Given the very nature of the job, governments cannot dwell on the past and presume success. They have to focus on the immediate while keeping an eye on the futureThe people have spoken, too loudly to be ignored and too clearly for anybody to mistake the message. The right to call shots from Islamabad has been established beyond reasonable doubt.
Thus one wonders what the greatest threat facing the polity today could be.
Let us begin with the usual suspects:
The Establishment. But one does not believe that the Establishment — much maligned, and not entirely without justification — will try to undermine the government. For one thing, it is no longer the entity it once was. It has had its day — a very long day, which was brought to an end by the people giving it an overwhelming thumbs-down. It may not like the resounding verdict but it is too wise to defy it, at least while the resonance lasts.
Given that bureaucrats are the nut-and-bolts people of governance, they know that they are not being replaced. Yes, there will always be some amongst them who think they can do the politicians’ job better than the politicians. However, if the politicians are actually doing a good job most bureaucrats will only be too happy. After all, the best time for them to contribute is when politicians are doing their job right.
The outlaws. From the despicable human smuggler and drug lord to the charlatan who seeks a kerbside interview to shake you down for a dinner’s worth — criminals cannot defeat a popular government backed by all the institutions of the modern state. Neither can the odd rebel without a cause, nor the raving-mad extremist. For such people are unfit, by definition, to thrive in a normal society. The evolutionary disadvantage they suffer may appear to be a surmountable pressure at the individual level. In large populations, however, it becomes a formidable force because, like gravity, it always acts in the same direction. Once hygiene can be ensured, even open wounds heal fairly quickly.
The world. Our neighbours in the global village — next-door or farther off — may, for a while, keep their fingers crossed. And given the context, who can blame them? In the end, however, if we can put our own house in order they will come round.
The most dangerous pitfalls, and the ones therefore to vigilantly guard against, are confusion and frivolity. Politics has been denied its role for so long that many political workers can be forgiven for believing that attaining power is the hard part and exercising it is the easy one. Partly because so many had quite despaired of democratic governance ever being given a chance, not much serious thought seems to have gone into policy formulation, let alone serious policy debate.
The business of government involves providing efficient management of the economy and polity to ensure that all citizens have an equal opportunity to live their lives to the fullest. In an imperfect world, this also means developing and maintaining the muscle needed to protect what you have and to jostle for scarce resources.
Given the very nature of the job, governments cannot dwell on the past and presume success. They have to focus on the immediate while keeping an eye on the future. The job is never easy and the satisfaction of the beneficiaries, even when it is done well, is far from guaranteed. But done right, it grants the participants, on balance, more satisfaction than regret.
When governments are successful, citizens are likely to be better off and therefore cheerful — sometimes even boisterous. But Prime Minister Gillani’s job would be so much easier if cheering people were the only or the principal business of government. In fact, he would not even be needed. (Sheikh Rashid Ahmed of the Lal Haveli would do.)
Fortunately for the ruling coalition, none of the major parties has made unrealistic specific promises. Nobody has said, for example, that Kashmir would be liberated in 30 days or that wheat prices would be halved. The campaign pledges all appear to be refreshingly reasonable or general enough.
And yet populism has already raised its frightening head. Important leaders — right, left and centre — who one liked to think were immune to the malady are proving vulnerable to the temptation for grandstanding and playing unnecessarily to the ‘gallery’.
One can see justification, for example, in the insistence by Messrs Zardari and Sharif that parliament must review all government policies — including its policy on the war on terror. That way it will ‘own’ the policy even if it remains essentially unchanged. But the tenor of their statements to the media and the anti-US demonstrations by their supporters cannot be helpful.
And the conciliatory noises made by Pervaiz Elahi, the ‘shadow prime minister’, sounded hollow given his early bid to pressure the government on blasphemous caricatures and his vow to defend military spending.
In addition, the ANP’s ‘our-people-being-killed-in-the-war-on-terror’ rhetoric is alarming. This party is supposed to have been elected to replace an MMA government that — while it denounced terrorism in principle — was reluctant to be tough on Taliban militants. Will the ANP now betray the electorate in order to secure brownie points on the street?
But the most disgusting recent example of such opportunism has to be the liberal Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s decision to seek a Lal Masjid edict (fatwa) to pressure an AJK minister.
A politician develops early an instinctive feel for policies and sound bytes that go down well with the people. With the high prevalence of electronic media, particularly, politics is increasingly becoming a spectator sport. What separates statesmen from lesser politicians, then, is the so-called Test match temperament rather than the popular-with-the-crowd Twenty20 risk-taking. That is, the ability to resist the popular demand once they are aware that it is not the right thing. Thus when President Pervez Musharraf retreated on the religion column on identity cards/passports and on women’s protection the politicking marked him as an opportunist and denied him the coveted pedestal of statesman.
Earlier, taking the nation into confidence on what he feared were going to be unpopular decisions the president had warned that the aatish-e gul (literally the rose blaze) — populist sentimentalism — rather than an avowed enemy might well be the greatest danger to the country. And yet the political season then, in horticultural terms, was more like early winter. With spring in full splendour, now is the time to watch out for the garden.
The author is a Daily Times staff member
Courtesy: Daily Times, 31/3/2008
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