President General Pervez Musharraf has unveiled October elections as part of a plan to nudge Pakistan back to democracy, but the country's biggest challenge remains its inability to fashion an institutional political structure that can survive individuals and provide durable stability.

This is all the more unfortunate and even ironical given the international community's newfound stake in the stability of Pakistan, whose government was taken over by an October coup by Musharraf.

The international community has now a strategic interest in preserving Pakistan's unity and stability while at the same time prodding it in a 'moderate and modern' direction.

Reforming the Pakistani state is now part of a global agenda, lesser in scope and intensity but certainly similar to the manner in which the Palestinian Authority is being overhauled.

This restructuring will extend to various domains of the Pakistani state including foreign policy particularly relations with India, Afghanistan and Central Asia, law enforcement, education, police and security services, economy and the domestic roots of terrorism and religious extremism.

The west, particularly the United States, is dealing with challenges in the Muslim world through a two-track approach — 'regime change' and reform. Afghanistan has already had both while the Palestinian Authority and Iraq are next on this list, but this agenda will extend to other Muslim countries as well.

The interests of the international community apart, many contentious issues of the past have been settling down.

Pakistan is the only country in the region without an insurgency or a secessionist movement. There is no electoral constituency for any extremist political ideology, and there is broad consensus on issues like democracy, economy and the necessity for the military's return to the barracks.

Despite these apparent pluses, Pakistan's biggest failure has been in the domain of politics: its failure to fashion new 'rules of the game' that could provide the basis for enduring stability.

Old wine

Musharraf's new 'political package', unveiled on June 26, is only 'old wine' packaged in an even older bottle, a political step backward since the previous quest for a pliant parliament and prime minister has been replaced by one for a virtual puppet, somebody like the prime minister of Egypt, Jordan or South Korea.

And prior to the announcement of the Oct 10 election date — done by Musharraf under measures required by the Supreme Court and aimed at replacing the parliament he abolished three years ago — the military ruler decreed that any person who has twice held the office of prime minister would be barred from seeking a third term for that office.

This was specifically aimed at ousting former prime ministers and rivals Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from the option of contesting.

Likewise, instead of devolution of power to the provinces, centralised control would be the key under Musharraf's political package, with presidential nominees as governors appointing chief ministers of provinces.

By no means does this package bear even a remote resemblance to a federal, parliamentary model. Rather, this is more the 'Indonesia model', certainly not the Turkish model.

Indonesian model

Under General Suharto, who tried the 'Indonesia model' for 32 years before it collapsed with a popular uprising in 1998, a 'strongman' was president-for-life. The army and America were the props for the Indonesian model, since the governing ideology was a strident anti-communism with 500,000 Communist Party members and sympathisers killed decades earlier, in one of the bloodiest political pogroms in the post-World War II period.

The army governed directly, influencing virtually all sectors of Indonesian life and society largely through the pervasive presence of military officers and an intrusive role of intelligence.

The parliament was pliant, selected rather than elected, while political party activity was curbed, with Indonesia functioning as a unitary, presidential republic.

Pakistanis always like to compare their country to neighbouring India, something which Indians also do all the time. What has been India's strength vis--vis Pakistan? Certainly not its large standing army, nuclear bomb or its missiles, all of which Pakistan possesses as well?

India is combating 17 insurgencies while Pakistan has none. Its record of corruption and criminalisation of politics is far worse than Pakistan's. It has an abysmal human rights record including systematic attacks on religious minorities — the killing of Christian missionaries and nuns, the extermination of 5,000 Sikhs in New Delhi alone within 72 hours of the murder of Indira Gandhi and this year's carnage against Muslims in Gujarat state.

Its ideology of secularism and Gandhian non-violence is in tatters.

But, for all its faults, India has two distinct advantages over Pakistan — a sound system of education and a solid democratic institutional structure. It is these pluses that have placed India among aspirants for a larger-than-life global role. Pakistan needs to learn from its adversary on this count.

Three lessons

For the future, instead of dishing out recipes for instability, it is vital for the Pakistani military regime to understand some of the ground realities that would influence any political dispensation. There are three particularly relevant lessons to be learnt.

First, unlike a host of East Asian authoritarian regimes like Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan at some point, Pakistan has not had any 'benefits' of dictatorship — for instance, a better quality of life for the majority of the people or control over law and order.

Second, given the developing regional scenario and the American stakes in Pakistan, the room for manoeuvre and the margin of error by Islamabad is extremely limited. What could be sustained by previous military regimes will no longer possible or acceptable given the changed international context.

Third, the khaki would very much like to 'monitor' the mufti in this military-managed democracy that is being envisaged by Islamabad at present.

But if the past track record of military regimes is any guide, a question lurking in the mind of most Pakistanis is: who will monitor the monitors? — IPS