“Let the people go to hell”

So let the smoking rains fall on the mind's rain forest. So many funeral masks are preserved in the earth that nothing is yet lost.

– Victor Serge

The outcome of elections in Pakistan is exactly what the general-in-sherwani wanted it to be. With 45 seats in the National Assembly, a six-party alliance of the religious right – the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) – has emerged as a formidable force. The two major political parties, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), have been cut down to size, but they have been allowed to remain on the scene so as not to raise suspicions about the "free and fair" nature of the election exercise just past. The king's party – the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) – is the largest party in the new parliament with 76 seats to its name, with enough clout to steer the course of the legislature any which way it wants.

For the moment, General Pervez Musharraf appears unassailable. The composition of the resulting assembly is such that his tinkering with the constitution prior to the polls will probably remain unchallenged. Meanwhile, the well-orchestrated campaign to portray the MMA as the Pakistani version of the Taliban means that he can show himself to be indispensable for Bush Junior's 'War against Terror' in the region. The next time Christina Rocca comes calling, he can claim in the manner of the last Bourbon: it's me, or chaos.

Through shrewd strategic arrangements prior to the polls and astute tactical moves during the elections, the brilliant general has emerged victorious in an important political battle. But whether he can win the war of de-politicising Pakistan remains to be seen. The scheme of disqualifying all probable political challengers in the name of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), or the sheer opportunism of hobnobbing with the extremists of the right to undermine the prospects of mainstream parties during the election campaigns are sure to have 'unintended consequences' unimaginable in any case-study of the best military schools.

Methods of warfare do work in short-term politics, but they are of limited use in the longer term. Any political battle that does not end in a compromise produces only losers, and General Musharraf must understand that even generals with the best of intentions cannot replace politicians. And how much ever the upper-crust Pakistani intelligentsia may hate populist leaders, they are all that the people have.

Old disease

To be fair to Musharraf, the politics of being 'above politics' is not his invention; it dates back to the days of the partition when the Muslim bureaucratic-military elite of British India inherited a country without a history which was fertile ground for military fascism. And sure enough, before the 1950s were over, General Ayub Khan had sowed the seeds of 'the political economy of defence'. General Yahya Khan nurtured the noxious weed long enough for it to cause the break-up of the country in 1971. From a military utilitarian point of view, General Zia-ul Haq had learned his lessons from the failures of his two predecessors. Instead of remaining content with his control over the state apparatus, Zia went about dismantling the whole political structure of the country in the name of 'Islamisation'. After the Soviet Union's entry into Afghanistan in December 1979, there was no stopping the nexus between Pakistan's military and religious zealots. Fuelled by the lethal mix of slush funds from the United States and the Wahhabi fanaticism of Saudi Arabia, jehadis schooled by the CIA and the isi destroyed democratic politics in Pakistan even as they waged their war against the Russians in Afghanistan.

Under the circumstances, the democratic regimes that inherited the demoralised state proved to be no less reckless. The feudalistic leanings of Benazir Bhutto and the rapaciousness of Mian Nawaz Sharif added to the disillusionment of the middle-classes in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi even as the free press went hammer and tongs at the freewheeling ways of the merchant political class in Islamabad. Enter Musharraf, the saviour in shining armour from the hallowed institution of the army, with his vainglorious claim that he would modernise Pakistani society a la Ataturk. The economic elite dreamt of an end of the dark ages. The middle-classes saw new opportunities opening up in the government once the political set-up was dispensed with. Small-town aspirants living off the remittances from relatives working abroad hoped of acquiring the lifestyle shown on satellite television channels.

In the euphoria over the ouster of the discredited Nawaz Sharif government, no one paused to mull over the fundamental flaw of General Musharraf's much-vaunted National Reconstruction Scheme: an autocratic regime was unlikely to steer society towards modernisation. Musharraf's methods were sophisticated – he used institutional mechanisms such as the NAB and the National Construction Bureau to tame politicians – but his intentions were no better than those of the earlier despot generals. Despite the 'free and fair' elections, democracy in Pakistan is now back to where it was in the early 1950s, with the added challenges of religious fanaticism.

No remedy

Meanwhile, Indian-held Kashmir has seen another general election, phased over six stages. According to international observers, the polls were largely free and fair, but the fact is that the outcome is unlikely to change anything in Srinagar. Even though the party that besmirched Sheikh Abdullah's name by associating itself with the saffron brigade in New Delhi has received a well-deserved drubbing at the hustings, the fact is that no other party has the mandate to hold meaningful negotiations with the rebels.

Elections are useful only if there is consensus over the acceptability of its outcome. With the Hurriyat boycotting the polls, the usefulness of the exercise was in doubt right from the beginning. The hung legislative assembly led to jockeying for power between Sonia Gandhi's Congress and Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's People's Democratic Party, which once again proves the point that some of the worst enemies of democracy are those politicians who swear by it day and night.

Like all previous arrangements in Srinagar, the new assembly is also unlikely to address the core question of the Kashmir dispute – autonomy, independence or a formal division of the riyasat between India and Pakistan? As long as the issue of its composition itself is not resolved, no election is going to restore lasting peace in the Kashmir valley. All political parties in Pakistan-occupied as well as India-controlled Kashmir swear by the people, but their fundamental attitude is the same as that of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the days when Kashmir was still an independent riyasat, Ali Mohammed Tariq, a National Conference activist, asked Jinnah whether its people would decide the future of Kashmir. The Quaid reportedly flared up at the suggestion and retorted, "Let the people go to hell". That is exactly what seems to have happened both in India and Pakistan, as the common people in both countries continue to endure the hell of communal hatred.

Kashmir is at the root of many malaises that afflict India-Pakistan (and therefore the region), but at this late date there is no resolution in sight. More elections at the point of the gun are unlikely to provide any solution. But nobody seems to know exactly how to extricate this region from the quicksand of Kashmir. Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have warned a young Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 40 years ago that the two countries had been caught in a situation that they could not get out of without causing damage to the system and structure of their respective societies. So, the curse of Jinnah will continue to haunt Kashmir and Kashmiris.

Freedom interrupted

In the Kingdom of Nepal, a mid-term election that could not be conducted due to Maoist threats became an excuse for the usurpation of sovereignty from the hands of people. The political clock in Nepal has been turned back, to the time of the People's Movement of 1990, for the democratic constitution of the country now lies in coma. No one knows when the executive authority will emerge from the political equivalent of an Intensive Care Unit that is currently located within the precincts of the Narayanhiti palace.

Beset with one of the most violent political insurgencies not just in South Asia but in the world, Nepal got itself into double trouble when King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev assumed all executive powers by dismissing the "incompetent" Sher Bahadur Deuba government for being unable to conduct elections that he (Deuba) had announced after dissolving parliament earlier in the year. The king has formed a cabinet of his own nominees under the chairmanship of Lokendra Bahadur Chand, an old court loyalist, but it lacks the mandate of the people and does not seem to have any standing in the public eye. What it can, or more appropriately cannot, do remains to be seen, both in terms of restoration of democracy through elections and the looming threat of a wildfire Maoism. But one reality is clear – the extreme right and left now face each other without the buffer of a political centre. Will this augur meaningful negotiations between the monarch and the Maoist insurgents, or a harsh rejectionism on each side which would before long lay the very viability of the Nepali state in question?

Democracy has suffered in Nepal no less that in Pakistan. General Ayub Khan's Basic Democracy was the model for King Mahendra's Panchayat system. Now that power is once again back with the palace, at least a few of the royalists may be contemplating a Nepali version of General Musharraf's Sustainable Democracy. But they should be forewarned, that the people of Nepal have tasted freedom uninterrupted for more than a decade now, whereas Pakistanis have been allowed only teaser doses. In addition to that, despite the goodwill it enjoys, the Royal Nepalese Army does not have the- acceptability in society that the defence forces do in Pakistan.

As of the moment of going to press, the discredited political parties that had brought the country to such a pass were meekly protesting the royal move even while their individual leaders were jockeying for power behind the scenes for roles in the new government. All seems to rest in new king's ability to rope in the aboveground political forces, convince the populace of his bona fides, and bring the Maobaadis to the table.

Over to the east, in Bhutan, the king has expressed to the constitution drafting committee a desire to be made a constitutional monarch, and a supreme law is being drafted to suit 'Bhutanese traditions and values'. In the changed circumstances, the palace officials in Nepal should be eagerly waiting to discover the 'traditions and values' model of constitutional monarchy.

Even as the economy in South Asia globalises, its politics all over seem to be mired in the outdated models of the 1960s, fashioned by American think-tanks to counter the rise of communism in newly independent countries. People in South Asia will have to break out of this hell all by themselves.