| 06 March 2005 | Sunday | 24 Muharram 1426 |
Growing economy, sinking politics
'Nuking' free speech
The ultimate weapon for Kashmiris
President Musharraf and his prime minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, have made several important policy pronouncements in recent days, ranging from foreign relations to the economy. Taken together, the statements and accompanying measures show an alarming alignment of the country's policy framework to foreign interests. Speaking to a foreign television network, General Musharraf has said that Pakistan would remain neutral in the event of a US attack on Iran.
The statement comes in the backdrop of an article in The New Yorker by the usually well-informed US journalist, Seymour Hersh, who revealed that US Special Forces are operating inside Iran, aided by information provided by Pakistan in exchange for assurances that it would not have to hand over Dr. A.Q. Khan, whom the US accuses of illegal transfers of nuclear technology. The White House has failed to deny the story, except describing it as "riddled with inaccuracies". Pakistan has denied the report altogether.
Even if the Pakistan foreign office version is accepted, the position of neutrality cannot be acceptable. A principled stand would be to oppose any such action against any country. Remaining neutral during such an eventuality would imply remaining neutral between the aggressor and the aggressed and between injustice and justice. The US, itself in possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and having actually used them against other countries - Japan and Vietnam, for example - cannot claim the moral high ground to ask other nations not to possess the same.
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are absolutely and unquestionably abhorrent and need to be banished from the world. However, a principled stand would be for all nations - including the US - to dismantle them and then prevent all other nations from developing them.
Unfortunately, moral principles are not the basis of world politics and certainly not of US foreign policy. However, there is a real politic issue for Pakistan. Neutrality in the event of a US attack on Iran's nuclear installations raises a few critical questions: What would Pakistan's stand be if the attack on Iran is carried out by Israel instead of the US? Would Israeli aggression be any less acceptable than US aggression? Is US aggression more benign than Israeli aggression?
Far more seriously for Pakistan, neutrality would amount to a tacit acceptance, in principle, of one country attacking installations in other countries. And by the same token, Pakistan would have provided the precedence and the justification for the US, Israel or India to attack its own nuclear facilities. The Musharraf regime's foreign policy doctrine is likely to cause grievous harm to Pakistan's strategic security interests.
The position that Pakistan has declared it would adopt vis-a-vis Iran is likely to ring alarm bells from Beijing to New Delhi to Riyadh and further isolate it from its neighbours. It has been the custom to cite the bond of Islam and refer to relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia as brotherly and fraternal. China too is referred to as a reliable ally with whom Pakistan has close strategic ties.
However, standing by as a neutral observer fails to qualify as behaving in a brotherly manner or as a reliable ally. If Pakistan is to fail to come to Iran's aid, is it also likely that it will not come to the aid of other neighbours being threatened by outside powers? Would Pakistan also remain neutral if the US were to attack China? Should not Pakistan then expect China to remain neutral as well in our own hour of need?
Given the signals that have been emanating from the Presidency, it is more than likely that Pakistan will succumb to US pressure and allow the use of its soil for carrying out offensive operations against neighbouring countries, be it Iran, Saudi Arabia or China or even India. The Musharraf regime is creating a situation where Pakistan is likely to be perceived as an untrustworthy neighbour and ally. Principles, rationality as well as self-interest demand an urgent reordering of our foreign policy parameters.
Pakistan is in no position to even remotely influence the US with respect to Iran or any other respects. And there is certainly no question of opposing or obstructing the US. Pakistan is too small a player in the world and too weak economically to engage in any such adventurism. However, the policy of abject servility to the US is uncalled for and deplorable. Unfortunately, Pakistan's military elite appear to be prone to placing US interests above Pakistan's own interests. General Ziaul Haq's military regime catered to US cold war objectives in the 1980s and - at the behest of the US - allied itself with religious fundamentalist elements that included Osama bin Laden. Now, General Musharraf's regime is - at the behest of the US again - now hunting these very elements, including Osama bin Laden.
Given that US foreign policy is dictated by expediency rather than principles, it is plausible that it may at a future date arrive at an entente with the likes of Osama bin Laden and then demand of Pakistan to make yet another U-turn. If past history is any guide, Pakistan's military elite are likely to oblige. The damage to Pakistan's domestic, social and political fabric and to its external image, caused by General Ziaul Haq's policies, has been grave. While it was the US that set up the training infrastructure in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the terrorists, western media continues to point to Pakistan as the training source of the terrorists apprehended in various parts of the world. And foreign diplomatic missions in Pakistan continue to view every visa applicant as a potential terrorist. It is time to stop tarnishing Pakistan's reputation.
The Musharraf regime's political dependence on foreign interests has led to the formulation of an economic policy doctrine that has also caused considerable harm to Pakistan's strategic interests. Speaking at the Jeddah Economic Forum, Mr. Shaukat Aziz declared that over 80 per cent of Pakistan's banking sector is now foreign owned. A short while earlier, the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation had been sold to a Saudi group. And indications are that negotiations are under way to sell the efficiently managed and profitable public sector firm, Pakistan State Oil, to a Malaysian group. PTCL too is up for sale, ostensibly to a foreign group. It is likely that after finance, the energy and telecommunications sectors will also end up being foreign owned to a significant degree.
General Musharraf's economic managers tend to judge their performance principally by the rate of foreign investment inflow. The regime, it seems, has locked itself into a tunnel vision, with serious national security implications arising from foreign control of strategic sectors of the economy. The dangers arise from the fact that capital ownership is now highly mobile. Today, public sector entities have been and are being sold to companies from supposedly friendly Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. However, there is no guarantee that at a future date US, Israeli or Indian interests or any other hostile elements will not acquire controlling stake in the said companies and be in a position to manipulate Pakistan's economy.
Mr Shaukat Aziz has also been somewhat emphatic about the absolute freedom of action to foreign investors, backed up by tangible measures to facilitate the process. This may be welcomed by the international business community, but is a matter of considerable concern for the people of Pakistan, who have the first right on the resources of the country. All countries, howsoever open their economies may be, adopt measures to protect their domestic interests. Similar measures are conspicuous by their absence in Pakistan and it appears that, rather than representing Pakistan's interests, Mr Shaukat Aziz is representing foreign interests in Pakistan.
Foreign investment, to be beneficial, needs to be channelled and regulated. An appraisal of foreign investment in Pakistan shows that the bulk of it is in the form of purchase of the existing productive capacity and not in the form of creation of new capacities. A mere change of ownership does not add to national wealth. Foreign investor interest is limited to a very narrow group of sectors that does not require significant 'brick and mortar' investment. This is perhaps intentional, as it allows quick exit if the situation so demands. There is thus an absence of sustainability of foreign investment in Pakistan.
New manufacturing plants in the capital or intermediate goods sectors do not appear to be part of the investment landscape. Rather, the nature of investment is such that the capital-labour ratio and employment multiplier is extremely low, and the meagre employment that it has created is limited to the category of clerical and sales personnel, with few benefits in terms of technology transfer. The regime's enthusiasm notwithstanding, foreign investment is not likely to inject dynamism into the national economy and certainly not aid efforts at reducing unemployment and poverty.
The factors behind Pakistan's strange foreign policy postures and related economic policy measures are not difficult to fathom. The people of Pakistan have time and again faced bullets and used the ballot to express their firm commitment to democracy. Military dictatorships have only survived on the strength of US support - and servility to US interests is the price that the Pakistanis pay for that support. It is noteworthy that while international financial institutions, operating under US patronage, have used conditionalities to force Pakistan to privatize over 100 public sector enterprises since the 1990s, they have never included the military-corporate empire - comprising industrial, financial and commercial enterprises - in the ambit of their privatization demands.
The sorry state of affairs can be attributed to the possibility that the interests and the policy agenda of the Musharraf government and its military and civilian collaborators are increasingly indifferent to the interests of the country and the people. If Pakistan is to progress and compete with emerging regional and world powers, it is imperative that it has a foreign and economic policy that is independent, is designed to serve national interests, and is respected in the region and in the world. This demands that national policy is formulated in and executed from Islamabad and the reins of policymaking forums are effectively in the hands of the people.
Growing economy, sinking politics
Amid the official rhetoric of checks and balances at the top, power at the grassroots and accountability of all, it would be fitting to cast a quick glance over all that has happened in the past five years. It has been a period long and tumultuous enough to reveal the true condition of state institutions and of government policies as also the calibre and intentions of the men conducting them.
The revival of the economy, monetary stability and the privatization of state enterprises - all three intertwined but viewed as divorced from politics - have brought credit to the government.
It will be some years, though, before their benefits reach the common man. Privatization could be faster with not 10 but 30 per cent or more of the divested capital going to the public. That would be one way of helping the common man when jobs are scarce. The interest and savings of the people (recent public issues have shown both are enormous) are better invested in productive stocks than in land or in cars as is happening at the moment. It would help the economy without harming the companies or handicapping their managements.
The management of the economy of which banking and privatization are an essential part has remained remarkably free of allegations of corruption or other irregularities because the managers at the head were carefully chosen non-political experts, and politics was kept out of the economic sector. The credit for it goes to President Musharraf. Now that the chief of the economic team has landed in the thick of politics, he must draw a distinct line between his political manoeuvres and the economic grind.
The alarm bells are already ringing for Shaukat Aziz. He has doled out an unbudgeted billion for unspecified, unapproved schemes in the district which returned him to the National Assembly, thus making possible his appointment as prime minister. In plain terms, the amount is a reward for the nazim of Attock to enable him to promote his own political career. A discretionary grant is usually the first unwary step into the quagmire of political corruption. After that, one keeps sinking.
Economy aside, all other institutions of the state and organs of the government have gone into decline. Morality in politics has taken a nosedive. This decline appears to be a continuous one.
The apathy of the people to the democratic process and institutions has been growing. Its latest manifestation came in the Lahore bye-election for the National Assembly in which only 22 per cent of the registered voters participated. The participation was even lower if the charge of extensive bogus voting is to be believed. And Lahore is the heart of Pakistan's politics where leaders and the governments are said to be made and unmade.
The first essential step towards reviving the public trust in democratic process would be to make the next elections free and fair. But that is possible only if the election commission is both impartial and competent. It was Musharraf's misfortune that successive chief election commissioners did not possess quality or were not allowed to put it to public use.
A recently formed democratic front headed by the oft-beaten but still unrelenting Asghar Khan has rightly held that the country will continue to be plagued by instability and unrest unless it has an election commission which is not only independent of the government but is also able to detect and foil rigging. For that, the area of selection for the chief election commissioner and the provincial commissioners has to be extended beyond serving and retired judges to cover administrators.
The appointment of the new CEC, now overdue will reveal whether or not the government wants the quality of the next poll - and the steps leading up to it like the preparation of electoral rolls and delimitation of constituencies - to be better than the one held in 2002 and the by-elections held since then.
Institutions - the assemblies and the cabinets - born of poorly attended or rigged elections - have grown in size but have failed in performance and gone down in public estimation. Frequent defections and deals have subverted party loyalties. According to the widely held view, the professional competence and integrity of the non-elected institutions - the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the military - were never at a lower ebb. With the politicization of public servants, it is feared that they may never regain lost public confidence.
Musharraf's strictures on enlightened moderation have not gone beyond a modicum of freedom in social behaviour. All the harsh and discriminatory laws remain intact to the disadvantage of the weak and dissenting. All in all, the change forcibly wrought in the closing stages of the 20th century may be somewhat redeemed only by the success of the economy and foreign policy. No political government would perhaps have risked changing the course of both as dramatically as Musharraf's administration has done.
For once, the economy is poised to surge and hopes have also arisen that there can be peace with India leading to a settlement on Kashmir. The government, however, has yet to put its domestic politics and other public affairs in order.If Musharraf and the few around him get credit for economic stability and relieving the tension on the borders, they must also take the blame for subverting political ethics and diminishing state institutions. The truth that needs to be recognized is that economy and diplomacy, as much as the administration in general, must be run and sustained not by the army but by the people's representatives who have been fairly elected and justly supported by permanent civil servants.
'Nuking' free speech
A "nuclear option" is targeting the American Senate. No, this isn't some terrorist plot. Rather, some in the Senate are considering dropping a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech.
President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year.
To force a vote on these nominees, some senators are hoping to launch a parliamentary weapon aimed at the heart of open and extended debate. By a simple majority vote, a Senate filibuster on judicial appointments would be "nuked" for all time.
It starts with shutting off debate on judges, but it won't end there. This nuclear option could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an over-reaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate's very essence - the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.
To understand the danger, one needs to understand the Senate. The framers created an institution designed not for speed or efficiency but as a place where mature wisdom would reside. They intended the Senate to be the stabilizer, the fence, the check on attempts at tyranny. To carry out that role, an individual senator has the right to speak, perhaps without limit, in order to expose an issue or draw attention to new or differing viewpoints. But this legislative nuclear option would mute dissent and gag opposition voices.
We have heard the president call for an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees. But nowhere in the Constitution is an up-or-down vote - or even a vote at all - guaranteed, and the president cannot reinterpret our nation's founding document to achieve his political goals. Those who disagree with the president in this matter will be labelled "obstructionists," but nothing could be further from the truth.
A federal judge is selected for a lifetime appointment. Senators must apply their best judgment to each selection.
If a senator believes a nominee should not be confirmed, that senator has a duty not to consent to confirmation. Yet, for the temporary goal of confirming a handful of objectionable judicial nominees, those pushing the nuclear option would callously trample on freedom of speech and debate.
If senators are denied their right to free speech on judicial nominations, an attack on extended debate on all other matters cannot be far behind. This would mean no leverage for the minority to effect compromise, and no bargaining power for individual senators as they strive to represent the people of their states.
Yes, Americans believe in majority rule, but we also believe in minority rights. Our liberties can be truly secure only in a forum of open debate where minority views can be freely discussed.
Leave it to the House to be the majoritarian body. Let the Senate continue to be the one in which a minority can have the freedom to protect a majority from its own folly.-Dawn/Washington Post Service
The writer is a Democratic senator from West Virginia and former majority leader.
The ultimate weapon for Kashmiris
The failure of India to reach an accommodation with Pakistan on the Baglihar Dam dispute rekindles the old ghost of our perception of India which lives through our political nightmares.
India the bigger, India the militarily more powerful, India the economically resurgent, India the institutionally secure, but India with a small heart when it comes to Pakistan. Under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and particularly in the last months of his stewardship, we clutched at straws of hope.
Here was an old political horse who had transmogrified into being a statesman with a vision and strength to transcend the calculus of narrow self-interest. But, this was not to be. The triumvirate that rules India's policy on Pakistan today is politically soft. It consists of a lady of foreign origin, an honest gentleman economist without a political base, and a foreign minister known to be a hawk on Pakistan.
A vulnerable leadership in New Delhi bodes ill for Pakistan. An agreement on Baglihar or a bus connection in Kashmir are resolvable matters. But the window of political expediency apparently does not permit much flexibility, let alone serious talks on Siachin or on Kashmir. President Musharraf has shown courage in going against the wind repeatedly over here; his wages for such bravura is a determined effort by the extremist elements to remove him from the scene. The current Indian leadership can fall like a house of cards against a right-wing BJP-RSS onslaught on any perceived real concession to Pakistan.
Where do we proceed from here? The future is a land without any maps. We are all subject to the law of unforeseen consequences. What we can do and should do is to keep our nose clean and bide our time. And by this one means we should satisfy India and the world that Pakistan has bidden adieu finally, irreversibly and irrevocably to promoting any form of violence in Kashmir.
We have learnt the hard way that assisting violence in Kashmir is a double-edged sword. The flip side is that inevitably these very guns get trained to our foreheads. The righteousness of a political cause is drowned by the sheer ugliness of terror. Historically, terror has seldom achieved its aim and where it has, it has murdered its own children. There is much wisdom in the saying that the quality of the means determines the ends.
If indeed we decide to end supporting militant groups in Indian held Kashmir from our territory, we may help the Indians fortify the fence they have built along the LoC and even point out any lacuna that might exist. And if there are complaints about any militant camps in Azad Kashmir or Pakistan, we might go to the extent of inviting Indian observers to check the ground realities for themselves.
Does this signify a policy shift on Kashmir? Certainly not. It is for the Valley Kashmiris to fight their battle for self-determination by peaceful means and for us to give them moral support. I want to propose to the Valley Kashmiris a weapon more deadly than terror and far more effective: it is civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, non-cooperation, a willingness to go to jail in thousands and to bare their breasts to police bullets.
As we well know, this very weapon was forged in India by Mahatma Gandhi. In recent times this was the chosen weapon against one of the most morally repulsive regimes that ever ruled any country; apartheid. Nelson Mandela has proved that civil disobedience is a viable weapon against regimes as murderous and cruel as the Indian forces of occupation in the Kashmir valley.
Vicious dogs, powerful water hoses and steel-tipped batons were used against peaceful protesters in South Africa. But the world was watching. Even though the apartheid people had European blood in their veins, Europe joined the rest of the world to treat the white South Africans as pariahs deserving total isolation until the regime imploded under its own weight.
Any alienated, sullen and defeated people are difficult to govern. You can take a horse to the water but cannot force it to drink. The satraps chosen by the oppressor demand and usually obtain astronomic sums of money to bribe, cajole, contain and corrupt an alienated people. In practice, these millions get lost in corruption or are otherwise salted away by the satraps and their cronies. Such was the case in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary after the revolts in these countries against Soviet overlordship. The billions of dollars invested by the Soviet Union in these countries made little headway after the revolts in gaining the loyalty and affection of the subjugated peoples.
Something similar also happened in Kashmir. Between 1988 and the present day billions of rupees have been spent by New Delhi to gain the affection of the Kashmiris. The Farooq Abdullah government as most Indians will concede was corrupt and rotten to the core. A subjugated state becomes a virtual parasite living off the oppressor. It is the syndrome of its degradation.
Even more telling than the financial drain is the power of the international media to shape the future. An epochal event in history of British India was the shooting at a defenceless crowd in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, by General Dyer in 1918 which shook the world; a similar event was the shooting of unarmed people in Sharpeville, South Africa in the 1960s. These events changed the political climate of the times; but when terrorists kill innocents in retaliation the reaction is different. The cause is then forgotten and in its place is loathing of the means adopted.
In the recently released memoirs of Mohammad Aslam Khan Khattak (A Pathan Odyssey), who for a short time was the 'honorary treasurer' of this scheme, he says: "The tribesmen started going to Kashmir. They were under their own chieftains and there was no discipline or coordination. I was shocked one day to find operational headquarters for the movement in the Chief Minister's small office attached to his house."... but, the Tribal liberators had other thoughts in mind before proceeding to free the Kashmiris. "At Muzaffarabad valuable time was wasted while two chiefs contested who would be Amir of Kashmir when it had been conquered."
As a consequence of this needless violence and loot in 1947, Operation Gibraltar launched by the Ayub government in 1965 in Kashmir was a failure when this band of "liberators" were identified and handed over to the local police by the Kashmiris themselves.
I mention these facts in passing to make the point that the Kashmiris have been traumatized not only by India but by Pakistan as well. Their current cry for independence or autonomy guaranteed by both India and Pakistan is very understandable in this historical context.
The upshot of it all is that we have to change our means, our view of the Kashmir dispute and, at the same time, keep our resolution tight as do the Chinese, who have never attempted to invade Taiwan.
The Chinese confrontation with the US over Taiwan has the interesting aspect that China has never allowed politics to come in the way of economics and business. China has broken all records on economic development generating a fantastic GDP growth of 10 per cent per annum for a decade or more and accumulating foreign exchange reserves of $600 billion. It does not hesitate to accept investment from Taiwan or the US. The Chinese view is that politics does not mix well with business. They take the long view of the inevitability of economic, military and political strength changing the dynamics of confrontation where the adversary is stronger for the time being.
Let us learn from China.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly.
E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk