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South Asia – Difficult transition to democracy |
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Harjit Singh
India is the only country which has common borders with all the South Asian countries. This privilege for India, however, has proved to be more a pain in the neck than a potential for regional cooperation in the field of economy and trade. As pointed out by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, while addressing the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations last week, many countries in the neighbourhood of India, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh are witnessing difficult transitions to democracy. This is not to speak of Myanmar which has been for long under military rule where an election victory was denied to the National League for Democracy and its leader, Suu Kyi, jailed, her only fault being that she asked the junta to honour the people’s verdict. Mukherjee said, “India’s interest is in a stable and peaceful periphery”.
While in Myanmar the military junta is refusing to cave in under international pressure and the recent crackdown on peaceful monk marches has shown it is not ready to come to terms with democracy, in Pakistan, President Musharraf has been forced by street upheavals to promise to shed his uniform. But, Musharraf’s naming a loyalist as Army Chief, his underhand deal with PPP chief, Benazir Bhutto clearing her of corruption charges in return for her support for his Presidency and seeking his own election from the Assemblies whose mandate has expired, do not speak well of his democratic credentials. It is nothing more than his anxiety to perpetuate his rule, with the military in the shadow, and he himself continuing to enjoy powers to dismiss the Prime Minister and dissolve the National Assembly.
In the East, there is Bangladesh, a country that was considered a relatively stable democracy in the Islamic world until a few years ago. It is currently under emergency rule, with an interim government backed by the military. The large scale arrests and trial of the former politicians and Ministers as also the two former Prime Ministers are a clear indication that the military is seeking to tarnish the image of the political parties so that the people could consider a military regime more honest and clean than the corrupt politicians. A very long timeframe to hold elections – the end of 2008 - creates suspicions in the mind about the intentions of the military.
Three other neighbours of India - Sri Lanka, Nepal – and Afghanistan – are in the throes of militancy which is again weakening the institution of democracy almost the same way the military is doing in Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Nepal is still struggling to come to terms with its new political institutions. More than a year after the King was forced to give up his emergency powers and restore the elected Parliament, things have yet to settle down. The Maoists have become part of the Government without fighting an election and once they entered the Government they are aggressively pursuing their agenda of declaring the country a republic and abolishing the monarchy although they do not have people’s mandate to do so. Girija Prasad Koirala is old and sick and is a weak Prime Minister who is no match for the Maoist chief, Prachanda, when it comes to dictating terms. The Maoist Ministers have resigned from the Government and Prachanda is threatening to walk out of the Government if their demand for the abolition of the monarchy even before Constituent Assembly elections is not met. The elections are exactly meant to set up a body which will draw up a new Constitution and decide on the fate of the monarchy. But the Maoists are behaving in a dictatorial way. In Sri Lanka, President Rajapaksa is fighting a dirty war with the Tamil Tigers which shows no signs of an end despite some significant battle victories by Government forces and the ouster of the LTTE from the East. His pleas to the LTTE to come forward for talks on a peaceful resolution, the latest made during an address at the HT Leadership Summit in New Delhi have been spurned by the rebels. Sri Lanka’s democracy is thus under attack from the Tamil Tigers who have demonstrated their growing military prowess by using air strikes against Air Force bases and oil and gas facilities in the country. In Afghanistan, President Karzai’s writ does not run beyond Kabul despite a heavy dose of NATO forces and their ongoing operations against the Taliban. His recent invitation to the Taliban for talks is a sign of his desperation. In another SAARC country, Maldives, though swearing by his democratic credentials, the aging President Gayoom, the longest serving leader in South Asia, is refusing to bring about electoral reforms in a way that free and fair elections could ensure a new younger crop of leaders to emerge.
The apparent failure of parliamentary democracy in several South Asian States is providing a fertile ground for all kinds of extremist ideologies, be it radical Islam, Tamil separatism and Maoism. The inability of political institutions to bear the weight of rising expectations in a region that contains more than one-sixth of humanity can have far-reaching consequences for the world at large.
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