A democratic UN for the 21st century

IS the United Nations heading the League way or will it survive the latest onslaught on its credibility and authority? A look at the rationale and history of the United Nations and its performance in terms of the charter obligations, since its inception fifty-eight years ago, might facilitate an answer to this two-in-one question.

Born out of the three great upheavals that gripped the world in the first half of the twentieth century-the two great wars and the great depression-the United Nations was meant to save the world from such disasters. It was established to pursue the twin goals of peace and prosperity. For the realization of these goals, it was hailed as “mankind’s last best hope”.

The UN was also meant to provide a moral edifice for the re-ordering of the global system, which would be based on justice and equity and which would be governed by rules, laws, values and cooperation. Unfortunately, the world that ensued was neither just nor equal.

As a universal organization, the UN came to be regarded as an instrument of international legitimacy because of the “belief” in its ideals by the nations of the world.

Hard realities, however, soon intervened to interrupt the rebuilding of the world on a moral edifice. The exigencies of the cold war became new imperatives in the realm of realpolitik. In a polarized world, the UN became another arena for the clash of ideologies and political confrontation between the two hostile military alliances.

In those years of “chilling” confrontation between the US and the USSR, the developing and non-aligned countries bore the torch of the United Nations. The defence of its principles and pursuit of its ideals for the next fifty years were to be in the hands of the newly emergent nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which were imbued with the idealism that had charged their struggle for deliverance from the dark days of colonialism.

In the early decades of the fifties and sixties, the people of Kashmir, Palestine, South Africa and Namibia and scores of others won legitimacy through political and moral endorsement at the UN for their just causes. Self-determination was the cardinal principle of the UN that shaped the world in those decades. The UN General Assembly and the Trusteeship Council were important bodies that made a deep imprint on the geopolitics of the world.

The Security Council, responsible under the charter for the maintenance of international peace and security, fell victim to the cold war. Political and strategic expediencies of the major powers kept it from taking positions based on principles. Major global issues on which the UN had taken a clear position through Security Council resolutions remained on its agenda without any follow-up action. The unresolved questions of Palestine and Kashmir continue to pose threat to global peace and security. The veto power blocked any meaningful progress towards the implementation of the Security Council’s resolutions. For all practical purposes, it was the major powers and not the UN that called shots in matters of peace and security.

Global security order came to be shaped by nuclear weapons, which proliferated vertically and laterally to give the erstwhile imperial powers a sense of “destiny” and “invincibility”.

The major powers, however, sought to monopolize the international security order by basing it on nuclear weapons. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was the first effort to build a legal regime that would eventually be used to legitimize possession of these weapons by the five, while denying them to others. In that sense, the NPT was a quasi moral/political expedient. Nuclear weapons became the corner-stone of the global security architecture.

The seventies were still heady days for the United Nations or for those who actually believed in its vision. The poor and dispossessed nations, emerging from centuries of exploitation of their lands by the colonial powers, sought to assert their stakes in the global economy by demanding a new international economic order.

The resource-rich countries, producers of raw materials and primary products realized the inefficacy of political rhetoric and their claims for justice as virtually nothing came out from the UN’s economic agenda. The debate and the acrimony only proved that pious hopes and idealism were no substitute for pragmatism and power.

Despite scores of resolutions on global economic inequalities and the need to redress them; on removing the barriers to markets and for transfer of technology; to build a partnership for universalizing affluence and elimination of poverty, hunger and disease, nothing could be done to realize a new egalitarian economic order.

The UN development programmes were poorly funded and in most cases heavily dependent on major donors for their strategic direction, accomplished little in reducing poverty. The UN system developed its own institutional interests that also materially coloured its development programmes.

With the UNDP in the lead, the UN family of agencies, bodies and programmes, made their presence felt in the capitals of the developing countries. In most cases, their capacity in programme delivery remained at levels, which were less than optimum. Their performance was not really reflected at the national or global levels. Bureaucratic procedures and vested institutional interests dictated subservience to donor guidance, encouraged corruption by local functionaries and took out merit and objectivity from the UN’s developmental assistance philosophy. At the same time, the UN bodies of great importance to the developing countries continued to face budgetary and resource problems.

The Bretton Woods system had an existence of its own. It had its own philosophy and own logic which had very little to do with the UN. But in recent years, the UN has been able to develop close cooperation with the World Bank and the IMF as major institutional stakeholders in UN’s global development pursuits

In their formative phase, the UN bodies and agencies responsible for humanitarian work accomplished their mandates. The UNHCR, in particular, played an extremely important role in caring for refugees. While the human rights machinery was imbued with idealism, its inter-governmental forums fell victim to the all-pervasive politicization of the system.

The end of the cold war had provided an opportunity to revert to the concept of collective security. However, while the Security Council was used to punish Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait, it was unable to effectively deal with aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and conflicts in Kosovo, Kashmir, Rwanda, Somalia and other places in Africa and Asia.

Besides inter-state conflicts, the recent years have seen intra-state implosions, involving terrible human suffering and dislocation. The Security Council has not been able to respond to these crises and conflicts in an objective manner. The “overriding” vested political and economic interests of the more influential and powerful players limit its role in conflict prevention and resolution.

In the economic and social fields, the UN can claim some credit. It may not have freed the world of poverty and want, but through a series of major international conferences and summits since the 1990s, a significant contribution has been made to promoting greater awareness of the multi-sectoral issues of development and of the need to address them through global partnership. In particular, three major UN conferences of this century, namely, the Millennium summit, the Financing for Development Conference at Monterrey, Mexico and the World summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, have brought the development agenda into a sharper international focus, and given it a new political momentum.

No doubt, the UN has not fulfilled its promise of peace and prosperity. The critics of the UN would even say that it has failed to live up to the lofty ambitions enshrined in its Charter. It has resolved no major disputes; nor has it prevented many conflicts. It is no more than a debating club, producing voluminous and repetitive resolutions without concrete results in terms of their implementation or enforceability. Its supporters and defenders, on the other hand, feel that the UN has indeed served the purpose of saving humanity, during the second half of the twentieth century, from the recurrence of the great disasters of the first half.

An objective assessment would support the view that despite its failures and constraints, it may not be fair to blame the UN for what it has not been able to accomplish. The onus for its “empowerment or inability” to carry out its Charter role rests on its membership.

The need for a strong multilateral institution capable of meeting the challenges of the new age has never been greater than it is today.

What is needed most is the reform of the UN that makes it stronger, more representative and more effective inter-governmental organization where one-state-one-vote principle should underpin its democratic and participatory character. This requires restoration of the primacy of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative policy-making organ of the UN through its involvement in all decisions of global relevance and impact, and democratization of the Security Council through rationalization of the veto power and permanent membership and increase in the number of non-permanent members.

The working methods of the UN system should also be reviewed and streamlined to ensure greater efficiency and coordination in implementation of the decisions and internationally agreed goals and commitments.

The writer is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.

Distributive justice & Shariat

DISCUSSIONS of distributive justice concern the unequal access of persons in society to the material means of well-being. The term, “justice,” does not have the same meaning for all who use it.

A persuasion known to political and social theory as “Social Darwinism,” propounded chiefly by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) in England and William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) in America, would have us believe that life is a battle in which the “fit” not only survive but prevail, and the incompetent get trampled down. This, they think, is “just,” for it is the law of nature, and attempts to interfere with its operation would be entirely counter-productive. The state and society owe the poor nothing: they are poor because they are lazy, ignorant, and imprudent.

Marxism, in its various versions, holds that exploitative arrangements of societal interaction, especially those relating to ownership of the means of production, force poverty and deprivation upon working people. This state of affairs can, and should, be replaced by one that establishes collective ownership, gives all according to need and takes according to each person’s ability to pay. That would be justice, properly understood.

Turning to our Islamic shariat, we hear the Prophet (pbuh) as having said: “O Lord I seek refuge in thee from poverty, scarcity, and indignity, and from being oppressed.” The Quran calls upon the believers to help the poor and the needy (which is the same as “spending in the way of the Lord”). How much are they to spend for this purpose? All that is left of their funds after their own needs have been met, says the Quran (2:219). The Prophet admonished that a true Muslim would not eat to his fill if his neighbour stayed hungry. He observed also that God would be estranged from a ruler who had become indifferent to his people’s deprivation.

In a letter to one of his governors, Umar bin Khattab, the second pious caliph, observed that a good ruler was he under whom the people prospered, and an evil one was that under whom they encountered hardships. He is reported to have said also that God would hold him personally accountable if even a camel or a dog, let alone a human, died from hunger while he ruled.

Who is to say what the needs are that one is entitled to meet before going out to help the poor? Muslims are not allowed ostentatious spending. It is all right to live in moderate comfort, but remember that “Allah loves not the prodigal” (Quran, 7:31). Lavish living and conspicuous consumption are wrong. Even if we cannot match them, we might take the lifestyle of the Prophet and that of some of his companions as a frame of reference to guide us.

The shariat does not approve of accumulation. The Quran announces a “painful chastisement” to those who hoard “gold and silver” and do not spend it to help the poor and the needy (9:34). Another brake on accumulation: the shariat forbids all unearned income and, in one version, it does not even approve of ownership of land beyond the amount the owner can till.

The shariat does not call for a general equality of incomes and condition. Nor does it ignore proportionality between the amount and quality of work done and the compensation given. But there can be no doubt that it wants to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor as much as possible.

It is clear that the shariat proceeds from the premise that all humans — by virtue of being human, and regardless of the levels of their native intelligence, acquired skills, and contribution to society — are entitled to the fulfilment of their basic needs. Further, being human, they are entitled to a share in the resources of the earth which are the gift of God to all mankind. Help to the poor is, thus, not charity. The Quran tells us that the poor have the right to a share in the rich people’s wealth (51:19).

It seems that the shariat expects wealthy individuals, first and foremost, to do the needful, while leaving the door open to state action should that become necessary. As we explore this matter further we find ourselves in muddy waters. During the pious caliphate, and certainly during its first fifteen years or so, the great majority of Muslims were deeply dedicated to the Islamic ethical values. The caliph himself, his officials, and many of the Prophet’s companions lived simply, even austerely. Some Muslims did become immensely wealthy while others lived in rather modest circumstances, but none in Madinah and the neighbouring areas were left to starve. In fact, many of them received regular stipends from the public treasury in addition to the income they generated from work.

The government was able to hand out these monies partly because its treasury continued to be replenished by an unceasing flow of “booty” seized in battles, and the “kharaj” paid by non-Muslims, in the territories that were being conquered. As conquests slowed down and the booty diminished, and as many of the non-Muslims converted to Islam and stopped paying ‘kharaj’, the stipends ceased. The gap between the rich and the poor began to widen.

Commitment to the shariat’s values began to weaken, and styles of high living began to surface in Madinah, during the rule of the third pious caliph (644-656). The injunction against accumulation came to be disregarded. Abu Dharr Ghaffari, one of the more austere of the Prophet’s companions, chose to scold the town’s wealthy for their lavish living. They regarded him as a nuisance and got him to be exiled to the Rabza desert where he soon died a destitute.

One may be certain that, even after the pious caliphate, Muslims paid zakat and spent in the way of the Lord, but these outlays could not possibly have sufficed to save everyone from the adversity and degradation of poverty. Throughout our historical experience the great majority of the people in Muslim countries, as in many others, have been relatively poor.

The current Muslim ethos is not especially known for an emphasis on frugality. We like to spend a lot more than we want to save. If our disinclination to save were further augmented by the shariat’s advice against accumulation, would we then be devoid of funds for investment? We would be, but for a newer interpretation of the shariat, embraced by many of our ulema, which assures us that if the holder has paid zakat on the accumulated funds, they have been “purified” and thus made acceptable.

We see that in Pakistan zakat on bank deposits is being collected and spent on helping the needy. But the job to be done is so huge that the current outlays do not amount to much more than a bucket in the ocean. One cannot be certain that the wealthy will voluntarily move to take care of all the poor who need help. Can the state do it?

Poverty alleviation is an objective of public policy. We have been told repeatedly that Pakistan is to be an Islamic welfare state. The needed resources can come either through taxation or by nationalizing a substantial part of the economy. More vigorous and efficient collection procedures may bring in more money, but the scope for new taxes is indeed limited: the existing tax burden, including that of indirect taxes, seems to be heavy enough to bring forth screams of protest.

The alternative (nationalization) is fraught with both practical and doctrinal difficulties. Experience in Pakistan and numerous other places shows that nationalization has messed up, far more than enhanced, national economies. Bureaucrats, who must of necessity run public enterprises, have neither the talent nor the requisite motivation to succeed as business managers.

According to the shariat, not only the earth and its resources but all possessions of individuals belong ultimately to God, and the so-called owners are really no more than trustees who are to hold and employ them for approved purposes. This holding would seem to open the way to nationalization and serves as the theoretical foundation for the ideology called “Islamic socialism.” On the other hand, it is true also that the shariat places a high value on the right to private property, which has led the ulema in Pakistan and elsewhere to declare that land reforms, which involve expropriation, and the government’s assumption of private commercial or industrial property (nationalization), are unlawful. They have dismissed “Islamic socialism” as a contradiction in terms.

This looks like a muddle. The shariat upholds the right to private property and seems to endorse a free and competitive market economy. At the same time, it seem to require a “welfare state” that meets the basic needs of all persons. These two positions are mutually incompatible both doctrinally and practically. Extensive state direction and control, let alone management, of the economy have no precedent in Muslim experience in the Prophet’s time, during the pious caliphate, or in any other pre-modern period. The state in which the basic needs of all persons are met will then have to be regarded as an ideal to which wealthy Muslims, more than their government, should be committed.

We are not to help the poor and the needy only as we encounter them periodically. We must take them out of the state of poverty, give the “lazy” ones the motivation to work, and give all of them education and skills that will make them employable. If public authorities and wealthy individuals in Pakistan move to achieve these goals, the shariat’s call for distributive justice will have been answered as much as it can be.

We would move faster in this direction if the ulema assembled in the MMA were to shift their gaze away from women, General Musharraf, and the LFO and focus it upon the wealthy to urge them, and to keep urging them, to spend their surpluses on educating and training our poor.

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

syed.anwar@comcast.com

Referendum on Constitution

THE fascination for a parliamentary form of government in Pakistan is an enigma. Just consider how its exercise under the Act of 1935, the Constitution of 1956 and that of 1973 with and without Zia’s Eighth Amendment had failed to find roots in the soil and in the minds of the people, and every parliamentary government proved to be worse than its predecessor and gave way to military rule.

The commitment to the system by the politically conscious families and clans numbering, perhaps, no more than a thousand is understandable for under it they find representation in the assemblies disproportionate to their numbers and exert excessive influence on the government institutions. Why the intelligentsia and among them the lawyers in particular are enamoured of it is not at all understandable. Their self-interest, passion and sensibility all lie in equality before the law and civil rights of the citizens. That is guarded no better in the parliamentary form than under the presidential as in the US or in a mix of both, as in France.

The people at large while expecting their elected representatives to be accessible and helpful hardly feel compelled to exercise their right of vote. The form of government is of no interest to them. Their apathy shows in the turnout at polls which hardly ever exceeds 25 per cent but is rigged up to 35-45 per cent by stuffing the ballot boxes or tampering with the count.

The declining voter turnout in successive elections shows the growing apathy of the people. It is in a way their adverse judgment on the performance of their elected representatives and the system in which they work. Rahimbuksh Soomro, a parliamentarian of the past honest vintage, is of the view that if the candidates were not to transport and feed the voters perhaps no one, at least not in the rural areas, would go to vote. The only exception would be some party activists. That explains the hegemony of the rich individuals backed by powerful clans or castes.

The normal election expense in a rural constituency (it is again on the authority of retired Rahimbuksh and his still contesting cousin Illahi Bukhsh) is five to ten times the permissible limit in law. So it was in the October 2002 elections. That anomaly persuaded General Zia to issue a general amnesty for excess expenses in the partyless polls he held in 1985. General Musharraf has not cared to do that and his Election commission has blinked the fact.

That is how the multitudes of Pakistan, poor but proud of their private morals, have been forced to embrace a perverse electoral system. The perversity could be tolerated only if the institutions it produced were to serve the people but they do not. That, looking back, explains the growing feeling that Ayub’s presidential decade, despite its many wrong-doings, was better for the common people than a rigged replica of the Westminster model. That undoubtedly is the nostalgia in rural Pakistan where the majority lives, if not among the more privileged urban classes.

The fast-changing parliamentary governments in the first decade of independence (six in as many years if the first four of Liaquat Ali Khan are counted out) had a redeeming feature despite instability and intrigue. The legislators and ministers did not interfere with the laws and propriety of administration or economy which were managed well by small but efficient cadres of civil servants and specialists.

In the post-Ayub/Yahya era, the cadres both of politicians and civil servants kept expanding but their conduct kept deteriorating to reach an all-time low in the government which General Musharraf dismissed. The charisma and cunning of the leaders mattered but not the institutions which were corrupted or just atrophied.

It is both ironic and sad that the tailored-to-Pakistan-needs system that Musharraf has launched after extensive and expensive studies and screenings by the generals and consultants contains all the evils of the setup he superseded — rather magnified and some more added.

The parliament, which is the hub from which all authority radiates in a parliamentary form of government, at least functioned in the previous periods if only to approve the executive orders. Now, it is not able even to meet. When it does some day (if Musharraf’s new-found flexibility and Jamali’s urge to survive work) litigations arising from the doubtful validity but admitted malpractices of the 2002 elections, changing party loyalties, forged university degrees or rigged up madrassah sanads and, above all, the legality of the system itself will haunt the parliament for as long as it survives.

The legal and moral basis of the parliament (as also of the local governments) is so controversial and questionable that a consideration must be given to the proposition whether it is worthwhile to keep it going through horse-trading, dissembling and deceiving. It is further confounded by the total subversion of the concept of party loyalty which is of essence in a parliamentary system. One may recount just one of the numerous examples of this subversion and its rewards. Mr Javed Ali Shah contested for a National Assembly seat from Khairpur on a PPP ticket but lost to Pir Pagara League’s Sadruddin Shah. Sadruddin, who had also contested and won a sindh Assembly seat, quit his NA seat to become a provincial minister. In the by-election that followed, Javed Ali Shah became a Pagara League candidate and beat his PPP rival. His reward: he figures in Jamali’s brigade of parliamentary secretaries.

Amusingly, the prime minister has appointed 35 parliamentary secretaries and promises to double their number to cope with the increasing work when the parliament isn’t at all functioning. To dispel the charge of bribery or waste of public money the conscientious among them should not receive their pay and perks and the less lucky ordinary MNAs should also return the allowances they have already received till the parliament starts functioning under an agreed arrangement. This gesture should somewhat lessen the rising public anger against them.

Legal doubts are also being entertained about the general and local elections if the legality of the LFO itself is questioned. More important than legalism however is the tremendous physical stress that the new system has generated. Even Prof. Ghafoor Ahmed who does not ordinarily cry wolf says the very survival of the country is threatened. This bizarre mix of law and ground reality leaves no option but to call fresh elections which should also be in the nature of a referendum on the form of government.

The four governments of the 90s and just seven months of the present government seem to have written the denouement of the tragic play of Pakistan’s parliamentary system. The final verdict on its extinction should be sought from the people.

Interestingly enough, though most politicians denounce Ayub and loath Zia for their presidential rule, their progeny and cronies have been given permanent places of honour and profit in the pantheon of parliamentary politics. This contradiction shows the influence of family and money but lack of commitment both to the parliamentary system and Islamic ideology.

The PPP — the parliamentarians, patriots and the original guard of “uncles” — should particularly recall that in the constitutional argument preceding the 1973 Constitution their founder fought to the last for the presidential system and when compelled to surrender to consensus he combined in his person the power and prestige both of the president and prime minister. Nawaz Sharif too went that way and further aspired to be a caliph under his shariat bill. Their presidents, Ch. Fazal elahi and Rafiq Tarar were reduced to objects of public ridicule.

If the separation of powers with checks and balances is truly the aim, it can be achieved only though a genuine presidential system and not by Musharraf’s grotesque invention in which the provincial governments are pitched against their own local councils, the governors and chief ministers fight on postings and transfers, the president and the parliament cannot coexist and all power and money emanate from the centre.

The opponents of Musharraf — ARD, MMA and the rest — who want to overthrow his invented system by undermining the parliament or by street protest also need to recall that the efforts to dislodge Ayub and Bhutto by force resulted not in more democracy but in worse authoritarianism. Zia is dead for 16 years but the country is still living with his legacy of shame and pain.

The wager this time round should be on fair election-cum-referendum, maybe under the supervision of an international agency for we have not been able to conduct one fairly on our own since 1970.