THE largely peaceful elections in the Kashmir Valley have not provoked much comment from the Clinton Administration, which seems to have decided on a wait-and-watch approach. This is partly due to the fact that news reports on the elections have tended to be rather sketchy.
Requesting anonymity, a State Department official says that while he is heartened by the fact that there was "not a lot of violence or election irregularities in this first election in the state in seven years", it is not clear "how many people in the state had actually voted and how many had, in fact, boycotted the elections".
Another Administration insider is more forthcoming. Reacting to news reports that people had been forced to vote in Baramulla, he says: "Preliminary reports suggest that these elections have been the most peaceful and the least marred by problems. Obviously the state is in transition. The voter is not sure how this transition will resolve itself, but understands that it is part of the democratic process."
Commenting on the fact that many displaced Kashmiri Pandits were allowed to vote, former US ambassador to India William Clarke says it was just possible that the BJP could win a seat in Kashmir. Clarke, who now oversees the India Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, did not say whether having a BJP legislator would make the situation better or worse or whether allowing people to vote from outside the state was a distortion of the electoral process.
Shaun Gill, also an India-watcher at the CSIS, draws a parallel between the Kashmir elections and those in Punjab, which helped put an end to separatist violence: "It was a reinvigoration of the democratic process that allowed Punjab to return to normalcy. It is a first step, not a solution. People are tired of militancy. They want peace." He adds that the Akalis "are now in the driver's seat, so to speak, after having boycotted that first election".
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