PRESIDENT Musharraf is unlikely to overcome the lurking doubts about the validity of his constitutional amendments enacted through the Legal Framework Order, 2002 (LFO). Hardly a day passes without strong doubts being expressed about the legitimacy of this instrument. The president’s critics have demanded that he should submit these amendments for ratification by the parliament.

On the other hand, the president claims that he was empowered by the Supreme Court to amend the Constitution in the case of Zafar Ali Shah V. Pervez Musharraf (PLD 2000, SC 869). Having been so authorized, these amendments are now part of the Constitution. If his critics persist, they are told to seek the repeal of these amendments by the parliament by resorting to the procedure which they have asked him to fellow in seeking ratification.

The real reason behind the government and its opponents asking one another to go to the parliament is obvious: neither has the requisite majority there.

The Constitution is the most fundamental document in a political society. It is our misfortune that our Constitution has been repeatedly mutilated by our elected as well as military rulers alike. While it took us over a quarter of a century to ultimately have a constitution in 1973, some of its fundamental provisions were suspended by its framers within hours of its promulgation. Since then it has been amended mostly to enhance the powers of the government of the day and to weaken the institution of the judiciary and deprive the people of their basic rights. Sadly, much of this has been done with a judicial nod if not that institution’s active support. Eleanor Roosevelt, a former American First Lady, once said: “Nobody can humiliate you without your consent”. We have all been party to this process of self-diminution.

The question as to whether the Supreme Court conferred this plenary power on General Musharraf and if so to what extent, can be endlessly debated on narrow legal and technical grounds. However, the fact is that this is no longer a purely legal or constitutional issue; it is now a political issue that has to be resolved through political dialogue. It will not be appropriate to involve the judiciary in this controversy.

The judiciary’s reluctance on this score is evident from the pronouncement of the Supreme Court in the case of the Watan Party v. the Chief Executive (PLD 2003, SC 74) decided just before the October 10 elections. In that case the petitioner, the provincial head of a political party, had challenged the amendments made in the Constitution through the LFO. The petition was dismissed by the court on the ground that the petitioner had no locus standi on the issue. However, the Supreme Court went on to observe, “The parliament and not this court is an appropriate forum to consider all these amendments. The procedure to amend the Constitution remains unaltered. The parliament retains the same power to amend the Constitution as it did before the promulgation of the Legal Framework Order.”

Whenever courts are moved to resolve political disputes, it tends to create a delicate situation for the trying court. In the case of Bush v. Gore, the US Supreme Court incurred considerable opprobrium by deciding in favour of George W. Bush, the other contender in the electoral contest. Justice Stevens, one of the dissenting judges in that case, observed, “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

As the country is back on the largely uncharted democratic trail, the question that ought to engage our attention is not whether the Supreme Court had conferred any plenary power on General Musharraf to amend the Constitution. The real question is how best to restore the political process so as to avoid any further pitfalls or booby traps along the way. The LFO has to be viewed in that larger context.

Since General Musharraf is still at the helm of affairs, the onus for avoiding a political standoff on the LFO question lies on his shoulders. He must demonstrate grace, vision and statesmanship to make a compromise between the supporters and opponents of the LFO possible.

The first thing that the president must do is to shed his uniform. A military ruler in a democracy is a contradiction and an anomaly. He must demonstrate his commitment to the democratic process, and what a better expression of this can there be than making a clean break with his military past by him. If he thinks that the military is still his power base, he is perhaps overestimating his strength on that account. Being the creator of the present political set-up, he is now identified with it. He will find it impossible to dissociate himself from it. He is no longer outside the tainted political process that is now in place; he is now an integral part of it.

Since General Musharraf is an inseparable part of the present political dispensation, he must not weaken or undermine it. By manoeuvring to appoint a political lightweight as prime minister, he may have thought that he can retain absolute power. This is naive thinking. Any gross imbalance in this equation would upset the apple cart of which he is an inseparable part.

Just as the office of the prime minister should not be treated as a decorative one, the parliament should also not be treated with ridicule as has been done so far. The parliament is a sovereign legislative institution. However flawed the process bringing it into being, it nevertheless represents the collective will and wisdom of the people. However, President Musharraf has continued to demonstrate his indifference to the parliament by legislating though ordinances. Governance through ordinances should come to and end. This virtually amounts to bypassing the parliament whose principal function is law-making.

There can be no better expression of commitment to the parliament’s sovereignty than by submitting the LFO for its scrutiny and ratification. The Supreme Court may have filled a legal lacuna and temporarily deemed legal what was otherwise patently illegal. However, legality is not the same thing as legitimacy in all cases. All the apartheid laws in South Africa were legally enacted but were they legitimate? The questionable origin of the LFO will continue to taint its provisions and keep the doubts about their desirability alive in spite of the stamp of judicial approval that it may have.

Incidentally, the LFO has also introduced a number of highly desirable constitutional provisions. It would indeed be tragic if such good provisions were to remain controversial because of their questionable origin.

The LFO has unfortunately also introduced some of the provisions that are highly controversial, particularly those relating to the president’s power to dissolve the National Assembly and the creation of a National Security Council (NSC). In so far as the NSC is concerned, President Musharraf should reconsider the wisdom of this provision. The institution of the military which he wants to be formally involved in the decision-making process on vital national issues already has a pervasive presence in the corridors of power. No civilian prime minister can think of alienating the military without risking the fate of his government. The NSC would hardly add anything of substance to this already powerful institution.

Article 58(2)(b) is the core issue. The parliament, particularly the opposition, should re-examine this issue dispassionately and with an open mind. In its judgment in the Watan party case, the Supreme Court lamented the failure of the legislators who had earlier repealed Article 58(2)(b) to realize the implication of the repeal of a safety valve against military takeovers. By showing flexibility, the present opposition can also persuade the government to modify the rigours of this provision. By doing so, fait accompli can be transformed by the opposition to its own and democracy’s advantage.

By debating and deciding these vital issues in the parliament, the opposition, including the religious parties which are now a formidable force in the parliament, can successfully bring back national decision-making to a forum where it rightly belongs. However, all this can be possible if President Musharraf takes the first step and places the LFO before the parliament. He claims that he is a soldier at heart and is not afraid of unknown dangers. Let him prove his claim in this case.

THE role of the National Accountability Bureau during the last three years of military rule became a contentious issue in the National Assembly on Friday last. The protest by the opposition, particularly by the PPPP, was sparked by certain remarks made at a press conference by the chairman of the NAB, Lt. Gen. Munir Hafeez, in which he accused Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari of having a large number of bank accounts in Swiss banks, quoting a Swiss judge.

The argument of the PPPP was that following the plea bargaining initiated and accepted by the NAB, military officers led by Adm. Mansurul Haq, former chief of staff of the navy and larger number of bureaucrats had surrendered far more of the looted money than 17 politicians who had declared their ill gotten wealth. And yet the politicians were singled out for “verification” constantly.

Out of Rs 2.5 billion recovered by NAB through plea-bargaining Rs 451 million came from military officers, Rs 1,051 million was recovered from 87 bureaucrats, Rs 771 million from others and Rs. 269 million from 17 politicians.

The PPPP wanted an explanation from the government for always singling out the politicians for maligning as well as an apology. Of course no apology was forthcoming and the PPP secretary general Raha Pervez Ashraf wanted replacement of the Gen Hafeez with a judge of the Supreme Court as a large number of military officers were involved in such malpractices.

Other members were not backing the demand for the appointment of Supreme Court judge to head the NAB on the grounds that the faith of the public in the efficacy and the integrity of the judiciary has weakened. The judiciary is no more seen capable of delivering quick and fair judgments. Hence other means have to be found for convicting the corrupt and recovering the loot from them quick.

There are no quick fixes to deal with the problem of pervasive corruption. The approach to the problem has to be complex and consistent. How to develop institutional checks against the ubiquitous corruption, and then how to punish the corrupt and recover the loot? Without that they and their children will flourish after the initial punishment and go on to become industrialists and political leaders. They may even become icons for those seeking wealth and success through foul means.

Military officials or bureaucrats who opted for the plea-bargain did not have a political career or electoral life in mind. They are happy to retain a part of the looted money with them and enjoy life, and may be to become businessmen or industrialists. But the politicians cannot give up politics. They would rather prefer a compromise with the military rulers and get their sins be forgiven on forgotten.

In Balochistan several politicians, including a few relatives of the prime minister, have been let off the hook by the new rulers. This is an easier and more gainful process than opt for plea-bargain, surrendering a part of the ill-gotten gains and then foregoing the electoral option altogether. Military rule has opened this second route, and more and more may be opting for that gainfully for themselves.

If some of these persons have not been convicted but only indicted that does not mean they are now enjoying the benefit of doubt. When a person is given the benefit of doubt he is not punished, but not made a minister or given key portfolios. So we should not be in any doubt about what is really happening now.

These are days when men in charge of the anti-corruption drive talk of looking into the root causes of corruption and eradicatin

g them. What are they? They are far too many. At the lower level it begins with persons not qualified to get government jobs with good salary. It begins with persons getting jobs with fake degrees. And when a person buys a job after making large payments he takes to corruption instantly and makes big money. When persons get jobs through political patronage they take to corruption instantly and stay assured in the post they cannot be removed from that until a change of regime comes.

Low-pay jobs breed corruption, particularly when the government employee has vast powers which the people fear. But good pay scales alone cannot ensure efficiency and honesty in the officers. In this case, a secretary, a director general and a senior officer enjoying large perquisites apart from their pay should not be corrupt. But the issue is more of opportunity for them to make money and lack of supervision and not low scale of pay alone.

A solution has been found through elimination of discretionary powers. But in a poor country with a large population discretionary powers cannot be done away with altogether but only reduced, and then they have to be exercised by the officials honestly and fairly and not arbitrarily.

If we have officers with small pay scales and large perquisites the latter will be abused. You may come across secretaries with two or three cars or more instead of one, and ministers with far more cars. We may have a speaker of the National Assembly with eight cars followed by another one with ten cars.

The solution lies in clean salary for all, leaving it to the officials to select the cars or homes as they like rather than given by the government along with a battery of domestic servants. Such kind of feudal civil servants are no more needed and they must go. There should be a modern administrative system and staffing. So we have today in Sindh at least two ex-ministers who refuse to return their official cars.

Accounting and auditing in the government departments have to improve a great deal. And the Public Accounts Committee should become a vigilant body holding its hearings in public. The standing committees of the Parliament must be equally assertive and conduct open hearings as much as possible. And it is not enough if the government employees declare their assets year after year. They must be verified, at least 10 per cent of them as well as details of the assets not recorded by them. That can be useful not only for tax purposes but also to keep the administration clean.

And the intelligence system of the country should be used not only against the politicians but also to keep a watch on the officials suspected of misdemeanour. The Annual Confidential Report of the officers should be comprehensive and not be sketchy in respect of the erring officials. Above all, there should be uniformity in dealing with the officials, more so the corrupt among them. Some should not be favoured on a political basis and given exemptions on the basis of political patronage or bribes.

What is happening now is the exact opposite of such uniformity in dealing with public servants or ministers. Making a Supreme Court judge preside over the NAB will not solve the problem. The other institutional checks are very essential. And the ministers whose past is in question could now be made to face a panel of three senior judges who can look into their past conduct and declare whether they are fit to be ministers.

The NAB is under President Musharraf. And he picks up the chairman. To improve his own credibility he should keep the NAB above board until he makes it a more credible organisation devoid of the current charge of partisanship.

If we want more of foreign investment and more of domestic investment, we have to stamp out corruption from our midst. Foreign investors had earlier declared us the second to the fifth most corrupt country in the world. The IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank are watching our performance and offering assistance to eradicate corruption. We have to make the best use of such offers in a realistic manner. Even China has offered to help us in this regard. The problem is real, pervasive and long lasting. Over the years, the situation has not improved but has become worse as more and more people tend to believe they can get away with large scale corruption with or without political cover.

On one side, poverty is increasing, and if on the other side corruption takes away what rightfully belongs to the people the poor will become poorer and suffer more, and take to violence and crime. We can’t afford that. The economic cost of large scale crime and violence is heavy. It deters investment at a moment when need it most.

Hence, the fight against corruption should be approached on an urgent basis and in an organised and sustained manner. But if corruption prevails at the higher levels of the government conspicuously it will thrive at the lower end in plenty. The people will then feel they have to become a part of the system instead of rebelling against it and losing even more because of the inefficacy of their protest. We cannot afford to let the masses live in a state of perpetual desperation and wrathful protest. We must find solutions for that in a systematic and sustained manner instead of letting the system go from bad to worse, repeating its follies and failures.

LIKEWISE, we are unable to provide a basic health cover for a great majority of our people, who are at the mercy of quacks. Basic amenities such as clean drinking water and sewerage remain a far cry for most of our people. Unless we build an equitable social platform, economic progress will remain a mirage.

The fourth challenge is posed by the breakdown of the country’s judicial system, both civil and criminal. Legal disputes take generations to settle. Without business-friendly laws and adjudication, there is not an iota of a chance that international investment can flow to any country.

Investors also need an environment of security, and a sound law and order system. Terrorism, crime, and corruption drive away investment. In my 10 years in public life, I have not seen a single murderer or terrorist receiving a major sentence. Legal deterrence has lost its force. We need to move fast on this front by revamping the judicial system, otherwise the erosion of law and order can shake the foundations of our society.

The fifth challenge is to overcome the crisis of governance. The government machinery is outdated and very fat. Ministries and departments function without professional competence and performance criteria. There are only negative incentives at work. A three-step reform of government machinery was initiated under Vision 2010, which must be revived — all departments and ministries defining their mission statements, developing annual performance criteria in light of the vision and mission, and a system of incentives and control to reward good performance and punish poor work.

A comprehensive modern management skill development programme needs to be initiated to overcome the competency gap. We need a business-friendly bureaucracy. Both the government and the private sector need to work together rather than in an adversarial mode.

We are relying greatly on private sector investments for future economic growth, but are not willing to give the private sector any role beyond an advisory one. The Pakistan Business Council set up under the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999, with an equal number of members from the government and the private sector and with the mandate to manage the economy in partnership, needs to be revived.

After the Musharraf government’s ill-managed accountability and tax survey drives, the confidence of the business community has been shaken. In order to restore it, something tangible has to be done: the mere sop of consultation will not work. The participation of the private sector should include top performing companies.

The sixth challenge is to understand the new quality and productivity game. These are the two important pillars of competitiveness. Unfortunately, we are not serious about them. According to a study commissioned by the Planning Commission, we found that over Rs 100 billion in the private sector and over Rs 150 billion in government sector are lost annually on account of poor quality work.

Our wheat production can increase by 65-120 per cent through better farm management practices. Our agricultural and industrial productivity is the lowest in the world. The world has moved to a zero-defect production paradigm. How can we be competitive by carrying an extra burden of Rs 250 billion in poor quality cost because of our production systems?

Quality does not come through ISO certifications, but from a culture of quality. A National Productivity Council was established in 1999, which has not met even once in the last three years. A five-year plan for achieving world-class competitiveness needs to be chalked out and steered in partnership with the private sector on a war footing.

The seventh challenge relates to promoting social capital by building a strong ethics and value infrastructure. Our economic management has traditionally focused on a strong economic ‘hardware’ in the form of roads, dams, and ports but overlooked the ‘software’ that goes into economic development in the shape of ethics and values.

A study found that one of the key factors in East Asia’s fast economic development was a higher level of trust in society. We have been made to believe that we are the most corrupt nation by our rulers. We are as corrupt or as honest as any other nation. We need to develop a positive outlook and confidence in ourselves. In addition, through reforms in the education system, we need to promote values of honesty, trust, service orientation, innovation, pursuit of excellence, quality, teamwork, discipline, hard work, tolerance, and professionalism as our social attributes.

To seize the opportunities of tomorrow, we have to change our mental models. Instead of blaming others for our failures or invoking conspiracy theories to explain away our reverses, we must take responsibility for our own conduct. Instead of playing geo-strategic games, we must champion geo-economic strategies, and instead of relying on foreign aid, we must create an enabling environment for domestic and foreign investments, become a bridge between Central Asia and South Asia and search for sustainable peace in the region. After the nuclear tests, I had asked the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission about their formula for success. His answer was simple and comprehensive: there was a shared vision from top to bottom, a stable leadership with, on average, the chairman serving an eight-year tenure, strict merit in recruitment and promotion, and priority for human resource development. If we can do it in the nuclear field, there is no reason why we should not be able to do it in other areas.

Concluded

ON 28 January an eight-year-old girl from Hong Kong visiting relatives in southern China fell ill with influenza and was admitted to hospital. A week later she died, and since then her father has died of the same flu, while her nine-year-old brother lies gravely ill in an isolation ward in Hong Kong.

The virus is outwardly similar to the A (H5N1) strain, also known as ‘bird flu’, that killed six of the eighteen people who were infected in the last outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997.

New strains of viral diseases that can kill human beings generally emerge by mutation as they hop back and forth between people and their domesticated animals. This exchange of viruses goes on all the time in farming areas — but it’s only when a lethal new virus crosses the species barrier and then starts to pass from one person to another that the alarm bells start to ring. They are ringing now.

“If this virus is transmissible from human to human then it is far more serious,” said a spokesperson for the World Health Organisation in Geneva on 19 February. The 1997 flu virus was stopped by slaughtering the 1.4 million chickens, ducks and geese in Hong Kong, but if the new one is already loose all over southern China that solution will not really work. Even the normal wave of flu that circles the world every year, slightly changed genetically each time, exacts a serious toll in lives, but once in a while something really lethal comes along. This could be one of those times.

The ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic of 1918 infected between 20 and 40 per cent of the world’s population and killed 20 million people in four months, twice as many as died in the First World War — and the majority of the victims were young, healthy people who died of complications like bronchitis and pneumonia. If a flu virus like that appeared now, could it do as much damage?

Certainly the two subsequent flu pandemics, occurring after the development of anti-viral medicines, did not cause the same carnage. The impact of the 1957 ‘Asian flu’ pandemic was greatly reduced by mass vaccination: only one human being in six caught it, and it killed an estimated two million people worldwide. The 1968 ‘Hong Kong flu’ pandemic killed only a million people, and as in 1957 most of the victims were elderly. But viruses are not impressed by medical technology.

Despite the far higher standards of sanitation and medical care in the developed world, influenza death rates there have not been significantly lower than in poorer countries. Viral diseases mutate fast, antibiotics are no use against them, and good hygiene is no protection either. Bacterial diseases like cholera, anthrax and malaria have complex life cycles and mutate only slowly, so they are easy to contain — but if the latest version of ‘bird flu’ is transmissible between people, we could be looking at millions of deaths over the next year. Nor is that the worst that could happen.

The true nature of the ‘Black Death’ was long a mystery, but early in the 20th century, after doctors had found and described bubonic plague in India, experts jumped to the conclusion that a more virulent form of that disease, endemic in rats and transmitted to humans by their fleas, was the real culprit. This was a comforting conclusion, because it meant that it was a bacterial disease with a complicated life-cycle, easily contained by hygiene and antibiotics, that would never come back to trouble modern human beings.

But it never actually made sense, because the standard treatment for the Black Death, tried and tested over three hundred years, was to quarantine affected families and villages for forty days. That could not have worked if it were carried by rats, which do not respect quarantines. So two years ago professors Christopher Duncan and Susan Scott of Liverpool University suggested in their book, ‘Biology of Plagues’, that the Black Death was really an Ebola-like virus, a haemorrhagic fever transmitted directly from person to person. It is frighteningly plausible.

There were actually two Great Pandemics, and the first hit Europe and the Middle East in 541 AD. The Roman empire had been relatively unharmed by great plagues, apart from bouts of smallpox in 170 and measles in 250 which killed mostly children and left survivors immune, but the new plague was different. —Copyright

THE dark clouds of war fast gathering over Iraq seem poised to rain death and destruction on the doomed people of that country. America seems bent on war. Far from providing any “smoking gun” proof of Iraq’s culpability, Colin Powell’s 75-minutes presentation before the Security Council on February 5 turned out to be a damp squib.

With only “raw” intelligence reports and wire-taps that could have been interpreted either way, Powell made a pathetic attempt at roping in Russian support by alleging a terrorist connection between a Saddam-supported, Iraq-based Al Qaeda network and Muslim rebels fighting the Russians in Grozny.

While it is possible that war can create strange bed-fellows, it would take a very fertile imagination indeed to a close link between a diehard jihadi like Osama bin Laden and a Baathist secularist leader like Saddam Hussein, who in any event could not even think of annoying Moscow. Granted that Saddam himself is no paragon of virtue and is a cruel dictator who has brought nothing but misery to his people, but it is the prerogative of the Iraqis alone — and certainly not for the distant Americans — to effect a change of regime.

Powell used his usual nuggets of wisdom in trying to claim the moral high ground in the fight against terror but what it all boiled down to was an exuberant capering around a well-known but less disguised truth — George Bush’s penchant for war and the all-important Iraqi oil. It is difficult to forget that both Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney were oil barons before they entered the White House.

Powell’s attempt to get even a grudging acquiescence from France and Germany was quite obviously hamstrung by Donald Rumsfeld’s earlier unkind barb in dubbing the leaders of both countries as being “Old Europe.” Both countries responded with renewed opposition to war without UN authorization. With the exception of the UK and Spain, there was a combined opposition to the US going it along against Iraq.

Unfortunately, if understandably, no Security Council member-country wished to ask the all important question — would a change of regime contain all of America’s ambitions in Iraq? Having already spent a staggering 2.1 billion dollars on its armada in the Gulf, the US is hardly even likely to pull back now. What does not meet the eye just yet is the hidden agenda which aims at redrawing the map of the entire Middle East as we know it today.

Powell has already hinted at this being a possible fallout of a change of regime in Iraq. President Bush went a step further on February 28 when be outlined his so-called “vision” for the Middle East, proposing re-shaping the region on democratic lines, freeing it of the virus of terrorism and creating an environment of peace between Arabs and Israel.

With the threat of Iraq’s chemical weaponry out of the way, there would be nothing to stop the US from installing Israel’s Ariel Sharon as its chief satrap in charge of the Middle East. Almost all the Arab rulers would have been weakened by the creation of a democratic order in the Peninsula’s heartland in Iraq, and, consequently, more dependent than ever on America’s continued support. Any opposition would be feeble at best. Russia is in no position to mount a serious challenge, and Europe could be placated with the assurance of an ever increasing supply of cheaper oil.

Iraqi oilfields alone have the potential to produce over three million barrels a day against the present output of one million barrels. And, of course, the problem of Palestine would have been solved with one stroke, with a truncated, beehived Palestine functioning under Israeli tutelage, which could be extended to ensure peace in the Lavant.

As far as the on-going debate in the Security Council is concerned, what really boggles the mind is the almost total absence of concern for the horrendous toll of human life and the destruction and suffering that a war would bring in its wake. Surveys conducted by the UN itself found no mention in the speeches made in the Security Council and elsewhere.

MEDACT, which is an affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, estimates that in any new conflict in Iraq casualties would be five times higher than in the first Gulf War of 1991. United Nations specialist agencies have now estimated that about 500,000 people would require medical treatment of one sort or other. One lakh civilians would be wounded and 400,000 hit by disease, while four-fifth of these victims would be children under five and pregnant or lactating women.

Iraq is already impoverished by sanctions. As many as 16 million people depend on a monthly food basket supplied free by the Iraqi government. This supply would vanish once the bombing starts, and thousands will starve once again. The UN estimates that bombing will disrupt the electricity network on which pumped water supply depends, leaving millions without drinking water in an already parched land.

After the 1991 Gulf War it was estimated that 15,000 civilians died and 120,000 Iraqi soldiers laid down their lives in the defence of their homeland. With improved and more destructive weaponry now available and in place in the Gulf region, the figures would be naturally much higher.

The flood of refugees fleeing the war for neighbouring Iran is estimated by the UN to be around a staggering 900,000, while one million persons might be displaced in Iraq itself. The destruction of homes and property alone might mean that nearly 40 million people would need emergency shelter with hardly anyone there to provide it. Oxfam says that there is particular concern for sanitation and pumping problems while there is no normal economy because people rely on state food distribution on a massive scale.

It is axiomatic that moral trepidations and wars do not mix, but if there is a lesson to be learnt today it is that the end justifies the means, and that enemies can be created where none exist. That unfortunately is the price that humanity is asked to pay whenever a single overwhelming force comes to dominate in a unipolar world.

The German writer Gunter Grass puts it in a nutshell when he writes: “The spectre of hypocrisy which the last remaining superpower and its chorus of allies use to cover their true interests has become so threadbare that the drive for dominance shows right through. It stands there in its hubris unashamed and dangerous to the rest of the world. The present US president is the perfect expression of this common danger that we face — my experience tells me that this war is a wanted war which will be followed by other wars with the same drive behind them.”

In the 18th century a European poet wrote a poem called “Warsong” in which he asked: “What should I do, if in fretful sleep, the ghosts of the slaughtered were to appear bloody, pale and wan and weep in front of me — what should I do?”

What would be his answer if the same question were to be put to President George Bush? Faced with a fast falling popularity rate even in his own country and with elections coming along next year, the “Dubya” mindset would evoke one obvious answer: ‘Be blown.’