| 10 October 2004 | Sunday | 24 Shaban 1425 |
Weapons that weren't there
Agenda for the opposition
Promises yet to be fulfilled
Who needs Camp Delta?
I have been receiving lots of drearily similar advice from members of the liberal intelligentsia over the past year, so perhaps this is an appropriate time to graciously give some counsel in return.
Rather than addressing their demands for my withdrawal from exercising my right to speak and assemble - that is, the core of running for elective office - I offer these words to advance their more responsible engagement in recovering their beloved, corporate-indentured Democratic Party. I suggest the following steps toward recovery:
* Reject the mantra "Anybody but Bush, leave it to Kerry, and make no demands." Replace it with the slogan, "If we don't make Kerry better, he will get worse." Scan the major constituencies supporting Kerry - environment, labour, minorities, consumers, civil justice, antiwar, peace groups, civil liberties - and note the absence of any mandates pushing Kerry to take long-overdue stands and campaign on them.
Notice that the corporate lobbies are not behaving in a similar fashion. In fact they pounced on Kerry's early remarks about corporate crime and welfare. Do you now see or hear Kerry or his Web site presenting any concrete platform on tougher law enforcement against corporate abuses of investors, consumers, workers and pension-holders? Or becoming specific on the abolition of vast subsidies, giveaways and bailouts to corporations?
Daily the corporate supremacists pull Kerry - through money, Wall Street advisers and sheer power - in their direction. If the liberals do not demand from Kerry commitments in detail that pull him toward the necessities of the people, guess in which direction he will continue to move. If he wins the election without mandates, corporatist dogma will follow him decisively into the Oval Office.
* Help Democratic liberals who are becoming an endangered species in the so-called red states in the Southern, Rocky Mountain and Plains regions. In significant part, this is due to the abandonment of these states every four years by Democratic presidential campaigns. This results in shrinkage of the Democratic vote right down the line, from the races for governor to Congress to state legislators, mayor and city council. Republicans become ever more entrenched.
Abandonment, as Texas's Ben Barnes has stated, deprives the Democratic Party of a farm team to nourish attractive candidates in the future. I recently returned from Hawaii and Alaska, where I received an earful from Democrats who are never visited by Democratic presidential nominees. This neglectful behaviour feeds on itself, further conceding territory to the Republicans.
* Address increasing reports of serious electronic vulnerabilities and irregularities that could lead to more voter disenfranchisement in several states, including Florida. Also, Jesse Jackson Sr. told me that the Democratic Party is not actively registering 9 million African American voters whose high preference for the Democrats could swing key states. Instead of unleashing hordes of lawyers, operatives and infiltrators to block our access to the ballot and voters' choices in the various states, tell your party to focus on millions of votes that may not be counted or cast because of Republican shenanigans, as well as the 90 million non-voters.
* Press all Democratic candidates at the federal and state level to condemn partisan redistricting. The new, more frequent gerrymandering is carving up our nation's electoral districts so that there is not even a semblance of two-party competition. Liberals have stood idly by and allowed our country to be turned into one in which incumbent-dominated districts account for 95 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. Similar patterns attach to many state legislative elections.
Where there is no practical choice, there is no real election, just a coronation. I know that a three- or four-party system does not interest the intelligentsia, but surely they should turn their attention to the end of the two-party system, as the Democratic Party is crowded to the edges of both coasts heading out to sea.
* Challenge the Democrats who are dominant in the party's hierarchy, including those in the Democratic Leadership Council who have taken bigger and bigger business campaign contributions in exchange for ceding the major economic issues associated with their corporate benefactors. Pro-labour law reform; a living family wage; single-payer health insurance; a serious reduction of the bloated military budget; authentic crackdowns on corporate crime and abuse of investors, workers and consumers; a programmatic commitment to renewable energy and efficiency; defending the impoverished and moving to end deep poverty - these are a few directions that come to mind.
Liberals have become increasingly estranged from demands that their party incorporate these subjects as part of what it stands for. They have settled for the Democrats' saying or doing the right things on the social and cultural issues such as choice, gay and lesbian rights, church-state separation and Social Security. When considered against the deterioration of standards of living, access to justice and the dwindling power of the people vs. giant corporations, the party's offerings are grossly insufficient.
Next time you complain to professional party operatives about their losing to the worst of the Republicans at the local, state and national elections for the past 10 years, don't accept the glib response that Republicans have more money. Ask instead about the grass-roots agendas. And demand a strong move toward public financing of elections. And whenever these professionals answer your complaints with, "But do you know how bad the Republicans are?" ask them, "Why not the best instead of the least worst?" -Dawn/Washington Post Service
The writer is an independent candidate for president in the US elections.
Weapons that weren't there
The new report from the Iraq Survey Group has confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt what most people have assumed for the past year: At the time of the 2003 US invasion, Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, and most of its programmes to produce them were dormant.
In more than a year of investigation, the survey group found "no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart" the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme that had been halted in 1991; there were "no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions" after 1991; and there was "no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW (biological weapons) programme."
Iraq was secretly working on banned long-range missiles and hiding both those programmes and clandestine laboratories from UN inspectors. But the estimates by the CIA and most other Western intelligence agencies that Iraq held large stockpiles of dangerous weapons were wrong, as was much of what President Bush said about the threat.
Mr Bush accepted those basic facts some time ago. He appointed a commission to study why the intelligence about Iraq was so wrong; though it has not yet reported, two congressional investigations have already pointed to many failings by the intelligence agencies. The administration's culpability in ignoring uncertainties in that intelligence, in failing to ask hard questions and in publicly exaggerating flawed estimates has not been thoroughly examined. Our hope is that the independent commission and a continuing congressional probe will fill that gap in the coming months.
In the meantime the report will surely fuel the debate between Mr Bush and Sen. John Kerry about whether the war should have been undertaken. The two have staked out dramatically contrasting positions, focusing on a theoretical question: If the president had known what the Iraq Survey Group now reports, would he have been right to order an invasion?
Mr Bush says he would have made the same decision; Mr Kerry says he would not have. Yet in reality no president could have known what is known now. As long as Saddam Hussein remained in power and refused to cooperate fully with the United Nations, there could have been no certainty about his weapons. Mr Bush had to decide whether the risks of invading outweighed those of standing pat without knowing for sure what U.S. forces would find in Iraq or what would happen once they were there.
Because Mr Bush chose to act, we know what capabilities Iraq did - and did not - possess, and we've learned how difficult it is to occupy and attempt to reconstruct that country. What can't be known is what would have happened had Mr Bush chosen not to invade. Here the new report suggests some answers. Saddam Hussein, it says, was focused on ending international sanctions, which were crumbling before the crisis began.
Had he succeeded, he would have resumed production of chemical weapons and probably a nuclear programme as well. Mr Kerry suggested recently that Saddam Hussein's regime would have collapsed under the inspectors' pressure. That is one possibility; another is that it would have re-emerged as a significant power in the Middle East, and as a de facto or real ally of the Islamic extremist forces with which the United States is at war.
The larger question is how, or even whether, decisions about pre-emptive war can be made in the absence of unambiguous intelligence. -The Washington Post
Agenda for the opposition
The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) have been talking of launching a mass movement to dislodge General Musharraf from one, if not both, of the posts (president and army chief) he occupies at present. Their objective may be sound, but their intended modus operandi is problematic. Mass movements can become very messy and destructive, and they do not always produce the desired results.
Is there another way? I think there is, and that is to take the issue to the Supreme Court if the general does not give up his army post by the appointed day. The launching of a mass movement can be considered as a second, or even a third, option.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain thinks a majority vote in parliament will devise a way to enable the general to keep wearing both hats. This position will not pass muster at the Supreme Court unless some hitherto untold interpretation of "necessity" comes in to guide its deliberations. He is apparently relying upon Article 63 (1-d) of the Constitution, which says that a person shall be disqualified from being elected, and from remaining, a member of parliament "if he holds an office of profit in the service of Pakistan other than an office declared by law not to disqualify its holder."
It follows that parliament can pass a law that will allow the army chief of staff to become a member of parliament, assuming that it can override his constitutionally prescribed oath of office in which he undertakes not to engage "in any political activities whatsoever." (Article 244, and Third Schedule)
Now read this particular provision with Article 41 (2) which says that "a person shall not be qualified for election as president unless he is . . . qualified to be elected as a member of the National Assembly." Shujaat Hussain and company figure that they will get parliament to pass a law that makes the army chief eligible for membership. Having become eligible for election to the National Assembly, General Musharraf will also have become eligible for election as president.
So far so good: let us assume that all of this may be possible, and then ask what happens after the person concerned has been elected as president. Can he remain president at the same time that he is the army chief of staff?
The answer in my view is a resounding no, for election to an office is not the same as occupation and retention of it. Upon his election, Article 43 (1) of the Constitution will apply. It says: "The president shall not hold any office of profit in the service of Pakistan or occupy any other position carrying the right to remuneration for the rendering of services." It follows, as day follows the night and night the day, that immediately upon taking the oath of office the president must give up any other post that he may be occupying.
The Seventeenth Amendment had placed Article 43 (1) in abeyance until December 31, 2004, but it will surely become operative as of January 1. If on that date General Musharraf is still found to be holding on to his uniform, the opposition can go to the Supreme Court for a writ of quo warranto and see where the chips fall. If they fall at the wrong place, it can examine its other options.
The launching of a mass movement should be placed fairly low on the list. For one thing, it is not clear what the slogans will be. No one with any understanding of politics will expect the masses of people to come out on the streets, and remain there long enough, because the "supremacy of parliament" is being eroded. Howsoever noble this cause may be, it is too abstruse to be exciting. Even those few who understand it, and approve of it in principle, will lose no sleep over the diminishing of our parliament, when they recall how poorly it has performed even when its presumed supremacy was intact.
The matter of the general's uniform may be worrisome for students of politics, but the vast majority of our people will not know why it should engage them. Given the fact that elections were held, assemblies are in place, and ministers are going around, they may not understand why and how the general's occupation of two offices at the same time is antithetical to democracy. It seems to me that this issue cannot be efficacious for the purposes of launching a mass movement unless it is joined with that of the people's deprivations.
Some of the deprivations are esoteric and difficult to handle. Take, for instance, the issue of provincial autonomy. It has no value in the context of political agitation unless it is translated to mean that some outside agency (namely, the central government dominated by Punjab) is usurping the rights, and stealing the resources, of the smaller provinces and thus reducing their people to abysmal poverty. There are obviously no takers for such reasoning in Punjab.
The issue of provincial autonomy is indeed linked with the issue of deprivation in Sindh and Balochistan but it will have to be left to the "nationalist" parties and groups in these provinces. The ARD and MMA, both of which will want to keep their support bases in Punjab, cannot do very much with it. The same holds for the related issues of water distribution and revenue sharing.
Deprivation will not make a good slogan in NWFP, for here the MMA itself is the ruling party. It must bear at least part of the blame if it chooses to speak of continuing poverty and insufficient access to civic amenities. There is generalized dissatisfaction in the province with the proposed Kalabagh dam and the fees that should accrue on account of electric power generation. But, on the whole, voices against an outsider's dominance and exploitation are no longer as strident as they were, let us say, 25 years ago. Many of our Pakhtuns have suffered economically as a result of the influx of Afghan refugees during periods of war in their country. But this is not something the blame for which can be laid at Musharraf's door.
The accommodations he has allowed America can be made into a volatile issue. Many Pakistanis, in all ranks and classes, are inclined to believe that the American government is directed by persons who are the enemies of Islam and the Muslim world, want to subjugate Muslim nations and rob them of their resources. On the "pretext" of fighting terrorism and its perpetrators (Al Qaeda, Taliban, extremists, militants, fundamentalists) they have killed tens of thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, destroyed their homes, and laid their lands to waste.
Having said all this, the MMA will say: And, General Pervez Musharraf has chosen to be an ally, indeed an agent, of these enemies of Islam and the Muslim ummah. This could indeed be an explosive issue, and one that might be capable of bringing people out on the streets. For good measure, the MMA will probably add that, directed by America, the general intends to sell the Kashmiri Muslims down the river to appease India.
An anti-American, and peripherally an anti-Indian, movement launched in the name of Islam might cause the present government a good deal of trouble. But otherwise it would be both deceptive and dysfunctional: first because Islamic extremists do threaten our own national integrity and, second, because Pakistan's need for American support, and its consequent status as a junior partner, would not cease if General Musharraf's government were to yield to one headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
But will the MMA be actually able to launch a mass movement? A couple of inhibiting forces may be mentioned. Parties and groups in the ruling coalition, both at the centre and in the provinces, will oppose it; the government's "secret agencies," which are said to have had friendly relations with the MMA components in the past, will intercede, bearing both the proverbial "stick" and "carrot"; Benazir Bhutto will not want to adopt a strong anti-American posture, and even Mr Nawaz Sharif may be reluctant.
There are other influential politicians in the country who do not like the MMA and its programme. I recall that a couple of months ago a spokesman of the Awami National Party (ANP) declared that under no circumstances would his people ever cooperate with the MMA. What are the general's opponents then to do? In the first instance, I think, they should wait to see which way the Supreme Court goes. Even if it goes with the general, the idea of launching a mass movement should be given up. Such movements have done us no good in the past: the anti-Ayub movement brought us General Yahya Khan whose policies caused the country's defeat and dismemberment. The anti-Bhutto movement in the spring of 1977 saddled us with 11 years of Ziaul Haq's disastrous rule.
In the unlikely event that the Supreme Court favours General Musharraf, the opposition should do what the opposition in democracies usually does. It should continue to criticize the government in appropriate forums (in the assemblies and in public meetings outside) by way of preparing public opinion to defeat the present government in the next election. While it might still talk a bit about the supremacy of parliament and the separation of the military establishment from politics, it should focus on issue that touch the lives of our people more directly: expanding poverty, rising prices, growing unemployment, inadequate schools, adulteration in food and drugs, want of health care and other amenities such as safe drinking water, and the present government's failure to ameliorate these problems. If the opposition addressed issues such as these, instead of the ones that are exotic, its fortunes would most likely improve.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.
Email: anwarsyed@cox.net
Promises yet to be fulfilled
The people of Pakistan, by and large, acquiesced in the forced removal of Nawaz Sharif by General Musharraf in the hope that they were trading democracy for security under a neutral, apolitical administration, but for a short period of time. In any case, Nawaz Sharif's rule in his second term of "heavy mandate" had become too personal for the people to mourn his exit. They had seen the substance of democracy fast ebbing away leaving only the form behind.
Has life for the citizens been any safer and the administration of the public affairs better over the past five years, and does the future indeed look rosier? The answers to this question will be many and conflicting. But the hope then entertained that the new government would work rising above party politics was belied at its very inception. Almost every party split up instantly and many politicians switched loyalties to provide a political base to General Musharraf, and so the situation remains after the 2002 elections.
The focus of Musharraf's programme all along has been on accountability, check and balances at the top and the devolution of power to the people at the grassroots, moderation in public life and the rehabilitation of the economy. An appraisal of the extent and the fairness with which this programme has been implemented should help one arrive at a judgment about whether it was worth disrupting a democratic order, howsoever fragile and flawed, by force instead of letting the people change it by ballot.
First comes accountability and the obvious thought whether it has been conducted across the board, irrespective of personal preferences or political affiliations. Perhaps no one who supported the government, or at least chose to lie low, has been arraigned for loan default, corruption or any other kind of felony before the special courts set up for this purpose. If anyone has been, the government or the much-feared National Accountability Bureau should publicize it. All that the common people observe, or are made to believe, is that while some big politicians suspected of corruption are in jail, others are sitting in government. Most are on the run.
Mr Yusuf Raza Gilani has been sent to prison for 10 years and fined a huge sum for making 300 or so appointments in the National Assembly when he was speaker. Very recently, the Sindh fisheries minister who had foisted himself on the fishermen's cooperative society as its chairman appointed 469 people in the society. Mr Raza had the authority to make the appointments, only the selection was flawed and perhaps even unnecessary. The Sindh minister did not have the authority to make appointments nor were so many hands needed and they were all chosen by the minister and at the cost of the fishermen for whose welfare the society exists. (In the good old days when people like Ghulam Rasul Kehar and poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz sat on the board of the society it had but less than 100 employees). The minister in question remains in the cabinet but it is a small mercy that fisheries is no longer his portfolio.
The process of Accountability as limited to governments of the past or to people out of favour can be justifiably viewed as an exercise to punish political foes rather than to reform the system. No wonder the that corruption and malfeasance in other forms, even in political offices, remain rampant. There are, no doubt, honest and careful ministers in this government, but the previous government too had Sartaj Aziz and Malik Naeem answering to the same description. Ironically, both of them are now out of public life - Naeem is ill while Sartaj Aziz did not defect but was sidelined by his own party.
Leaving past and current proceedings aside, the government should now make it a requirement for holders of all elective offices to file a return of all their assets and recurring income with the National Accountability Bureau and report additions whenever they take place. The will, however, seems to be lacking and the legislators remain indifferent or defiant. Many among them have not filed even the mandatory election-expense returns knowing they wouldn't be disqualified for the government needs them.
The standards of conduct in politics if not deteriorating in the new regime are not improving either. Elections to the Senate and to women's seats in the National Assembly have added an element of nepotism to political corruption which in itself had got a fillip with ministerial offices and development funds being given out more generously than in the past.
The anomalies and defects in the devolution plant pointed out to its authors but ignored - are now causing numerous serious conflicts in the field. Public interest and service discipline are both suffering as disputes between the district and provincial governments are carried from the conference rooms to the courts. Delay and indecision will only aggravate them causing irreversible damage. The advice still needs to be heeded that the district government and the councils should concern themselves only with civic functions and local development. They have neither the capacity nor the resources to do more than that and the provincial governments will not let them even if they can.
All that need be said about the other part of the plan - the new policing system - is that political interference has increased and the citizens, aggrieved through the actions of a police officials, have no other remedy available to them except to go to another police official. The new law has made the nazims responsible for law and order but at least the Karachi nazim says he is not. He holds that no crime takes place without the connivance of the police and that he is helpless. As in the case of district governments, the delay in reviewing the Police Order 2002 to make it workable might permanently damage the law enforcement machinery. Truly speaking, under our circumstances there is no alternative to the police and executive magistracy working in conjunction to check crime and general disorder.
Moderation in religious views and public behaviour has not gone beyond exhortations while extremism gains ground rapidly. No law enacted by Ziaul Haq promoting religious hatred and discrimination has been repealed, not even made less harsh. The joint electorates too have been saddled with a "special list" which has no legal basis nor moral sanction but disenfranchises a particular community and has opened yet another door to the persecution of its members.
The economy may have been rehabilitated but is unlikely to flourish amid political mayhem. If the economy stultifies and joblessness grows these years may be remembered only for its sectarian carnages.
To do away with the curse of unending militancy and conflict, the focus must shift from the president's uniform to fresh general elections. The nationalist and mainstream parties should be wary of falling once again into the trap of the religious right. The political forces have to realign themselves to bring about a new order which is both democratic and liberal. The rumblings against the status quo are getting ominous.
Who needs Camp Delta?
It turns out not so many of the 550 men still held prisoner at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely "the worst of the worst," deserving to be "dealt with as people who have engaged in mass murder," as Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said.
Or "killers," as President Bush has called them all. Their years of detention provide a good lesson as to why U.S. and international laws presume innocence, and set guidelines on how long people may be held without charges, access to lawyers or basic human rights.
"Even if somebody has been found to be an enemy combatant, many of them will be released because they will be of low intelligence value and low threat status," Army Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti, Guantanamo's deputy commander, told London's Financial Times on Tuesday.
His is not a lone voice in the wilderness. The interrogators of prisoners at Guantanamo have not gleaned any information that resulted in preventing any terrorist act, Lt. Col. Anthony Christino, a senior watch officer for the Defence Department's terror-intelligence task force until he retired in June, told British journalist David Rose, as quoted in The Guardian on Sunday. -Baltimore Sun