Both cause and Effect

AN escalation of the undeclared war for Kashmir was inevitable after the recent referendum in Pakistan that “confirmed” General Pervez Musharraf’s civilian job. This is not because the referendum strengthened Pervez Musharraf. But because it weakened him.

The unstructured but recognized pattern of behaviour in a Pakistani coup goes something like this. Tension begins to build between the civilian authority and the military establishment for one reason or the other. A game of nerves begins. Both sides test how far they can go. It does not necessarily end up in a victory for the brass. When General Jehangir Keramat and Nawaz Sharif lost confidence in each other, it was the general who blinked. But at some point the army, which is always fed up of civilian governments, decides that it is strong enough to take on the civilians. Or it feels that it has no other choice but to cross the Constitution Avenue in Islamabad.

General Pervez Musharraf was convinced, as were his senior officers, that he would be killed — if not in the air then on the ground — by Nawaz Sharif if he did not take over. After the pistol-packing boss has taken charge, there is what might be called a phase in which he is ‘trainee president’. During this period the general is generally too embarrassed to call himself president; he could be known as chief martial law administrator (the preferred nomenclature). Pervez Musharraf simply called himself chief executive. Then comes the second stage, when the title is manoeuvred into the general’s designation.

The third stage comes with the “moment of legitimacy”. This is the point when the general feels that he needs some evidence that he has the support of the people of Pakistan. It is not external factors alone that make him crave for such legitimacy; a government cannot hang loose in the air, without any relationship to those it rules.

General (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan did not have to worry about American pressure for democracy; dictators were formally welcome in the American fold then. But he too had to tinker with ideas like Basic Democracy and set up some kind of national election to confirm him in his job. But at least Ayub Khan had an opponent; and he must have got a bit of a shock when he discovered that his opponent was the steely sister of the steely father of the Nation, Fatima Jinnah.

However, Fatima Jinnah was soon to appreciate that the most basic fact about Basic Democracy is that the winner chose the electorate. General Ziaul Haq, who knew what he wanted to do with power, had no time for niceties and dispensed with unimportant matters like an opponent. He became the cause as well as the effect. A referendum changed from being a vote about a person or a post to being a vote for a policy, or alleged policy. As a fraud, it was far more convenient.

The army mind has no understanding of democracy, which is as it should be. The last democratic army, and maybe the first too, existed in the early years of the French Revolution and we all know how quickly it needed Napoleon. An army command is an oligarchy, where decisions by a few are taken for a perceived common good. It is unsurprising that officers do not understand the culture of democracy. The most stupid civilian politician would have understood the need to stuff a few votes against himself even if he had to rig an election. But it must have become clear to General Musharraf and his friends from the reaction that they had shot themselves pretty severely in the foot with this meaningless referendum. Their previous illegitimacy was more legitimate, if only because it was more honest. The referendum exposed in the starkest terms that the army clique that has seized power in Pakistan does not represent the people.

If a government does not represent the people, then what does it represent? Why is it in office? Pervez Musharraf justified his coup by saying that the people of Pakistan had got fed up of Nawaz Sharif. That might even have been true, although there are other ways of solving that dilemma. But what happens when the same people get fed up of Pervez Musharraf?

Every government needs a rationale to survive. The condition becomes acute in an illegitimate government born of a coup and “ratified” by a fiction. An external threat becomes an acute need for a general; but this too must be backed by a domestic agenda. General Zia thought he had found his answer when he made the Islamization of Pakistan his domestic rationale, while God sent him the ultimate foreign policy gift with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. General Musharraf brimmed over with good intentions during his long honeymoon. He may even have seriously wanted to end corruption and curb the terrorists who, as he candidly admitted in his famous January 12 speech, had become Pakistan’s biggest headache.

Good intentions are not good enough. All that the general finally delivered was cosmetics. It may not have been his fault. You cannot do much about corruption when the army itself has institutionalized a massive system of state-lubricated comfort for itself. You cannot curb terrorism when its use is part of state policy in Kashmir. The sag between the Musharraf of mid-January, confident at home and applauded across the western world, and the man who donned strange turbans in his quest for some mythical vote was palpable. During the last two months western journalists (and all of them are now in Pakistan) had begun to sniff the duplicity in government and write about it. Pakistanis could not contain their frustration and even anger at the prospect of sustained military rule stretching into the foreseeable future, without any hope of democracy as long as the “referended” Musharraf was around. It was clear that the army needed a quick-fix shift of attention from itself to another story.

On Monday, May 13, the International Herald Tribune carried a column by Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post. I quote: “No one plays this aid game better than Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, whose uneven help in the way on terrorism has been purchased at excessive monetary and moral cost to the United States. Washington’s unconditional generosity now seems to encourage the Pakistanis to toy with the United States even on the subject of terrorism... How do you say chutzpah in Urdu?” Hoagland then shifts to the scene in South Asia: “After a three-month lull, terrorist groups that infiltrate saboteurs and killers into Kashmir have in recent weeks resumed their normal rate of attacks across the informal ‘line of control’ in the disputed territory.”

But the most striking part of the column was a quotation from Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, the Pakistani intelligence chief, from a speech he made to his commanders in the first week of May: “There exists an all-time high risk of Pak-India conflict in the coming weeks.”

On what basis did General Haq make what by any standards is a dramatic assessment? This was certainly not the view from this side of the border. The mood in Delhi was induced by the lull after the parliament-assault storm. The threat of war, that had seemed so real in December and January, had in fact receded, and there were even murmurs about de-escalation. Did the intelligence chief of Pakistan know something that Delhi was not yet aware of? To speculate, did he know for instance that there would be attacks on Indian army camps in Jammu and Kashmir that would send the temperature on the border to flare-up levels? The phrase that General Haq used was “an all-time high risk”. Higher than Kargil?

During Kargil the United States of Bill Clinton was disengaged from the complexities of South Asia; it wanted peace as a principle, while the rest of life went on. It required the threat of a nuclear war in the region for Bill Clinton to summon Nawaz Sharif and tell an ashen Pakistani prime minister that his own armed forces were preparing for the unimaginable, without the knowledge of the country’s political leadership. In a sense the coup that removed Nawaz Sharif had begun long before it happened. South Asia is a radically different region after last September. Not even the most fanciful seer could have predicted that American troops would be holding joint exercises with India on Indian soil even while their comrades were stationed in and off Pakistan at the same time.

War is easier than peace. That is the one fact about India-Pakistan relations over the last fifty years. Armies are war machines; they flourish in times of confrontation, they wither during peace, even if they are indispensable at all times. The Pakistan army has taken this premise a few notches ahead; it wants to become a permanent part of the power structure. On what basis can it sell this thesis to its own people? Only by the thesis of a permanent war with India. A democratic government in Pakistan does not have to be friendly with India, but it will have a greater vested interest in peace, if for no other reason than to keep the army at bay. The Americans have taken, once again, a shortsighted view of Islamabad. If Musharraf claims to serve their cause, then he must be protected and even patronized. But an army cannot run a country. At best it can defend its nation; at worst it can ruin it. There is no middle ground. If there is ever going to be a solution to the problems of the region it will only happen when democracy returns to Pakistan. A fudge is not a solution.

The question at the beginning must remain the question at the end. If the government in Pakistan does not represent the people then what precisely does it represent? Think about it.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi

Mideast peace prospects

AT long intervals, the cauldron of the Middle East generates an opportunity for a possible breakthrough. It usually occurs after an explosion that brings home to the parties their necessities as well as their limits and permits a balancing of concessions with the help of interested bystanders. The Middle East conference called by US secretary of state Colin Powell may relate occasion to opportunity. But for this to happen, it is important to be clear not only about the opportunity but also about its limits.

A broad-based Middle East conference is not the most appropriate forum for achieving a comprehensive solution, and the United States has generally avoided them. For the composition of such conferences tends to isolate America. The vast majority of the potential participants in the proposed conference — the European Union, the United Nations, Russia, moderate Arab states and Israel — will, in the quest for a comprehensive solution, endorse variations of the Saudi plan: a return by Israel to the 1967 borders, a partition of Jerusalem, elimination of Israeli settlements, in exchange for “normalization,” “recognition” and security guarantees, none of which has been defined.

I have known Israeli prime ministers and chiefs of staff for 40 years; none has ever considered these lines defensible. Demarcations that leave a corridor of only eight miles between Tel Aviv and Haifa and the road to Jerusalem within hundreds of yards of Arab outposts have not gained attractiveness after 18 months of intifada and suicide bombings. For its part, the United States has supported the phraseology of UN Security Council resolutions calling for “secure borders,” not necessarily those of 1967. The quest for a comprehensive solution thus sets up precisely the US-and-Israel-versus-the-world equation, which jihadists seek to promote.

Nor is a general conference the best forum to induce compromise regarding a comprehensive agreement. In the face of broad-based opposition, Israel will dig in reflexively. Under pressure from radical colleagues, the moderate Arab participants will not modify their position. This is why the United States saw to it that previous general conferences were token. The Geneva conference of the 1970s met only once in a plenary session, after which the negotiations for two disengagement and two political agreements, culminating in a peace agreement with Egypt, were conducted in separate forums. And the Madrid conference of 1991 led to the PLO-Israeli agreement negotiated in Oslo under Norwegian aegis without reference to the original meeting.

If the proposed conference pursues a comprehensive solution, deadlock is certain. And that will sooner or later generate demands to impose the terms on Israel. But if imposition is the aim, a conference is unnecessary; the United States could do that on its own. The 1967 lines in Palestine have never been international borders; they were the armistice lines of the 1948 war. No Arab state accepted them even when they were the official demarcation line or before the Beirut summit in 2002. None of the Beirut summit states except Egypt and Jordan have, to this writing, recognized Israel.

While Prince Abdullah deserves credit for stating a willingness to accept Israel under some conditions, the substance of the Saudi plan is inherently one-sided. Israel is asked to cede territory — a tangible and irrevocable act; the Arab states in return offer normalization and recognition, which are psychological and revocable. And the content of normalization has never been defined. Israel was established by a UN resolution in 1948. No other members of the United Nations have been asked to pay a premium for recognition, the refusal of which implies a right to extinguish a state’s legal, if not physical, existence. Nor are Palestinian leaders in a position to make a general agreement. No Palestinian leader has been willing to renounce the right to return even when he acquiesces into it de facto. This implies an option to overwhelm Israel demographically.

A fashionable argument is to invoke the Camp David talks of 2000, during which Israel proposed giving up 94 per cent of the West Bank, and the subsequent Taba talks, which raised that percentage to 96 per cent, as proof that the Saudi plan is not so far from reality. But the Taba “agreement” is a strange concoction. Negotiated in the last weeks of the Clinton presidency and while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was heading for an overwhelming electoral defeat, no written record of the agreement seems to exist; no map reflecting what the percentages represent has ever been published.

The Israeli proposal — which, it must be remembered, was a minority position within Israel and was rejected by Arafat — was based on the assumption that major territorial concessions would change the psychological framework and result in genuine coexistence. It cannot be resurrected after months of suicide bombings; it could come about, if ever, only at the end of an extended period of coexistence.

Should the United States or an international consensus pursue a comprehensive agreement nevertheless if only, as some claim, to save Israel from a strategy that is multiplying its enemies and eroding America’s position in Islam? Imposition of the Saudi plan would not reconcile the Arab world, however. Whether the United States garners credit in the Islamic world for diplomatic initiatives will depend on the perception of the choices available to us. An imposition viewed as having been extorted by Islamic militancy would encourage the jihad groups around the world, that would demand the destruction of Israel next. It would not even help Arab moderate leaders. For to the extent that militant Islam gains momentum, the position of moderate Arab leaders is progressively undermined. And it would gravely weaken America’s war on terrorism.

Imposition would break Israel’s psychological back. For Israel to end the period of the intifada with borders considered insecure, abandonment of all settlements and the partition of Jerusalem would transform it into a client state of America, totally dependent on our military support in every crisis by means of a defence agreement (useless against suicide bombers); it would surely lead to an upheaval in Israeli society, wrecking its morale and its faith in the future. This in turn would tempt those in the Arab world who would treat an agreement as an interim stage in the destruction of Israel.

American influence — and if they understand their interest, that of our European allies as well — is enhanced to the degree that our diplomatic initiatives are perceived as resulting from free choice and not either from terrorism or other pressures, such as oil boycotts.

The American strategy should be to help bring about a change in the calculations that have produced the current impasse and not a paper plan reconfiguring conventional wisdom. America must urge a strategy reflecting the fundamental reality: that progress toward a settlement can come only by stages, and that the quest for a comprehensive peace in the abstract will guarantee another explosion.

At this stage of the Middle East crisis, the fundamental challenge is to establish a framework for coexistence for the two sides. Only then is it possible to address the long-term issues of peace realistically. America’s special position obliges it to act as mediator but also to define the limits of its mediation. The moderate Arab nations must understand that the United States is not able to obtain their maximum programme for them but will do its utmost to achieve more than they can hope for without American mediation. And Israel must accept that the status quo is not sustainable.

The quest for an overall settlement is equivalent to an extended stalemate, in the course of which a desperate Israel may seek to weaken its neighbours to a point where the terms in dispute become irrelevant. Thus Arab countries should have an interest in an interim outcome, for a continuation of the present crisis threatens the future of moderate Arab regimes. Thus, while keeping open an ultimate comprehensive agreement, the only feasible strategy for the United States at this point is to strive for peaceful coexistence; comprehensive peace should then be the next stage after a specified interval, during which new conditions have been created on both sides of the dividing line.

In outline, such an interim agreement would bring about a Palestinian state on territories substantially larger than those controlled by the present Palestinian Authority — though short of the 1967 borders — with a contiguous territory ending the many Israeli checkpoints. It would end new Israeli settlement and leave those outlying settlements that choose to remain the option of being evacuated or living under Palestinian rule. This is the maximum Israel can concede under present conditions and a great step forward for the Palestinians. Whether the area between the borders of the Palestinian state and the 1967 borders could be constituted as a buffer zone with a special status deserves exploration.

In return, the Palestinians would need to stop hostile propaganda, abandon terrorist bases and end terrorist attacks on Israeli territory. To accomplish this, the Palestinian Authority would need to reconstitute itself in a way that generates confidence in its ability to honour its obligations and to establish a functioning state on democratic and representative foundations.

Such an interim agreement is the only conceivable outcome that has any chance of being negotiated relatively rapidly and of lasting for some period. It contains an equilibrium of concessions; it provides a framework within which coexistence can be tested and from which a comprehensive agreement can emerge.

Thus, the proposed conference can play a useful role if it adopts a division of labour:

(a) The United States would play the principal mediating role in the negotiation of an interim agreement, buttressed by a general statement of objectives for the overall goals, providing a link between an interim and a comprehensive settlement. Our European allies could contribute by suspending the flood of plans by which they seek to improve their position in the Arab world but in reality radicalize it by raising unfulfillable expectations.

(b) Because the distrust between the parties is so great, Israel will not accept the word of the existing Palestinian Authority. But since it is inappropriate for Israel to designate the leaders with whom it is prepared to negotiate, the Arab states participating in the conference should guarantee the Palestinian Authority’s commitments and facilitate the negotiations.

(c) Europe and the United Nations, backed by the United States, could generate an international commitment to assist in the creation of a viable Palestinian entity, at first under an interim agreement and later on when a permanent settlement is reached. That commitment would imply a level of assistance that could be effective only in the context of a new set of institutions,in the creation of which the conference — or a relevant subgroup — could play a major role. The criteria for attracting

international support must seek to provide what the Palestinian Authority lacks now: a legislature responsible for the designation of the executive, an administrative structure beyond corruption and a system of laws.

In this manner, the conference could help bring about a reconstituted Palestinian Authority, more predictable and capable of a genuine cooperative relationship. In this manner, the conference could provide an interval that makes it likely that the final step toward an overall agreement will be taken in conditions less shadowed by hatred and bloodshed and by leaders on both sides less encumbered by the battles of the past. — Copyright Los Angeles Times Syndicate International

Where are the artefacts?

WHAT should one make of the government decision to wind up the department of archaeology and museums in Karachi and shift all its possessions and officials to Lahore — or is it just the libraries and offices of the D.G. of the department to Islamabad now?

Let’s not talk of the consequences for the officials of the department who have been asked to move or consider retiring from the department. It’s a great idea otherwise, one could say — Lahore needs the antiques, since its original collection has gone missing. Anyone who has visited the Lahore museum would notice that quite a few so-called antiques in the glass cases look suspiciously like cheap reproductions or that some cases are really empty.

Can all the 150,000 items be lodged in the Fort? Private museums such as the Faqir Khana do not obviously have the arrangements to prevent their collections from decaying. The stuff from Karachi will be packed and shipped off to Lahore eventually and one would be right in suspecting that not all of these 150,000 objects will end up in Lahore. Can the federal secretary for culture who issued the order, guarantee that these treasures which also include pottery and figurines dating back to the Harrappan civilization will not be replaced with fakes during the move, and the originals not smuggled out of the country?

In 1997, the Smithsonian Museum (Freer Gallery of Art) bought the ‘Uma Maheshvera’ Gandhara sculpture from a London art dealer for 1.5 million pound. The DG of the department of archaeology and museums, Dr Rafique Mughal originally issued an NOC for the said purpose. He then tried to have the NOC withdrawn, only when it was too late.

He informed the ministry for tourism and culture and the Smithsonian Museum ten months later that the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian had been notified officially that the item was smuggled out of the country and asked the ministry to stop the deal which had not been finalized even then. The ministry took no notice of it and the sculpture now rests in the US museum.

A recent burglary at the Moenjodaro museum resulted in the loss of 40 seals and copper tablets. Last year more than 80 pieces of Gandhara art disappeared from the Taxilla museum overnight. The police registered cases of thefts in both cases, investigations were carried out and departmental inquiries conducted but nothing has been recovered so far and no one has been held accountable for it.

All these pieces are most probably resting in the drawing rooms of our local or foreign influentials, or are with some museum or antique dealers in the West. Most probably the same means were used here that the Seventh Earl of Elgin resorted to in 1801 to acquire the ‘Parthenon’ Marbles.

Last summer the Greek minister for culture wrote to his British counterpart with request to return the Elgin Marbles, dating back to the 5th century B.C from the British Museum. The Greek government argued that these were part of the Greece’s heritage and should be in their country of origin in the newly designed museum near the Acropolis when the 2004 Olympics take place. That Lord Elgin who had these removed in the early 19th century from the Parthenon, a temple on the Acropolis dedicated to the goddess Athena, did so without any legal authority is a question beyond doubt.

This is an age when countries honour such requests after it has been proved that these were stolen artefacts when they were acquired by the authorities. Greece has in the meanwhile based its argument on “where these are now and where they should be”, making it clear that it would not fight for the marbles through international courts, and asked for a loan of the marbles. The Greek government has offered to hold in return, an exhibition of Greek art, which has never been seen outside Greece, in the British Museum while the marbles are in Greece.

Would Pakistan at this point even contemplate a request to the Indian government for the return of the 4,600-year-old bronze figurine of the Dancing Girl from the National Museum, New Delhi? Never, the reason being that firstly, we are not interested in our non-Muslim past so there would be no point in talking about Harrappa or Gandhara. It really doesn’t matter to us that India never returned the Dancing Girl or that the Gandhara artefacts disappeared from Taxilla. Could we even ask the Hermitage in St Petersburg, Victoria and Albert and the British Museum in London for our antiques or even the ‘Kohinoor’?

With ‘cultural olympiad’ running till 2004, one can only hope that Greece may finally get back its Parthenon Marbles — even if on a loan. Our culture secretary may be advised to keep the antiquities in Karachi, or we may have to go to the US to view them.

Growth imperative to fight poverty

THE economic growth rate in Pakistan is being debated again. While the cautious IMF thinks it may be a 4% growth next year, the more optimistic President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn talks of a 5% growth rate.

Pakistan’s growth rate in the 1980s was an assured 6%. Comparing that to the 1990s the Governor of the State Bank calls the latter a wasted decay, rousing some serious controversy.

The targeted growth rate for 2002-03 will be decided by the National Economic Council in the first or second week of June. Meanwhile there are differences on the growth rate this year, although the target fixed by the three year plan is 4.7%.

The targeted growth for the current year is 4%. But the achievement is likely to be around 3%. There are people, who laugh at target-fixing, saying that has become irrelevant for too long as reality falls short of the target. But there are three strong reasons for that to happen this time. The first was the drought, secondly the economic setback following September 11 and the third is the global economic recession which resulted in sharp drop in the worlds exports.

But the recession is easing gradually and Pakistani exports are rising steadily, reassuring Commerce Minister Razzak Dawood of exports of 9 billion dollars.

The textile sector is proving to be the star performer following the one billion dollar investment on expansion and renovation of the industry. The European community is being pretty generous in accommodating our exports and intend to be far more liberal by the year 2003-2004.

In fact, the year 2005 would present the toughest challenge to Pakistan as the textile quotas will expire by end of December 2004. And Pakistan will then have to compete purely on merit, price and efficient business practices with other countries.

Major Pakistan textile exporters have taken due notice of the coming radical change which means the absolute end of protection and have to spend a great deal on renovation and replacement in the industry. The estimate is of a total of seven billion dollars that would be needed for completing the renovation, which means a great deal of money has to come from the banks.

Meanwhile, the tax on banks is to come down from 50% to 46%, following the cut of 8% effected this year from 58%. The issue is whether the banks will pass on the benefit of the sharply lowered tax to the borrowers.

The State Bank Governor, Dr Ishrat Hussain says that only half the benefit of the reduced interest rate has been passed on to the borrowers with the argument that they have to take care of the non-performing loans.

But the fact is that the banks have also reduced sharply the interest rate for the depositors and also retrenched a substantial part of their staff. So old loans cannot be a perennial excuse for high interest rates despite the sharp drop in the deposit rates of the banks and large cut in the tax charged by the government.

There is a speculation now whether the Finance Minister would come up with a budget that aims more on larger revenues, than on revival of the economy. This is undoubtedly a tough act. He certainly would like to help the industry to expand and export more, but the demands of defence and bureaucracy too have to be met. If the CBR could be more helpful to him without being harsh to the tax payers, his tasks would be less burdensome, but the much damned CBR finds it too difficult to improve and produce far larger revenues without greater pain to the tax payers.

Larger revenues are very important now to promote economic growth as the private sector is not investing as the tumbling down of prices in the Karachi Stock Exchange indicate. In the absence of private sector investment, in substantial measure for long, the public sector has to invest far more, but although the Annual Development Plan outlay is to be increased as the Finance Minister has announced, the increase may not be adequate for the need. Without adequate investment, the growth cannot be accelerated, however strong the projections may be.

Of course, more foreign aid is available to fund development and the IMF programme is called “Poverty Reduction And Growth Facility” which links poverty reduction with growth. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and other donors also see a clear link between poverty and poor economic growth.

Hence the World Bank President has been giving top priority to combating poverty and it has recorded the voices of the poor around the world and quotes them from time to time at international conferences.

Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz says there is a clear link between fall in growth rate and doubling of poverty in the 1990s. But it is not enough if growth rate has increased, as in the days of Ayub Khan or in the 1980s.

Distributive justice is equally important, if the very poor are not helped to come up and if the rulers adhere to the World Bank’s old theory of trickle-down of prosperity, the poor will never get better.

Hence, attention is now being given under international pressure to take care of the bottom poor and provide them with micro-credit instead of nominal charity, but this too is a complex task. The official mechanism has to ensure the loans are received by the right persons and are put to the right use and recycled in the manner proposed.

Growth is important as China could reduce poverty and make substantial progress through a 10% growth rate, but its good effects were diminished by the 3% population growth, conspicuous consumption of the new rich and rapid corruption.

As a result the new wealth was not invested but spent on consumption including on sleek automobiles, swanky mansions and holidays abroad. As a result the real growth of the real economy has been too small, while the population growth and the consumption pattern have maintained the old trend.

White collar prisons

WHEN Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia, he was asked a question about his prison reform. He said, “We’re doing the best we can and before we do much better we have to get a better grade of prisoner.”

I thought of this the other day when Al Taubman, a billionaire owner of shopping malls and Sotheby’s, the giant auction house, was sentenced to one year and one day for engaging in price fixing with Christie’s, the other auction house giant.

Now this is the kind of prisoner I’m sure Maddox had in mind.

Taubman is not the only white-collar businessman to go to the slammer. Waiting in line are executives from Enron and Arthur Andersen, brokers from the largest firms, crooked investment advisors, and let’s not forget government officials who committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

For years, we all know, the prisons have been accepting a lower class of inmates — many without an education, others who are psychotic, and still others who are just plain antisocial. The chances of reforming them are very low.

On the other hand, white-collar criminals have gone to the best business schools, such as Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. These people are used to the good life and will not give the warden any trouble.

It’s true that Allenwood Federal prison, in Pennsylvania, has some white collar criminals. They have been sent there because it has tennis courts and is known as the country club of prisons by convicted felons all over the country.

But prison reformers say the white-collar prisoners should be separated from those inmates who are doing time for robbing banks and shooting people.

It has been suggested that they have their own prison, where they will be able to mingle with their own kind.

White-collar criminals need a tickertape machine in their cells so they can follow the market and make some money while they are doing time.

The Wall Street Journal should be available in the recreation room and lights should stay on until Louis Rukeyser finishes his show.

Classes in shredding documents, taught by convicted accountants, should be available.

The inmates will be allowed to bring in their tailors from Brioni, Calvin Klein and Saville Row so they can have hand-sewn prison uniforms.

At meals, a nice wine list will be available. A golf course will be constructed for the enjoyment of embezzlers, alimony chiselers and those convicted of mail fraud and tax fraud.

We must convince white-collar criminals that after paying their debt to society, honesty is always the best policy. But the lesson will never be learned by those who still have numbered bank accounts in Switzerland.—Dawn/Tribune Media Services