Towards a monolithic system?

One of the problems affecting Pakistan's political landscape has been successive governments' drive to concentrate all power in their own hands, including the affairs of the party in power.

The ruling Muslim League's bid to revamp the PML-Q by merging all smaller factions of the party - except the PML-N - and other like-minded parties into a single party is a move in that direction.

Wrangling within the PML-Q and the prospect of Mian Shahbaz Sharif's return from exile seem to have hastened the process that was first proposed by Senator S.M. Zafar a year ago but dismissed by many as wishful thinking.

There is now talk of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali also assuming the office of the (unified) party's secretary-general. The suggestion reportedly does not go down well with the PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and party cadres loyal to him.

The prime minister, however, is largely seen as a man in whom leaders of the other PML factions and PPP dissidents have placed their trust.

Cliched as it may sound, the ailment, namely, realpolitiking, is chronic to our political flip-flop through an uncertain transition to democratic rule every time the military intervenes and reinvents the wheel to suit its own purpose.

The only constant to stay unchanged in this unending game all through our chequered political history is the effort of the ruling establishment to further marginalize whatever little opposition it allows for form's sake.

The PPP is well accustomed to being at the receiving end of reviling and persecution since General Zia's time, but the current establishment has done one better by luring away some of its cadres by doling out ministries and masterminding the creation of the PPP-Patriots.

The remaining People's Party leadership is now on the same wavelength as the PML-N and other smaller components of the ARD. But to what end? In the absence of a well-planned campaign for mass contact and a determined drive for genuine democratic restoration under credible leadership, what good is an opposition if its purpose is restricted to merely complaining of obstruction and denied opportunities? Neither the ruling coalition nor the opposition has a manifesto or a plan addressing the people's problems or providing for long-term democratic institution-building.

The system has come to its present sorry pass because of periodic interruptions of the political process and the military's inability to resist the temptation to rule, directly or indirectly.

It would be a folly to believe that the demons of instability haunting the nation can be defeated by cobbling together quasi-democratic governments using undemocratic means, political blackmail, plea bargaining or simply by buying and selling loyalties.

In spite of all this, it is plain that the ruling party needs a further push to keep it from falling apart. The PML-Q now seems to consider expansion as its only option in the face of mounting political pressure from the opposition and the constant squabbling over spoils of power within the ruling coalition.

But combining party and government offices is definitely the wrong way to go about consolidation. This practice has weakened political parties and obliterated the distinction necessary between a party and its government.

The establishment would do well to leave the party to decide its own course of action, and the prime minister ought to resist the demand of accepting a party office just to keep his government in place. This is necessary to make some sense of the hash the proponents of 'real' democracy have made of politics in the country.

Chashma agreement

It is reassuring to see that China and Pakistan have signed a contract for the construction of the second unit of the Chashma Nuclear Power plant. The project is of vital national importance.

The 300-megawatt (MW) second unit of the Chashma plant, which is expected to be operational in 2009, will help Pakistan correct its generation imbalances in favour of a cheaper source of energy.

Under the 2002 policy for power generation projects, the focus has shifted from meeting the rise in demand for power to promoting cheaper and indigenous sources of power and developing renewable energy sources.

As of now, Pakistan has an installed generation capacity of 18,598 MW. Of this, nuclear power accounts for barely three per cent while the bulk of the power comes from thermal sources which stands at 65 per cent, followed by 32 per cent hydroelectric power.

Pakistan plans to drastically reduce its dependence on thermal power in the coming decade so that cheaper non-oil sources of energy make up the bulk of its generation capacity.

Sino-Pakistan collaboration in nuclear power production goes back to the early 1980s when, disappointed by the refusal by certain western countries to sell nuclear equipment for power production, Pakistan turned to China.

Chashma-I, which was commissioned in 1999, is the result of this cooperation in the nuclear field for peaceful purposes. Beijing has done well to make it clear that, like Chashma-I, Chashma-II will also be under international safeguards since this project has nothing to do with nuclear weapons technology.

There is a genuine need for Pakistan to explore alternative sources of energy. It cannot afford a rising oil bill to meet thermal generation requirements while the vagaries of weather and rainfall make hydro-power generation an uncertain prospect. To meet this gap, Pakistan has turned to nuclear power. Chashma-II is a step in that direction. One hopes more projects will follow as Pakistan's power generation needs increase.

Murder in Macedonia

The excess of zeal with which some countries have been siding with or applauding America's war on terror can sometimes lead to gross injustice, as seems to have been the case with Macedonia.

In its attempts to curry favour with Washington, the government of the newly-formed state admitted last week that in 2002 its then interior minister had masterminded a plan to lure Pakistani immigrants into the country on the pretext of transporting them to a western European country.

It also goes to prove that staged police encounters, in which innocent people are gunned down so that officials can claim success in fighting crime or terrorism, are not the exclusive domain of law enforcement forces in the Third World.

Six Pakistanis and one Indian who fell into the trap were taken by Macedonian police to the outskirts of the capital Skopje where they were shot in cold blood. This ruthless killing was then called a successful operation by the minister who had claimed that "Muslim terrorists" trying to infiltrate Macedonia to strike at western embassies had been engaged by his forces and killed.

When the incident was reported in March 2002, the relatives of the six Pakistanis refuted all allegations that they were terrorists. In fact, one English-language monthly magazine in this country even exposed the work of the Macedonian police as nothing but a pre-planned hatchet job done to please western powers and to score some points with the Americans.

Such was the state of paranoia in the West at that time following the events of 9/11 that these protests fell on deaf ears. Perhaps, the guilt of that ghastly deed, and the fact that the man who masterminded the murders is no longer the country's interior minister, seem to have made the current Macedonian government realize that the crime must no longer be hidden from the world.

Pakistan must follow and monitor the investigation launched by the Macedonian government to ensure that the families of those killed get justice. It should also ask that country to consider paying compensation to the bereaved families and to tender an apology for the crime.