Action, not mere words

EVER since he came to power, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been emphasizing the need for reviewing and revising the Hudood ordinances. On Wednesday, he repeated his belief at an international conference in Islamabad on gender equality and development goals. The president said the ordinances needed a review with a view to bringing them into conformity with the spirit of Islam. Even though these ordinances were enacted and imposed on the nation by a military regime that flaunted its Islamic credentials, they have some obnoxious features that could hardly be called Islamic or civilized. In matters of sex crimes, the relevant law is grossly unfair to women. For instance, it provides for the arrest of a woman the moment she reports rape; the criminal is booked later. In a well- known case, a blind woman, raped by a father and son, was asked to identify her molesters and was thrown into jail.

All enlightened sections of society, human rights groups, the media and women NGOs have for a long time been demanding a revision of these ordinances so as to remove those clauses which militate against elementary principles of justice and equity. The trouble with these ordinances is that they were framed by a military dictator who wanted to justify his autocratic rule on religious grounds. These ordinances also had an ulterior political motive, for the idea was to terrorize the regime’s political opponents with the spectre of public flogging. The ordinances served to brutalize society, for public flogging became a spectacle that was watched by people — women and children included — as a sport. Regrettably, some religious parties lent full support to the regime on these laws which had no public support behind them. No representatives of the people were consulted, nor did the despot bother to elicit the views of all sections of ulema and fiqh. Instead, only a small coterie of bigots who were on the right side of the military government were involved with the drafting of these laws. No wonder, the ordinances evoked widespread criticism from all sections of society. These laws covered a large number of crimes and sought to provide Islamic punishments for murder, sex crimes, drinking and thefts.

The issue before the nation now is to revise these ordinances through a national consensus. This means the proposed amendments must be debated and the views of all sections of ulema, intellectuals, rights groups, NGOs and the media taken into consideration. Once a consensus is achieved, the draft laws must be vetted by the Islamic Ideology Council before being moved in the parliament. The idea is to purge the ordinances of those abhorrent features which blatantly violate Islam’s fundamental principles of justice and fairness by discriminating against women. Is the present government in a position to start the process? Besides making suggestions off and on, it has done nothing concrete to make things move. In fact, one would be justified in wondering why the president speaks on the subject every few months without taking any initiative for revision. The government should know that non- action makes it vulnerable to the charge of lacking resolution in the face of opposition from obscurantist elements. Its critics also wonder whether a government that has surrendered on the issue of the religion column in passports has the courage to act on an important issue like the Hudood ordinances.

Tackling price spiral

PRIME Minister Shaukat Aziz’s decision to form a Prime Minister’s Committee on Prices (PMCP) in response to growing anger over rising prices clearly looks like an attempt to sidestep a burning issue. The 12-member PMCP has been given the task of monitoring the price situation in the country by looking at the demand and supply situation relating to major consumer items. It has also been asked to coordinate with provincial governments to ensure that prices remain stable. The committee comprises ministers, MNAs as well as senior bureaucrats. It does not have any economists, members of any consumer watch organization or representatives of the private sector on board. This makes the committee very one-sided in its composition. Headed by the PM’s advisor on finance, Dr Salman Shah, the PMCP has neither any means to ensure a price level nor any powers to punish those who indulge in profiteering. Keeping in mind the price spiral being witnessed in major consumer items, it is clear that the government has been unable to provide any relief to the common citizen by keeping a check on rising prices. Take the recent example of the rise in milk prices. Despite announcing a control price, the government has been unable to enforce its decision.

One would have expected that with political pressure mounting over the issue of inflation, particularly in relation to oil prices, the government would do more to ensure price stability. While one can understand that in a free market, there is very little a government can do to ensure a certain price level in the market, the trouble is that it is not doing enough to check profiteering, hoarding and other irregularities that tend to inflate prices of a whole lot of commodities. In some areas, cartels have been formed and prices are not fixed on the basis of demand and supply. In this as well, the government is reluctant to take action. It is time the authorities moved to check rising prices instead of paying lip service to the issue. One step would be to reconstitute district price committees and give them the necessary powers to check profiteering and hoarding and punish wrongdoers. This would go a long way in sending the right signals to all concerned.

UN oil-for-food inquiry

An independent commission investigating the United Nations’ oil-for-food programme for Iraq has cleared Secretary-General Kofi Annan of any wrongdoing. However, it said that Mr Annan should have acted promptly once allegations of conflict of interest surfaced after it became known, six years ago, that one of the firms chosen for the programme had hired his son as a consultant. Mr Annan’s son worked for a Swiss firm and the role it played in the oil-for-food programme was a relatively minor one. However, the issue of conflict of interest becomes even more glaring and needed prompt attention of Mr Annan himself since, as pointed out in the report, UN rules governing award of contracts were not followed when the Swiss firm in question was chosen. This should have been done in order to avoid questions being raised by various critics regarding the impartiality of the UN’s leadership in the matter.

As for the oil-for-food programme itself, which was begun in 1996 to minimize the impact of sanctions on Iraq, the commission sharply criticized its chief, undersecretary-general Benon Sevan for using his position to solicit favours for a particular firm (not the same one involving Mr Annan’s son). Mr Sevan was rebuked for acting in an “ethically improper” way and it was also revealed that he had received $160,000 in cash from a relative in his native Cyprus. Quite often in the recent past, the UN has been accused of having an overbearing bureaucracy prone to mismanagement and financial improprieties. To prove such detractors wrong, Mr Annan should act to ensure that the UN’s own rules are followed when contracts are awarded and that there is greater transparency in the way it conducts itself while playing its role in world affairs.