HAMSTRUNG POLITICS

GEORGE W Bush is no longer friends with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ever since the latter, who has just been narrowly re-elected, had the gall to oppose military action against Iraq. Meanwhile, the United States military machine is getting ready for yet another strike against a country that has already been pummeled many times over. In West Asia, a familiar scene presents itself – Israeli forces running riot through Palestinian towns and villages, and to top it all off, Yasser Arafat's headquarters being bulldozed to the ground.

It would be inaccurate to say that Gerhard Schroeder, or other Western European leaders who are opposing military action against Iraq or voicing even the slightest concern about state-sponsored terrorism in Israel, are the world's most prominent upholders of human rights. But nonetheless, they seem to have decided that absurdity must stop somewhere. If not, the 'war on terror' could go on indefinitely, and that augurs badly for the entire world, rich or poor, powerful or weak. Nevertheless, it is likely that Bush will have his way, and Chancellor Schroeder will just have to accept that.

And so, as all common sense seems to be quickly dissipating from the practice of international politics, South Asians should consider how US unilateralism will affect us on the home front. After all, what happens at home is intimately related to the myopic decisions of George W Bush and his operatives the world over. The upcoming Pakistani general election is the strongest evidence of this unfortunate fact.

It is now common knowledge that the Pakistani military has gone out of its way to ensure the consolidation of its role in politics once the newly elected government comes to power. Indeed, whether or not it will actually be accurate to term the new government as being democratically elected remains to be seen. But the fact is that the election will take place, and when it is over, there is little that is likely to substantively change.

There are many reasons for this. One is that the US is quite happy with General Musharraf being in power. And General Musharraf is quite happy with the US on his side, just as Zia-ul Haq was two decades ago. And so no one is too concerned when the military redrafts significant portions of the constitution, when 40 retired generals and colonels stand for elections, when there is significant and worrying talk of prepoll rigging, and when democratic principles and the norms of human rights are completely ignored across the country. The Pakistani people's reality is shaped by the actions of the US. The global hegemon has given General Musharraf a clean slate for now, and so the Pakistani people and Pakistani democracy will have to pay.

This is not to say that Pakistani democracy has a proud history in any case. Mainstream electoral parties have drifted so far from the general public that it hardly feels like a general election is around the corner. Political parties however, regardless of whether they are responsive to people's needs or not, should ask themselves some serious questions. The decade of the 1990s saw four governments all toppled before they completed their terms. There can be a variety of explanations for this, but ultimately, it must be said that all of these governments were operating under the larger security paradigm that determines decision-making in Pakistan.

That being the case, political parties ought to ask themselves how long they will continue to accept that the future of democracy, and therefore the future of their own politics, is largely determined by others, including the military and the US. Indeed, one of the defining features of the upcoming elections is the manner in which the military has already clearly stated that the new government will not be permitted to undermine the economic agenda that has been put into place by finance minister Shaukat Aziz and company. The international financial institutions (IFIs), for their part, have also been unambiguous about their preference for the military to retain a significant say in economic decision-making.

It is another issue altogether if one assumes that politicians are completely uninterested in articulating their own politics and the needs of the people at-large, and would rather continue to engage in power games to secure their own limited interests to whatever extent possible. But it is difficult to imagine that all politicians are happy to reap the rewards of colluding with the military while perpetuating the kinds of injustices and inequalities that always characterise undemocratic systems. This is especially true given the fact that the military government has systematically defamed politicians over the past three years, in close collaboration with the IFIs. The latter have pointed out that corruption, economic mismanagement and "poor governance" are the defining characteristics of elected governments in Pakistan, in contrast to which the present military government seemingly has a monopoly on good governance.

While it is necessary to acknowledge that Pakistan's next prime minister will be far less able to resist the dictates of the US and the IFIs than Chancellor Schroeder, states such as Pakistan should be appalled at the rapidity with which sovereignty is being turned into an almost obsolete concept. The first alarm bell should be ringing in the secretariats of all political parties that are taking part in these elections. After all, they are the ones directly affected by this current practice of international politics.

But the fear is that most of the mainstream political parties in Pakistan are neither informed nor interested enough to be doing anything about this situation. The world over, civil society has accepted the responsibility of reinvigorating political processes, particularly in countries where formal democracy has been practiced without interruption for decades. In Pakistan there is perhaps even more urgency required in not only opposing militarisation of state and society, but also in erecting viable political organisations that articulate people's needs and resist the onslaught of corporatisation.

This will hardly be a painless process, or one that has a definite timeline. But it is necessary because the alternative is much too grim to contemplate. For the time being, the very least that can be done is to ask difficult questions of political parties about how much they understand the problems of the populace, and how much they are willing to risk to address these problems. This, of course, requires civil society to ask just as critical questions of itself, and the extent to which it is playing the role that is desperately needed.

The time has come to reconsider whether or not military governments, international institutions and global superpowers who use the language of poverty reduction, human rights and peace really mean it, or whether in fact they have just made their usurping tactics a little more sophisticated. The time has also come to shed the fear of supporting movements and initiatives that are radical, such as tenant movements which demand land reform, movements of forest dwellers which refuse to allow any more of their vanishing resources to be pillaged by the state and timber mafias, movements of fisherfolk demanding that their waters and livelihood be protected from profit-hungry corporate trawlers, or movements of teachers and students opposing the privatisation of education. Only when civil society takes such initiatives on its own will political parties be forced to redefine their politics, and only then, in this era of frightening militarisation, will Pakistan even begin the long march towards democratisation.