| February 11, 2003 | Tuesday | Zul Hijjah 9, 1423 |
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Back to the old game
Stranded in Chitral
THE Supreme Court’s decision allowing those who lost in October’s election to contest for Senate seats is largely academic. Most of the “losers” had already filed their nomination papers which have not been rejected. So Monday’s judgment does not materially affect the outcome of the Senate elections due later this month, though it does strike down a very unjust ban. However, if elections to the national and provincial assemblies are any pointer, it is possible that the outcome of the Senate polls will not be very different. Just as arbitrary changes in election rules and the plethora of ordinances had prepared the ground for the victory of the PML(Q), one can expect the ruling coalition led by it to get the lion’s share of the 100 seats of the Senate. Vote buying is already in the air, with reports speaking of as much as one and a half million rupees being offered for a vote. Apart from money, various forms of arm twisting and inducement, including offices and assignments of choice, are likely to be employed to obtain the intended result.
While the PML(Q) will obviously emerge as the leading party in the Senate, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal too is likely to have a stronger presence than its vote bank nationwide would warrant. This is because all constituent units in the Senate have an equal number of seats. Because the MMA enjoys an absolute majority in the NWFP assembly besides a sizable presence in the Balochistan PA, it is likely to win a big chunk of Senate seats. Which need not be considered an unmitigated disaster if one realizes what the responsibilities of an upper house are. An upper house does not represent the people; it represents the constituent units of a federation and presumes their equality irrespective of demographic and territorial disparities. The job of the upper house is to keep a check on hasty or skewed legislation and possible “excesses” by the lower house. Often, the people’s representatives make laws which may be politically motivated in a parochial or partisan sense. Such laws may hurt the interests of a constituent unit or of a minority and cater instead to the interests of a particular group or party enjoying a majority in the lower house. In such cases, the nation’s over-all interests may go by default. The job of the upper house in such cases is to guard against excesses by the majority party. The upper house, thus, must not only rectify such tilts and imbalances that might have crept into a particular bill, but also attempt a qualitative improvement in it from the point of view of larger national interests.
Ideally, an upper house should consist of people who are maturer and have a higher level of educational and political backgrounds. This is especially true of countries where the upper house consists partly of nominated members. These men and women are nominated because of their services to the country in their areas of specialization. In many cases, they happen to be academicians, retired judges, literary figures, artists and professionals. This makes the level of debates and discussions in the upper houses markedly superior to those in the lower houses. In Pakistan, the Senate has not been without such personalities. And even in the list of 186 candidates now running for the first phase of the 92 Senate seats, one can see the names of quite a few seasoned professionals, technocrats and intellectuals. Many of them espouse liberal causes. Their presence in the Senate will, one hopes, serve to give a balance to senatorial proceedings and counter the point of view of the parochialists and religious bigots who often tend to ignore logic, rationality and realism when it comes to putting forward their pet notions and ideas.
THE already tense relations between India and Pakistan took a turn for the worse on Saturday following the expulsion from India under extraordinary circumstances of Pakistan’s acting high commissioner and four of his officials. In a prompt and neatly symmetrical response, Pakistan ordered India’s top diplomat and four of his officials to leave Islamabad within 48 hours. The tit- for-tat expulsions came on the heels of several incidents involving diplomats on both sides complaining about heightened surveillance and obstruction in the performance of their diplomatic duties.
The expulsion of Pakistan’s acting high commissioner followed a bizarre sequence of events. Mr Jaleel Abbas Jilani was accused by the Indian authorities of having personally handed over a briefcase containing over 300,000 rupees to a woman Kashmiri leader with links to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The woman and another Hurriyat activist were promptly arrested and the Pakistan acting high commissioner was named as an accomplice in the FIR registered by the Delhi police. To believe that the head of a sensitive diplomatic mission could personally hand over a bagful of money meant for the Kashmiri freedom struggle stretches credulity to the limit. The move served three primary purposes: to malign the APHC leadership by ‘exposing’ its financial links with Pakistan; to provide an excuse for launching another anti-Pakistan tirade for political gains; and to convey to the world that Pakistan was funding what India views as terrorist activities in Kashmir. Following the BJP’s resounding success in the recent Gujarat state elections, the ruling party seems to have concluded that an anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim stance is the best way obtaining handsome electoral results. With more state elections due later this year, the government could well be raising the level of anti-Pakistan rhetoric for narrow political gains. That domestic political exigencies could dictate India’s foreign policy and provoke a politically dangerous confrontation with its neighbour is a sad reflection on the level of that country’s current leadership.
REPORTS emanating from Chitral speak of the hardships people are facing as a fierce winter continues to make life miserable. Roads to and from the snow-bound valley remain impassable causing shortage of food supplies and other essential commodities. The PIA flight operations, subject to vagaries of weather, have also suffered massive irregularities in recent days, resulting in a huge backlog of travellers stranded at Peshawar and Chitral. The government had negotiated the opening of an alternative land route through Afghanistan two months ago, which, given the unsettling conditions in that country, did not turn out to be a very safe option.
Road links with the Chitral valley remain suspended for nearly five months on an annual basis. The valley is home to very impoverished people, who have few means of subsistence of their own and remain highly dependent on employment elsewhere in the country. Moreover, the lack of health facilities in the valley necessitates that the infirm be taken to Peshawar for medical treatment. Successive governments have promised the completion of an all-weather tunnel through Lowari Pass since the 1970s, but little progress has been made on it, with the result that the project is now all but abandoned in actual terms. It is time the government showed some empathy towards the people of Chitral and their long-standing problems. To start with, work on the tunnel should begin in right earnest and completed within a reasonable time frame, so as to facilitate travel to and from the far-flung region, and lessen people’s misery.