A bridge too far?

Shortly after his release late on Monday night, Mr Asif Zardari told the press that he could act as a bridge between different political parties, which he said should come together to free the people from autocratic rule.

He avoided sounding bitter, although he has every reason to feel bitter after his eight-year incarceration dating back to Mr Nawaz Sharif's second term as prime minister. Mr Zardari is technically on bail, and he remains implicated in over a dozen cases.

Theoretically, they can be revived at any time that the administration wants and Mr Zardari dragged back into prison. It is important that transparent legal processes should be followed and any suspicion that the cases against Mr Zardari are false and motivated should be removed.

But beyond the legal status of Mr Zardari, speculation centres on what his release means in political terms. There have been reports that the Musharraf-led government has been talking to him and through him to Ms Benazir Bhutto, and neither Mr Zardari nor Ms Bhutto have tried to disabuse us of this notion.

There is no indication of the lines along which discussions have been taking place, if indeed they have been held at all. But there are straws in the wind that the establishment is beginning to come round to the realization that some accommodation with the opposition is necessary to gain a measure of stability for the existing system and to move forward on crucial policy objectives.

Overtures are also said to have been made to the Sharifs in exile in Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz took the initiative to call on Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the opposition, in Islamabad the other day.

The moot point is whether such moves - and the attendant inspired leaks - are motivated by a genuine desire for reconciliation or are directed only at causing confusion in opposition ranks to thwart its planned anti-government movement. If the latter, then the moves will prove self-defeating and ultimately widen the gulf between the government and the opposition.

The hope should be that there is a genuine movement afoot to end the existing deadlock that has stymied parliament and created an atmosphere in which everything that the government does is criticized and turned down and, on the government's part, the opposition is dismissed as being of no consequence.

There are many reasons why a measure of understanding is necessary between the warring sides. The official PML has been unable to muster the credibility and the capacity required to make the system work; a smugness has come to characterize its attitude to political, administrative and legislative matters that is of no help to the government.

Its legislators have given little evidence to show that they have a mind of their own on issues that cry out for the widest possible input, the problems of federation and the peace process with India being the most pressing.

A government with wider political support in these matters would be able to proceed more decisively. Although this flies in the face of parliamentary norms, it is tempting to suggest the possibility of forming, till the next elections (when?), a national government incorporating all the major political elements to tide us over the present phase.

The constitutional distortions that have occurred in the past few years of military rule can then be removed by consensus, the stillborn local body system given suitable resuscitation, some fundamentals of governance settled for the future, and the need obviated far the president to retain his uniform. But all this depends on whether the army and Gen Pervez Musharraf are sincerely prepared to accept the principle of rule by the elected representatives of the people. Otherwise, the bridge Mr Zardari talks about may still be far off.

Small mercies won't do

Israel's willingness to allow Arab residents of Al Quds to participate in the January 9 Palestinian election is too small a carrot to be bandied about. Israel agreed to it during the visit on Monday by the outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his last-ditch effort to jumpstart the stalled peace process.

Even this small concession came under American pressure and vindicates Yasser Arafat, who died believing that an independent Palestinian state could become a reality only if the US showed a will to implement the two-state solution.

The much touted argument that Arafat's death provides an opportunity to restart the stalled process will have substance only if the US keeps up the pressure on Israel. Israel has been America's pro-consul in the region for so long that it is hard for the other members of the Quartet - Russia, the EU and the UN - to steer it into compliance.

One hopes that this time America's ostensible interest in the peace process will not wane after the departure of Mr Colin Powell from the Bush cabinet. President Bush himself, more than his nominee for the position of secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, should act out of moral responsibility to put the process back on track.

One says this because it was none other than Mr Bush who first unveiled the roadmap for peace in April last year and then conveniently reneged on it. It is the on-again, off-again approach by Washington that Israel has exploited to the detriment of the two-state solution. The time has come for the US to live up to what the rest of the world believes to be the truth - that the Palestinians deserve a fairer deal.

Still at the bottom

Despite the upbeat picture painted periodically by the authorities about the progress made on literacy and education targets, the goal of Education For All (EFA) remains a distant dream.

This seems to be confirmed by the latest UN report covering the progress of over 100 countries towards achieving the EFA goals by 2015. Pakistan is in the third and last category of countries that are "far from achieving the goals".

A similar "EFA Global Monitoring Report" in 2002 had also listed Pakistan in the category of countries at "serious risk" of not achieving any of the EFA goals set at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. We can only hang our heads in shame at being equated with the poorest and least developed nations of sub-Saharan Africa in terms of educational development.

It has been four years since the EFA goals were first set. At that time, the federal government had moved quickly to develop a national plan of action for achieving the targets. Hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid were poured into various uplift projects in the education sector.

Yet Pakistan has not been able to even move up to the second category of countries - those making progress towards achieving some, but not all, goals - in the "EFA Global Monitoring Report", and which include many Arab and Latin American countries.

The latest report should prompt the government to rethink its education policies so far, particularly its priorities with regard to primary, secondary and tertiary education.

One point is obvious: unless the government significantly increases its education budget, Pakistan will remain associated with those countries that are unable to ensure free and compulsory primary education for their citizens, especially girls.