| November 24, 2002 | Sunday | Ramazan 18, 1423 |
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Factional fighting
An innovative way out
MIR Zafarullah Jamali was sworn-in as prime minister yesterday, inducting a 21-member cabinet that includes 14 ministers and seven ministers of state. This includes three of the 10 dissenting PPP parliamentarians whose vote helped Mr Jamali get a wafer-thin majority in his bid for the prime minister’s office. There is just one woman in the cabinet, and the finance minister in the outgoing military-led government, Mr Shaukat Aziz, has been retained as adviser on finance as well as Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada as legal adviser: apparently the latter has his uses yet. Political governments are under some compulsion to satisfy all their pockets of support, and coalition governments face even greater pressure on this account. Mr Jamali might have to expand his ministerial team further, although it is already larger than the previous one. A bigger cabinet does not necessarily make for more efficient administration, and it should be hoped that Mr Jamali would be able to resist the temptation to have an unwieldy government merely for the sake of political expediency. The past practice of having several ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries, who add up to the burden on the state exchequer, should not be repeated either at the centre or in the provinces.
Corruption has been listed as one of the major charges whenever the military has ousted a civilian, elected government. It has been a convenient handle and proved easy to use because, unfortunately, many of our elected leaders and governments have given enough reason to justify its use: it is another matter that military men in power have hardly turned out to be paragons of virtue. But, whatever the past, Mr Jamali has an opportunity now to set standards of transparency and accountability. When in public life, there can be no distinction between public and private morality. When General Pervez Musharraf had taken over, he had announced his real estate assets, but his gesture was not uniformly followed by others in government. Mr Jamali should insist on every member of his cabinet and all advisers and parliamentary secretaries to declare their assets for the public record. Ministers who own or manage or are associated with lucrative commercial enterprises should make a clean breast of it and be asked to ensure that these business interests do not benefit from their term in office. The public accounts committees in the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies need to be treated with respect and should represent all sections of political opinion, irrespective of party divisions.
People have been betrayed, bullied and ignored for too long. They know that the freedom of action of the new government is constrained and its authority in many key areas is defined by the military. But nothing stops Mr Jamali from leading an administration that is more caring and more in sympathy with the pressing concerns of the average citizen. In a television interview earlier this week, he said if every citizen gave five minutes of his or her time to national development, the country would be transformed. The prime minister needs to move beyond such simplistic notions and understand that it is the government’s duty to reorder policies in a way that shifts more resources to education, health and other social sectors and makes a visible difference to day-to-day living. The civilian and military elite never had it so good in terms of earnings and perquisites as now, but the underprivileged sections of society perhaps never had it so bad. Correcting this imbalance should be one of Mr Jamali’s top priorities, along with restoring faith in the constitutional guarantees of civil liberties and freedom from state oppression.
UNLESS checked right now, the factional fight between the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi) could snowball and get out of control. There were three incidents of shooting on Friday, and several people were critically injured, one of them dying on way to hospital. The resurgence in violence follows the end of the “no go” areas and the sealing of Baitul Hamza, Haqiqi’s headquarters in Landhi, by the law enforcement agencies. That action was politically motivated and had nothing to do with law and order. The “no go” areas had existed for nearly a decade after the Haqiqi faction broke away from the MQM in 1992. It was an open secret that Haqiqi had been created by the intelligence agencies and that it was the writ of this group that ran in the “no go” areas. There were also allegations of extortion by Haqiqi men, though, in all fairness, the Muttahida, too, never lagged far behind in this activity. But the government crackdown on Haqiqi coincided with the Muttahida’s decision to support the “king’s party” in the National Assembly.
Haqiqi has a sizable following in certain areas. If it becomes convinced that it is being targeted for the benefit of the Muttahida, then there will be no peace in Karachi. Friday’s rally by Haqiqi women and their clash with the police show the group’s readiness to fight back. The best way to avoid a resurgence in factional fighting is for the government to treat both evenhandedly and to advise them to adopt a political approach to their differences, instead of flying at each other’s throat as they do now. Both are now recognized political parties with representations in the national and provincial assemblies and should learn to coexist.
THE KESC has come up with an innovative scheme designed to prevent power thefts without disrupting the cultural and religious life of the citizens of Karachi. The corporation has announced an ‘immediate connection policy’ in which those who want to organize public functions, set up stalls or engage in sporting activities can get a temporary legal electricity connection within 24 hours. Organizers of such events can now pay to hook on to the KESC’s system rather than resort to the traditional practice of using ‘kundas’. This policy will benefit many, particularly young people who face harassment for using illegal connections to play night cricket matches during Ramazan. This positive approach — which can be adopted elsewhere too — must be commended because it allows the young to engage in sporting activities without encouraging illegal practices. Because of an acute shortage of recreational facilities, such as parks and playing fields, young people in the metropolis are forced to find venues for entertainment in the unlikeliest of places, including the streets. By regularly cracking down on night-time street cricket, the authorities deny the young a vital outlet for harmless fun.
The KESC could try to extend this imaginative approach to other fields. For example, many people in katchi abadis are more than willing to pay for their electricity but are prevented from getting legal connections because linemen, in league with community middlemen, make money from those with illegal connections. Keeping ground realities in mind, the KESC could streamline its complex system and grant swift connections on demand to anyone who desires to legalize their connection. That would eliminate the need for regular drives against small consumers with illegal connections and help simplify the task of netting the big fish who wilfully steal electricity.