A pretty good year

Around this time last year, the political climate across Southasia looked grim. In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto had just returned after years in exile, and had been greeted with bomb explosions as she made her way out of the airport. She was killed soon thereafter. While President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the Maldives was making all the right noises about democratisation, civil liberties in the atolls continued to come under attack, and opposition leaders were travelling out to lobby for international support. In Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had walked out of the government, the November elections for the Constituent Assembly had been cancelled (for the second time), and there were serious doubts about whether the peace process would last. But the coming year has proved restorative in all these countries. Indeed, 2008 has been a year of fragile yet consistent democratisation, and the people in each have spoken, surprising pundits and putting their respective countries on the path of democracy. At this tenuous point, it is important to remember that this process is neither irreversible, nor is it deep-rooted enough for anyone to be complacent.

Pakistan saw elections in the early part of the year. Democratic forces were given a resounding mandate, and the configuration meant that both of the key political parties – Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) – were forced to work together. While the uneasy coalition did not last for several reasons, the process did see Pervez Musharraf becoming steadily weaker. After almost a decade, the man who had played an efficient double game with the Americans and Islamist militants was thrown out. The army, headed by a new chief, retreated.