'Perfect' democracy still a dream

It's curious how the prospect of polls becomes a nation's unwitting barometer. And how it polarises societies, dividing those who cling to the hope that they can institute a peaceful change of guard while that very expectation threatens the incumbents who can do little but justify their track record, however ill-founded and deficient in good sense.

Witness US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher's description of President Pervez Musharraf's January 8 rendezvous with the electoral turnstiles as "a good, credible, transparent and fair but not perfect election" in the face of criticism by US lawmakers who have slammed Boucher's description of the president's tactics as "bumps in the road", not "an attack on democracy".

Boucher later conceded they were "serious mistakes".

And how all eyes are focused on Narendra Modi's Gujarat in western India, which goes to the polls this week.

"Narendrabhai" has raised hackles in rational, secular India once again as he borrows a leaf from party elder Lal Krishna Advani and traverses the Indian state of Gujarat in a truck-turned-chariot and pulls out the communal card when all others fail to ignite the masses.

He may get his come-uppance after the Election Commission, India's pugnacious and fiercely independent election body, asked Modi, bristling with braggadacio, to explain his remarks on Sohrabuddin, the "terrorist" whose killing in a fake encounter he endorsed during an election campaign.

Narendrabhai's justification? Congress chief Sonia Gandhi started it by calling him a "merchant of death". In case he doesn't get it, someone should explain to him that Sonia was referring not just to the hundreds who disappeared in fake encounters but to the best kept secret this side of the Narmada - Modi turning a blind eye to Gujarat's pogrom of Muslims.

Modi suffers from a failing that afflicts most strongmen - that they are a target of assassins, and that they are always right.

In the White House, George W. Bush has much riding on his last months in power. Even a National Intelligence Estimate that clearly states Iran stopped enriching uranium three years ago has failed to halt the convoluted logic that it's a rogue state anyway and should be bombed.

An America in peril, with George W. riding to the rescue should drum up some votes to keep the Republicans in power for yet another term.

Or at least that must be what Bush is being told by his neo-con advisers peppering the media with hysterical stories of "Pakistan nukes in peril" raising the prospect of a full-fledged US intervention. In election year, anything is possible.

For some inexplicable reason the US fails to make the connection that once Iran was forced to sever links with nuclear carpetbagger Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Libya blew the whistle on the Pakistani icon, Iran has had no recourse to a new supplier. Therein ended the Iran nuke story.

The world is right to worry that just as Bush was quick to misjudge and attack Iraq over mythical WMDs, he could do the same on Iran for its mythical nukes.

The danger is that unlike Iraq, Iran is unlikely to allow the US to go unpunished in its two theatres of war - Iraq and Afghanistan and by extension Pakistan where the country is gripped by not one but multitudinous crises with the political shadow boxing adding to the climate of uncertainty.

Despite a seeming rapprochement, neither Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif have been able to get past their differences over whether to call for the reinstatement of the sacked judiciary before or after the January 8 elections.

The threat to boycott the polls or not is linked to this sticking point. With Benazir unable to win assurances, a reinstatement of the judges will not negate the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

Sharif says without the status quo ante there will be no recourse to independent courts if elections are rigged. Benazir says it's a matter that can be taken up after winning the election, although how that will be possible if it's rigged is not explained.

Their charter of demands, not yet a formal document, does not spell out what the opposition will do if Musharraf does not dissolve local bodies, set up an independent election commission and a caretaker government.

Saudi Arabia is back in the picture, trying discreetly through its ambassador to persuade the sacked chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to take the "Nawaz route" and find safe haven in Jeddah, removing the central irritant and providing Musharraf with a face saver. Chaudhry insists on his reinstatement.

But that impasse between the pro-Musharraf status quoists and the political parties who want a return to the pre-November 3 scenario could be the least of Pakistan's problems.

After Musharraf's summary stepping down as army chief, the air is thick with conspiracy theories, some credible, some not, but all equally alarming.

A palace coup, the assassination of a major figure, the October 18 assassination attempt on Benazir a dry run for the main event, a terror attack that will push Pakistan into an abyss from which the US will pull it out.

A "perfect" election? In Gujarat, maybe. Certainly not yet in Pakistan.

Neena Gopal is an analyst on Asia