Regrets to Bangladesh

DURING his official visit to Dhaka, The President of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf expressed regrets over the events of 1971, which were no other than the excesses committed by the army on the civilian population of what was then a part of Pakistan.

These excesses had been highlighted and commented upon in the report of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, which was released by the Musharraf government sometime ago. Having made this authentic record public Gen. Musharraf apparently thought it proper to express regrets over what had happened.

While standing as an honoured guest on the site of the memorial for those who perished in what the Bangladeshis call their war of liberation it was an appropriate occasion for him to respond to a long-standing demand of Bangladesh for an apology from Pakistan — a demand which had acquired a sharper edge after the publication of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report.

The Bangladesh government has welcomed the expression of regrets by Gen. Musharraf and is quite satisfied with it. The Awami League and some other opposition groups are of course unhappy: they think it is not enough because it falls short of an apology. Let us see the difference between ‘apology and regret’. According to the Oxford Dictionary an apology means “regretful acknowledgement of an offence or failure”, and regret means, “a feeling of sorrow or repentance or remorse”.

So the expression of regrets may imply an apologetic attitude but it is not an apology per se. Leaving aside the question of semantics what is important is that Gen. Musharraf is the first Pakistani ruler who made a commendable gesture to allay a grievance by making a public statement of regrets and what is even more important is that it has been made by a ruler of Pakistan who also happens to be the chief of the army, an institution which was held responsible for the 1971 excesses.

The statement in question as formulated bespeaks the caution and reserve observed in consideration of any possible reaction because the general public opinion in Pakistan, based as it is on certain false perception and illusions were nurtured by our media on the emergence of Bangladesh and have persisted ever since in one form or the other. One of them is that it was the miscreants of the Awami League who terrorized and intimidated people of East Pakistan to vote for the Awami League secessionist programme of six Points in the 1970 elections, otherwise they were all for one Pakistan. Coupled with it is the perception that the political discontent in East Pakistan was due to the intrigue of the Hindu teachers.

But as Kunwar Idris has rightly pointed out in his article ‘Lessons from the Past’ (Dawn August 4, 2002). “The time and events have proved wrong all these views and assumptions. Bangladesh has not fallen under Indian hegemony nor is any remorse felt there on breaking away from Pakistan.”

In any case, the protagonists of the theory of the intrigue of the Hindu teachers have no answer to the question as to why the said intrigue did not work in 1945-46 elections in which Pakistan was the main issue and the Muslim League captured all the seats of the Central Assembly and 113 out of a total of 119 seats of the provincial assembly in Bengal. That was the time when Hindu teachers were there in much larger numbers and in full force of their anti-Pakistan activities. Even so, the Muslim Bengal gave a clear vote for Pakistan.

Why don’t we admit that something had gone wrong in the intervening period of 25 years, which turned the tide in East Pakistan and it gave an almost unanimous vote for secession in 1970 polls, in spite of desperate efforts by Yahya Khan’s martial law administration to split the vote through Al-Shams and Al-Badar who were heavily financed and supported in every possible way?

Kunwar Idris goes on to add: “Now almost 32 years after the creation of Bangladesh, even the blustering patriots of that time concede that had the power been transferred through the parliament to the winning party, Pakistan would have stayed together, or at least the bloodshed that accompanied the separation could have been avoided.”

Yes, the bloodshed accompanying the separation could have been avoided if the army was not in control. It is again an illusion that Yahya Khan could transfer power to Mujib. There is also the question: was Mujib prepared to accept it?

Safdar Mahmood has listed some of Mujib’s statements in his book: “Pakistan Divided” (Pages 72-72) which provide an answer. On one occasion Mujib is reported to have said that the six Points “charted a path where Bengalis had to break the bondage of Pakistan”. Mujib also confessed in a TV interview with David Frost that he had been “working for Bangladesh since 1948”. Mr. Sultan M. Khan, a former foreign secretary of Pakistan, has disclosed in an article that during an RCD meeting in Dhaka soon after the 1970 elections, foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran called on Mujib, with our government’s approval, and he told them that he would “rather be the Founding Father of Bangladesh than the Prime Minister of Pakistan”.

In this regard, I may perhaps record a personal memory also. I was joint secretary of the central ministry of information in Dhaka, I met Sh. Mujibur Rahman for the first time, at one of the British deputy high commissioner’s parties soon after the martial law of 1969. I was introduced to him by Mr S.G.M. Budruddin, the then editor of the Morning News, Dhaka. During the course of conversation Mr. Budruddin said to Mujib that as a disciple of Mr Suhrawardy he had to rise to the occasion and play his role, Folding his hands in an apologetic manner, Mujib replied: “Budruddin Bhai, Suhrawardy Sahib was a great man. He was an all-India leader of the Muslims, and later an All-Pakistan leader. I am a very small man, I can only be a Bangladesh leader”.

After the Awami League had swept the polls in 1970, Mujib is reported to have said to many people, including Mr Budruddin: “Do you think I can run this country on the basis of the numerical strength of my party in the National Assembly with the Punjabi army and Punjabi bureaucracy still around”?

And now something about the history of Pakistan with particular reference to East-West relations in order to bring into focus the rise of the secessionist movement in the eastern wing.

Pakistan was created as a single sovereign state with two zones; the eastern and the western, but at no stage of its history as a single country did the Bengali Muslim leaders fail to invoke the Lahore Resolution which had visualized independent states in the north-western and eastern zones of India. In the first provincial elections in 1954 Moulvi Fazlul Haq and Mr H.S. Suhrawardy set up a United Front and campaigned on the basis of a 21-point programme which declared, inter alia, that “East Bengal will get complete autonomy according to the Lahore Resolution.”

Again, during the framing of the 1956 constitution of which Suhrawardy was one of the architects, most of the leaders of his party, the Awami League, did invoke the Lahore Resolution, talked about a confederal system and did lay a claim to maximum provincial autonomy for East Pakistan inside the Constituent Assembly and outside.

Suhrawardy himself went along with the then Prime Minister Choudhry Muhammad Ali, M.A. Gurmani and other Punjabi leaders to turn all of West Pakistan into One Unit, in spite of the opposition from the small provinces of Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan, and also agreed on the principle of parity between East and West Pakistan in spite of East Pakistan majority on the basis of population. Finally, the first point in Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rehman’s Six Points, which became Awami League’s “battle cry” during the 1970 elections emphasized that the future constitution of Pakistan should provide for a “federation of Pakistan in the true sense on the basis of the Lahore Resolution.”

The Awami League won all the seats in East Pakistan except one from where Nurul Amin was elected. But the Six-Point programme was not acceptable to political and military leaders of West Pakistan.

The Awami League and its militant wing mounted a movement. The Bengali civil servants and even the personnel of the army joined the anti-government demonstrations. There were protracted negotiations between Yahya Khan and Mujibur Rahman as also between West Pakistani leaders Bhutto and others and Mujibur Rahman. But there was no agreement and the Awami League, particularly its militant wing, went on a course of rebellion. Eventually in March 1971 when General Yahya Khan resorted to army action, the Bengali Muslims fought what they call their “war of liberation.”

The Indian army intervened, Pakistan was dismembered and Bangladesh emerged as a new and independent state — a free Muslim national homeland in the eastern zone of India. Now, was it not in a way the fulfilment of what had been envisaged in the Lahore Resolution of 1940? Does it not basically conform to the formula devised in 1940, by our founding fathers, the leadership of All-India Muslim League?

We in Pakistan, sometime, refer to the civil war in East Pakistan without going into its background and conveniently attribute the emergence of Bangladesh to the Indian armed support. Let us, however, pause and think. Was it the Indian armed support alone which was responsible for Bangladesh’s coming into being? Granted that it was one of the decisive factors in the last phase of the civil war but the civil war itself was the culmination of a long history of bitter prejudices, and grievances of East Pakistanis against West Pakistan’s power elite based on feelings of deprivation and of non-participation in running the affairs of the country in political, economic and administrative fields. They felt that they were treated like a colony whereas they were numerically the majority part of the country.

It is Hobson’s choice

WHEN Pakistan was born, the country had one major political party, and some smaller parties. One among the smaller parties was the Communist Party of Pakistan. Before long it was banned.

Today Pakistan (about half of what it was then) has 71 political parties that have managed to win the recognition of the rather choosy (or lenient?) election commission. These would have been 129 had the election commission not declined to recognize as many as 58.

All told, the country has some 72 million registered voters on the electoral roll. This would mean that for just over one million voters there is one political party. We may be the only country in the world with such a formidable array of political parties. Under the Political Parties Order 2002, a political party is required to have a constitution and elected leadership.

Although the EC has seen fit to extend recognition to 71 political parties, few among them would be able to convince the average voter that they have satisfied anything more than the letter of the existing law. It can be said quite safely that most of the so-called major political parties have only gone through the motions of electing their top leaders. Almost all the leaders of these parties have been returned unopposed. So much then for their commitment to democracy.

All the ‘major’ political parties share one attribute. They are today fragments of their original existence. The Pakistan Muslim League is perhaps the most fragmented of all. There is no counting the bits and pieces it has broken into. The Pakistan People’s Party, once the colossus that brought a field marshal down, presents a pathetic picture. It is no longer the PPP that it once was. Now it is PPPP. Not to be ignored is the existence of the Pakistan People’s Party (SB, that is, the Shaheed Bhutto faction of the original PPP).

What does this fragmentation of the parties signify in practical terms? This means that each faction of a party is a declaration of no confidence in the original party and the original leader. If there are, say, a dozen Pakistan Muslim Leagues then eleven must be seen as declaring no confidence in the leadership of Nawaz Sharif. If that were not really so, why should they break away from the PML(N)?

Remember the same PML(N) one enjoyed the unprecedented 2-3rds majority in the National Assembly. It utilized (exploited) that massive strength to amend the Constitution at will. It rode roughshod over much that lay in its path, accounting for one COAS and also one president. In what state does one find that giant today? Political parties do not decay without good reason.

The PPP and the PML(N) are today in a shambles despite being in power twice. On each occasion their governments were dismissed for grave misconduct. Strictly speaking, the PML(N) government was dismissed thrice.

Right now the political landscape is pretty confusing. That is putting it mildly. It is not only the number that is mind-boggling. A sane citizen would like to know why so many parties, in the first place. Does it mean that a wide choice is available to the voter? What is the difference between, say, the PML (Jinnah) and PML (Quaid-i-Azam)? Or between the PPP and the PPPP? In what rational or tangible way any one of these 71 parties presents a choice to the elector?

As far as the average citizen is concerned this is a very uncomfortable state of affairs. There may be some difference between Tweedledom and Tweedledee. But between one brand of the PML and another there is nothing to distinguish one from another. They are the same and in the eyes of the voter. They will remain the same unless a credible difference is shown to the public. How moribund the political parties are in their present state is more than evident from the exasperating fact that none has so far cared to prepare a policy statement, not so speak of a coherent programme of action or a party manifesto.

For some inscrutable reason, some political observers talk of PML(N) and the PPP in terms of eternity. As far as the coming election is concerned, all that the PML(N) has been talking about is the Sharif family, as if this family is the elixir of life for the people of Pakistan, the same people over which the Sharif brothers have ruled for so long to so much of avoidable harm and embarrassment.

it is exactly the same with the PPP(BB). Now it has turned itself into PPPP, as if this could possibly be seen as a big change for the better. An extra alphabet ‘P’ is neither here nor there as far as the voter is able to see. If anything, it signifies so much more of political inanity, if not bankruptcy. All the noise that the PPP or the born-again PPPP is making is a lament about Benazir Bhutto. For her part, the BB is hardly doing anything more than making incoherent statements that remind one of the gloomy Cassandra and her curses.

Both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have had at least two chances to govern. They chose to rule and reign (and ruin) instead of governing this country and serving its people. If this sounds a one-sided and prejudiced statement, the two are free to counter it. The best way to defend themselves is for them to say something about their past; more important, about their plans for the future. It is not unfair to suggest that if they had much to say for their past or for their plans about their future, they should not have kept so studiously mum.

As if out of some frozen habit of mind, most political observers in the country think of the political reality in terms of three ‘major’ political parties. Up to a point they are right. The three that they think of — the PPP or the PPPP, the PML(N) and the MQM — have had something to show by way of electoral attainments. Therefore these three are the generally accepted ‘majors.’ All the three have held power more than once in more than one kind of combinations and coalitions.

As the nation knows to its unease and dismay, the heads of all the three ‘majors’ are in various states of absence from the country. It is for the citizen to decide whether they are in exile or absconding or what. But the fact is that they are not here. Even so, all of them are participants in national political activity. Benazir Bhutto has been ‘re-elected unopposed’ as the life chairperson of the PPPP(BB). Nawaz Sharif has nominated his brother Shahbaz as the party chief. Altaf Hussain retains his position.

Nawaz Sharif and brother Shahbaz have a powerful lobby working for them in the country. Altaf Hussain keeps in constant and close touch with his MQM through long lectures over the long distance telephone. He has, meanwhile acquired British citizenship and a British wife to boot. Benazir has a big secretariat working for her in Islamabad and the Bilawal House in Karachi is humaning with ceaseless activity.

What is also notable is that not one of these ‘major’ political parties or their leaders have so far given any inkling about their policies, programmes or strategy if and when elected and in power. There is no indication whatsoever of what they intend to offer to the voter. In fact, it appears that all the three of them are supremely dismissive of the voter. The voter does not seem to figure in their scheme of things. What kind of politics is this?

At this moment the question that should be upper most in the minds of thoughtful citizens is: Whom to vote for? A senior citizen reflecting on this rather perplexing situation said he has resolved half of this conundrum: Whom not to vote for. All the familiar actors on the stage fall in the “not to vote for” category. These people have been in power and they have turned out to be less than worthy of an open-eyed citizen’s vote. Now, the question that calls for an answer is: Whom to vote for? This is a situation that would have left poor Hobson scratching his head.

Protectionism’s blowback

IN Argentina, even in the wealthier area that includes Buenos Aires, half of the population lives in poverty in shantytowns. In Brazil, 10 per cent of the people control half of the wealth. In Guatemala, about two-thirds of children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. In Colombia, an average of eight people a day are kidnapped for ransom.

To blame the United States, the free-market economy and the Bush administration for these and other political, economic and social ills — as some Latin American leaders and US critics have done recently — is foolish. But to ignore the problems that besiege neighbours of the United States would be reckless.

Consider the decisions made by President Bush and Congress that harm free trade. The farm bill that the president signed into law subsidizes US farmers to the tune of $180 billion over the next decade as the administration tells poor countries to lower their subsidies to their own farmers.

That damage is done, and, given the realities of congressional election-year politics, Washington is not going to revisit farm aid or eliminate unwise tariff barriers imposed on foreign steel products.

However, the administration must not pretend it doesn’t understand the effects of its actions on Latin America. Protected by generous subsidies, US farmers are flooding world markets with underpriced agricultural products. Driving down prices distorts markets and makes it impossible for unsubsidized farmers to export, compete and sometimes even survive.

Countries that produce corn, wheat, rice and soybeans are suffering the consequences of US protectionism. Mexico’s corn production has been negatively affected, and in Brazil and Argentina farmers are forced to accept lower prices for their most important export crops.

So while the administration preaches free-market theology in Latin America, its actions undercut its homilies. Many in the region now believe that a free-market economy is incapable of delivering the promised prosperity. That’s wrong. The serious problems Latin America confronts are due to a combination of historical factors and new ones stemming from the realities of life after Sept. 11. But the fact remains that almost every big problem in the region has a repercussion in the United States.

Legal and illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico, Central America and some countries in South America increases with every crisis. Oil supplies to the United States from Venezuela could be threatened if the political crisis there goes out of control.

—Los Angeles Times