| 09 March 2005 | Wednesday | 27 Muharram 1426 |
A fit case for appeal
Doctors for rural areas
'Corrupt politicians', 'good governance', 'enlightened moderation' - we seem to be living on shibboleths. The more the government uses them the more it loses credibility. Every country has its share of corrupt politicians, but in our case the nation has been told since Ayub's days that corruption is politician-specific.
This is absurd, for experience tells us there is no shortage of the corrupt among non-politicians - civilian and military bureaucrats, businessmen and scientists, and people in the media and other professions.
Amazingly, having accused politicians of corruption and promising good governance, the generals have had no qualms about accommodating corrupt politicians. In 1988, Ziaul Haq dismissed the Junejo government, accusing the prime minister of having looters and plunderers in his cabinet. Yet he accommodated in his caretaker cabinet a large number of those very ministers whom he had accused of corruption.
Recently, some more politicians have been in the news for the wrong reasons. The Sindh chief minister has sacked a cabinet colleague on a charge of corruption. In Karachi, a former woman MNA has been arrested for misappropriation of funds, while at the centre, federal minister Faisal Saleh Hayat's bail has been cancelled by the Supreme Court.
The normal reaction to these developments should be obvious: let the due process of law take its own course. The government must prove the charges through a judicial process. However, quite often the due process of law has fallen victim to political expediency.
There is also one perverse practice sanctified by the military-led government: you can evade a jail term if you surrender part of the loot to the government. Several corrupt businessmen and former bureaucrats have utilized the NAB's plea bargain clause to live happily ever after. All of this brings us to the question of good governance, which, like enlightened moderation, has been one of this government's key policy planks.
Good governance and a corruption-free society do not come into being through military take overs and draconian laws; both require a system - a system based on the rule of law. Specifically, this means democracy. No doubt, democracy itself is imperfect because it is run by humans.
In the case of Third World countries beset with poverty and illiteracy, democracy will take time to mature and strike root. Also, democracy does not have a built-in mechanism to keep the corrupt out. The corrupt will be there if society is prone to it.
But ultimately it is democracy and its accountability that cleanses the system and moves towards such perfection as is humanly possible. In Pakistan, however, the generals have taken it upon themselves to give us a corruption-free society and a workable democracy.
The result invariably has been disaster, for whenever a general lost power the nation found itself worse off than before. Whether it is war on corruption or creating a society wedded to honesty, answerability and responsible conduct, it is the people who can achieve these ends through an inter-play of democratic forces.
We have had enough of short-cuts to democracy and good governance. This must stop. One must shun being selective in trying the corrupt, extending patronage to some and witch-hunting and persecuting those parties and persons whom one regards as a threat. Because of lack of impartiality, the government's war on corruption and its commitment to good governance lack credibility.
A fit case for appeal
It is reassuring to know that the government has decided to appeal in the Supreme Court against the verdict passed last week by the Lahore High Court, Multan Bench, in the Mukhtar Mai gang rape case.
For lack of sufficient evidence the court acquitted five of the six men accused of raping the victim under a panchayat verdict. The panchayat sentence was carried out at the behest of a powerful clan against the victim in Meerwala Jatoi village of Multan district in June 2002.
It is now important that the government should move quickly in the appeal and pursue the case diligently. The harm done by shoddy police investigation when the incident had first come to light and the delay that had marked their inquires might never be repaired, but it is the government's duty to ensure that justice is seen to be done.
The more prolonged the case becomes, the greater the danger that public pressure may wane. The second aspect is that the woman is under a very real threat. Those acquitted or their tribe might seek to harass her and the witnesses and villagers who could come forward to testify. The government must ensure adequate security for her.
Mukhtar Mai's struggle for justice again draws attention to two problems: loopholes in the Hudood laws that place the burden of proof in rape cases on the victim herself and lack of social awareness of women's rights.
These factors have had an emboldening effect on those with a criminal bent of mind and seeking to victimize women, whether to settle honour-related scores or acting out of personal or tribal motives.
Violence is also used as an instrument to assert power over the weak and often to intimidate, harass and force women into submission. It is sad to know that despite the coming into light of publicized cases such as that at Nawabpur in the 1980s, of Mukhtar Mai and more recently that of a lady doctor in Sui, the public mind has not been sensitized to the expected extent. This also points to the failure of mainstream political parties which have done little to press for social justice.
Doctors for rural areas
The Sindh government has undertaken a number of measures aimed at revamping the existing health system in the province. These include the sealing of several blood banks suspected of violating safe blood rules and a move to regulate private health units.
The latest step in this direction includes the launch of a health policy whose impact on rural health infrastructure is likely to be significant. For under its provisos, medical colleges would not only be affiliated to teaching hospitals, but would also be attached to a district health facility or a rural health centre.
This would make it incumbent on the teaching staff and the students to regularly visit health units situated in far-flung areas where the local population is deprived of basic health care.
The government plans to introduce a non-practising allowance of between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 4,000 for doctors and other medical staff serving in the rural areas. But it will have to do far more to lure public sector doctors and young graduates away from the more lucrative packages the urban areas have to offer.
Given the present moribund health set-up in the rural areas, this task will not be easy, especially when most doctors manage to avoid rural postings by securing a transfer back to the cities.
On top of this, the government's decision to slash the number of seats in public sector medical colleges would reduce the number of graduating doctors serving in rural areas. Along with a better salary, better security might make doctors more willing to serve in basic health units in rural health centres.