| October 26, 2003 | Sunday | Sha’aban 29, 1424 |
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Iraqi civilian deaths
Why this blooper?
THE repeated failure of the ruling party to keep the National Assembly in quorum is a sad commentary on the members’ commitment to democracy and democratic institutions. The current session again had to be adjourned on Friday for lack of quorum, which requires just 86 of the 342 members of the house to be present. This is the 13th time that the assembly was not found to be in order. The opposition has been virtually boycotting the NA and the Senate as part of its protest over the LFO. It stages a token appearance during sessions only to make its point by thumping desks and shouting slogans and then walking out. But that still leaves almost 200 members belonging to the ruling PML-Q and its allied parties — a number more than sufficient to enable the assembly to hold its session.
Even without the opposition, the PML-Q could get some parliamentary business done, hold the question hour, which has tremendous value as a means of subjecting ministers to accountability, and let private members’ bills be moved. Indeed, the practical thing to do would have been for the prime minister and his colleagues to encourage coalition members to assume some of the responsibilities abdicated by the opposition and steer substantive legislation through parliament on issues that enjoy a degree of consensus. But the perfunctory manner in which NA sessions are being approached tends to confirm the impression that they are held merely for fulfilling the constitutional requirement of the minimum number of days parliament should meet and that no one is terribly interested in taking part in any serious legislative business. The electorate will consider it extremely odd that in these circumstances its representatives should demand that their remuneration be raised.
The situation is not a new one. Military interventions have prevented the establishment of proper parliamentary traditions. The political process has been cruelly pummelled and beaten out of shape. But when elected civilian governments have been in power, they have also treated parliament and democratic institutions with studied disdain. Prime ministers have been notable for their absence from the house rather than for their presence. Views expressed on the floor of the house have been ignored. There have been many occasions when the speaker or the Senate chairman has been forced to instruct ministers to be present when subjects relating to their portfolios are under discussion. But nothing appears to have changed. When parliament and other vital institutions, including the judiciary, are given little respect by elected leaders and legislators, it becomes easier for generals to overturn the constitutional order and get away with it. Someone once wrote that after every war, there is a little less democracy to save. In our case, with every military intrusion, there seems to be less democracy to save. But whatever little that we have, it is worth saving, and this can only be done if those elected by the people to represent them work to preserve democratic values and institutions. As it is, not a great deal of space is available for parliament to function effectively, but by failing to make full use of it, we will be cutting the ground further from under our feet. Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali may not be able to do much by way of making or influencing policy, but he can at least try to set a precedent by regularly taking part in parliamentary proceedings and ensuring that his party legislators do the same.
THE US-based rights group, Human Rights Watch, in its latest report has accused the US-led occupation forces of excessive use of force against Iraqi civilians. The report says that 94 cases of deaths in Baghdad at the hands of the occupation forces, occurring between May and September this year, need to be investigated. The 56-page report is based on 60 interviews with families of the Iraqi victims, Iraqi rights groups, Baghdad police, and judicial and US military sources operating in the Iraqi capital. It notes the US military’s refusal to maintain any record of civilian casualties in occupied Iraq, saying “such an attitude suggests that civilian casualties are not a paramount concern” for the occupation forces. The report condemns what it calls the “use of excessive” and “disproportionate force” against the civilian population by US combat troops policing Baghdad’s five million citizens.
As the US and its coalition partners have discovered since the fall of the Saddam regime last April, Iraq is not the safest of places for their occupation forces. Sustained guerilla attacks by angry Iraqis against the coalition forces have become routine occurrences across Iraq, but this does not give the occupation forces a licence to kill civilians on the slightest pretexts. The findings of the report in question suggest that this is exactly what is being done. The figure of 94 “unwarranted” civilian deaths over a period of just four months in Baghdad alone is a matter of grave concern. These and other civilian casualties must be investigated to check alleged human rights violations. War crimes should be the last thing the Americans would want to be accused of in occupied Iraq.
A GROUP of parliamentarians from Sindh attending a seminar in Karachi the other day was told that nearly Rs500 million from the budget of the population welfare ministry remained unutilized last year. The reason, it was said, was that the ministry did not know how much fund it had in its coffers. The irony is that the seminar was organized by the provincial population welfare department itself. Just goes to show how the ministry and its departments are lost in a bureaucratic maze where nobody seems to care about putting an action plan in place and following it up. Surely, the Sindh population welfare department is partly to blame for this inexcusable omission.
Planning and implementing a population welfare programme must become a top priority in a poor country like Pakistan which has the highest population growth rate in South Asia. Years of neglect in this sector have only generated more poverty, unemployment, and a sense of despair among the majority of underprivileged sections of society. If the trend continues and proper attention is not paid to lowering the current birth rate — estimated at well over two per cent even by official estimates — Pakistan will not be able to effectively realize its socio-economic goals in the years to come. To start with, the working of the ministry of population welfare needs to be made less bureaucratic and more functional. If small NGOs with limited resources working in the social sector can make a difference in the lives of the communities they serve, there is no reason why a ministry with an annual budget of over two billion rupees cannot do much more.