Barriers to cross

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has very rightly contended that improved access to EU markets was crucial for Pakistan's drive to create jobs, fight poverty and combat extremism.

His hosts in Brussels were all praise for the Pakistan government and its efforts to introduce political reforms in the country and establish peace in the region. The prime minister is visiting the EU capital with a strong economic team comprising the ministers of commerce, industries and investment.

His talks with the officials of the Union seem to have mostly focused understandably on economic issues. The most immediate concern for Pakistan is the imposition of anti-dumping duty by the EU on our bed linen, one of our major textile exports.

Next, Pakistan would like to join the exclusive club of 'GSP-Plus' countries whose textile imports into the EU carry zero duties. Those who qualify for membership in this club not only need to show that their exports to the EU are less than one per cent of the total EU imports but they also need to ratify 27 international conventions related to human rights, labour laws, illegal immigrants and governance principles.

Since Pakistan's exports to the EU at present make 1.7 per cent of the EU's total imports and since Islamabad still needs to ratify 10 of the remaining UN conventions, the prime minister and his team in Brussels seem to have met with a lot of resistance.

So, on both the issue of anti-dumping duties and Pakistan's entry into the GSP-Plus Club, the visiting Pakistani team seems to be up against heavy odds. According to reports, the EU trade chief could give no commitment on Pakistan's requests.

He is said to have taken the position that Pakistan has to qualify by the EU criteria, otherwise the GSP system would not remain transparent or fair. On the issue of anti-dumping duties, Pakistan was told that since the majority of the member states had voted against giving an exemption to Islamabad, it cannot be withdrawn.

There are three major world markets for textile goods - the US, Europe and Japan. Of these three, Europe is perhaps the largest. A generous access to this market for Pakistani textiles, say, for about three to five years would surely enable the country to adjust to the market vagaries that have been let loose following the withdrawal of the textile quota system.

For its part Pakistan has carried out a number of economic reforms which have made its markets perhaps the most free in the region. At the same time, Pakistan is faced with the challenges of terrorism, both from inside and outside. The domestic terrorism's roots can be traced to abject poverty that the country has been suffering from over the last five decades.

More than 30 per cent of its population is living below the poverty line, and despite the attainment of a level of macroeconomic stability and an average growth rate of about six per cent per annum, the country is still facing a high rate of unemployment which in turn is further deepening the pervasive poverty, threatening the country's ability to control extremism.

This is what the prime minister had in mind when he said that improved access to EU markets was crucial for Pakistan's fight against extremism. It is this extremism that at times overflows the national boundary and threatens regional and global peace.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the richer part of the world to help Pakistan at this juncture by providing it the needed markets. More than the concessional assistance which every rich country is prepared to extend to Islamabad, it is liberal trade with Pakistan that will not only enable the country to get out of its perpetual dependence on such assistance but at the same time also create the needed environment for promoting moderation and liberal values in society.

The European officials seem more interested in Pakistan's performance in the region vis-a-vis Afghanistan and India. But for Islamabad to be able to sustain this performance, it needs to be helped on the economic front rather more generously by the EU.

Removing LB anomalies

The government's decision to hold local body elections in the country's 43 cantonments this year finally fills the gap left behind by the devolution of power plan under which local bodies came into being in 2000.

For this the government has had to amend the Cantonment Act of 1924, allowing elected local bodies to be formed in these areas on the basis of a 50-50 elected versus army-nominated representatives.

This is a good beginning, especially because elected representatives from the cantonments will also be members of the greater district councils. This will ease some of the problems pertaining to dispute resolution between district governments and the cantonment boards in areas such as taxation, cess, fees, rents, utility charges and the like.

The amended cantonment act also calls for greater interaction between the district governments and the cantonment boards. With the settlement of this vital issue across the country, Islamabad capital territory is now the only municipality that does not have elected local bodies in place.

One hopes that the National Reconstruction Bureau will also pay attention to the lack of representation in the federal capital at the grassroots level. The cantonments today have come a long way from their original mandate given in the 1920s when the colonial government envisaged them as tertiary townships combining military garrisons and housing units for army personnel's families.

Only remote cantonments such as those at Mangla, Kharian and Pano Aqil, for instance, have remained largely garrison townships today. Shedding their old feel, cantonments in big cities offer the finest of residential locales with the majority of residents there being civilians.

This has also brought about excessive commercialization of certain large cantonments, especially in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Quetta, Peshawar, etc. It is high time they were integrated into the mainstream of larger municipal units and linked up with district governments.

Whether this would entail the formulation of public safety commissions in the cantonments is not yet known; however, the amended act requires cantonment boards to publicize rules pertaining to new levies and taxes and to hold public hearings before enforcing such rules.

That the local body elections scheduled to be held this year will again be conducted on a non-party basis remains an anomaly in the larger context of public representation.

It makes little sense why politics at the grassroots level should be kept so detached from the country's broader political system which allows party-based representation. Local bodies should be seen as nurseries that would groom future politicians for public representation at the provincial and national levels, as is the case in all bona fide democracies.

The government's piecemeal approach to devolution of power, whereby local bodies were revamped without the involvement of the provincial governments has not been very helpful. As they near completion of their four-year term now, some of the local governments are still grappling with teething problems.

This is particularly true for those district governments which the watchdog provincial government sees as comprising sympatizers of its political opponents. Thus, the farce of keeping local bodies outside party politics has been exposed. Also, the lack of ownership of the LB system on the part of the provinces needs to be addressed. Unless the NRB has a strategy to work towards that end, elected local bodies will continue to be treated as unwanted children by the provinces.