The author is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

Politics in Pakistan has become rather pointless and has little to do with the social and economic problems afflicting ordinary people. One look at the noisy crowd of existing parties and groups - constantly splitting into factions and given to serving the generals - and it becomes obvious why there has never been any transfer of power to a democratic government. Substance of power, ever since early 1950s, has eluded Pakistani politicians; military dictatorship can now be seen as a norm and elected constitutional governments exceptional interludes, permitted by the military when expedient.

In addition to the Army that has acted as the most organised secular rightwing (conservative) party - the locus of ultimate influence and power -, other political parties are divisible into three broad categories: the first is the most populous crowd of civilian rightwing conservatives; the second group comprises various regional nationalists with their one-point demand of provincial or regional autonomy. The third is the sparsely populated leftwing.

A word about the Army. It is the most important segment of society that is, to repeat, at bottom secular but profoundly elitist and conservative amounting to being reactionary. Its stock-in-trade is non-radical reforms, efficiency - running the trains on time, which now happens to be beyond it - and corruption-free administration. Their immediate objective is usually an external prize or foe. For Ayub Khan it was Kashmir; for Ziaul Haq it was Afghanistan; for Pervez Musharraf it is again Kashmir. As for Yahya Khan it might have been securing East Pakistan. What military regimes in fact turned out to be and what they achieved is fairly well-known.

There is a second sub-division of conservatives, the so-called mainstream parties. One of these is the Muslim League, divided into countless factions. All of them are uniformly conservative, living by the slogans of (secular) Islam - the Quaid-e-Azam's non-sectarian Islam - and Kashmir. The second is PPP. It began as an ambiguous, patriotic, rather fascistic, party that wanted to be all things to all people. Its slogans were socialist sounding - roti, kapra aur makan - plus being quite Islamic, again of a secular kind, and it was even more shrill about Kashmir, shrieking about a thousand years war against India but being ready to serving the generals or doing as they tell. Benazir has added serving the American interests to this repertoire. There are a few other parties of the ilk that remain unproven.

The other category of conservatives is religious parties and groups, all with multiple factions. They too need to be sub-divided into two: the first are purely religious parties, all directly linked to a particular sect or maslak (denomination). JUI, JUP, Jamat-e-Islami and Tehrik-i-Jafarya, all having factions. They are all deeply conservative, socially reactionary with no identifiable social or economic programme, except enforcing Shariat, with each wanting its own version of the uncodified Shariat to be enforced by itself. They all listen to, and are always ready to obey, the generals. They too shout about Kashmir when called upon to do so or otherwise necessary.

Yet another sub-division of religious parties is usually the progeny of the main religious parties, though not in each case. They are Jehadi militias with a politically ambitious guy at their head. They do owe allegiance to the main religious parties, but some are functionally independent. Their characteristics, apart from being conservative, are: being fanatics and extremists, well armed, rich and ready to die for both Islam and Kashmir which they appear to see as two sides of the same coin. These militias, thanks to their number, armaments and resources, are private armies; they ordinarily cooperate with the army and may indeed be said to be coordinated by it for Jehad in Kashmir. They are commonly, and correctly, seen as the most dangerous force of a generic kind that can inherit Pakistan state under certain conditions. None of them ever talks of anything but Islam and Kashmir.

Regionalists, the second genre of parties, are thick on the ground in NWFP, Sindh, Balochistan and Karachi without the parliament and press recognising their due weight. Sindh is unique: hearts and minds of most ethnic Sindhis are dominated by ideas and demands of regional nationalism. But they vote for a Bhutto; Benazir thus retains a vote bank in rural Sindh. In NWFP, ANP and its splinters take all the votes of ethnic Pushtuns but remain out of provincial power most of the time.

The reason is that non-Pushtoons usually vote for Muslim Leaguers. Balochistan socially lives in a purely tribal society in which the Sardars call all the shots and ordinary people do not matter. Most people being too poor and illiterate have no political views. When and if there is an election they vote as their tribal leader tells them to.

Some of the party leaders in the province are Baluch or Pushtun Sardars who are nationalist. A few have stayed independent but most Sardars take their cue from Army or other rulers of Islamabad at any given time. Karachi is emerging as the storm centre of Mohajir nationality no matter what purer theorists of Nationalities may say. Altaf

Hussain's MQM asserts Mohajirs to be a separate nationality and it is currently allied with a Sindhi nationalist party-JSQM. MQM has been taking Mohajir vote monopolistically for over a decade and convincingly too, all the propaganda against it of being a fascist party notwithstanding. Its reality has to be acknowledged, whether or not its politics is lovely. It chants the same provincial autonomy mantra as all Sindhi nationalists do.

The third genre, ie, the left, is only statistically in existence. There are innumerable leftist parties, including quite a few communist parties. Most are tiny groups now. Politically their influence is next to nil. So is their vote. This end of the ring should be declared empty, or virtually so. There is dire need of a leftwing programme to tackle the rapidly growing poverty in Pakistan. So far no one has dared to produce such a document.

One did not mention any centrist or left of centre party. Actually none exists, except the one that toys with the idea of becoming a left-of-centre party: Tehrik-i-Istiqlal that has been in the process of merging with a number of small groups of former left. Two other new parties - Tehrik-i-Insaf of Imran Khan and Millat Party of Farooq Leghari - wish to occupy the empty space. Imran has little more to talk than corruption. Leghari has not yet shown his full hand (programme). Moreover both these are fledgling parties and no one knows how they will fare. TI has still to show why it should be supported except for the personal goodness of Air Marshal Asghar Khan.

Insofar as actual concern for the interests and welfare of the common people is concerned, Pakistani politics, for all the plenitude of parties, is extremely poor-like themselves. In such a poor country where poverty is growing by leaps and bounds by official count and where religious intolerance is resulting in growing number of selective murders and is creating mayhem, no leftist or left-of-centre party, with a credible programme, has emerged. Isn't this poverty of politics remediable? Can't this vacuum be filled?