| 19 April 2004 | Monday | 28 Safar 1425 |
Positive signals
Cinema in crisis
The killing of Hamas Gaza chief Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is more than an act of madness on the part of Israel. It is now clear that it is part of Ariel Sharon's plan to eliminate one Palestinian leader after another.
The fact that Mr Sharon publicly declared all Palestinian leaders, including Yasser Arafat, "marked for death" soon after Israeli missiles killed Hamas supreme leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in Gaza City on March 22 lends further credence to this view.
The attack on Mr Rantissi came hours after a suicide bomber struck at an Israeli border check post in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing one Jewish soldier and wounding another - providing the excuse the Israelis needed to carry out another assassination.
Condemnation of the attack has been voiced by governments and organization around the world except for the US, which has said that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorist (suicide) attacks.
For all practical purposes this is open endorsement of Israel's state terrorism and its plan to eliminate the Palestinian leadership. Given Mr Bush's nod last Wednesday to Israel's unilateral decision to withdraw from parts of Gaza in exchange for retaining larger Jewish settlements in the West Bank and denying the Palestinian refugees the right to return to their lands in Israel, even an objective observer will be hard pressed to draw any other conclusion.
By the way things are being allowed to slip out of control in the Middle East, it is well nigh impossible to consider any prospects for peace. Mr Sharon's so-called 'peace' plan, and America's acceptance of it in deference of its own long-standing policy, has virtually sealed the fate of the internationally-backed roadmap to peace that was unveiled by none other than President Bush himself only last year.
The Palestinian prime minister's assertion that Mr Rantissi's killing "is a direct result of American encouragement and the complete bias of the (Bush) administration (for) the Israeli government" cannot be refuted.
America's support for Israel's unilateral actions and its gang sterism, which Washington's staunchest European allies also condemn as "unlawful" and "unacceptable", has only worked to legitimize Mr Sharon's twisted logic that makes no distinction between secular Palestinian organizations and militant Islamist groups.
The sudden shift in American policy is thus helping to further the right-wing Israeli government's murderous designs on all Palestinian leaders and leading the region towards greater violence and chaos.
It is the glaring injustice inherent in the situation that is driving more and more Palestinians closer to the militant viewpoint held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. As popular passions run high, the Palestinian Authority itself is forced to side with those whose vision of a Palestinian state clashes with its own.
The Palestinian people have been forced into a position where every means of resisting and fighting occupation is seen as legitimate. It is equally disquieting to note the lack of forceful action on the part of influential Arab countries.
They should back the Palestinian cause and come out more strongly and with one voice against Israeli and US policies. Mere verbal condemnation of Israel by the Arab League is hardly the response warranted by the latest turn of events: it should consider economic and other measures, and review the Israeli boycott regime that has for all practical purposes been allowed to lapse.
At the very least, the Arabs should move the UN General Assembly to declare Israel a terrorist state. They should not let the war on terror confuse the issue of the colonization and dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Positive signals
The auction of two mobile phone licences for $582 million on Wednesday in an open bidding process organized by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) gives a positive signal about the telecom sector in the country.
By opting for open bidding, the government has been able to get the best price under the circumstances for its cellular phone licences. Considering that the PTA chairman had given the floor price for the sale at $100 million per licence last month, it can be assumed that the final price exceeded the expectations of all concerned.
The challenge now for the PTA would be to ensure a level playing field for all the operators in this sector and better mobile phone services for the public.
Under the new cellular phone policy, the government plans to increase the number of mobile phone users in the country from the present three million subscribers to 15 million in the next four years.
This quantum jump can only be achieved if mobile phone services improve and calling costs come down. There have been many complaints in the past against mobile phone companies that charge excessively on the one hand and provide substandard service on the other.
In this regard, it is encouraging to see that mobile phone operators already in the field have started to make substantial investments to improve their infrastructure as well as the technology they use.
Despite all the progress made, the cellular phone policy has a number of inconsistencies that need to be removed. For one, the issue of determining the licence fees for the older companies, some of which have been in the field for over 10 years, remains unresolved.
The PTA has to play a more active role in supervizing and regulating the telecom sector. In this, the authority has to look after the interests of both the private sector players and the phone users and not just its own. If this is done, one can expect more positive developments taking place in the telecom sector in the future.
Cinema in crisis
Something needs to be done to address the concerns raised by the Pakistan Film Exhibitors Association in its on-going campaign to highlight its problems. Heavy taxes, rampant piracy, and an unrelenting onslaught, first from satellite TV and now cable TV, have reduced the number of cinemas in the country by 80 per cent from their heyday in the 1970s.
The government should listen to the concerns of the film exhibitors and offer them some kind of tax relief. After all, entertainment should be one area that the government should not tax heavily because the average Pakistani has few avenues for recreation. However, even if such help does materialize, the troubles of the cinema owners will not disappear.
The malaise runs deeper. True, cable's growing popularity and piracy might be part of the reason but the real factor is the abysmal standards of films being produced in Pakistan.
Almost all recent releases have done badly at the box-office and the reason for this has to do with the fact that those who finance Pakistani films persist in making productions on hackneyed story lines, outlandish plots, replete with bad acting, crass dialogue and shoddily-choreographed dance numbers.
All this would have been somewhat digestible for audiences had the film industry achieved a certain level of artistic and technical competence in presentation. But that is hardly the case.
The result is that the kind of films being produced here are so bad and disappointing that not many people would like to go to a cinema. A concerted effort should be made by the film industry to shed the mediocrity and unoriginality that have become its defining traits.
The establishment of an acting institute, an actors' guild, and provision of training opportunities for those involved in film production could help set some minimum professional standards.