Lawmakers & development

The allocation of a record Rs. 202 billion this year for the Annual Development Programme has enhanced the eagerness of the various political players to make use of these large funds for the development of the country as well as their regions or constituencies.

Over the years the development funds are likely to increase particularly in the areas of large dams and costly irrigation projects and long highways. So the MNAs, MPAs and Senators want to have an effective say, if not an active role, in the utilization of these large funds.

Simultaneously, there is a sense of vacuity among the members of the national and provincial assemblies and the Senate in respect of playing an effective role in political and economic matters unless they are high in the ruling coterie.

They find themselves unimportant members of a set-up in which the labyrinthine bureaucracy has control of the system and the all-powerful military establishment asserts itself quietly and, when necessary, openly.

This is not necessary because at the moment the set-up is headed by a powerful and assertive general with his fellow commanders advising and assisting him in decision-making.

It has happened in the past as well as when the political rulers depended more and more on the bureaucracy and a little coterie of their own cronies. On the other hand, the emoluments of the legislators have more than doubled but few of them are seen in the assemblies or the Senate during their brief and often tumultuous sittings.

To add to the old and frequent absence of quorum in the House there is now the frequent walk-out with the TV channels showing mostly empty chairs. When there is no walk-out there are no relevant ministers present to answer the questions of members or respond to opposition suggestions.

Meanwhile, the official or non-official role of the legislators has expanded after the non-party elections were held in 1985 by Gen Ziaul Haq at the end of the third round of martial law rule in the country.

Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo realised the need for a large political party to support the government in the parliament and get the bills passed. Otherwise he would have to send official whips around to the independent members each time to enlist their support for the bills which would have been a frustrating exercise.

To keep the members within his new Muslim League he came up with development funds for them on the basis of Rs. 5 million for each while the members of the provincial Assemblies got a half of that. But the funds were not released in cash to the members until the projects they had suggested were approved by the relevant officials to the executing agency.

Abuses began soon after the scheme commenced. While the ruling party members could be given more than the funds they were entitled to, the opposition members were denied the funds or given too late, after a great deal of higgling and haggling.

Some used the funds in the rural areas to build roads to their farms or farm houses or homes. Some built schools in their areas but used them as their guest houses and even as cattle sheds.

When Lt-Gen. Moinuddin Haider was governor of Sindh he was told about 2,000 school buildings were abused in this manner and he ordered their immediate vacation. But if the schools were vacated of the local landlords' occupation or misuse, he was told the doors and windows would vanish the next day.

Hence until a proper use of the buildings was decided on and arrangements made to take due care of them, the school buildings should be allowed to stay in the possession of the legislators.

Over the years the non-legislative role of the lawmakers has increased. In addition to the development funds earmarked for them, they were allowed to recommend candidates for some federal and provincial jobs.

That made them a kind of mini-public service commissions with some of them who were close to the government getting far more of their favourites appointed than others. The job-giving began in the days when Benazir Bhutto was prime minister.

In the present set-up, the emoluments of the legislators have again been doubled and their development funds increased. The question arose whether the parliament members wanted real sovereignty or higher salaries. The answer was they wanted both.

And since they could not exercise their sovereignty in actual practice, the salaries and development allowances were doubled. And now Prime Minister Shujaat Hussain says that while some members were getting rupees one million as development funds, some others were getting Rs. 10 crore.

He wants this abuse to end, and his suggestion is that the development programme should be implemented by committees of Pakistan Muslim League legislators and at places where PML is not represented a committee of the PML should do the job.

The suggestion has not been taken up by anyone in the political set-up. He has come up with a series of such suggestions to which he had not given serious consideration.

After the non-party elections of 1985 an important development is the birth of the multi-tiered Local Bodies system. Danial Aziz, chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau, says the local Body system is to be amended.

We have to see what shape it takes and what efficacy it has after such amendments. Some are even suggesting the Local Body system should be based on party-based elections instead of non-party elections, as it is now.

However, no party committee can supervise development programmes as they will be partisan, more so in Pakistan where the feudal lords who head such committee do not bother for the views or objections of others.

Meanwhile, the supreme development planning body, the Planning Commission, seems to have lost its clout as it is occasionally consulted by the government now. It's only when large public sector investment is proposed that its views are sought by the government.

The Planning Commission should be there as the super think-tank whose views should be solicited on major public sector projects. It is there to see the whole picture and try to put the pieces together.

A development outlay of Rs. 202 billion cannot be spent in a year without seeing how it fits into the big national picture and how effective will be the return for such large investment, and whether its priorities are right. And Local Bodies should deal with local development projects. Those who execute local protects should finally rise to the top and make use of their grassroots experience to serve the nation well.

The National Assembly and the Senate should deal with national and inter-national issues and take to task erring provincial governments and assemblies. The NA has 39 Standing Committees with well rewarded chairmen to look into the national affairs, particularly the performance of various ministries and key divisions. They have not been doing that job seriously or earnestly. They should do that now.

If instead they are busy in the parliament building trying to get their development schemes approved or obtain more funds, or get jobs for their relations or friends they would not be performing their basic duty. And the National Assembly and the Senate will be empty too often.

The 39 Standing Committees should be coming up with their annual reports as the Auditor General of Pakistan does and expose the corrupt practices in the government. There can be no good governance without the standing committees doing their jobs diligently and consistently.

It may not be easy for the federal parliament and government, the provincial governments and the Local Bodies to divide their jobs and do them well. But they have to learn co-existence with the opposition in a country where it has not been common.

The Planning Commission as an autonomous body should also publish its annual report so that the economists, non-official experts and journalists could know its views on various development issues.

The Local Bodies should supervise the manner in which the police functions, the education and health departments and the sanitary divisions, beginning with water. The Local Bodies should also come up with their annual reports which should be discussed by the Local Councils in the presence of the press. If such steps are taken, the elected members will not feel they have so little to do or they have so little voice in the affairs of the country.

Above all, in a country with a third of the people living below the poverty line of a dollar a day the elected representatives of the people from the Local Bodies to the parliament must see to it the taxes collected are well used and the developments funds are effectively utilised.

Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain says after becoming prime minister Shaukat Aziz will look after finance and good governance. The benefit of his economic reforms cannot reach the people without real good governance. Without that the poor will not get their share in the new wealth, if not be a part of the old wealth.

A meeting with al-Baghdadi

Outside, on Sayed Ayatollah Ahmed Hassani Al-Baghdadi's little lawn, the temperature is touching 60 degrees. But inside his spacious library with its shelves of leather-bound volumes of Islamic science and law, the political heat soars between 3,000 degrees and minus 20.

The Shia 'marja' are known for their outspokenness but Sayed Al-Baghdadi more than speaks his mind. The Americans occupied Iraq as part of a Zionist project, he announces.

They will not leave Iraq because they intend to steal Iraq's oil. The new US-appointed Iraqi government are "collaborators." And Sayed al-Baghdadi, remember, is a highly respected and very influential 'marja' whose lectures draw students from all over Iraq.

When I ask him to talk about the current situation of Iraq's Shia population, he responds with an attack on my question, suggesting that the world's press are involved in a vast project to separate Sunni from Shia.

When I ask him what would happen if the Americans left next week, he roars back at me. "Impossible! The Americans will not retreat from Iraq because they have strategic benefits in the region from Afghanistan to Morocco... How can you ask such a question?"

Sayed al-Baghdadi looks older than his 59 years but he has the energy of a tiger, leaping from the floor to retrieve a volume of history, on tip-toe to find a copy of his own biography, his voice bellowing and booming across the library - the roaring air-conditioner is no match for him - his right hand, forefinger pointed, bouncing up and down when he refers to "the British spy, Miss Bell."

Poor Gertrude Bell, she thought she understood Iraq and knew very little about it when she died after the First World War. But she could hardly have expected to find herself on Sayed al-Baghdadi's list of villains.

"The press are putting a Zionist-American cover on the war in Iraq," he says. "They say there is only a triangle in which the Sunnis are fighting the occupation. But there were operations in Kerbala and Hilla and Diwaniya (Shia cities) before the 'intifada' of the 'Mehdi Army' - this fact unmasks the lies of the press agencies.

The Shia insurrection led by the 'Mehdi Army' was a symbol of the emotional ties with their brothers from the Sunni areas. Now the CIA and MI6 and other foreign intelligence services are saying there will be a civil war if the American army retreats."

Sayed al-Baghdadi's forefinger goes up like a warning beacon. "This is a play, a scenario of theirs. This civil war will not happen because the Iraqi people are linked by their Arabic origins and religion.

So when this 'civil war' threat didn't work, the intelligence service invented the character of Zarkawi (the al-Qaeda member whom the Americans claim is in Iraq). Then a mosque explodes or a 'Husseiniya' (Shia house of worship) blows up or a Shia religious leader is killed.

Then the local press - the collaborationist press - say like the Dawa Party and the National Conference of (Ahmed) Chalabi that there will be civil war like this if the Americans go."

The Sayed's scorn for the press will last throughout our interview. So will his anger towards the American-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi and his president Gazi Ageel Yawar.

His is a cocktail of political argument and religious history. "The Americans theoretically handed over power to their collaborators, Allawi and Yawar, but those people don't have a patriotic nationalist history. The Shia follow the lines of the Imams and they coordinate with the Sunnis.

Even if the Sultan is a Sunni - even if he is a dictator or oppressor - we will follow him and obey him, and we will not obey the idolators. Our Imams fought with the Amawayin states (the Caliphates who opposed the Imams Ali and Hussein) and with the Abbasids and with the sectarian Ottomans.

"Miss Bell, the British spy, was writing to her father and to her minister that the Shia will not fight with British soldiers because the sectarian Turks had killed so many Shia.

But the Shia fought the British in Basra in 1914 and later, in 1920, the Shia and the Sunni fought together and the British were shocked. And today there is a strategic relationship between the Sunni and the Shia and they will continue resisting the occupation."

Almost inevitably, it turns out that the Sayed's own father and grandfather were involved in the 1914 Basra insurgency against the British. Sayed al-Baghdadi went into exile in Damascus for 10 years to avoid Saddam Hussein's wrath, so he is no apologist for the old regime.

But he has no doubts about America's intentions. "The new American embassy is the largest in the world and there are many CIA in the embassy. American military bases are on both sides of Iraq and in the mountains in the north where they have the means to 'listen in' to the entire Middle East.

America is not a charitable organisation to save the Iraqi people from dictatorship. Saddam Hussein was himself an American agent." According to the Sayed, when America invaded Iraq "to start its new Middle Eastern project", Iraq was "like a sheep", exhausted by unjust sanctions and wars.

"The Americans came to steal the petrol...That's why there was a struggle between the Americans and the European powers. But now they have reached a deal by establishing the "multinational forces". They changed the name but the occupation still exists."

Suddenly the electricity cuts out, the roaring air-conditioner dies and within seconds the outdoor heat moves like a cowl across the thick carpets. But Sayed al-Baghdadi is on his feet again, handing me a photocopy of his hand-written 'ishtihad', the certificate which authorises him to issue 'fatwas' - religious rulings - and quoting from his own biography. "He still continues to lecture and discuss science in a unique way," he reads from the text about himself.

"From childhood he was a revolutionary who by nature could not be misled." The Sayed shows me a photograph of him kneeling next to Ayatollah Khomeini and begins to list those who have referred to his books and character, including Sayed Mohamed Fadlallah and the writer Khaled Rashid.

Then just before the air-conditioner growls back to life, he turns to his son-in-law and - in reference to me - says quietly: "He is either a liberal man or a spy." But half an hour later, he signs one of his books - "Power and the Religious Shia Foundation" - for me. "In the name of God," he writes, "this is a gift to brother Mr Robert with good wishes and regards." No 'fatwas' against Fisk, it seems.- (c) The Independent

Why Arabs lag behind

It was just a random statistic, but a telling one: only 300 books were translated into Arabic last year. That is about one foreign title per million Arabs. For comparison's sake, Greece translated 1,500 foreign-language books, or about one hundred and fifty titles per million Greeks. Why is the Arab world so far behind, not only in this but in practically all the arts and sciences?

The first-order answer is poverty and lack of education: almost half of Arabic-speaking women are illiterate. But the Arab world used to be the most literate part of the planet; what went wrong? Tyranny and economic failure, obviously. But why is tyranny such a problem in the Arab world? That brings us to the nub of the matter.

In a speech in November, 2003, US President George W. Bush revisited his familiar refrain about how the West has to remake the Arab world in its own image in order to stop the terrorism: "Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.... because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty" - as if the Arab world had wilfully chosen to be ruled by these corrupt and incompetent tyrannies.

But the West didn't just 'excuse and accommodate' these regimes. It created them, in order to protect its own interests - and it spent the latter half of the twentieth century keeping them in power for the same reason.

It was Britain that carved the kingdom of Jordan out of the old Ottoman province of Syria after the First World War and put the Hashemite ruling family on the throne that it still occupies.

France similarly carved Lebanon out of Syria in order to create a loyal Christian-majority state that controlled most of the Syrian coastline - and when time and a higher Muslim birth-rate eventually led to a revolt against the Maronite Christian stranglehold on power in Lebanon in 1958, US troops were sent in to restore it.

The Lebanese civil war of 1975-90, tangled though it was, was basically a continuation of that struggle. Britain also imposed a Hashemite monarchy on Iraq after 1918, and deliberately perpetuated the political monopoly of the Sunni minority that it had inherited from Turkish rule.

As Gertrude Bell, an archaeologist and political adviser in the British administration in Baghdad, put it: "I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority, otherwise you'll have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil."

When the Iraqi monarchy was finally overthrown in 1958 and the Baath Party won the struggle that followed, the CIA gave the Iraqi Baathists the names of all the senior members of the Iraqi Communist Party (then the main political vehicle of the Shias) so they could be liquidated.

It was Britain that turned the traditional sheikhdoms in the Gulf into separate little sovereign states and absolute monarchies, carving Kuwait out of Iraq in the process. (Saudi Arabia, however, was a joint Anglo-US project.)

The British Foreign Office welcomed the Egyptian generals' overthrow of King Farouk and the destruction of the country's old nationalist political parties, failing to foresee that Gamal Abdul Nasser would eventually take over the Suez Canal. When he did, it conspired with France and Israel to attack Egypt in a failed attempt to overthrow him.

Once Nasser died and was succeeded by generals more willing to play along with the West - Anwar Sadat, and now Hosni Mubarak - Egypt became Washington's favourite Arab state: to help these thinly disguised dictators to hang on to power, Egypt has ranked among the top three recipients of US foreign aid almost every year for the past quarter-century. And so it goes.

Britain welcomed the coup by Colonel Qadhafi in Libya in 1969, mistakenly seeing him as a malleable young man who could serve the West's purposes. The United States and France both supported the old dictator Bourquiba in Tunisia, and still back his successor Ben Ali today.

They always backed the Moroccan monarchy no matter how repressive it became, and they both gave unquestioning support to the Algerian generals who cancelled the elections of 1991 - nor did they ever waver in their support through the savage insurgency unleashed by the suppression of the elections that killed an estimated 120,000 Algerians over the next ten years.

'Excuse and accommodate'? The West created the modern Middle East, from its rotten regimes down to its ridiculous borders, and it did so with contemptuous disregard for the wishes of the local people. - Copyright

Malaysia's policy perspectives

After former Prime Minister Mahathir gave a bold and out-spoken profile in foreign affairs to his country, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi maintains the tradition of candour and courage when it comes to calling a spade Uncle Sam's spade.

Perhaps this is why, appearing at a Congressional committee hearing in Washington DC in June 2004, the US Under-Secretary of State James Kelly referred to Malaysia as "a respectful critic" of US foreign policy.

It would have been more appropriate if the US official had used the words "a respected critic" by which Malaysia was afforded the recognition and respect it so richly deserves in contrast to the word "respectful", which suggests that it is Malaysia that gives all the respect due to the USA.

Be that as it may, Malaysia today enjoys a pre-eminent position in the comity of nations, both by virtue of its remarkable development over the past three decades and because of the direct and realistic approach that it applies to its international relations.

In discussions with senior analysts at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, observations about how Malaysia views itself at the regional and global levels provide revealing glimpses of an exceptional nation conducting itself with rare wisdom.

For instance, despite being blessed with vast natural resources and a vital geostrategic location, keeping in mind that the population (23 million) in comparative terms to Indonesia (over 200 million) its next-door neighbour is small, Malaysia sees itself as "a small country" and, accordingly, conducts its foreign policy.

Yet its international impact is certainly larger than small. The maxim that "there is strength in numbers" motivates Malaysia to give very high priority to its membership of the Association for South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to its relations with ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, South Korea) to the Asia Pacific region, to the Non-Aligned Movement and to the OIC (of which it is the current chairman).

Not wishing to "gang up" against other countries, good relations have existed with North Korea, China and others in east Asia. Even during the US-Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s, the country enjoyed good relations with North Vietnam.

The country tends to incline to the West with which it has had a long association during colonial occupation by the British. But when the West becomes a negative force in world affairs, Malaysia expresses its disapproval in clear terms.

Sharing interests with all developing countries, Malaysia takes a developing country perspective on trade issues in WTO, most often in disagreement with the views of developed countries. As part of NAM and OIC, basic disagreement is unavoidable on crises such as Palestine.

With exports of over $ 95 billion in electronics, petroleum, liquefied gas, wood and wood products, palm oil, rubber, textiles and chemicals and imports of about $ 76 billion in machinery, plastics, chemicals, petroleum products, electronics, machinery, iron and steel products, Malaysia sees itself as one of the most globalized countries in the world, also exposed to the downsides of this new phase in world history.

The country's leadership sees the task of maintaining and strengthening national unity for a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society s the biggest challenge. With one of the most successful pluralistic societies in the world, the government does not wish to become complacent about successes to date. The nation has shown the capacity to be cohesive.

Yet it remains vulnerable even to a single provocative incident that can upset zealously crafted stability. Many of the major decisions taken on the world stage are driven by this concern to preserve national unity.

Fortunately, there is no major military threat to the country. Some signs of small-scale local troubles may occur in and around the Malacca Straits: they are overcome politically without the use of military force.

Of the major strategic issues facing Malaysia, the first is to increase the national competitiveness of the country even as the combination of low-cost products and high-volume exports from China in a whole range of sectors becomes a worrisome threat.

Security represents the second major concern. In an immediate context, steps to enforce effective counter-terrorism and strengthening of maritime security against piracy and illegal shipping in adjacent waters.

But other dimensions of the security challenge are socio-economic: to ensure freedom from hunger and the provision of shelter for the five per cent of the Malaysian population which lives below the poverty line, and for others who may suffer from sharp income disparities.

But security is also required in the struggle between the moderate version of Islam and the extremist version of the faith propagated by the religious political party known as PAS which has lost ground in the 2004 election and whose control of provincial governments is now confined to only one province - Kalantan.

The Kalantan wing of the Barisan National (BN) under Prime Minister Badawi has actually increased its number of seats. President General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan advocates enlightened moderation as the true expression of Islam's essence.

So too in Malaysia from an earlier period, reflecting the strong and progressive orientation of Prime Minister Badawi's own inheritance of rational religious thought as a precious heritage from a widely respected father figure, a concerted attempt is being made to propagate the concept of "Islam Hadihaar". This theme may be translated to mean that "Islam represents all things good".

It is to stress that Islam is compatible with democracy, development, knowledge, modernity and tolerance. "Islam Hadihaar" is not yet a part of public discourse nor a central issue between PAS and BN.

When both sides push the concept there is likely to be an even greater collision between the two versions of Islam represented by PAS and BN. In such a hypothetical conflict, Prime Minister Badawi has a distinct advantage of being strongly endorsed in the 2004 elections by the vast majority of Malaysians.

Sectarianism is strictly discouraged in Malaysia whose Muslims are overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Sunni. Off the record, senior Malaysian officials explain that any other non-Sunni sect is bound to be in some way critical of, or in dissent with, Sunni Islam.

Which then would obligate a response by the vast majority.' Rather than deal with such potentially divisive debates, the country remains monolithically Sunni. A vital indicator of the trust reposed in Malaysia by other Asian countries is the fact that North Korea preferred to conduct some part of its talks process with other nations on the North Korean nuclear issue in Kuala Lumpur.

On the sensitive issue of militancy and violence amongst the Muslims of Southern Thailand in the area bordering Malaysia, the government does not wish to get involved in what it views as an internal affair of Thailand. Any interest that Malaysia takes is discreet, cautious and constructive.

While countries such as Thailand and the Philippines are both democratic, it is believed by some in Malaysia that the real reason for the conflicts in the southern parts of both these neighbouring countries is that there was, in the past, a deliberate effort to dilute the Muslim weightage among the local population by moving non-Muslims into those areas.

The social contract of equity had also been violated. As a reflection of its cautious approach, the Malaysian government refrains from making public statements about conditions in neighbouring countries.

If invited by these countries to render cooperation, Malaysia responds positively. It stresses that a neighbour like Thailand has vast experience in dealing with internal ethnic problems though it does not have any experience in dealing with a Muslim problem in Thailand.

There are very few Muslims in the administrative systems of Southern Thailand but Malaysia notes with appreciation that more jobs and more economic opportunities are now being offered to Muslims in Southern Thailand.

Until about 2003, neither the Philippines nor Thailand recognized the importance of events such as the Muslim New Year by declaring a public holiday on that day. Preferring quiet diplomacy with minimal or no media publicity, Malaysia implements "prosper thy neighbour" programmes through initiatives such as a Malaysian Technical Assistance Programme for less developed countries like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Joint ventures are also encouraged across South East Asia and South Asia. It actively supports the negotiation of free trade agreements between ASEAN, China and India.

Keenly participating in the process of attempted reforms of the United Nations system, Malaysia is aware of the probability that reforms will actually be shaped partly, or even wholly, by powerful vested interests.

One sign is that when meetings are held at the United Nations in New York to discuss reform proposals, most of the veto powers remain absent from such discussions.

Yet Malaysia is convinced that the United Nations has been far more successful as a multilateral system than it is given credit for. Even in the face of American unilateralism, the US needed to obtain a UN resolution to attempt to legitimize the transfer of power in Iraq.

Malaysia supports the concept advocated in a recent book titled: "Tragedy of great power politics" by which the UN could become a global policeman which is given custody of all the world's nuclear weapons.

The writer is chairman of the International Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution and a former minister.