MR Pervez Musharraf was out to Europe and the United Kingdom once again on a tour which, like many of his earlier foreign missions, had no real purpose and would seem to have accomplished nothing.

He went professedly to attend a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) and, secondly, to correct certain misperceptions that foreigners had developed about Pakistan.

It is true that economic reforms were instituted in Pakistan, and the growth rate went up for a time, during his rule. That means that he had the good sense to place professionally competent persons in relevant posts in the government. But that did not mean that he had become an expert in economic affairs, or even that he understood them better than a ‘worldly wise’ layman did. It is then hard to figure out how he came to think that he was the right person to represent Pakistan at an international economic conference.

As to the perceptions he wants to correct, it should be understood that some of them are wholly or partly correct, others are unfounded, and still others relate to Musharraf himself and not to the country. Pakistan may not be the most dangerous place in the world, but there can be little doubt that living here is hazardous not only for foreign residents and visitors but also for the natives. Newspapers every day report killing of persons in incidents of suicide bombing, remote-controlled blasts, attacks on personnel and installations of security and law-enforcement agencies. How can we then blame anyone for designating Pakistan as a dangerous place?

A related perception holds that certain areas in Pakistan have become safe havens for extremist militants. Osama bin Laden and his chief deputies may not be hiding in our north-western tribal regions, but it is a known fact that thousands of Taliban launch their terrorist operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan itself from their locations in these areas.

Still another related perception, current more in the United States than anywhere else, has it that Pakistan’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is in danger of falling into the hands of Islamic militants, and that it should therefore be placed under some sort of international supervision. This is worse than a misperception; it is a malicious assertion fabricated and circulated by forces hostile to Pakistan’s status as a nuclear power.

One more perception of the same order may be mentioned. A substantial segment of opinion in the West has adopted the view that Islam approves of violence, and that therefore Muslims are particularly inclined to be violent. It is true that certain extremist groups, that describe their mission as Islamic, have been perpetrating terrorist acts. This is, I think, a passing phase in the unfolding of history. It may also be seen as a phase in an oppressed people’s struggle against western imperialist drives.

In the normal course of events, Muslims are no more prone to violence than Jews and Christians. It was not Muslims but Christians, guided by the Church of Rome, who initiated the Crusades. It was the Christian knights, not Muslim soldiers, who upon taking Jerusalem killed every Jewish and Muslim man, woman and child they could lay their hands on.

Then there are perceptions both in the West and Pakistan, relating not to the country and its people but to the ways of the Musharraf regime. These perceptions are substantially accurate. That Musharraf seized the government in a military coup in October 1999 and ruled the country as a dictator for the next three years is an indisputable fact and he admits as much. He admits also that the ‘civilian’ government he installed after the elections of 2002 was no more than a façade, and that he had in fact been directing its day-to-day workings. His role as the effective head of government until now violated the Constitution. Critics, foreign and domestic, have done no more than reported ground realities.

Observers, other than Musharraf’s allies, agree that the elections of 2002 were rigged, and they are apprehensive that the ones scheduled for Feb 18 will also be rigged. Musharraf’s claims to the contrary have done nothing to dispel these concerns. During his recent visits abroad heads of government, parliamentarians, and journalists kept asking him to ensure that the coming elections would be free and fair. President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and congressional leaders in America have been giving the same advice to him almost on a weekly basis. Evidently they are unable to take at face value his oft-repeated assertion that their reservations are unwarranted.

The perception is widespread that Musharraf’s government has been violating the citizen’s fundamental rights. Security agencies and the police have forced their way into private homes, taken persons away and detained them at undisclosed places for extended periods of time without filing charges, and some of them have never been seen again. A few judges took notice of some of these disappearances and required the agencies concerned to produce the detainees. For their ‘interference’ in the executive’s operations, a majority of them in the Supreme Court were dismissed.

This was an ugly fact and there is no misperception here to correct. There is no way to reverse the extremely adverse reaction General Pervez Musharraf’s moves on Nov 3, 2007, invited in Pakistan and much of the rest of the world.

On that infamous day, he staged a coup against his own office as president and, acting as the army chief, promulgated a state of emergency, imposed martial law, suspended the Constitution, sacked and placed under house arrest judges who had held their heads high and declined to bend the law to suit his whims and wishes. He sent away scores of other high-ranking judges because they would not endorse his subversion of the Constitution. These moves were calculated to make the judiciary subservient to the executive (of which he himself was the head) and destroy it as an independent enforcer of the country’s Constitution and law.

The general threw caution and discretion to the wind when he asserted before his British audiences that the deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had been ‘inept and corrupt’. The great majority of jurists and judges in this country and elsewhere have dismissed this assertion as incredibly vicious.

He and his advisors have not fully grasped the fact that democracy represents the spirit and temper of the times. It has emerged as the universally preferred mode of organising governance. There are occasions when he says he intends to bring genuine democracy to Pakistan. But then he was, once again, reckless enough to tell European and British politicians and opinion makers that they were ‘obsessed’ with democracy, and that they should not look at the developing world from their ‘angles’ of human rights and democracy.

The outside world is not saying anything outlandish about the Musharraf regime or even about the country. It is not saying anything that a great many Pakistanis do not say.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

TO Nawaz Sharif, the polls on Feb 18 represent an event as fateful as the creation of Pakistan on Aug 14, 1947. Hence he wants the voters to turn up in large numbers to vote for his party. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Imran Khan and Mahmud Khan Achakzai, on the other hand, view the whole electoral process as a huge fraud, and appeal to the people, one and all, to abstain from voting.

In between the two extremes, the PPP is taking part under protest but Asif Zardari, its interim chief, is confident of sweeping the polls. Conducting a costly campaign, the Q League makes similar claims but on the basis of its enduring service to the people and not just a passing appeal to their emotions.

In the background of these diverse and cunning efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people and their votes, looms the spectre of violence, rigging and the martyred image of Benazir Bhutto.

All three in varying degree must necessarily influence the turnout of the voters and a fair treatment of their vote.

The first threat to the legitimacy of the result of the polls arises from a low turnout because of the boycott by the Jamaat-i-Islami, Tehrik-i-Insaaf, Pukhtunkhwa Milli and some other parties. Put together these parties can be safely assumed to command 10 per cent of the popular vote which wouldn’t be cast.

Another unspecified but larger number may not leave the safety of their homes for fear of harassment or, worse, bomb blasts.

In parts of the NWFP and Balochistan, where even in normal times women do not vote at all and men voting are few, the percentage might fall precipitously. In South and North Waziristan, where war-like conditions prevail, still fewer will vote.

In Swat, it would take a very committed citizen to appear at a polling station in the face of the death threats held out by the Sharia campaigners.

My hunch is that even if violence is not widespread or serious at places because of the organised boycott alone, the national voting average which has ranged between 35 and 45 per cent in the five elections held since 1988 might come down to 25. In the troubled tribal areas and Balochistan, it could be much lower.

And that is not all. The voting lists this time round are believed to have left out many more voters than in past polls. The Ahmadiyya voters, in particular, whose number could be put at half a million, have been cast out of the electoral rolls on an arbitrary order of the president which the chief election commissioner obeyed without demur. Having been put on a subsidiary list they have decided not to vote at all.

The Ahmadis thus constitute yet another boycotting block though for reasons different from others. Considering the omissions or deliberate exclusions from the rolls the number of eligible citizens who have the right to vote but will not be able to would be higher than the count.

The low turnout besides impairing the representative character of the polls carries yet another hazard: the ballot boxes may be stuffed to show a larger turnout.

In that event, agents of the contestants may collude with the polling staff so long as their relative positions are not disturbed. Each candidate is thus shown to have polled more votes than he actually did.

When it comes to rigging, a part of it takes place before the polling. Every contending candidate strives to benefit but my friend Ilahi Bux Soomro, a former speaker, is more candid about it. Half the election is won, he holds, if a candidate manages to get the revenue and police officials of his choice posted in the constituency.

On this score, the chances

of his victory in the current contest are dim because his rival is a grandson of the nazim of the district who in turn is the mother of the caretaker prime minister.

According to Human Rights Watch, a fiercely independent agency, complaints in the thousands lodged with the Election Commission accusing the nazims of rigging have gone unheard. And nazims are now responsible for law and order and revenue collection as the deputy commissioners used to be before the devolution plan.

The charges of rigging swirl around Musharraf because the nazims owe direct allegiance to him and the safety commissions formed to supervise the police are also headed by the home ministers appointed by him. Musharraf thus stands at the centre of the rigging storm. Though the charge refuses to go away despite his disavowals, the finding in a BBC survey suggests that while he may not intervene to stop rigging by others he wouldn’t mastermind it either.

According to this survey, almost as many people trust the government to be fair in conducting the polls as those who think it wouldn’t be. The pressure of world public opinion and governments, that of the United States above all, backed by the findings in surveys by the International Republican Institute, the BBC and many others, seem to have finally persuaded Musharraf that he had done more than enough for his political allies. Still if they lose so be it.

There is no reason for Musharraf to rig when the PPP which is rated by foreign pollsters and domestic pundits alike to emerge as the largest single party is prepared to work with him, or at least so says Asif Zardari.

In an atmosphere of gloom, the BBC survey kindles a light of hope. Half of the people polled believe better days for Pakistan lie ahead. The light shines the brightest in Balochistan where despite poverty and discontent more widespread than in other provinces this belief is shared by a vast majority.

Sadly, and surprisingly, Sindh is the only province where the majority thinks we are headed for doom.

This should draw attention to the ethnic conflict which seems to have simmered under the surface in the five years of the Q League-MQM diarchy. Benazir’s assassination has only added poignancy to it.

Apprehensions of low attendance, violence or rigging aside, Monday’s polls will neither mark the birth of a new independence as Nawaz Sharif imagines nor would be altogether a hoax as Imran Khan believes. The modest expectation should be that the change will be orderly, peaceful and also for the better.

IT seems like a lifetime ago when my family moved abroad for a few years. I was sent to a public school, which was, in every sense of the word, as impressive as any modern, fully-equipped Pakistani school of recent times. Along with the culture shock — that too at a very vulnerable age — there was also the language shock. It added to my communication problem.

The language barrier, created mainly by an accent that was foreign to me, was another constraint. My half-foreigner cousins must have found my lost expression most amusing.

One day while sleeping in the room allotted to me, I was woken up by the ringing of the telephone. Half asleep and not exactly pleased by the unwanted disturbance, I picked up the receiver.

A male voice on the other end said, “Good afternoon”. I responded, “Good afternoon”. Again the voice said, “Good afternoon”.

This exchange of greetings was repeated with the tone on the other end becoming more and more exasperated. Taken aback I asked the caller to hold on as I dashed upstairs taking two steps at a time.

Much to my embarrassment I discovered that the gentleman on the line was, in fact, my cousin who had picked up the phone almost at the same time as I had and was asking me to “Get off the phone”.

Being unfamiliar with the

accent, I thought he was greeting me, saying “good afternoon”.

Unfortunately, I faced the same problem at school. I was too shy to share my thoughts in the classroom because my accent was alien in that part of the world. Now, after all these years and with some knowledge and experience in the field of education, I can analyse with hindsight the link between language and the development of the human thought process.

My inability to understand the accent emerged as a barrier to my participation in class activities that I otherwise would have been very good at. In a few weeks, I managed to overcome this problem and completely adjusted to the new environment which was pleasantly welcoming.

Coming to the state of our government schools, I can understand why our children perform so poorly. Their language proficiency is not developed and so their thought process is also stunted.

The bulk of them are without good command over any language — be it English or Urdu. Their creativity and innovative skills literally come to a halt. What is worse, they get into colleges and universities that are equally substandard.

To a layman, a school involves a building, books, teachers and students. Actually, it requires much more. Where does the problem lie? It is in producing school graduates whose thinking process is aligned with the language they speak. The teacher uses books to teach. The books have to have a language.

First of all, the selection of language must be right. No matter how good the books are, if the selection of language is incorrect, the books will not be useful.

For instance, give a good English-language book to students in a primary school where the mother tongue of most children is not English and you will never be able to teach them how to think.

Additionally, the language used by the teacher to teach must also be the mother tongue of the students. Once the issue of the selection of language of instruction is resolved, the focus must turn to the contents of the books used. The text must be thought-provoking.

Here I shall give an example from the Sindh Textbook Board’s Grade 1 textbook. There is a chapter titled ‘Hamara Pyara Ghar’ in which the protagonist says, “This is my house. There are four rooms in it.”

As in most academic books, there is a part at the end of each chapter with test questions. A question from this chapter is “How many rooms are there in this boy’s house?” The students have to memorise the answer for their exams. This hardly encourages students to think.

Ideally, if the exercise asked students to count the rooms in their own house instead, they would be compelled to use their minds and think. This is just a small example from the numerous I can give.

The beauty of language is that once students learn how to think in one language, they find that learning a new language becomes very easy.

I have French and German friends who were not very fluent in English. Surprisingly, this was after they had completed their Master’s degree from their respective countries. And then they went on to study for their PhD in English-speaking countries.

With little effort and within a short time they had gained command over the English language before starting their doctorate. Reason: their ability to think, understand and process information had been sharpened in their mother tongue during their early education.

The term ‘English-medium school’ is deceiving. Such schools produce students who lack good thinking processes though they have learnt how to read, write, memorise and calculate while they have picked up a smattering of general knowledge.

I believe that there is only one difference between developing countries and developed countries. In the former, a majority of citizens have limited thinking and innovative and creative skills.

In the latter, the majority of the people are capable of thinking. Once people know how to learn and think, they can distinguish between good and bad and start working for their own prosperity which eventually results in the prosperity of the nation.

Now the million-dollar question: what do we do? We have very few primary level books in our national and regional languages which are designed to produce thinking individuals. The few that are available are being used in some good private schools.

The need of the hour is for the government to seriously look into the issue and do what is required, that is, change course books with immediate effect.

The writer, a pop singer, is president of Zindagi Trust, an organisation working for child welfare and education.

royzad@gmail.com