Exit Mahar: who and what next?

Of the four chief ministers elected after the October 2002 election, Mr Ali Mohammad Mahar is the first to go. His exit can be seen to mark the first dent in the existing set-up.

The situation in the other three provinces is far from ideal - Balochistan, too, has had its gory moments. But the recent violence has put the spotlight on Sindh. Mr Mahar's resignation comes in the wake of the trauma Karachi went through in May.

A total of 61 people died in bomb blasts and the disturbances that followed the assassination of Mufti Shamzai and the explosion at Ali Raza Imambargah. As chief minister, he was responsible for maintaining law and order and keeping the law enforcement machinery on its toes.

That he failed to do so does not mean that anyone else in his place would have turned Sindh into a bastion of peace and progress, and his resignation, rumoured much before, should be attributed to other political factors.

The challenges the province faced during his tenure were enormous. Those were, in a sense, a continuation of the unsettled conditions that have characterized life in the nation's biggest city since the mid-'80s.

Ethnic strife, violence on campuses, power breakdowns, water shortages and common crime turned life in Karachi into a nightmare. Worse still, disturbed conditions hit the province economically, leading to a high unemployment rate.

Side by side, the continued trek from villages to Karachi resulted in the mushroom growth of squatter settlements and added to social tensions. These problems would constitute a challenge for any leader, and the government led by Mr Mahar was singularly inept in dealing with any of these.

Thus, the failure has been collective, and not individual, and it remains to be seen how his successor faces the challenge. Mr Mahar kept a low profile, which is not a bad thing given the raucous noises one hears daily from various ministers and politicians; his main failure lay in being unable to take his cabinet colleagues along or to win the trust of allied parties.

Ideally, Sindh needs a chief minister who should be able to carry both the urban and rural populations. This requires a politician who has roots in the interior of Sindh and yet is fully alive to the gravity of the province's urban problems and can respond to them with tact and resourcefulness.

The Sindh Assembly is scheduled to meet today to elect a new leader of the House, who obviously is Mr Arbab Ghulam Rahim. His dash to London to meet Mr Altaf Hussain has confirmed him in his position.

His government, like Mr Mahar's, will consist of a rag-tag coalition cobbled together to keep the PPPP, the majority party, out of power. The PML with 50 seats is now the second largest party in the assembly, next only to the PPPP's 59. Yet these 50 seats were not "earned" by the party in the election; the figure is a result of mergers forced from above. The MQM with 41 is the third largest party.

Theoretically, any government that has elements from both urban and rural areas should serve Sindh well. But as experience since 1988 shows, that has not been the case, because the PPP and the MQM failed to work together and, instead, remained locked in confrontation.

Now that the PPPP has declined to join a coalition, it is for the two next largest parties to prove themselves worthy of the trust reposed in them by the people. What the change in Sindh presages for the federal government should be interesting to watch. As for the MMA, it has only eight seats but its contribution to Mr Mahar's exit seems enormous.

Checking proliferation

The government has done well in introducing in the National Assembly a bill providing for the regulation of transfer of nuclear technology and equipment. This is in conformity with the UN Security Council resolution of April 29 designed to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling in the hands of non-state actors.

Although Pakistan and other Third World countries had questioned many provisions of the draft resolution in the Security Council, it was adopted without much resistance.

The bill called "The export control on goods, technologies, material and equipment related to nuclear and biological weapons and their delivery system", has been introduced in the assembly as part of the process which Pakistan and all other UN members are obliged to follow.

After the Abdul Qadeer Khan episode came into the open, the danger of nuclear proliferation - especially the implications of WMDs falling into the hands of non-state elements - has become pretty clear.

It cannot be denied that even without official involvement, as in the Qadeer Khan episode, the possibility of WMDs falling in the hands of terrorists is very real. The bill provides for 14 year-imprisonment for anyone who transfers nuclear technology in contravention of this law.

A regulatory authority is also to be set up to administer the system. All this is something logical, for nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to proliferate unchecked. Without a law, the government would find itself helpless to check the criminal acts of malfeasant elements. Since research has not been banned, there is really nothing in the bill that would compromise Pakistan's security.

It is, however, important for the government to set up a nuclear security system in the country defining the controls to prevent proliferation and providing for safety measures to protect the citizens living in the vicinity of nuclear projects.

Road tragedy near Abbotabad

The death of 38 people in a road accident involving a truck near Abbotabad is yet another tragic reminder of the dangers of road travel in Pakistan. Over 7,000 people die in road accidents in the country every year, the majority of them involving rashly-driven buses, trucks or other vehicles.

A high proportion of the victims come from poor and impoverished backgrounds, since they are the ones who cannot afford the relatively safer option of travelling in private transport.

Monday's dreadful accident is typical of what happens when a truck, overloaded with people (all pilgrims returning home to their village near Mansehra from a shrine in Murree) goes out of control and plunges down in a ravine.

Though it has yet to be ascertained what led to the accident, certain factors cannot be ruled out. Two most common, and which account for the greatest number of accidents on roads, are reckless driving and vehicle fatigue.

Reckless driving can be tackled to some extent by a stringent enforcement of traffic laws, especially on speeding and overtaking. Often it is found that on the roads in the mountainous north traffic police allow trucks and passenger buses to ply with dangerously heavy loads after receiving a bribe.

The traffic police of Punjab and the NWFP (this particular truck was going from a town in the former to a village in the latter) need to enforce the rules uniformly and those found neglecting their duties should be proceeded against.

As for vehicle fatigue, all commercial vehicles should be tested for their roadworthiness on the basis of their fitness certificates as well as in relation to their actual operational state. Action must also be taken against those found issuing fraudulent fitness certificates.