Opinion An extraordinary election

By all indices,this has been an extraordinary election. It is too soon to determine what juncture it has brought Pakistan to — but it is well within the realm of realism to argue that something has changed. Every election brings a polity and society up for appraisal. And Pakistan’s has certainly done so. But for all the imperfections of their democracy that Pakistanis have agonised over,it is their politicians who made this historic transition happen,by forging an all-party consensus on a caretaker mechanism of the sort unlikely in older democracies. Essentially,with a bipartisan agreement,they stabilised the electoral process for partisan contestation. Beyond the composition of the next government in Islamabad,the big question this election poses is: how has it,if at all,changed the way Pakistanis perceive their country and their agency in shaping its future?

An already much-quoted anecdote from a new book (The Dispensable Nation by Vali Nasr) has Pakistan’s president,Asif Ali Zardari,comparing his country to an imploding financial institution. It was the June of 2009,and the extraordinary rescues of the financial crises were obviously within easy recall when Richard Holbrooke,then the US government’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,came calling in Islamabad. Holbrooke had brought along American journalists in the hope that their dispatches would crackle with intimations of the dire need for Washington DC to focus on Pakistan to win the “good war” in Afghanistan. Zardari,ever eager to play to the gallery,settled for the metaphor of choice in those early days of the Great Recession.

“Pakistan is like the AIG,” he claimed. “Too big to fail.” Lest there remain any doubt about what he was getting at,he added: “You gave AIG one hundred billion dollars; you should give Pakistan the same.”

All countries at some point oversell their compulsions to yield as little as possible in international negotiations. But Pakistan’s rescue-or-regret ultimatums have become almost state policy,used with great dexterity by the country’s rulers,not only to procure bailouts but also to plead helplessness in acting against terrorists on its soil,whether as a way of buying time or indeed to cover up double-dealing.

But as Vasr notes,“The problem (is) not to prove what Pakistan (is) up to — that (is) easy — but how to get Pakistan to transform its ways.” It’s gritty business,the effort to transform Pakistan,to work together to alter perceptions and attitudes within,so that the country does not perceive its precariousness as an advantage to swing concessions but as an impediment to realising its promise. It is to broadbase the constituency for peace and shared prosperity.

India could not have a greater stake in this.

This is a year of many transitions for Pakistan — not just the elected government,but the offices of president,army chief and chief justice are up for change of incumbent too. For India,new introductions are potential opportunities,for extending niceties and using that inventively to give bilateral relations renewed momentum. All the main political parties in Pakistan fought on manifestos promising improved relations with India. Trade between the two countries has picked up — or to put it more accurately,has been allowed to pick up. In fact,of all the contenders,Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League is expected to be especially keen to improve trade ties,given the direct returns to Punjab and the pathway it could give him to snatch power from the military in formulating foreign policy.

But in a year-long stretch in which elections are due in key Congress-BJP battleground states and then for the Centre,reaching out substantively will carry political risk. It is a risk that can only be — indeed,must be — hedged by explaining the costs of not enhancing relations in the first place.

Pakistan is,by all appearances,reinventing itself. The centre of gravity may not fully coincide with the elected government,but a readjustment of institutional equations is evident — a balancing even. The past five years were rife with speculation of one undermining the other,as well as with apocalyptic visions of the morrow. If at one moment a military takeover was seen to be imminent,at another the army chief was rumoured to be on the brink of being upstaged; at still another,the supreme court,embarked on a phase that has come to be called “suo motu jurisdiction”,was feared to be setting off a cascade of prime ministerial resignations to potentially provoke a showdown with parliament. If,at one point,panic gripped Peshawar that it could be on the verge of falling to the Taliban,the ease with which American soldiers swooped down within shouting distance of the elite Abbottabad military academy,killed Osama bin Laden and spirited away his body left the entire establishment looking so embarrassingly ludicrous that the incident has still not been domestically examined in all its dimensions. (The last was,curiously enough,when the too-big-to-fail fear hushed those who’d otherwise interrogate the establishment on lesser charges.)

Nonetheless,Pakistan kept on course with its electoral calendar,beating its earlier tendency to deal with political messiness by countenancing the dismissal of imperfect governments by undemocratic measures. Accountability has been sought through the ballot,not by the extra-constitutional means of military or military-directed dismissal. It’s no mean achievement. It may or may not be a tipping point,but do let’s applaud it.

The writer is a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’

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