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In the last few days, the issue of the safety and security of the country’s two main political leaders, Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina have once again come to the fore. On Saturday last, the government decided to beef up security for the AL chief after an Indian television channel reported an alleged Harkatul Jihad plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina. On Tuesday, the Rapid Action Battalion arrested two suspected militants with grenades from the Debidwar upazila in Comilla, close to where the BNP chairperson was campaigning that day. Both leaders were also advised by the government not to go to Chittagong to campaign because of security concerns. That suggests that the government has actionable intelligence about possible threats.
   These are indeed ominous signs and occurrences, particularly because of the conceivability of the threats. After all, both leaders have enemies who would want to remove them from the scene and both have been targeted in the past, the most daring of which was the grenade attack on Sheikh Hasina on August 21, 2004 which the former prime minister narrowly survived. Given that backdrop, we feel it necessary to stress that the safety and security of these two leaders are of paramount importance. They are not only former prime ministers both, but lead the two largest political parties in the country. Also, it is almost certain that in just a few days, one of them, depending on which alliance prevails in the upcoming elections, will be sworn in as the country’s prime minister again. If anything untoward were to happen to either of them, or to both, it would not only be tragic but would also have terrible consequences and repercussions on the country’s politics in general and to their respective political parties in particular.
   Therefore, it is an absolute imperative that the military-controlled interim government take these threats very seriously and do everything in its power and within its resources to ensure the safety and security of the two leaders in the lead up to the elections. Every conceivable threat must be thoroughly investigated by our law enforcement agencies and the perpetrators must be brought to quick justice. At the same time, we would urge the leaders themselves and their party colleagues not to trivialise the security issue for parochial political purposes, and also to refrain from arbitrarily blaming the other side every time an attack occurs. On Wednesday, the Awami League chief accused the BNP chairperson of staging a drama with regard to the grenade threat in Comilla. In the same way, in 2004, after the grenade attacks on Sheikh Hasina, the then BNP government had tried to lay the blame for the attack on the Awami League itself. This sort of behaviour is unbecoming of the country’s two top leaders and the two major political parties. Therefore, we would ask everyone concern to give the security issue the serious attention that it merits, instead of trivialising the issue or partaking in the old blame game.

Yet another failure in Election
Commission’s cap

A FEW days back, we came to know that some 68,000 prisoners, who were registered as voters earlier this year, are unlikely to cast their votes in the December 29 elections because the prison authorities ‘have not received ballot papers’ in time ‘to supply to the prisoners’, and also because postal ballots could not be arranged due to time constraints. Now, it seems that more than 12 lakh voters, including 5,66,537 polling officers, 4.25 lakh members of the Bangladesh Ansars and 2 lakh law-enforcers, who will be on election duty outside their constituencies, will not be able to cast their votes as, according to the chief election commissioner, voting through postal ballots ‘will not be possible this time because of time constraints.’
   The time constraints that the chief election commission is putting forth as an excuse, one must say, is the commission’s own making. Ever since it unveiled its election roadmap, the commission has hardly appeared to be sticking to the timeline it has set for itself. Yet, it has managed time to send two of the commissioners to the United States and the United Kingdom to explore the possibility of registering the non-resident Bangladeshis as voters, an exercise that eventually proved to be a complete waste of time and money. While time and again, the commission has given us the impression that it has all the time in the world, it is time that the commission has been running against.
   Now its shoddy time management has led to a situation when it cannot even ensure the rights of a sizeable section of the electorate to exercise their adult franchise. Apart from this being a violation of the law, such a failure could have an impact on the outcome of the elections in some closely-contested constituencies. For argument’s sake, even if we assume that these 13 lakh voters are evenly spread across 300 constituencies, it comes to more than 4,000 per constituency. In the previous elections, in many constituencies, the results have been decided on far less a margin.
   With only three days left before the elections, it would be foolhardy to expect that the commission would be able to arrange for postal ballots in such a short time. However, it certainly owes the people more than the convenient excuse of ‘time constraints’. The commission should forthwith come up with an explanation, and also an unconditional apology, for yet another failure.

POLITICS and economy are twins – shaped and driven by power relations. Financial crisis does not happen in a political vacuum. Politics and policy choices often shape, make and break economies and the financial architecture. So it is important to unpack the political contexts, causes and consequences of the financial and economic crisis. There seems to be a clear connection between war, economic crisis and political transitions.
   In spite of the confident rhetoric of political leaders, economy did not necessarily dance according to their music. In early 2007 George W Bush boasted that ‘economy is powerful, productive and prosperous.’ It would be worthwhile to compare this with the message of President Calvin Coolidge to the congress on December 4, 1928: ‘Enlarging production is consumed by an increasing demand at home and expanding commerce abroad. The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.’ Within less than a year of that statement, on October 29, 1929 the great crash happened at the New York Stock Exchange, arguably the most traumatic experience in the history of capitalism. The near universality of this economic crisis and its political implications are not too far to forget.
   The political context of the great depression and the ongoing financial crisis are not the same. However, there is one shared context — concentration of wealth in a few hands and consequent increase of inequality. The prosperity of the United States in the 1920s was very fragile; five per cent of the population received more than one-third of the income and seventy per cent of the population got an annual wage hardly good enough for survival. The roots of the great depression can be traced back to the consequences of the First World War. And the consequences of the great economic crash in the early 1930s made enabling conditions for the rise of fascism as well as the context for the Second World War. This eventually led to the reordering of the world in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, there is a substantial difference between the political context of the great crash and that of the ongoing financial and economic crisis.
   The present financial crisis is a result of the cumulative impact of the neoliberal economic paradigm and unbridled financial capitalism in the last twenty years. The globalisation of market, media, technology and finance went hand in hand with the globalisation of discontent and the globalisation of terror. They fed into each other with increasing virulence. Thus, economic growth was accompanied by inequality, injustice and reactionary politics. George Bush and Osama Bin Laden fed into each other. The rise of neoliberal capitalism, driven by hyper-consumerism and economic growth, perpetuated a new addiction for oil. The oil addiction shifted the theatre of international politics to West Asia and Gulf countries. The powerful countries sought to control oil and other natural resources through the power apparatus of the military and markets. This created new forms of imperialism and militarisation. The new oil economy irrigated markets, war machines as well as terrorism. Though the gulf war in the early 1990s proved to be a profitable enterprise for the US, the Iraq war proved to be a lost game, in terms of economics and politics. The economy, military and unilateral power of the US got overstretched and became increasingly brittle. In spite of the boastings of Bush, the economy began to bleed in the context of a costly war. It was estimated that around $3 trillion was used to blow up Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people, making deep wounds in the world as well in the economy. The eclipse of military adventurism and casino-capitalism eventually shook the political power of the White House and the economic muscle of the Wall Street.
   The context of the great depression in the 1930s needs to be located in the interwar economic and political order of the world. The crash of the New York Stock Exchange on October 29, 1929 led to a deeper universal crisis, which at that time looked like a collapse of the capitalist world economy. However, it is important to note that at that period Communism was a viable economic and political alternative to capitalism. In spite of the great depression, the economy of the USSR was less affected due to the strength of the state-controlled Soviet system of economy. The economic and political consequence of the First World War also created a fertile ground for the rise of right-wing militant politics in the form of Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe. Though America emerged as an important player in the aftermath of the First World War, the US was neither a unilateral superpower nor the dollar became the super currency of the world. The finance capitalism was far less globalised than the preset time. The political economy of oil was still in its early stages. The world was still a big colony of the British and European powers.
   Now the context is dramatically different. It is an irony of history that the US blew up lots of money for the war in the Gulf and Iraq, and now the US economy will have to depend on the money and oil from the very same Arab world. The US has to depend on the trillions of foreign exchange reserve from the Gulf countries, and other Asian countries, such as China, Japan and India. Many of the top banks and business enterprises in the west is increasingly owned by the rich Arabs through investments as well as the strategic use of the national sovereign funds of many Gulf countries. While the market in Europe and the US got increasingly saturated, the new power of vibrant markets shifted to emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
   The dramatic recession in the US in 1930 spread to Germany and the rest of the world. The industrial production in the US and Germany fell about a third from 1929 to 1931. There was a slump in the demand and price of primary commodities, including rice, tea, coffee, wheat and silk. Many of the Asian, African and Latin America countries dependent on the export of primary commodities suffered due to the slump in demand. The world trade fell by 60 per cent. The crisis resulted in the rise of massive unemployment, which varied between 20 and 50 per cent, in different countries. The epidemic failure of banks and credit crunch actually led to the great stock exchange crash. By the second half of 1930, 603 banks failed, including the Bank of the United States, which accounted for the loss of about one-third of the total deposits. By January 1932, 1,860 banks had failed. The automobile production, a key sector of the economy those days, reduced more than 50 per cent within two years. The combined output of the world’s seven economies declined around 20 per cent within three years, 1929–32. Millions lost job and unemployment in the US and Germany was above 33 per cent. The depression resulted in a sharp increase in tariff and resultant reduction in international trade. And the world trade almost collapsed. In fact, Great Brittan, the original imperialist masters of ‘free trade’, abandoned free trade in 1931.
   However, the immediate response to the depression was a series of half-baked panic reactions, including protectionism, cutting deficits and more conservative budget with less public expenditure. This further made the situation worse. It took another five years of concerted effort to re-energise the economy. And as a matter of fact, the Second World War helped the US to increase demand and production to shift the economy into a growing pattern.
   The seeds of the Second World War were very much there in the ‘reparations’. The vast and undefined ‘reparations’, as the cost of war and the damage done to the victorious powers, were imposed on Germany in the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Though John Maynard Keynes – who participated in the Versailles Peace conference as a young economist in the British delegation – warned against ‘reparations’ through an illuminating paper, The Economic Consequence of Peace (1920), the political leaders of the day ignored his arguments. As a result, Germany plunged into an economic crisis in the aftermath of the First World War, and this is what provided the fertile ground for the rise of Hitler and of Nazism.
   There is a connection between economic crisis, political turmoil and possible shifts in governance. Germany was indeed a major industrial power and when the crisis of Germany was followed by the crash of the US economy, there was a huge impact, economically and politically. This gave rise to fascism in many parts of Europe. But it also gave rise to the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt in the US, following the economic model of John Maynard Keynes. The New Deal consisted of a series of policy and economic measures to address unemployment and stimulate economic demand. The first New Deal Programme (1933-35) sought to restore public confidence and resulted in a series of legislations, including the one on public works and policy measures. The second phase of the New Deal began in 1935. Path-breaking social legislations in 1935 included Social Security Act (a scheme for unemployment insurance, disability insurance and old-age pension), the Wealth Tax Act and the National Labour Relations Act. In the eight-year history of the New Deal, a total of $11 billion was spent and provided employment for 8 million workers in the US. The New Deal signified the role of the state in redistribution of wealth. Though the package was a radical step in many ways, it did not help to completely address the economic crisis, as the US again faced a recession in 1937–38. However, it represented the far-reaching and stunning socioeconomic reforms and established the role of an interventionist state. Thus began the political legitimacy for the welfare state across the world.
   The ongoing financial crisis may lead to a deep recession. Such a shift is powerful enough to shape new paradigms of policy, development and institutional framework in the next five years. The great depression was the beginning of a paradigm shift in the policy, politics and nature of the state. The political outcome of the financial crisis may be too early to predict. But one could see multiple shifts in the political process and governance in the years to come.
   The ongoing financial recession played a very important role in shifting the politics of the US. It is yet to be seen whether the team of Barack Obama can turn the tide of politics and economics. There is indeed a danger of conformist politics with a high dose of optimistic rhetoric. A black man in the White House may be a great political symbolism. But whether it would transform the politics and economics in the world still remains a billon-dollar question.

POST-MUMBAI attacks jingoism, coupled with diplomatic offensive, is literally pushing South Asia to an uncertain situation with bitter nuclear neighbours Pakistan and India locking horns. There are reports that troops and war machinery are being mobilised or at least geared up for testing efficiency on both sides.
   India played to the UN galleries in connivance with the United States and has got a slip as ‘victim of terrorism’ at the hands of the militants, reportedly operating from inside Pakistan, leaving no option for Islamabad but to crack down on Jamaat-ud-Dawa. New Delhi has also created a war hype to strengthen its diplomatic offensive, prompting the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, to meet the chief of army, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, of Pakistan, to impress upon them to ‘do more’ to eliminate, in his words, the ‘terrorist groups’. Mullen also urged Kayani and Pasha to support judicial efforts to prosecute those who have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
   The Pakistan media has been in search of the story behind Mullen’s seventh visit to Pakistan and eighth meeting with Kayani since his assumption of the current position. There have been several angles to the story but the one released by the US embassy in Islamabad tends to explain clearly what the Americans want Pakistan to do. ‘Mullen encouraged the Pakistani leaders to use this tragic event as an opportunity to forge more productive ties with India and to seek ways in which both nations can combat the common threat of extremism together,’ says the press release. The release seems to suggest that Pakistan is the culprit in his analysis.
   Prior to Mullen’s visit, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the assistant secretary of state, Richard Boucher, and other US officials also visited Pakistan and told their Pakistani counterparts the story that India had narrated to them. Mullen’s visit is by far the most significant as he used the Pentagon’s historic links with the General Headquarters (still the centre of power as General Kayani has been rated among the world’s most powerful people). In addition to the American leaders, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, advocated India’s case as well.
   The Indian strategy to continue with war hype and diplomatic offensive with apparent support from the Bush administration and its allies heralds a new balance of power that the US establishment wanted to create in South Asia to counter China and neutralise Pakistan by giving strength to India in terms of allowing India nuclear technology for civilian use while denying it for Pakistan.
   In this diplomatic offensive what surprised Pakistan’s pro-peace groups who have been advocating for cordial ties between India and Pakistan is that India did not take a hostile stand while a dictator was ruling the country. Pakistan’s liberal and democratic elements were surprised when on General Pervez Musharraf’s departure and restoration of democracy in Pakistan, India’s national security advisor blatantly said Indians were more comfortable with Musharraf and did not show any goodwill gesture towards the democratic government which inherited a lot of domestic problems and economic crunch. Instead the Indian leaders should have assessed what President Zardari has been saying on normalisation of relations. It is in his tenure that after 61 years, trade between two sides of Kashmir did take place as a window to reach to the settlement of this core conflict.
   Democratic forces in Pakistan feel that though the Mumbai tragedy is an extreme act of terrorism and Pakistan has been facing similar heinous acts of terrorism at home, the Indian leadership should have assessed the situation in the right perspective instead of blaming Pakistan for what has been done by those non-state actors who are neither in control of India nor of Pakistan. The question arises when the Indian authorities themselves could not check the terrorists to enter Mumbai and occupying the luxurious hotels for weeks, how Pakistan could stop them there in Mumbai while in Islamabad it could not stop bombing of the Marriott hotel, just a kilometre away from the president’s and the prime minister’s residences in the capital.
   The United States and Indians should know that Pakistan’s democratically elected government which is still weak cannot think of supporting or favouring Mumbai attacks that too when its foreign minister was on the Indian soul. Even now, the Pakistan government does not have any control over militants though it is struggling hard to track them down through a military operation.
   No doubt, Pakistan, India and other world forces should unite against terrorists who are spoiling peace and security in this very volatile region and with two nuclear powers creating war hypes could be dangerous but it is time to cool down. If India continues with its diplomatic offensive to achieve some other objectives, then it is something different. Pakistan has already lost much of its credibility on the diplomatic front, which they can restore only if the situation is re-assessed on the basis of reality.
   If such hypes continue, Pakistan’s coalition government would further lose its control and ultimately, some other forces may replace them and if they come nobody can predict what will be the state of affairs in Pakistan.
   Shafqat Munir is a Pakistani journalist based in Islamabad. shafmunir@gmail.com