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POLITICS: South Asia Spars over Commonwealth Summit
Commentary - By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (IPS) - Even as they enforce a ceasefire along the Kashmir
border and make other peace overtures to each other, India and Pakistan
continue to fight each other in multilateral forums.
They famously indulged in a slugfest three months ago at the U. N.
General Assembly. The latest instance of their mutual rivalry concerns
Pakistan's continued suspension from the Commonwealth, the 54-nation
association of the former colonies of the British Empire, which is
scheduled a summit meeting of its heads of government in Abuja, Nigeria
beginning Friday.
Pakistan blames India for the suspension. India is a member of an
eight-member ministerial group that is looking at the progress Pakistan has
made since Gen Pervez Musharraf's coup d'etat against Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif in October 1999.
Islamabad claims that its exclusion from the Commonwealth on the ground
that it ceased being a democracy is unjustified. In October last year,
after all, it held parliamentary elections and now has an elected prime
minister with his own Cabinet in place.
The domestic political opposition questions the authenticity of the
official claim to democracy and argues that all power effectively rests
with the president, a post to which Musharraf appointed himself.
Meanwhile, the Indian government would like the world to believe that
Pakistan cannot be a genuine democracy - so deeply rooted is its politics
in the culture of military authoritarianism and intolerant forms of Islam.
Both India and Pakistan are trying to leverage their positions and lobby
friendly states over their Commonwealth status.
Their conflict could get aggravated over the coming election of the next
secretary general of the organisation. The Sri Lankan president's adviser
and former foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, has thrown his hat into
the ring. India is likely to back him strongly.
For that very reason, Pakistan is likely to lobby its Commonwealth
friends against him. In the past too, India and Pakistan have often sparred
with each other both inside and around the Commonwealth.
At one level, the tussle over the Commonwealth reflects something of a
disconnect within the foreign policy establishments of both India and
Pakistan, which have agreed to a Kashmir ceasefire and to working to
restore aviation links severed nearly three years ago.
New Delhi and Islamabad are also likely to discuss trade cooperation and
the launching of a bus service between the two divided parts of Kashmir.
The present peace overtures between the two are the most significant
since their relations all but broke down following a terrorist attack on
India's Parliament building in December 2001.
At another level, the conflict speaks of growing sensibilities in both
countries about their global image.
Pakistan is acutely aware of the growing Western perception that it is
not pulling its weight in the 'war on terrorism' and that many of its
nationals are implicated in extremist groups in different countries, with
covert support from the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
The Islamabad establishment wants to reform the situation and dispel
that impression, and reclaim a democratic mantle - after many misses:
Pakistan has had military rule for two-thirds of its independent political
existence.
Islamabad also boasts that it has established good bilateral relations
in the post-Sep. 11 situation with powerful members of the Commonwealth -
and that it does not need formal Commonwealth membership.
For all the professed concern about democracy, Britain recently invited
Musharraf on a state visit. A Pakistan foreign ministry official was quoted
as saying: ''Our membership is more important for the Commonwealth in the
changing global scenario, than for us.''
Indian leaders, on the other hand, are keen to promote their country as
a ''brand''-a modern, forward-looking nation on the march, with a growing
economy, high levels of talent in its population and an open society, where
democracy has ''matured''.
Their manoeuvrings in the Commonwealth are of a piece with this. The
India-Pakistan tussle highlights the question of relevance of the
Commonwealth as an institution.
The Commonwealth has become the site of not one but two conflicts, the
second one involving Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe stands accused
of having rigged the recent presidential election.
Mugabe has not been invited to the Abuja summit. First, he lobbied for
an invitation. Then, two weeks ago, he said he expected an invitation ''at
the 11th hour''.
Now, Mugabe says Zimbabwe would quit the Commonwealth if it is not
treated as an equal. ''If our sovereignty is what we have to lose to be
readmitted into the Commonwealth, well, we will say goodbye to the
Commonwealth, and perhaps time has now come to say so.''
Mugabe has exhorted other African nations to boycott the summit, but he
received a strong rebuff from South Africa. This is considered a setback
for Mugabe's efforts to divide the Commonwealth into black and white camps.
South African political leaders have been quoted as saying that Mugabe's
exclusion from the Commonwealth ''could signal his fall from power''. This
suggests that the Commonwealth still matters for some countries, especially
in Africa.
Yet over the years, the grouping of Anglophone former colonies,
including settler colonies like Canada, Australia and New Zeland, has
declined in importance. Perhaps, the Commonwealth was at its most
influential in the 1970s and 1980s, when it served as a forum of trenchant
criticism of apartheid in South Africa.
Commonwealth summits generated tremendous moral and political pressure
on the apartheid regime and helped shape global opinion against that
obnoxious form of racism. The Commonwealth has certainly lost some of that
shine, but still remains an arena for sideshows and symbolic conflicts.
(END/2003)
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