| November 29, 2002 | Friday | Ramazan 23, 1423 |
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Highway deaths
IN less than a week of the swearing-in of the Jamali government, two events on Wednesday dramatically demonstrated how fragile the new political set-up is or can be. One is the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s decision to withdraw support to the PML(Q) and sit in the opposition benches in the National Assembly. The other is the postponement of the inaugural session of the Sindh Assembly by the government. The two events are, of course, interrelated. The president would not have postponed the session if the Muttahida had not reversed its position at the centre. This has upset the establishment’s apple-cart. A Muttahida unwilling to support the PML(Q) will mean that the “king’s party” will not be able to form a government in Sindh. The PML(Q) has only 15 seats in a house of 163 (actual number is 168), and needs the MQM’s 41 seats for a working coalition. The whole game seems to revolve round keeping the PPP, the largest party in the assembly with 67 seats, out of power. This took the form of a blatant attempt to create a rag-tag coalition consisting of small parties and turncoats merely to deny power to Sindh’s largest party — an army obsession since the days of Ziaul Haq.
The reason for the Muttahida’s reversal of its earlier position is its peeved feeling over the “no go” areas in Karachi. Initially, it had felt elated at the end of these ‘exclusive zones’, and the sealing of the Haqiqi headquarters, Baitul Hamza. However, within 24 hours of the opening up of the no-go areas, it began complaining that the government had not lived up to its promises — whatever they were. The Haqiqi leaders escaped and went into hiding, and this the Muttahida was not prepared to countenance. It also wants the rehabilitation of those pro-Muttahida families which had been purportedly evicted by the Haqiqis. One does not know exactly what promises the generals had made to the Muttahida and what exactly the Muttahida wants. But its decision now to withdraw support to the PML(Q) has precipitated a serious problem for the political dispensation that is still struggling to emerge from the partly doctored electoral exercise of October 10.
There was pre-election rigging, and many laws and rules were so made, amended and bent as to make it impossible for those on the wrong side of the military-led government to win. Even then, a hung parliament would not have proved an unmitigated disaster if those actually calling the shots had allowed the elected representatives to freely choose a leader of the house without being subjected to pressures, blackmail and blandishments. The result was that the National Assembly elected a prime minister whose coalition enjoys a majority of only one — even after 10 PPPP members had been won over. The Muttahida’s decision not only rocks the boat at the federal level; in Sindh too a PML(Q) government now appears an impossibility if the two largest parties that between them command 108 votes are kept out.
That a process meant to be a democratic transition for the country has begun to crumble even before it has reached its destination is there for all to see. Since far too much is at stake in seeing the process through, the mandated parties, big and small, must reassess the new situation, put aside their mutual narrow differences and animus, and mount a salvaging effort by coalescing and forming workable governments in the provinces and by reinforcing parliamentary support for the precariously placed federal government. A response such as this alone can avert a graver crisis for the country and its political system.
THE drastic reduction in the research budget of the country’s premier public sector university over a period of three years should be a cause for extreme concern. The Quaid-i-Azam University’s research budget, which in any case was not very substantial, has been reduced from Rs 5.46 million for 1999 to one million rupees for the current year. In fact, according to faculty members, this year’s allocation was made possible only after the teaching and research staff put pressure on the authorities. So the amount set aside by the government for research at the university is probably around half of what it would spend on purchasing a limousine for use by visiting foreign dignitaries or by one of its ministers.
The reasons why we have such lop-sided priorities are all too obvious. Our public-sector universities are managed and operated by bureaucrats or former generals who often have no background of working in higher education centres. They decide on the allocations, and how the monies are to be divided between the various heads like administrative costs, salaries, research, teacher training and so on. Universities have a key role in national development not only in terms of educating future leaders but also in developing new technologies which then drive industry and commerce. As long as we are reluctant to spend more on research, our public universities will continue to be mired in a sea of mediocrity, with faculty teachers using decades-old teaching methods and churning out graduates with poor analytical skills.
The federal education ministry was allotted Rs 2.5 billion for the year 2002-03, and this was trumpeted by the Musharraf-led government as an indicator of its pro-education stance. However, administrative costs and salaries are eating up these funds with only leftover morsels going to finance research and development. Let’s hope the new government will see to it that the increase in higher education funding translates into improved opportunities for research.
ONE need only to look at last year’s statistics pertaining to the poor road safety standards in the country to get a clear picture of how dangerous our roads are. Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being the ninth most accident-prone country in the world, where more than 7,000 people die in road accidents every year. Among the cities, Karachi and Lahore top the national statistics where over 600 and 300 people, respectively, perish in road accidents on an annual basis. The country registers over 16,000 seriously wounded as a result of road accidents in the course of a year, with Punjab claiming the lion’s share, followed by Sindh and the NWFP. This points to the fact that overall road safety standards remain poor throughout the country with each region claiming a proportionate share of fatalities.
The key causes of road accidents are speeding, overloading, the poor condition of roads and vehicles, and lack of proper drivers’ training. Other factors include malfunctioning traffic signals and drunken, drugged or exhausted drivers exploited by bus and truck owners. The traffic police have recently tried to ensure better training for drivers and impose heavy fines for certain violations, but such sporadic and half-hearted drives do not seem to have made any significant difference yet to the number and seriousness of road accidents. And, according to a recent study, rampant corruption — amounting to Rs 26 million a year in bribes in Karachi alone — in certain sections of the law enforcement agencies remains an obstacle in the way of improvement. Unless the government formulates a comprehensive national road safety strategy to be implemented over the longer term, the frightening daily highway death toll will continue.