Amidst the din of Pakistani news channels and their proclivity for making mountains out of molehills, important issues are often neglected. One such issue pertains to the ongoing election processes across our eastern and western borders. The voting process for Presidential elections has ended in Afghanistan and preliminary results will be announced on 24th April, 2014. India has a lengthy voting phase, which started on 7th April. Voting will continue in different states till 12th May and results are expected to be announced on16th May. Another election took place in one of our current favorite countries (Turkey), in which a right-wing party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), managed 45% of the vote, consolidating its grip on the reins of power.
Normally, foreign affairs do not matter much in national elections and all politics, at the end of the day, are local politics. Despite this truism, the future of internal stability in Pakistan is tied with a stable government in Afghanistan and a friendly one in India.
Based on current estimates, frontrunners in the Afghan presidential race are, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani. Mr. Abdullah was a close confidante of Ahmed Shah Massoud, a legendary Tajik military commander. Mr. Abdullah served as Foreign Minister in the Northern Alliance government (1996-2001) and in the aftermath of Taliban withdrawal (2001-2005). Mr. Ghani is a cultural anthropologist by training, with a PhD from Columbia University. He taught at the University of California, Berkley and later at John Hopkins University. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan and took an active part in the reconstruction of the war-torn country. He remained Minister of Finance and Chancellor of Kabul University in the years following 9/11. He has chosen Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord and alleged war criminal, as his running mate.
From Pakistan’s perspective, both Abdullah and Ghani are potential deal-breakers. Both candidates share contempt for the Taliban and their ultimate benefactor, Pakistan. During the election campaign, Anti-Pakistan rhetoric was used by both candidates, probably to stoke the deeply held contempt against Pakistan by a significant majority of the Afghan populace. International politics though, does not work according to election time rhetoric and whoever wins the election will most likely choose the path of pragmatism to deal with Pakistan and the Taliban. Withdrawal of American and NATO combat forces from Afghanistan and its aftermath will be the real challenge for the incumbent leader.
The case of the Indian elections is different from Afghanistan in many different aspects. The enormity of the election procedure and the number of people participating in the democratic process, has led to Indian Elections being called the biggest show of democracy in the world. The cast of characters can put ‘War and Peace’ to shame. The central contest will be between the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the centre-left Congress Party, while a ‘third-front’ led by Jayalalithaa or Mamata Banerjee can benefit from the clash of titans. Major issues that will decide the fate of these elections vary according to constituencies. BJP promises a business-friendly, corruption-free governance, also known as the ‘Gujarat’ model, implemented by Narendra Modi. Congress has little to show for its decade-long stint at the centre (first as part of United Progressive Alliance-I and then UPA-II) and will face a tough challenge at the polls, under Sonia Ghandhi’s son, Rahul.
The issue of corruption was raised by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party (AAP), which surprised almost everyone last year by forming a government in Delhi. After 49 days in power, Mr. Kejriwal resigned from office and has worked since then to contest polls on the national arena. Left-wing parties in India, after a wonderful showing during the 2004 elections, are in utter disarray. Political campaigning by Modi, Rahul Gandhi and regional parties focused heavily on local issues. Modi’s campaign did a miraculous job of avoiding any mention of his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand Muslims. Instead, they doubled down on his economic policy, and termed it ‘Modinomics.’ Maitreesh Ghatak and Sanchari Row, academics working in the United Kingdom, did a systemic analysis of the claims made by Modi’s campaign and found little evidence to support the claims of economic prosperity being peddled by the BJP campaign team.
The so-called ‘Modi Wave’ might sweep urban and peri-urban centers with a youth bulge, but a coalition government is more likely to be formed after the elections. Since 1984, India has been ruled by coalition governments and no one party has been able to gain the upper hand. Coalition politics can taper the Hinutva edge to a certain extent and it would be interesting to witness how Mr. Modi manages relations with different coalition partners.
The impact of the Indian Elections on relations with Pakistan is likely to be positive. According to Pew Research’s recent survey of Indian Attitudes, up to 71 % of the respondents had unfavourable opinions about Pakistan but even then, 53 per cent were in favor of talks with Islamabad. The last BJP-led coalition government, for all its nationalist posturing, ended up normalizing the cross border relations until Kargil happened. In the past few years, the Indian military’s primary focus has been on countering Chinese threats and Pakistan’s army is too entrenched against internal enemies. This dynamic is unlikely to change soon.
BJP’s election manifesto, according to Ankit Panda, associate editor of The Diplomat magazine, ‘is especially critical of the Congress for allowing India’s leadership in its immediate neighborhood to wane, and indicates that the BJP is interested in establishing regional leadership for India in SAARC and ASEAN.’
The manifesto is also big on Indian soft power, noting that the country has always undercapitalized its ‘ancient wisdom and heritage’ which continue ‘to be equally relevant to the world today.’ The manifesto generally seems to support India’s troubled tendency to pursue non-alignment and strategic autonomy in international affairs.’
Professor Manjari Chatterjee Miller, writing for Foreign Affairs magazine, quoted an Indian Ambassador regarding a change in India’s foreign policy in the following words, “An elephant is not prone to making sharp turns.”

The writer is a freelance columnist.

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