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What the elections in PoK mean

Nirupama Subramanian

The larger challenge for the PoK Government is to carve out a more meaningful role for itself than Pakistan allows at present.

ELECTIONS WERE held to the 49-seat Legislative Assembly of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on July 11. The ruling All Jammu & Kashmir Muslim Conference won the elections. The new Assembly elected Sardar Attique Khan of the AJKMC as Prime Minister. He is the son of the party's `life patron' Sardar Qayyum Khan. The government formation process was completed in the last week of July when the new Assembly, the Kashmir Council under the Pakistan Prime Minister, and the Pakistan Minister for Kashmir Affairs elected Raja Zulqarnain Khan as President. A 14-member Cabinet took office in the second week of August.

This is the eighth Legislative Assembly in PoK since 1970, and the seventh since 1974 when Pakistan granted the region a parliamentary system with adult franchise. The previous elections were held in 2001.

What do these elections mean for PoK, its relations with Pakistan, and for the peace process?

For Pakistan, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir state is disputed territory. "Azad" Kashmir, that part of the state which falls on Pakistan's side of the Line of Control, is categorised as an "autonomous" region. But titles such as Prime Minister and President for the region's elected political leadership are misleading about the real nature of the relationship between PoK and Pakistan.

In Pakistan, most debate on Kashmir has focussed on "Indian Held Kashmir" and there have been few critiques of the structure of Pakistan-PoK relations. In 2004, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan came out with a report on PoK and observed, among other things, that the autonomy of the region was adversely affected by the domination of the Pakistani bureaucracy and military in its affairs. The latest is from the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, which has in the July-December issue of its journal Policy Perspectives a paper titled "Status of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Political Milieu" by Ershad Mahmud, an expert on Kashmir affairs.

The IPS is a pro-right think-tank, linked — those in it say only "indirectly" — to the Jamaat-i-Islami, political/ideological mentor of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. While the JI advocates Kashmir's accession to Pakistan, it has also been critical of Islamabad's policies in PoK. It describes President Pervez Musharraf's "out of the box" proposals on Kashmir as a dilution of Pakistan's Kashmir cause.

While Mr. Mahmud argues for meaningful devolution to PoK, it is interesting, given the JI position on the "out of the box" proposals, that the paper considers the possibility that the idea of self-rule for Jammu & Kashmir may eventually boil down to a settlement that will provide more devolution on both sides without altering the present territorial claims of either India or Pakistan. According to Mr. Mahmud, this possibility demands that Pakistan start cleaning up its act immediately.

Like the HRCP report, Mr. Mahmud lists several irritants in the relationship, the main being the 13-member Kashmir Council headed by the Pakistan Prime Minister as its chairman, while the PoK President is its vice-chairman. The Pakistan Minister for Kashmir Affairs is an ex-officio member of the council. The Pakistan Prime Minister nominates five members, while six are members of the Legislative Assembly, representing all parties in the Assembly on a proportional basis.

PoK is effectively ruled by the Kashmir Council, which has 52 subjects under its control aside from the crucial ones of nationality, citizenship, and migration from or into the region, and admission into, and emigration and expulsion from the region, finance, defence and foreign affairs.

The council is empowered to make any laws on the subjects under its control, it has exercise over all development funds, and its decisions are final and not subject to judicial review either by the judiciary of Pakistan or of the region. The Federal Government has the power to dismiss the PoK Government. Although it has been used only twice since 1974, Mr. Mahmud argues that it gives Islamabad "leverage to dictate its terms to the ruling elite of Azad Jammu and Kashmir."

Over and above all this is the Pakistan military's role in the region. The HRCP report said several people complained to its team about the Pakistan Army's "big role" in its affairs.

The 2006 elections were also a study in PoK's relations with Islamabad. Two facts are significant. Elections are not held in the Northern Areas. Pakistan, which has incorporated the NA as part of its own territory — India holds NA to be part of the "erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir" — rules over this region directly from Islamabad.

Secondly, despite the official categorisation of PoK as a "disputed" area, candidates are required to sign an affidavit of allegiance to Kashmir's accession to Pakistan. This is a mixed curse for pro-independence parties such as the Amanullah Khan faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front.

As candidates of the JKLF, and other smaller such parties, will not sign such an affidavit, their nominations are rejected. But it gives the party a handy tool with which to embarrass Pakistan. When the issue resurfaced this year at the time of nominations, the JKLF announced a boycott and could put Pakistan on the mat over this particular requirement. Of course, the other advantage is that it has never had to undergo an electoral test of its popularity.

Before the 2006 election, there were two dominant parties in PoK — the AJKMC, which won the election, and the PoK chapter of the People's Party of Pakistan, known as the People's Party of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (PPAJK). This time a third force entered the scene. In the weeks before the election, the PPAJK split, with the ruling party in Islamabad, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), openly encouraging the dissidents. But once the dissidents broke away to rally under the name of People's Muslim League, they found to their dismay that the PML (Q) had started cozying up to the AJKMC.

Game plan

It became clear that Islamabad's main aim in encouraging the PPAJK split was to give the AJKMC an edge and ensure that a party headed by Benazir Bhutto did not win the election in PoK. There was a possibility that the PPAJK might win. The AJKMC Government's inefficiency was glaring after the earthquake. In any case, PoK had a history of alternating between the two dominant parties. From the point of view of President Musharraf, this had to be prevented. A PPP victory in "Azad" Kashmir could have queered the pitch for the PML(Q) in Pakistan. The AJKMC was the safest bet.

Of the 49 seats in the Assembly, 41are filled by elected members, while eight are nominated after the election. Of the elected seats, 12 are located in Pakistan, reserved for Kashmiri migrants from the Indian side of the LoC. Mr. Mahmud writes that "these seats have become, simply, a tool of manipulation in the hands of the ruling government in Islamabad, and particularly Punjab, which has eight and a half seats in its territorial jurisdiction. There is no doubt that successive federal governments have been gifting these seats to their allies. The ruling parties always use their leverage to ensure their allies' victory. Additionally ... a huge number of non-Kashmiris are registered as voters."

The AJKMC won six of the 12 seats this time, and 14 seats in AJK. It formed the government with the help of independent candidates, some of whom were members of the last government but were denied the ticket this time and therefore, contested independently. Proving Mr. Mahmud's point about the "migrant" seats, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, an ally of the Federal Government with no base in PoK, won two seats from Karachi.

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of religious political parties including the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamaat-e-ulema-Islami, contested the PoK elections for the first time, aiming to win seats on the basis of earthquake relief work carried out by militant groups associated with it. But its hope was belied — the MMA did not win a single seat. The JI, the main constituent of the MMA, won a seat in 1996, lost it narrowly in the 2001 election, and did not make it this time either.

The main expectation of Kashmiris from the new government is on the issue of post-earthquake reconstruction, especially with winter round the corner. But the larger challenge for the PoK Government is to carve out a more meaningful role for itself than Pakistan allows at present. Were Prime Minister Attique Khan to attempt to negotiate any change in relations with Islamabad, how seriously Pakistan would consider this demand would be important in the context of President Musharraf's idea of self-governance for Kashmir, which he described as "something between autonomy and independence."

But irrespective of the peace process, there is also an indigenous demand in PoK for more say in its own governance. In Mr. Mahmud's words, while the people are "by all means, obliged to and feel part of the larger community of [Pakistan] ... there appears a consensus that the relationship between Muzaffarabad and Islamabad certainly needs to be redefined without delay ... on the basis of mutual interests, dignity and honour."

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