in monitoring the polls. The Citizens Group for Electoral Process gave the pre-poll process an overall score of 26 on a scale of 100 in terms of fairness.

Despite, or perhaps because of these manipulations, Monday's polls were the most scrutinised in Pakistan's history, drawing an unprecedented number of international observers -- over 500. They included three prominent United States senators, Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with senior panel members John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.

Speaking with the BBC's Lyse Doucet on Feb. 19 in Islamabad, Kerry expressed his "admiration for Pakistani voters," who have spoken, he said, "powerfully and forcefully", going to the polls despite the pre-poll violence and loss of lives.

Doucet, no stranger to Pakistan, is among the over 700 foreign journalists who have landed here for the elections. Immigration authorities set up separate counters to facilitate the foreign media at Pakistan's international airports some days before the polls.

In addition, for the first time, the elections were held under the spotlight of over 40 privately-owned television channels. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and other organisations, like Human Rights Watch, had in the run up to the elections expressed anxiety about how much freedom the electronic media would be allowed.

Musharraf's six-week emergency rule from Nov. 3 was accompanied by a blackout of all independent news channels. They were allowed back on air only under a restrictive code of conduct imposed by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority. Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, PML-N's Sharif lauded journalists for covering the election campaigns risking their lives, and despite the restrictions.

A day before the elections, Attorney General Malik Qayyum had termed these restrictions as "illegal". He was addressing a press conference at which he denied that it was his voice admitting that the polls would be "massively rigged" on the audio tape recording released recently by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Although the PPP and PML-N have emerged with a thumping majority according to the unofficial results, observers point out that this happened despite the pre-poll manipulations that had been documented earlier.

Talking to Geo News on Tuesday morning, as the results were still coming in, the routed former chief minister of Punjab and provincial president of the PML-Q Choudhry Parvaiz Elahi, who won one of the three National Assembly seats he was contesting, said he accepted his party's defeat.

"Not all the results are in yet," he added. "We are confident that we will still win some more." Sure enough, the last few results to come in did push the PML-Q to a better position.

The delays in reporting the results of some key constituencies aroused some suspicion. "They wanted to hold back the results of several seats," said Nawaz Sharif in his press conference, citing delayed results where his party eventually lost by narrow margins.

Many voters could not find their names on the electoral list, while others whose names were listed were prevented from voting. Amiruddin Channa, who came to Karachi from Dadu in interior Sindh 22 years ago, told IPS that he had been trying to find his name on the voters' list since morning. The 65-year-old retired senior government official's wife and daughter's names were finally located and they cast their votes.

"But the polling officer told me my vote was in Dadu although I saw it on the list here. I have also served as a presiding official, but we dealt with cases judiciously. The presiding officer here refused to take a stand. When I insisted on my right to vote, a goonda (hooligan) there became very threatening, so I left," Channa told IPS. "I'm a pensioner, I have high blood pressure, it doesn't make a difference to me whether the PPP comes to power or whoever. I'm never voting again."

Several other incidents of vote manipulation, violence and loss of lives, were reported around the country.

Political science professor Sahar Shafqat also points to "the massive systematic disenfranchisement of women," noting that women were barred from voting in several districts in NWFP. "But maybe more serious is that women are simply missing from the electoral rolls. Since the rolls are based on the national identity cards which many women simply don't have or are barred from obtaining, they are severely underrepresented in the lists."

IPS obtained several eye-witness accounts of ballot papers being illegally stamped and stuffed at polling stations around Karachi, the stronghold of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (United National Movement or MQM).

"I myself stamped two ballots for MQM," Javed (real name withheld) told IPS. "The boys came at 8 am to take people out to vote. They returned at 10 am and took me along for elections 'work'. I went into four polling stations with them in our area."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41253

Public speaks

By: Amjad Malik

 

This is not gallop survey or western frenzy human right organisation's guess work, people of Pakistan in reality have given verdict and have shown serious dissent to the policies of general Musharraf and his way of governance, in particular to his treatment to top judiciary of Pakistan and his own handpicked Q league stalwarts have lost their own home seats which is a clear sign of charged mood of the nation.

 

Sharifs and Bhuttoo's party have landslide in Punjab and Sindh respectively and moderates in NWFP showing red card to the bearded Prime Ministerial aspirant Maulna Fazal u Rehman. These parties if can carefully muster a coalition government, it will be a big victory for the people of Pakistan which will bring continuity, stability and strength in governance. However, the task ahead is not small as they will have to be wise enough to acknowledge lawyers,  media and civil society's movement for justice and they must invite open heartedly Imran Khan, Qazi and APDM components to join them too in their coalition. Lawyers will be content if pre 3 Nov judicial position is restored and Chief Justice is brought back to his position along with his colleagues with honour and order of 7 member SC bench is given due respect and preference. If they can not achieve this then sitting in opposition may give a signal of strong character. Media men who were banned from reporting must be asked to resume at once especially Hamid Mir. And Dr Shahid Masood, however a code of conduct must be discussed along with setting up an independent complaints body for consumers and public separate from PEMRA and law of compensation for sleazy, and slanderous reporting must be introduced which will pave way for the due role of media which is acknowledged by all in the run up of election(s). I think printing and electronic media representatives may jointly draft a code which is reflective of the need of the state as well as encompassing the international norms.

 

Having said that, opposition voice must be protected too, now that the winning party is in government, they must treat the opposition the way they wished the treatment for themselves which they never received. Opposition plays an important part in democracy, and winning graciously is the key and 'forgiveness' and 'live and let live' principle must not be ignored. Any component of opposition may not be barred from going from one province to another, their families must not be disturbed and no false and trump up charges should be brought against them. Even if charges are made, they must be offered due process of law and fair trial ideally in the court before Justice Choudhry. I believe that political defeat by vote is the biggest revenge one may take from their opponent.

 

I for one am not in favour of selective accountability. Sharifs idea of holding people accountable through Saif ur Rehman and General Musharraf's pardon through NRO are not ideal solutions and give rise to suspicion of selective accountability which people dissent. I feel accountability trials may be conducted through normal courts, higher as well as superior courts if public representatives have violated the law, they must be brought to justice and no sacred cows must be left unattended in law. However what these two parties can do is to create a political will to strengthen the judicial process, as well as the existing court system and the way judges are appointed. If judiciary is strengthened, then that truly can stop military intervention as it can play a role of a buffer zone where a military man does not need to jump in on the name of wiping out corruption. I think winners must bring true meaning to the slogan of servants to people in its true form too as people do not like big cars, grand offices and luxurious foreign trips when there is a shortage of flour, oil, gas, and sugar in the country and people are dying of suicidal attacks so simplicity could be the key to avoid any suspicion of mal administration and government should be reflective of the people it serves, a poor state in debt over head and heels.

 

Finally, the main man himself, I think General Musharrf must consider where he went wrong, his advisors made him a deaf and dumb and showed him a true picture of his governance and he lost the pulse of the people. He did not learn even from the build up of dissent on 5^th of April in Lahore when obedient subservient Chief Justice was admired as a bold courageous man for saying 'No' to the dictator, however he rather than understanding the will of people tried to show muscle on 12^th May  like a genuine public leader resulting in many deaths. Hired spectators can never make one a leader similarly a serving General devoid of legitimacy can never be a legitimate elected leader as he never has roots in the masses. He lost his constituency when he shed off his uniform and rest is history. We can divide his rule between pre and post 9^th of March 2007 and he is a victim of his own deeds and may be considered an ignition of waking  this slept jinni a nation of 160 million who only wake up when they are to loose everything and they woke up when they saw the country loosing its ground and institutions started crumbling.  In all honesty, he could have been a leader if he had not gone for his own elections first  and had held these elections post 20^th July accepting Supreme Court verdict but end of the day he was a man not a saint. Its for him to decide how to manipulate his exit as military has honourably distanced themselves from him and civilian politics. However, whatever happens the game is on and people once again have vetoed against the turn coats.    

 

Amjad Malik is a Solicitor-Advocate of the Supreme Court (England) and a political analyst based in UK

 

19 February 2008

Public speaks

A tribute to Benazir Bhutto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugM1sdBFE-A

Pakistan Election Reference and Background Materials from Human Rights Watch

Elections under Musharraf 1999-2007

 

Microsoft Word File Attached

 

Long before Pervez Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999, elections in Pakistan did not meet international standards for being "free and fair." Periods of military rule have meant that elections were not held regularly and their genuineness was often challenged. The secrecy of the ballot has not always been maintained and practices by local feudal and tribal leaders have frequently compromised the free expression of voters' will. Authorities have often placed severe constraints on the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement.

 

This document provides a summary of the issues raised in elections held since Musharraf came to power. The elections covered are:

Local bodies elections, August 2001

Presidential Referendum, April 30, 2002

General elections, October 10, 2002

Local Bodies Elections, August 2005

 

 

Repressive Legal Measures Put in Place by President Musharraf

Available at:

http://hrw.org/pub/2008/asia/Repressive_Legal_Measures_Musharraf.pdf

 

This provides an overview of majot amendments to laws and the constitution under Emergency Rule imposed by General Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007

General Musharraf used the state of emergency he imposed in November 2007 to

arbitrarily change laws and amend the constitution. These amendments seek to

institutionalize serious restrictions on individual rights and provide immunity for

Musharraf and other officials for human rights violations and the subversion of the

rule of law.

 

Human Rights Watch Media Monitoring

Available at:

http://hrw.org/pub/2008/asia/appendix0208.pdf

 

Human Rights Watch monitored television election coverage in three phases prior to elections: December 19-26, 2007; January 7-14, 2008; and February 7-10, 2008. During the monitoring periods, Human Rights Watch documented election-related content in the main news bulletins of the three most popular 24-hour Urdu-language news channels, Aaj TV, ARY One World, and Geo News (on the internet until it was restored on air), as well as the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV) news. Periodically, monitors noted details of news bulletins on other cable channels like Dawn News (English), Business Plus, and Indus News. The bulletins were not recorded.

Human Rights Watch documented the start time of each news story and noted statements of officials and political leaders. The documentation focused on details of elections and campaign news, noted whether the coverage included a video or audio clip of a leader, noted party affiliation, and noted whether the news was provided with a voiceover comment. The monitoring included observations of any unusual news or change in programming. Advertisement and promotional breaks were also noted along with the name of the party sponsoring campaign advertisements.

PAKISTAN: Attorney General Aware of 'Massive' Election-Rigging Plans

A Statement from the Human Rights Watch forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission

PAKISTAN: Attorney General Aware of 'Massive' Election-Rigging Plans
Audio Recording Calls Into Question Government's Commitment to Fair Elections

 (New York, February 15, 2008) – In an audio recording obtained by Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/audio/2008/urdu/pakistan0208.htm), Pakistan's Attorney General Malik Qayyum stated that upcoming parliamentary elections will be "massively rigged," Human Rights Watch said today.

In the recording, Qayyum appears to be advising an unidentified person on what political party the person should approach to become a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary election, now scheduled for February 18, 2008.

Human Rights Watch said that the recording was made during a phone interview with a member of the media on November 21, 2007. Qayyum, while still on the phone interview, took a call on another telephone and his side of that conversation was recorded. The recording was made the day after Pakistan's Election Commission announced the schedule for polls. The election was originally planned for January 8 but was postponed after the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, returned to Pakistan on November 25. An English translation of the recording, which is in Urdu and Punjabi, follows:

"Leave Nawaz Sharif (PAUSE).... I think Nawaz Sharif will not take part in the election (PAUSE).... If he does take part, he will be in trouble. If Benazir takes part she too will be in trouble (PAUSE).... They will massively rig to get their own people to win. If you can get a ticket from these guys, take it (PAUSE).... If Nawaz Sharif does not return himself, then Nawaz Sharif has some advantage. If he comes himself, even if after the elections rather than before (PAUSE)…. Yes…."

Repeated attempts by Human Rights Watch to contact Qayyum by phone were unsuccessful.

Fears of rigging have been a major issue in the current election campaign. Human Rights Watch said that since the official election period commenced in November 2007, there have been numerous allegations of irregularities, including arrests and harassment of opposition candidates and party members. There are also allegations that state resources, administration and state machinery are being used to the advantage of candidates backed by President Pervez Musharraf. Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the Election Commission, which is monitoring the polls, was not acting impartially (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/02/11/pakist18034.htm).

Background

Malik Qayyum is a former judge who resigned from the bench in 2001 amid charges of misconduct. On April 15, 1999, a two-judge panel of the Lahore High Court headed by Qayyum convicted Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari in a corruption case. They were sentenced to five years in prison, fined US$8.6 million dollars each, disqualified as members of parliament for five years, and forced to forfeit their property. The impending verdict led Bhutto to go into exile in March 1999.

In February 2001, the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, published a report based on transcripts of 32 audio tapes, which revealed that Qayyum convicted Bhutto and Zardari for political reasons. The transcripts of the recordings reproduced by the newspaper showed that Qayyum asked then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's anti-corruption chief, Saifur Rehman, for advice on the sentence: "Now you tell me how much punishment do you want me to give her?"

In April 2001, on the basis of this evidence, a seven-member bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the couple, overturning the conviction. In its ruling, the Supreme Court contended that Qayyum had been politically motivated in handing down the sentence. Faced with a trial for professional misconduct before Pakistan's Supreme Judicial Council, the constitutional body authorized to impeach senior judges, Qayyum opted to resign his post in June 2001.

A close associate of Musharraf, Qayyum was appointed as the lead counsel on behalf of Pakistan's federal government in the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, instituted after Chaudhry was first illegally deposed by Musharraf on March 9, 2007. A full bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court reinstated Chief Justice Chaudhry on July 20, 2007.

Qayyum was appointed attorney general of Pakistan by Musharraf in August 2007.

To download the audio recording of Pakistan's Attorney General Malik Qayyum discussing election rigging (in Urdu with English transcript), please visit:
http://hrw.org/audio/2008/urdu/pakistan0208.htm

For more of Human Rights Watch's work on Pakistan, please visit:
http://hrw.org/pakistan

For more information, please contact:
In London, Brad Adams (English): +44-20-7713-2767; or +44-790-872-8333 (mobile)
In Washington, DC, Tom Malinowski (English): +1-202-612-4358; or +1-202-309-3551 (mobile)

#  #  #

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984. The above statement has only been forwarded by the AHRC.

Whither Islamabad?

By Helga Ahmad

WILL 500 years hence tourists be flocking towards the remains of the erstwhile capital of Pakistan, similar to the present massive influx in Fatehpur Sikri? This five-century old capital built by Akbar the Great was shifted 14 years after its inauguration as water resources were dwindling rapidly due to an ever-increasing population.

Islamabad will soon celebrate 50 years of its existence. But, what is there to show for it? The worst air pollution ever engulfed the city for weeks in 2007, while the increasing gutter fragrance, so common now in this capital of ours, filters through closed doors and windows. Warned are we that water shortage, constant load-shedding and low gas pressure will be upon us in full force this coming summer.

Although the highest number of foreign degree holders reside within its boundary no pressure group questions why 'water tankers' have become a permanent feature, nor are bans imposed by the CDA on the ever-increasing number of privately installed tube wells. Instead, the planners are fully supportive of the prevalent resistance of the upper strata of society to sacrificing personal comforts for the betterment of their surrounding.

Unheeded are the concerns of the early planners about keeping a balance in discharge versus the recharge of groundwater, and the CDA is adamant in accepting its responsibility as an effective service provider, as the development part of its title is more lucrative.

Visionary planning is unknown within CDA's fold and it has surrounded itself with a corps of consultants to find a solution to the looming water crisis within its territory. Amazingly, this corps of specialists identified Pakistan's lifeline, the River Indus, as the only salvation for the survival of the constantly expanding capital territory. They were unaware that the Indus Regulatory System Authority, situated right in the heart of Islamabad, could have provided them with details of the periodic seasonal crisis in this lifeline. Diverting water from this source would have reduced the power-generating capacity of Tarbela and Ghazi Barotha.

In retrospect, one can appreciate the British occupation force in Germany, who prior to establishing their cantonments made sure that the water sources would not run dry on them. Consideration was even given to not disturbing the supply system of local communities and that of the lower riparian, unbelievable for an occupation force. Could the fate of Fatehpur Sikri have played a decisive role in this decision, as most planned sites were in the midst of fertile landscapes? If so, why can our planners never learn from mistakes committed in the past, while erstwhile rulers seem to have gained from this exposure, at least on European soil?While in the West, global climate change is given serious thought, the CDA plans a chairlift right in the middle of the Margalla Hills, the only known watershed fully in its control and known as the 'recharge of the groundwater table of the capital'. Conveniently, no data is accessible in its offices, which would provide details of this vanishing sweet groundwater. However, it is known that water drawn from 200ft is already contaminated. The CDA chairman dares to compare these hills to the Swiss Alps, readily ignoring the difference in climate between the two countries, besides cultural practices.

In the midst of this energy and water crisis, Jinnah Park is being prepared for the 22nd century, as one assumes that by that time all varieties of crises would be solved. Residents of adjoining sectors look at this park, replenished with imported exotic grasses, alien shrubs, plants and trees, requiring constant watering, when their water supply lines are empty. To further expose the crisis-burdened public to the CDA's tremendous feat, each collection of plants is separately illuminated and one wonders if this could be the cause of load-shedding in the residential sectors.Islamabad could once upon a time certainly have been bracketed as a Green City. Today, unplanned expansion within and around the capital territory is rapidly reducing the vegetative cover. No federal or provincial planning department has shown concern over the horrendous development schemes in the Murree Hills. Vast stretches of undulating shrub land are being levelled making way for the new golf city that the king of Bahria Towns is blessing the twin cities with. A huge apartment block, encroaching right into the riverbed of the Korang river, feeding Rawal lake, the drinking water reservoir for Rawalpindi, prides itself on belonging to the offspring of the founder of Islamabad. These new development projects will be withdrawing the last drop of water that Pindi residents are already crying for.

Who in the erstwhile assemblies raised a voice of concern? And who of the future ones will take up this issue, when 'wheels under the applications and files' will continue to smooth out its path? Already, one hears the promise of one candidate from the Murree Hills that he will build a New Murree City, if he is elected.

So, adieu Islamabad, I am all for a mountain retreat, as no air-conditioning and fans are required, at least not for the next five years. By then, surely the slopes of Nanga Parbat will be stripped bare of vegetation and provide a haven for enterprising real estate developers. Further north we seekers of comfort shall move.

http://dawn.com/2008/02/11/op.htm#4

A new course for the US and Pakistan

FREDERICK BARTON By Frederick Barton  |  February 12, 2008 AS PAKISTAN faces two near-term crises, parliamentary elections on Feb. 18 and increasing extremist violence, the United States has an opportunity to build a new and constructive relationship with the country. In the past, America has been reactive, driven by fear and uncertainty, with the end-result a military dominated policy. Now, there is a chance to forge a more values-centered partnership. Pakistan's champions of democracy are warning that the election will not be free or fair. They cite recent violence, a biased elections commission, intelligence community meddling, and the absence of an independent judiciary. While the major democratic parties are expected to win, the rewriting of the rules by President Pervez Musharraf will probably produce a political stalemate or a public rejection. Before any US administration or Congress takes further action in Pakistan, there must be a greater confidence in answers to the following questions: How can the political ownership of Pakistan's people be maximized in the coming days and months? What is the best model for a peaceful and democratic transition in a post-Musharraf Pakistan? What are the sources of extremist violence within Pakistan and how can the United States be of greatest help? There are three steps that the United States could pursue to set its relationship with Pakistan on a more promising course. First, the United States should champion the rule of law. For too long, Pakistan's ruling elites have shaped justice to their own service. It is hard to imagine a successful Pakistani election without the reinstatement of the suspended judges, at all levels of the system. Reforms of the police, prisons, prosecutors, and corrupt officials will only progress if the judiciary is insulated from political pressures. The recent demonstrations by Pakistan's lawyers are precisely the kind of opening that America should champion. Once the deposed judges are returned to the bench, an independent review of the judiciary and how it stood up to prior Constitutional violations and corruption should be a top priority. This is consistent with America's deepest held beliefs and a clear way to align ourselves with Pakistan's public and its civil society. Second, the United States must improve its knowledge of Pakistan. At a time when Pakistan is growing and 50 percent of its 160 million people are under 20, the United States has been too dependent on singular leaders, the military and a few designated friends. Washington is more bravado than brilliance and has failed to tap into a huge diaspora of Pakistani-Americans (the largest single group of Muslim immigrants), and others who will extend the official reach. Accelerated learning should be our concern. This will not happen with more high level, two-day visits - mostly to Islamabad - from top Washington officials, from a bunkered down and overstretched Embassy, or from multiple military scenarios that the Pentagon is designing. The deployment by the National Security Council of several small, integrated, interagency, and interdisciplinary teams, to travel throughout Pakistan for conversations with all levels of society would help develop a strategic and more grounded sense in the coming two months. Finally, we must develop a trusted partnership with the people of Pakistan. The relationship of the past two decades has been built on events and issues rather than a joint commitment to the long-term well-being of Pakistan's people. Of the $10 billion of US involvement in the last five years, little has touched the hearts of Pakistanis, such as America's effective response to the devastating earthquakes of 2005. Pakistan's tribal belt may be the place to start. Because of the challenges of the region, from well-armed insurgents to the destruction of maliks, any American approach must complement participatory tribal structures and a freshly engaged Pakistani government. The dangers will require more self-directed projects that combine catalytic US transfers and significant local inputs. Such a combination could speed delivery and capture the public's imagination. The benefits of such a fast-flowing initiative would be felt well beyond the 20 million people of the Northwest. Emigration from the frontier areas has made Karachi the largest Pashtun city in the world and others have found gainful employment in Dubai, England, and the United States. The economic center of the region is thousands of miles away and yet there is a strong connection home. If the global Pashtun people see that there is a genuine effort to invest and better the lives of their long neglected native area, a lasting alliance can be started. Pakistan's people must be at the center of any national resurgence. By building an informed relationship with Pakistan's citizens that is anchored by the rule of law, America can be a constructive ally. Frederick Barton is co director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies Post Conflict Reconstruction Program.

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