WITH the Senate elections done and over with, parliament is now complete and ready to begin doing its work, assuming that it is cognizant of its real mission. Members of the National Assembly are elected by the people in their appointed constituencies, and one may infer that they are answerable to their constituents for their stewardship of the public interest. But whom do the Senators represent, and to whom are they accountable?

In unitary democratic states the “upper” house of the legislature is expected to take a second, more critical, look at the bills that have passed the lower house. As a result of the special considerations and procedures by which its members have reached office, they are deemed capable of bringing a higher level of detachment and deliberation to bear on their work. They should be able to dispel popular prejudices, passions, and parochialism to which members of the lower house, directly elected by the people and therefore closer to them, may be vulnerable.

In federal political systems the upper house may be as competent a guardian of the public interest as any other organ of the government, but it has been constituted mainly for another purpose. Its members are to represent the constituent units in the federal union (states or provinces) to which they respectively belong. It is assumed that each such unit is equal in status with all others, regardless of size and population, and therefore entitled to equal representation in the upper house. Since no legislation can pass without the concurrence of the upper house, federating states or provinces carries substantial weight in determining the course of national affairs.

We did not have an upper house until the framers of the Constitution of 1973, following the chastening secession of East Pakistan, and even then somewhat reluctantly, provided for a Senate. They sought to create the appearance, but not the reality, of federalism inasmuch as they excluded the Senate completely from consideration of the budget and all other “money bills.” They made the government of the day responsible to the National Assembly to the exclusion of the Senate.

As regards other bills, in case the Senate did not go along with the National Assembly, its view of the matter could be overridden in a joint session of parliament where the Assembly would have an overwhelming majority. This diminution of the role and status of the Senate translates into a refusal to recognize that, while the constituent provinces have much in common, and while each of them is a part of the state and the nation, it also has its own distinct identity which it cherishes and wants to keep.

Downgrading of the Senate is to be regretted for another reason also: the last Senate would appear to have had an impressive level of competence. Looking at a directory of its members for the years 1994-97, I see that, leaving out the eight FATA members, 66 of the remaining 79 Senators had a college degree or a higher level of educational attainment. Lawyers made the largest single group, but the spread included a whole lot of other occupations and interests as well.

Each provincial assembly elects an equal number of senators on the basis of proportional representation. In the most recent election each political party was allotted a specific number of senatorial slots depending on its numerical strength in the assembly, and its MPAs voted for one or another person whose name appeared on the list established by the party concerned. It is not clear why this method was chosen in preference to direct election by the people of each province, voting either on an at-large basis or from designated senatorial constituencies — unless it was the framers’ intention to further lower the Senate as an organ of democratic governance.

In his role as a representative of his province, a Senator is to serve and safeguard its interests. Will he figure out for himself what these interests are, will he act upon the provincial assembly’s determinations in this regard, or will he be guided by the political party whose votes sent him to the Senate?

It goes without saying that the Senate, being a part of the parliament, is also obligated to protect and preserve the national interest. Beyond relying on his own judgment in doing his duty, a Senator cannot be bound by, or accountable to, the provincial assembly because that body, as a whole, did not elect him. He may then be regarded as accountable to his political party and bound to follow its agenda. Since parties are an integral part of our political system, there is nothing wrong with this perspective.

The latest elections may have thrown the matter of the new Senators’ accountability into confusion. Corruption of the electoral process is nothing new in our experience. I am not sure how far corrupt practices entered the earlier Senate elections, but they surfaced with a bang in the last one. According to persistent reports, many provincial assembly members expected Senate candidates to pay as much as five million rupees per vote. A candidate for a technocrat’s seat would thus have ended up paying a hundred million rupees (10 crores) or more to get elected.

One might have expected that each political party instructed its MPAs to vote for designated candidates and they did so without demanding anything in return. But apparently this is not the way the election went. Even so, it may not be extravagant to assume that the MPAs belonging to the Islamic parties, being men of God and righteous, voted as instructed. It is hard to say how the MQM people and the PPP parliamentarians acted. But it is generally believed that nominees of the PML (Q) had to go out and buy at least some proportion of the votes they needed.

A number of questions arise at this point. First, why would anyone in his right mind want to spend tens of millions of rupees to become a Senator? This is baffling when we recall that the Senate has no role in the establishment and dismissal of governments, and its status as a law-making body is much inferior to that of the National Assembly. Senators would then appear to have very little leverage with which to recover the money they have invested in getting elected — unless they become ministers and can kick open doors to graft.

Is the “honour” and prestige associated with the office great enough to warrant the cost? Not by any normal person’s calculation. Consider also that in all probability the designees of any important political party were already regarded as honourable enough in their respective areas. The esteem in which they were held will now actually decline when it becomes known — as it will be — that they had bought their way to their new station. One other thing: having paid millions for the office, what reason can these new Senators have to entertain any real sense of obligation to the party that had awarded them its “ticket” and submit to its discipline in the house?

One would want to know also why this buying and selling of votes was allowed to take place. The same practice may be difficult to control in elections to the national and provincial assemblies, because these involve several thousand candidates and many millions of voters. But voters for the Senate numbered less than a thousand. Even allowing for the agents deputed to track down Osama bin Laden and his friends in Al Qaeda, our police and intelligence agencies could have assigned agents to keep an eye on each MPA and grab him if they saw him dipping his hand in the candy box. The conclusion would then seem to be inescapable that the buying and selling under reference here has been done with the knowledge and approval of those at the helm.

Why did they allow this reprehensible practice? One may say that they did so for the same reason that they allowed, or even ordered, a variety of malpractices in the National Assembly elections in October. They wanted PML (Q) and its allies to have a majority in the Senate as well as in the assembly. Rigging the assembly elections before and during the polling and the post-election horse-trading were inexcusable but easily understood: a government acceptable to General Pervez Musharraf could not otherwise be put in place. But why corrupt the Senate?

Mr Jamali did not need the Senate’s approval for the government he had formed, and he does not need it for remaining in office. The Senate has no role in the more critical categories of legislation (“money bills”), and we need not assume that other bills the assembly passed would necessarily have been rejected by the Senate if the Jamali coalition did not have a majority there. Note also that no bill originating in the Senate could become law without the concurrent approval of the National Assembly where Mr Jamali did have a majority.

Since that majority is thin, it is conceivable that his government may not carry the day in a joint session of the two houses if he does not have a majority in the Senate. On the other hand, that situation might have worked to the long-term advantage of our political system. It would have required the ruling coalition to exercise a measure of self-restraint and learn ways of working with those on the other side of the aisle for the common good.

It may be said in conclusion that corrupting the Senate was an unnecessary evil that General Musharraf, the overseer-in-chief of public morality in our government, should not have allowed. He should understand that, having appointed himself to this office, he is deeply answerable to both God and man for all corrupt deeds done in his domain and with his knowledge.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.

E-mail: syed.anwar@attbi.com

FOR five months the prime minister did not speak to the people though they wanted him to, for, he thought, he had little to say. He was right. He spoke long on Tuesday last but did not say much which was new or spectacular. His critics have been quick to surmise that he was goaded into speaking only to show that his commitment to the person and the system that had brought him and his government into power had not wavered in the face of clamorous opposition to both.

The tribute the prime minister paid to the patriotism and effort of the president in restoring the democratic institutions peacefully and smoothly bears that out. His endorsement of the local government and police reforms is also to be similarly viewed though both have yet to make a positive impact on public life and remain a subject of bitter contention between the competing interests in politics and bureaucracy.

That the prime minister has not specifically defended the package of amendments in its entirety known as the Legal Framework Order should encourage the opposition to call off its shouting protest in the parliament and let a compromise emerge through debate inside the parliament and bargaining outside. Mr Jamali has conceded — hopefully he sticks to it — that all matters of national interest will be decided in the parliament. The vote and procedure to amend or altogether repeal the LFO and other laws (35 in number) protected by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution could be negotiated alongside.

The protesting parties should call a truce to give the debate — and horse-trading — a chance. The people would like to know how much of their money has been spent already on the upkeep of the parliament and its sessions and what business was transaction in their welfare. The answer to the first part could be hundreds of millions and to the second, none at all.

The enthusiasm, never much in sight on the restoration of the parliament and the elected governments, is fast subsiding. Once the Iraq crisis is out of the way and the current parliamentary bedlam still continues, the people might be pining for Musharraf’s “good old days” while Mr Jamali hopes his government would last for five years. Hardly a government in the past has and the chances of his one lasting that long are minimal for it hangs by a cliff.

The interest of the politicians as a class thus lies in seeking coexistence for some time if not for full five years with President Musharraf as the army chief of staff. The party lines dividing our politicians are neither clearly drawn nor unalterable. They are crossed all the time, never more frequently or unpredictably as now. All of them, or their forerunners, have collaborated with the military at one or the other time. There is no principle or ideology at stake now.

The prime minister’s speech was made long by many assertions and promises with a familiar ring — appointments in public service on merit, speedy justice, end to lawlessness, model housing and cheap loans for the poor — which have never been fulfilled nor would in all probability be this time round. Resource apart, how will the merit and integrity prevail in public service when both have found no place at all in the political institutions and elective posts? The instances where both were sacrificed at the altar of political expediency or bribe in the national and provincial assemblies, the Senate and the cabinets are too numerous to be recounted.

The decision of the federal cabinet to take a number of posts out of the jurisdiction of the public service commission has, in fact, already undermined the principle of merit the prime minister is now propounding. On this count public scepticism is more widespread than it was ever before.

In a litany of hopes and promises, the prime minister announced two decisions which will have implications more serious than the reaction they have provoked. No more land reforms are necessary, says the PM, for jagirs are no more. This is evading the issue that lies at the core of our rural society and agricultural economy. It is not a question of rent collection alone but of the inequity inherent in a few large holdings and the mass of landless peasantry, and the low productivity that results from this arrangement. It is certain that the owner of an estate cultivates his own land better and produces more than he would for another. It also lifts his spirit.

Secondly, the prime minister wants to introduce a uniform curriculum or courses of study in all educational institutions. The diversity of courses and their bias, he thinks, is widening social disparity and polluting young minds. The curriculum he proposes to introduce would instead reflect the ideology of Pakistan, its nationhood and morals rooted in its own soil. It is nothing more than a high-sounding claptrap. Missionaries since early times and entrepreneurs in more recent times have set standards of education which the state-run institutions could never reach because of the paucity of resources and lack of commitment.

The uniformity the prime minister now intends to impose will do more harm than Bhutto’s nationalization of 1972. The educational system is still reeling under it. As for the standards, the late Dr. Eqbal Ahmad once noted that Lahore’s Government College, the country’s best, was worse than the worst community college in America’s black ghettos.

What Mr Jamali said about the land and educational reforms, it can be assumed, was merely his personal view and not of the government. All decisions of national importance, he committed in the very speech, will be made in the parliament. What can be of greater national importance than these two? In fact, they are too important to be left to the parliament alone. The press and all the other media and forums should get involved in the discussion to enlighten the legislators.

On Iraq and relations with India, as the Dawn headline of the speech story put it, the PM “reaffirmed” the stand. What his stand is remains unclear, however.

A parting bit of advice to the PM: He should find a speech writer who writes briefly. It would not be easy to find one. When Chiragh Hassan Hasrat, an icon of journalism in the last century, was asked by his proprietor to write briefly, his reply was he did not have the time to be brief. Luckily for the PM there are no Hasrats in Islamabad’s government corridors.

PRESIDENT George Bush claimed last month his impending war against Iraq would bring peace and democracy to the Middle East and liberate Iraqis from repression.

At the same time, in a move clearly aimed at intimidating the media, the White House denounced a CBS News interview with President Saddam Hussein in which the Iraqi leader asserted his nation had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda, as ‘propaganda’.

Now, I have no love for Saddam’s sinister, brutal regime. The last time I was in Baghdad, late 1990, the Iraqi secret police threatened to hang me as a spy after I discovered a group of British technicians and scientists who had been secretly sent by the British government to produce anthrax and other germ weapons for Iraq to use against Iran.

But what I dislike even more than Saddam’s nasty regime are government lies and propaganda. Since 9/11, North Americans have been subjected to the most intense propaganda campaign from their government since World War I. Much of the mainstream US media has been intimidated by the administration into unquestioningly amplifying its party line, or, in the worst tradition of yellow, jingoist journalism, it acts as cheerleaders for war. I am reminded of the sycophantic Soviet media during the days of Chairman Leonid Brezhnev.

The American public, often wobbly about geography, history and international affairs, has been alternately terrified and enraged by bare-faced lies that Iraq was about to attack America with nuclear weapons or germs, and was a secret ally of Al Qaida. A shocking two-thirds of Americans mistakenly believe Iraq staged the 9/11 attacks.

A surging wave of anti-Islamic hate promoted by Bush’s allies on the Christian loony far right, and administration repression of Muslims, frighteningly recall Europe’s growing anti-Semitism of the early 1930s. These are the reasons why a majority of Americans still support a war of pure aggression against Iraq, though more and more question the president’s motives.

It is frightening to see Bush claim with a straight face his war against Iraq will bring democracy and peace to the Mideast, and save Iraqis from repression. Why didn’t he begin by saving Palestinians from the repression by his alter-ego and, increasingly, his mentor, Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon. If Bush really cared about Mideast democracy, he has had two years to do something about US-sponsored dictatorships like Egypt, or medieval autocracies such as Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and American’s Gulf protectorates.

When Bush says he will bring democracy to benighted Iraqis, what he really means is US rule. In Bush-speak, ‘democracy’ has been perverted to mean US imperial hegemony: nations run by puppet rulers who makes all the right noises, like Afghanistan’s US-installed figurehead, Hamid Karzai, while following Washington’s orders to the letter.

Bush’s war is not about democracy, weapons of mass destruction, human rights or terrorism. It has two main motivations. First, the Manifest Destiny crowd in Washington, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The terrible events of 9/11 seemed to produce a psychotic reaction in these good, patriotic Americans, transforming them into 19th century imperialists.

Their intention is perfectly clear: prevent any nation ever challenging US global hegemony; dominate oil. The aggression against Iraq is not about oil per se; it is about control of oil. Before the Iraq crisis, the US imported about $18 billion of oil annually from the Mideast, but spent $31 billion keeping military forces there. Why? Control of Mideast oil gives the US domination over Europe and Japan, which draw most of their oil from the region. Domination of Mideast and Caspian oil will assure the US a permanent stranglehold over China and India, as well as Europe and Japan.

The second, but almost invisible driving force is Israel’s far right Likud government, which has come to dominate Bush administration policy and US media commentary on the Mideast. The Clinton administration was close to Israel’s moderate Labour Party; Bush’s camp is totally aligned with Israel’s aggressive far right and mirrors its views and policies to a remarkable, unprecedented degree. Likud, and its powerful American supporters, want the US to crush Iraq into pieces. The principal beneficiary of the war against Iraq will be Israel.

Many Americans simply do not understand their leadership is about to plunge the nation into an open-ended, dangerous colonial war.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2003

ANYONE optimistic that war in Iraq will lead to peace in the wider Middle East — a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict — would do well to take a look at what is happening in that conflict. What they will find is a bad crisis getting infinitely — probably irredeemably — worse.

February saw the establishment of what one Israeli commentator described as “the most right-wing, most nationalistic, most extreme and most war-like government Israel has ever had”. At its head is Ariel Sharon, a man whose anti-Palestinian record — first as military commander and then as politician — needs no introduction. Recent highlights include triggering the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 with a blatant violation of the Holy Sanctuary, reoccupation of Palestinian territories earlier ceded to the Palestinian Authority, active promotion of Israeli settlement in those territories, and a ‘security policy’ that has as its most important components targeted assassinations and military offensives against civilian population.

Sharon’s previous government included Labour ministers. They had joined his coalition in the misguided belief that they could act as a moderating influence on Likud. Nineteen months later, their ineffectiveness was clear to all. This time round, under the leadership of Amram Mitzna, Labour has refused Sharon’s invitation to join the government. Mitzna’s decision is one of the rare laudable developments in current Israeli politics. Despite his party sinking to an all-time low in the polls, Mitzna continues to insist on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, an end to Jewish settlement construction and negotiations with the Palestinians. To take such a principled stance in the face of electoral defeat is the sign of a truly courageous political leader.

The same could not be said of those who accepted Sharon’s invitation this time: Tommy Lapid of the secular Shinnui party, and the pro-settler National Religious Party and National Union. Lapid campaigned on a platform of liberating Israel from the grip of Judaism’s ultra-orthodox cadres. He promised he would never enter into an alliance with the religious parties. But the lure of political power soon put paid to those pledges.

While it is true that the ultra-orthodox Shas has been left out of the new government, the NRP and NU are equally hard-line. The NRP’s Effi Eitam and NU’s Avigdor Lieberman, who now hold the housing and transport portfolios respectively, believe that Jews have a God-given right to the West Bank and Gaza. Their solution to the Palestinian problem is transfer: shifting Palestinians to Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula. Uri Bank of the NU declared: “There is a Palestinian state. It’s east of the Jordan River. Some call it Jordan”.

Not only did Lapid agree to join such illustrious Zionist company, he was soon sounding like them too. His latest pronouncement on Palestinian statehood — that there can be no discussion of this until Yasser Arafat is removed — could just as easily have been made by Ariel Sharon. Rounding off this coalition of the hard-right and ‘secular’ right are Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz — finance and defence ministers respectively. Netanyahu was the Israeli prime minister who began the process of undoing the Oslo peace accords (a task completed by Sharon). Mofaz was the chief of army staff who spearheaded Israel’s recent reoccupation of Palestinian territory. They are no peace-lovers.

This second, more hard-line, Sharon government has wasted little time in implementing its Zionist ideology. While the peace process is not even on the government’s agenda, settlement expansion has been promoted from ‘natural growth’ to a national priority. Side by side with this is continued repression of the Palestinian intifada.

On March 2, 11 Palestinians were killed in a raid on Jabaliya refugee camp. Last week Muhammed Taha, one of the founders of Hamas, was captured in a raid on Gaza that killed several civilians. That was followed by the assassination of senior Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and three others in a missile attack on their car. As one analyst put it, Israel is taking advantage of the world’s focus on Iraq to carry out acts that would normally be unpalatable to international opinion. (Bear in mind here that international opinion already gives the Israeli government huge leeway to violate human rights).

During his second term Sharon is continuing the ‘peace strategy’ he had pursued during his first term — giving nominal support to negotiations for a Palestinian homeland while setting impossible conditions for this. Previously, the conditions were a complete cessation of Palestinian violence and the removal of Yasser Arafat. Now Sharon has added Palestinian renunciation of “the groundless demand for the right of return” and acknowledgement of Jerusalem as “the united and undivided capital of Israel” to the list. Makes it plain: do not expect peace to come from this Israeli government.

Let us note also, for the record, that the ‘Palestinian statehood’ that Sharon has in mind is not a viable homeland comprising all the occupied territories. Far from it. Sharon’s very distant vision of ‘Palestine’ comprises a series of enclosed Palestinian settlements, linked by Israeli-controlled highways. In total these ‘Bantustans’ would make up just 42 per cent of the occupied territories. The Palestinians running them would have no control over borders, airspace or water resources. In short, Sharon’s vision is more akin to a vast Palestinian prison than a state.

Faced with such a formidable foe, the Palestinian Authority is desperately trying to meet international demands for reform, while the Palestinian resistance continues its self-sacrificing but also self-defeating attacks on Israel. Last week, Yasser Arafat finally nominated a Palestinian prime minister, while Hamas killed 15 Israelis in a suicide bomb attack in Haifa. Neither action will help the Palestinian cause. The former will be criticised as ‘not enough’, while the latter will be used to justify greater repression. Though diverse, the actions of the PA and Hamas are actually symptoms of the same malady: Palestinian hopelessness.

It is a hopelessness fuelled by Washington’s attitude to the crisis. Far from putting a brake on the further rightward turn of the Israeli government, George Bush has put his weight behind that turn. Speaking at a dinner on February 27, the American president made an end to settlement activity in the occupied territories conditional on progress towards peace. The American ‘road map’ to a Palestinian state has been thrown away. ‘Success in Iraq’ is now touted as the harbinger of a ‘new stage for Middle East peace’.

The contradictions in American policy towards the Palestinians are almost as huge as those of the Israeli government. How can peace come about while Jewish settlement expansion — one of the biggest impediments to peace — continues apace? How can the Palestinians be expected to renounce all violence and sit at the negotiating table when they have no idea where — if anywhere — that process will lead them? Most of all, how will removing Saddam Hussein transform the Israeli government’s total rejection of a Palestinian state into acceptance?

The honest answer, of course, is that it cannot — it will not. The Israel-Palestine conflict has been getting worse for months because of the ‘occupation and oppression’ strategy being pursued by Sharon, and because of the Bush administration’s refusal to curb it. There is no connection between this crisis and the one relating to weapons of mass destruction and dictatorship in Iraq.

Or rather, there is a connection — but it is a consequential rather than causal one. Iraq did not cause the Israel-Palestine conflict, but a war on Iraq will make it much worse. The signals being sent out by Washington and Tel Aviv clearly indicate that ‘success in Iraq’ will be used to bolster the Israeli agenda of reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza — not to bring peace. Once American forces enter Baghdad, expect more Israeli troops to follow in the occupied territories, more settlements to be built and more Palestinians to be killed. Gulf War II will put the final nail in the coffin of Middle East peace. This is the sad reality: a situation that has been deteriorating for months is about to get much worse.