If recent domestic political trends in the rich West appear troublesomely xenophobic, authoritarian and even obscurantist, both Malaysia and, now, Pakistan, have demonstrated that their democracies can buck the trend. So, too, in central America, where Mexico’s once-monolithic ruling party was recently displaced by a maverick Leftist with a motley coalition that might, just about, tamp down on rampant corruption and a violent drug underworld – if Donald Trump allows him.
In Africa, however, recent elections in Zimbabwe and, earlier, in Kenya have only strengthened the stranglehold on power of long-dominant and corruption-tainted political regimes.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, Israeli army firing resulted in more deaths among Palestinian protestors in Gaza. The Israeli government last week, again, imposed a sudden ban on fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip. Such sudden fuel stoppages are part of Gaza life along with the decades-long squeeze on electricity supply and water supply as well as similar sudden stoppages of medical and essential food supplies whenever the Israeli government decides that the Palestinians have shouted too loudly about their inhuman predicament. For generations, the people of Gaza – almost entirely refugees displaced from the rest of Palestine when ‘Israel’ was set up – have endured just four hours of electricity that is provided without announcement or time table at various odd times of the day.
Last week’s parliamentary victor in Pakistan, cricketing legend and popular philanthropist Imran Khan, seems set to innovate in the face of the enormous political, social and economic mess that is his country today. Initially, his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) wanted to invite Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan and cricket legends Sunil Gavasker, Kapil Dev and Navjot Singh Sidhu for their leader’s swearing in as Prime Minister.
In fact, on hearing of the overtures, cricket-TV-showman-politician Sidhu gave a typically emotive press conference praising the Pakistani Premier-elect and, declaring readiness to accept such an invitation. At the same time, the three Bollywood Khans – Shah Rukh, Salman and Aamir – all congratulated Imran Khan on his victory and praised his political initiative.
The PTI had also toyed with the idea of inviting Indian Premier Narendra Modi to the Premiership event. By Friday, however, Imran Khan had abandoned the gala celebratory concept for an austere and simple oath-taking ceremony which is due later this month. It is possible that the Pakistani military – the maverick PTI leader’s un-named strategic patron – may have discouraged their protégé from flamboyant geo-political gestures that could prematurely lock Islamabad into conciliatory postures that would constrain the military’s strategic manoeuvrability.
The enthusiastic response from the top rungs of the gigantic, regionally influential, showbiz and cricketing worlds of India may, however, be a harbinger for a fresh new dimension in South Asian politics that could be heralded by Imran Khan’s victory.
Both, the Indian and Pakistani news media played up this glamorous star-to-star dimension for their audiences. But in the face of the domestic coalition-building that Khan’s party must engage in simply to stay in government, such romantic hopes may remain simply wishful thinking. After all, previous Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, while no close pal of the Pakistani military, had enough of a parliamentary majority to buck trends and engage in a bit of Indo-Pak diplomatic theatrics himself – to no avail.
It is likely that Army influence encouraged the Pakistani higher courts to come down hard on Sharif’s corruption in a manner that has blocked his direct engagement with Pakistani politics, until, at least, the popular political winds turn in his favour.
Premier-elect Khan, however, was always the Pakistani military’s ‘good boy’ – given that the cricket hero did not belong to any top elite clan or old, established political party lineage. When Imran Khan began to make waves with his generous social philanthropic programmes accompanied by an initial secularist and pluralistic public rhetoric, the all-powerful military seems to have picked him out as the ‘third party spoiler’ in Pakistani politics.
Imran is safely from within Establishment Pakistan’s ethnic heartland – the Punjab. It is the Punjabi social elite that populates the upper echelons of the military and comprises half of the traditional land-owning clans (alongside the Sindh and other landed gentry) some of which have now emerged as the modern industrial elite. But Khan is ‘marginal’ in terms of his social class background. He is not from the landed gentry but from an upper middle class professional family background. He represents the modernist, urban intelligentsia and that is what swung many urban votes to him.
Star value or not, Imran Khan is unlikely to make much more than a dent on Pakistani politics, and is even less likely to trigger changes in his impoverished nation’s complex geo-political environment. China will expect to see Islamabad pushed further into its orbit as a result of Indian and US pressures. Shia-dominant Iran will hope for continued good relations with her eastern neighbour now under a modernist, pluralistic regime (even as Tehran balances that with equally good relations with Delhi). Relations between Kabul and Islamabad will likely continue with the current stalemate.
Broadly secularist and pluralist Khan will certainly be hamstrung by majority Sunni suspicions, especially, since Sunni perceptions are ideologically intertwined with the fascistic ‘Islamism’ of the Sunni religious right-wing parties, movements and militias, some of which are also covertly backed by the Pakistani military (as their other ‘third party’ options both domestically and regionally).
If at all, the ‘star’ diplomacy might help cool down tension between India and Pakistan, at least for a while. Even a slight cooling of the regional heat will be good for the whole of South Asia.
Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, the recent presidential and parliamentary elections ended last week with the expected further entrenchment in power of liberation hero Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF regime (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front). With ageing strongman Mugabe now forcibly ‘retired’ curbed with the threat of criminal prosecution, most Zimbabweans, as expected, voted overwhelmingly once more for the ZANU-PF, giving it a two-thirds majority in Parlaiment.
Zimbabweans, presumably, hope that the revolutionary movement that liberated them from White supremacist colonialism, will continue to govern, but, minus the extreme nepotistic, corrupt and authoritarian traits that characterised the Mugabe regime.
Since the winner of the presidency, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is, himself, Mugabe’s one-time security chief and complicit in that regime’s repression, Zimbabwean voters may be too optimistic. Mnangagwa may have overthrown his mentor Mugabe and may be threatening his former patron with corruption probes, but given his own complicity with that past regime, it is highly unlikely that the President-elect will shake the political foundations of his own power by digging into his own political party’s immediate past.
Nor will he want to completely emasculate the ZANUN-PF’s current hold on the Zimbabwean political establishment overall after decades of politically biased personnel deployments and appointments across the administrative, security and judicial spheres. That alliance’s candidate, Nelson Chamisa, garnered 44.3 percent of the vote, compared with the 50.8 per cent taken by Manangagwa, according to Zimbabwe’s electoral commission announcement in the capital, Harare, on Friday.
Chamisa is now claiming “fraud”, but independent election monitors, while deploring intimidation, some election violence and biased news media, did not rule the elections as ‘unfair’ or wholly irregular.
Post-colonial Zimbabwe (former White-dominated ‘Rhodesia’) is yet recovering from the extreme trauma its society underwent in its hard, violent, struggle to free itself of colonial rule. Hence, Zimbabweans seem ready to forgive their liberation movement for its post-independence depredations. But, if the 70+ years Manangagwe persists with a ZANU-PF regime of the old style Mugabe era, then it is likely that the much younger Chamisa and his forward-looking liberal movement will have a better chance of power in the future.