On Oct 4, 1988, then acting president Ghulam Ishaq Khan promulgated a little known ordinance to amend the Representation of the People Act of 1976.

In 1976, the ceiling on election-related expenses contained in the act had been set at Rs40,000 for a National Assembly seat, and Rs25,000 for the provincial assembly. Citing the `rising cost of living` Khan`s ordinance of 1988 raised these ceilings to Rs500,000 and Rs300,000 respectively, more than a tenfold increase.

The ordinance was promulgated two days before nine political parties announced an electoral alliance to be called the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), which would field candidates against the PPP on almost all seats. It came four days before the notification for the elections, and Eve days before the nomination of candidates was set to begin.

The `cost of living` had indeed gone up in the 12 years between 1976 and 1988, but nowhere near the tenfold increase envisioned in the ordinance.

Far from reflecting any increases in the `cost of living`, Khan`s ordinance of `88 was in fact the earliest official acknowledgement that the cost of doing politics was about to rise very steeply.

With 1,167 candidates running for National Assembly seats in 1988, and 3,408 candidates in the contest for provincial seats, the total expenditures to be incurred in campaigning alone would be over Rs1.6 billion, assuming each candidate spent only up to the ceiling allowed by the law. Of course, in reality the amounts spent would have been far in excess. By the standards of that time, this was a considerable sum of money.

Consider this figure, the permissible limit on campaign spending, as a proxy into the rising cost of doing politics in Pakistan. By 2002, the ceilings had risen to Rs1.5 million for a National Assembly seat, and Rs1m for a provincial seat. In the four elections since 1988 for which the figure was hiked up, three of those were elections that saw a new force being ushered into the electoral arena the IJI in 1988 and 1990, and the PML-Q in 2002.

The ceiling on election expenses is only proxy here. It represents only the entry cost into the game. But it is the best proxy we have to identify the trend: that the cost of doing politics in Pakistan has risen very sharply since the transition to civilian rule in1988.If the dollar doubled in value versus the rupee in this time, or the price of a litre of petrol increased by a factor of 10, the cost of the entry ticket into politics went up by a factor of 37 in the same period.

To support the growing expenses associated with the game, politicians increasingly turned towards the cultivation of rackets. This is one big difference between the civilian politicians of the 1950s and those that emerged from the long decade of Zia`s rule. The earlier generation had secure sources of income through their land holdings that they used to fund political activity, whereas the new rabble that entered politics in the liberalisation days had to build their own revenue lines.

Nawaz Sharif epitomises the new generation.

Many others have remarked on the obvious observation that his family started as humble owners of a small steel mill until they were touched by the general`s hand in the early `80s. But in noting the rise of Nawaz Sharif, there is another view to also keep in mind.

Consider this. In the 1990 election that brought him to the stage of national politics for the first time, Nawaz Sharif was one of four contenders for the IJI`s candidate for prime minister.

The other three included Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who believed that since he was interim prime minister perhaps he could just continue on in the same role for the sake of simplicity. There was Ijaz-ul-Haq, who considered himself the right heir to his father`s legacy, and there was Mohammad Khan Junejo, who believed that the party owed him the slot because it had been unlawfully taken from him in the first place. And hadn`t he decided to withdraw his challenge to Zia`s dismissal of his government in the Supreme Court under the assurance that he would be his party`s prime minister in the next election? Where are these individuals now? Junejo passed his legacy to Hamid Nasir Chattha, who is little more than someone with whom Nawaz Sharif will negotiate a seat adjustment. Ijaz-ul-Haq is lucky if he gets an invitation to a TV talk show, let alone being in a position to lead a major political party.

And Mr Jatoi left this world quietly in 2009, leaving behind little more than a wistful obituary or two.

For a quarter of a century since that election, no challenger has been able to emerge from within the PML to Nawaz Sharif`s authority. And it is my contention that behind that rather spectacular rise to power there is a new ingredient, which was the unique relationship with the country`s ruling business elites that Sharif was able to build that his rivals could not.

And that relationship was not built with smiles and earnest handshakes. And the improbable hold on power that Sharif has demonstrated in the decades when the cost of politics has spiked so massively did not come from his personal charisma. It took money and bargaining over access to the rentier terms that govern who will have a place at the top and who won`t.

Success in that game is what it takes to do politics in this country. Just look at the tussle within the PTI, with one group complaining that the other is using money to acquire influence. This is how the line between rents, profits and corruption has been blurred to such an extent in this country. This is why politics has become mainly a game of money.• The writer is a member of staff.

khurram.husain@gmail.com Twitter: @khurramhusainHaq, who considered himself the right heir to his father`s legacy, and there was Mohammad Khan Junejo, who believed that the party owed him the slot because it had been unlawfully taken from him in the first place. And hadn`t he decided to withdraw his challenge to Zia`s dismissal of his government in the Supreme Court under the assurance that he would be his party`s prime minister in the next election? Where are these individuals now? Junejo passed his legacy to Hamid Nasir Chattha, who is little more than someone with whom Nawaz Sharif will negotiate a seat adjustment. Ijaz-ul-Haq is lucky if he gets an invitation to a TV talk show, let alone being in a position to lead a major political party.

And Mr Jatoi left this world quietly in 2009, leaving behind little more than a wistful obituary or two.

For a quarter of a century since that election, no challenger has been able to emerge from within the PML to Nawaz Sharif`s authority. And it is my contention that behind that rather spectacular rise to power there is a new ingredient, which was the unique relationship with the country`s ruling business elites that Sharif was able to build that his rivals could not.

And that relationship was not built with smiles and earnest handshakes. And the improbable hold on power that Sharif has demonstrated in the decades when the cost of politics has spiked so massively did not come from his personal charisma. It took money and bargaining over access to the rentier terms that govern who will have a place at the top and who won`t.

Success in that game is what it takes to do politics in this country. Just look at the tussle within the PTI, with one group complaining that the other is using money to acquire influence. This is how the line between rents, profits and corruption has been blurred to such an extent in this country. This is why politics has become mainly a game of money.

The writer is a member of staff. khurram.husain@gmail.com Twitter: @khurramhusain

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The playground in Paris had a few more people than usual the other day, the day the Brussels bombing happened. A few people there told me because of the bombing, which happened early morning, the gendarmes are going to be deployed at the train stations, checking IDs and bags of all passengers coming and going, and this will cause massive delays. So they left work early and came home, and those with younger kids decided to come to the playground. That`s where I met them.

In another reality, messages of concern poured in. Don`t step out, a few people advised me. Family messaged, asking if my plans had changed due to the bombing. No, I replied, there is no perceptible change here.

Terrorism is a phenomenon that lives in the headlines only, rarely puncturing the surface tranquillity of day-to-day life. The only time it can enter the lives of people directly is if one should be, or should know of someone, who was there when it happened. Or through the security measures that arisein response toit.

In reality, the number of people dying as a result of terror attacks in Europe has declined sharply since the 1970s and 1980s. Since the war on terror began, only two large spikes of deaths as a result of terrorism present themselves on a graph drawn up by the Global Terrorism Database. One in 2004, the Madrid train bombings, and the other in 2015, the Paris attacks.

The total number of victims in both those attacks is about 320, whereas Pan Am Flight 103 took down 270 victims in one go back in 1988. That bombing triggered some of the most intense sanctions against Libya, which had only just been loosened as a result of painstaking negotiations when the uprising hit.

So why does terrorism seem so much more frightening today than it did back then? Why does it inspire such dread, even though it does not puncture through the headlines and the television space, where it lives and breathes mostly, into the `structures of everyday life`, to borrow that rather French phrase? The fear is palpable in the heightened deployment of police and paramilitary on the streets, thedeclaration of a state of emergency, the escalation in the right-wing rhetoric against migrants and the tightening of immigration rules. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when terrorists claimed more lives in Europe than they do today, their actions did not sway the institutions of mainstream politics in the way they are able to do today.

So what has changed? I count three things. First, is the growth of a large migrant population in Europe over these decades. Second, the more nativist tendencies stirred by the rise of the European project, and further aggravated by the more recent crisis of the European Union. Third, the discourseassociated with the war on terror, which found a very contested space in Europe ever since Mitterrand`s famous `non` to the American doctrine of pre-emptive action.

The terrain of fear upon which terrorism seeks to have its day is built on the anxieties that are created by economic, cultural and demographic forces. And the ultimate objective of the terrorist is to triumph in the mind of the observer, not on the ground. None of the forces that aid the terrorist in his enterprise have been created, or even midwifed, by him.

But they have provided the amplification for his message, which is all that he really seeks in any case.

What exactly is the message that the terrorist is trying to send? After all, small random bombings that kill a few people but leave the structures of power and day-to-day life largely untouched cannot be compared to acts of war, least of all war of the sort that the European continent has known since at least the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.Such bombings do not work towards the capturing of territory, nor do they impact the flow of economic life in any significant way.

In other countries, terrorists have targeted tourists because that country`s main source of foreign exchange earnings is from tourism. Or they have targeted infrastructure, because it is through infrastructure projects that the regime has tried to tie rural communities into the national life of the rest of the country. Or they have targeted military installations, because the army is leading an operation againstterroristsafe havens.Orthey have targeted civilians in bazaars and other locations in an attempt to tell the populace that the state they hide behind cannot protect them from the terrorists` wrath.

But what is the thinking behind targeting people in cafes, or commuters on a train, or people in the departure lounge ofan airport? The ideais to stir up the anxieties that already plague the society in question. It is to tell the migrant populations in these countries `see how fast they abandon their commitment to your rights and welfare? And you dream of calling this country your home?` They seek to stir suspicion on all sides: `we are here, any one of us could be carrying the next bomb! With these messages, the terrorists seek to drive a wedge between the migrant community and the larger society, an act in which they are aided by the growing economic crisis which spreads unemployment and strains resources for the welfare state for which Europe is famous. Economy and demography create the world of meaning which the terrorist uses, while technology and the attendant language of the war on terror give him the tools with which to amplif y his message.

Thus far, fortunately for us all, his message has failed. But if in a few years, if the European electorate brings into power those far right forces that are similarly preying on the postmodern anxieties of the moment, the terrorist will have his triumph.

The writer is a member of staff. khurram.husain@gmail.com Twitter:@khurramhusain

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan