Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto
Mushtak Parker

THE brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday in Rawalpindi has seen the most powerful dynasty in Pakistani political history laid to rest at least for a generation. With her father and two brothers similarly experiencing violent premature ends to their lives, there are no more Bhuttos left willing to carry on the dynastic mantle with immediacy. Benazir’s only surviving sibling, Sanam, is disinterested in Pakistani politics and prefers to live in Dubai.
The world will have to wait for the next generation of Bhuttos to emerge - the offspring of Benazir’s elder brother, Murtaza, and her own children - that is assuming they have the same political genes of their charismatic elders. There is a precedent in dynastic politics on the subcontinent from which the Bhutto clan could well do to learn - that of the even more famous but equally tragic Nehru/Gandhi dynasty in neighboring India.
Mother India herself - Indira Gandhi - too was assassinated by one of her Sikh guards. Her youngest son and heir apparent, Sanjay, died in a light plane crash, which he was piloting. And her eldest son, Rajiv, who followed in her footsteps in politics was similarly assassinated - blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber during an election campaign rally.
There were no more Gandhis from the immediate family to take over. The two wives, Maneka, married to Sanjay and a one-time environment minister, and Sonia, Rajiv’s widow and the current chair of the ruling Congress Party, found it nigh impossible to follow in their husbands’ footsteps, simply because they were merely married into the Gandhi clan. They both tried. Maneka became estranged from the family and party. Italian-born Sonia could have become India’s prime minister but wisely declined after the Congress Party won the last election because the opposition BJP raised the chauvinistic specter of India being ruled by a “foreigner”.
In this context, the implication for Asif Zardari, Benazir’s grieving husband, is that he should not be tempted to carry on the political mantle of his martyred wife. That would be a miscalculation of enormous proportions not only for the Pakistan People’s Party but for the country per se. For, Zardari neither has the charisma, nor grassroots constituency, nor the political genes of the Bhutto clan. The whole world knows that the Bhutto/Zardari betrothal was a “marriage of political convenience” and the mother of all matrimonial mismatches. Educationally, intellectually and socially, the Harvard and Oxford-educated Benazir towered over her spouse.
The tragic events in Rawalpindi expose two important but festering issues about contemporary Pakistan - the nature of its governance and the state of its political parties and culture. Given the turbulent 60-year history of the country since partition, the questions that beg are: “Is Pakistan ungovernable?” Is Pakistan a perpetually dysfunctional state?
These questions should not be confused with the strength and the sustainability of the Pakistan state per se, which is strong and of course nuclear, albeit controlled pervasively by the armed forces. Pakistan is unfortunate in that it did not have an established infrastructure of statehood at birth. As such, it had a massive disadvantage compared to India, which inherited most of the bureaucracy, civil service, judiciary and press - with all their warts - of the Raj.
The British in their hasty retreat from Empire, effectively frog-marched the two entities into partition. And Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the first leader of Pakistan, fell for it the hardest. It is perhaps revealing that the army has been the most dominating institution in Pakistani politics in its short history. Perhaps this was not the legacy, which the founder of the Pakistani state had envisaged. But this almost single-handedly stunted the development of civilian institutions, especially political parties.
Those that eventually flourished, largely due to the pressure from the West, had the misfortune to be established by strong feudal clans who virtually controlled the two most powerful states in the country - Sindh and Punjab. With the result these parties are centrally dominated by two families who have a healthy disregard for delegation of power. How ironic that both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif claimed to be the torchbearers of the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, and yet their own internal party structures are the most undemocratic.
Others tried to join the frame. The Mohajirs launched the MQM but were soon sidelined as usurpers in a spate of violence, especially in Karachi. The Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami has never had a constituency of substance and fortunately remains a marginal force, perhaps also indicating that the majority of Pakistanis prefer the middle road to politics and governance. As to the answers to the above questions, they are unfortunately both in the affirmative, at least for the moment. Both the army and the civilian parties have failed the Pakistani people and democratic governance. And there is hardly a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.
The role model for the Pakistan Army is Turkey, especially under the Kemalist revolution of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Even in its current manifestation, Gen. Pervez Musharraf is clearly trying to emulate what Kenan Evren, the last Turkish general to stage a military coup in 1980, did in Turkey. The similarities are uncanny, but up to a point. The Turkish Army is much more organized, resourced, bigger, and sophisticated. And Turkish civilian parties, after decades of in-built ideological rivalries, seemed to have learned the lessons of yesteryear.
The current AK Party government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, in July won a landslide election after it took on the powerful army over a constitutional issue. Erdogan won because he put the electorate first, who were more interested in the management of the economy, job creation and the cost and standard of living. The opposition Republican People’s Part, pandering to the army, tried to raise the specter of creeping fundamentalism, which of course backfired badly.
When last did a Pakistani military regime or a civilian government put the interests of the Pakistani people first? Never before! Pakistan needs a period of reflection. To reach a better quality of civilian rule, will require a revolution of mindset - not only of the army and the political parties, but perhaps more so of the middle classes, the backbone of any tax-paying democracy, and the extra-parliamentary institutions such as the NGOs.
Pakistani political culture, like several other developing countries, is too easily infused with blind emotion rather than sober reflection that inevitably leads to wanton violence and destruction. Failure of the above stakeholders in Pakistan is too horrendous to contemplate. Dysfunctional governance is the oxygen that fuels alienation and extremism. A lack of accountable government; free and fair elections; strong state institutions; an independent judiciary; law and order; freedom of the press; a vibrant political culture; an open society; and efficient economic management similarly give rise to corruption, despair and militancy, because, they are the willing occupants of political vacuums.
Political restoration in Pakistan has a long and tortuous journey ahead. No one should kid themselves about this. Just consider the moral nadir to which the country has degenerated. The specter of Muslims murdering Muslims in a mosque during prayers. The only other countries where this is currently happening are Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

—Arab News



Why it’s important to read up on Asia
Tom Plate

I CONSTANTLY tell my students that if they only come to understand one area of the world fully, make it Asia. Why the emphasis on Asia, they ask? Well, here is just one of many reasons: In just a few years, something like 90 per cent of all PhD-holding scientists and engineers will be living in Asia. Want more? “Each year,” notes the gifted Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Singapore’s former UN ambassador, “India is introducing more gifted people into the global economy than any other society, with the possible exception of China.” Still not convinced? Alright then, try this: something like one billion Asians are Muslims (only about 200 million live in North Africa and Europe). So if you’re interested in the ‘Moslem world’ — whatever that might mean — keep watching Asia.
But how best to maintain an intelligent and efficient personal Asia watch? Aside from the obvious — travel there as much as possible — read and bookmark the best stuff available. Among the periodicals that students generally have not heard of, I recommend — for Japan alone — The Oriental Economist, the consistently savvy monthly out of New York, and the Nekkei Weekly, the comprehensive business and political news magazine out of Tokyo. For China’s view of the region, read the Beijing-based newspaper China Daily, though it does arrive in the States ten days or so late; but it is indispensable, and often surprisingly entertaining. Better known, of course, are The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Economist — they are unavoidable, but, alas, sometimes Western-centric. The preferred-periodical list could go on. Leaving aside Asia’s many vital news-sites, especially The Straits Times of Singapore and The South China Morning Post (two terrific newspapers that — despite individual shortcomings — rival the quality of almost any Western paper), I tell my students to read serious books on Asia. Here are four that I just finished; they were so compelling that I intend to re-read them next year.
The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East — by Kishore Mahbubani (Public Affairs Books). Singapore’s educator and diplomat writes like a Jonathan Swift and thinks like a chainsaw usefully massacring all sorts of Western sacred cows. His first book “Can Asians Think?” was a little masterpiece, and my students love it; this new one is deeper and even more thoughtful and not for one single page a bore. Read this book for a surpassingly incisive sense of how a former Asian diplomat and current policy-school Dean conceptualises tricky but fateful relations between “the West and the rest.” Your geopolitical brain will never be as orthodox or as predictable again — and you’ll thank me!
Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics — by William H. Overholt (Cambridge University Press/RAND Corporation). Overholt is the director of RAND’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy and probably knows as much about Asia as anyone in the United States. His new book is a muscular, mind-expanding tour of the Asian geopolitics of today and tomorrow, told on an epic, intelligent scale. You don’t want to travel any deeper into this century without having this book thoroughly encrypted into your DNA. Overholt has scoped out all-important and sometimes difficult-to-assess China with special brilliance. The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us — by Robyn Meredith (Norton). Journalists typically offer the reader all the historical and geopolitical perspective of a play-by-play football announcer, if that. But Meredith — who holds down the Forbes magazine Hong Kong bureau — is quite special. Her new book comparing and contrasting the rise of India and China is a monument to how wonderful truly incisive journalism can sometimes be. Her glittering talent for the telling of stories that are illuminating as well as entertaining gives this terrific book a zing that makes it endlessly engrossing. There’s also a nifty undercurrent of a plot line, involving a race between the slow but steady elephant and the fast but mercurial dragon. Who should win? Get the book to find out.
The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Novel — by Christopher G. Moore (Grove Press). An accomplished novelist can penetrate through life’s surface reality and bring out unique word-pictures of profound meaning and clarity. Chris Moore’s series of private-eye tales set in the full mysterious splendor of bubbling Bangkok remind us anew of how much meaning we miss out on when we don’t worship true artists and give them a proper hearing or reading. This weekend, the country of Thailand undergoes an election that simply cannot be understood by reading current journalism alone. For underneath Bangkok society is a deeply encrusted demi-world of hope, despair, corruption and courage that Moore, an American-born writer who has lived in Bangkok for almost 20 years, paints with maestro-like Dickensian strokes. Marvelously, he makes you care about the Thais in a most unexpected and startling way. This is a real artist at work, and at play.

—Khaleej Times





Elections, criticism enshrined
Huang Wei

A the just concluded 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a great step has been taken toward democratic reform with the inclusion of a tenure system for delegates to CPC congresses at all levels in the Party’s Constitution, .The amendment, designed to empower delegates to supervise Party committees at all levels, was endorsed on October 21.
It enshrines the right of CPC cadres to elect, supervise, criticize and demand attention from the Party’s leadership. “The tenure system plays an active role in establishing the authority of the Party congress and activating the functions of both the Party congress and its delegates,” commented Liang Yanhui, a professor from the CPC Central Committee’s Party School, the Party’s top cadre-training base and a leading thinktank.
More functional
In China, the National People’s Congress is elected for a term of five years. During the term the People’s Congress deputy carries out his statutory duties. The tenure is same as that of the Party congress deputy, but he has no duties between national Party congresses. Major decisions at the local level are made at local Party plenums, which are held every few years. There have been few meetings between plenums and this has contributed to the poor functioning of the Party’s deputy system. Many Party members, including a considerable number of Party deputies, see Party membership as simply a political honor. According to Zhang Xiaoyan, political science expert from the CPC Central Committee’s Party School, the newly adopted tenure system guarantees the right of Party deputies to elect, supervise and criticize the Party’s leaders and organizations, to demand attention from the leadership of the Party congress and to recall inept Party cadres.
From theory to Constitution
The CPC has always respected and safeguarded the democratic rights of its members over the Party’s 86-year-long history. It has been working to establish a Party congress system with regular annual conferences to promote inner-Party democracy since the very first-generation of the Party leadership, said political expert Li Yongzhong. Documents show that in 1956, Mao Zedong suggested adopting a five-year-term tenure system for the Party congress. The second-generation Party leader Deng Xiaoping also proposed in a report on the amendment of the Party Constitution at the Eighth National Congress of the CPC that a system of Party congresses with regular annual conferences should be tried out at central, provincial and county levels.
Afterwards the 10-year “cultural revolution” (1966-76) wreaked devastation on the Party and the country. “The Party has drawn lessons from its turbulent history, and made collective leadership construction a shared notion among generations of Party leadership,” noted Huang Weiting, Associate Chief Editor of Red Flag Press. The third-generation Party leader Jiang Zemin also emphasized expanding inner-Party democracy and promoting supervision by ordinary Party members at an important Party plenum in June 1989. “The rules of procedure in the central leadership have been systematized and standardized. Discussions are clearly distributed among different levels of Party meetings,” noted Yu Yunyao, Director of the Party Building Department of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)