| 15 April 2005 | Friday | 05 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426 |
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Pointless confrontation
Deaths in Larkana
THE Supreme Court has rejected the constitutional petitions challenging the 17th Amendment filed by a number of organizations and individuals. It has announced the dismissal in a short order, and the reasons for the dismissal will be outlined when the full judgment is released. The courts are not constitutionally empowered to override parliament, which is the supreme law-making body. The 17th Amendment, which incorporated the Legal Framework Ordinance, was passed by more than the required two-thirds majority by parliament in December 2003. But can the rejection of a constitutional petition on a point of law or on the basis of a technicality necessarily be interpreted as endorsement of a particular action or a series of actions? This is what the debate will now centre on, and the full judgment will be eagerly awaited. The superior courts have previously, beginning from the early years of Pakistan, validated many totally extra-constitutional steps, including military takeovers. There are thus legal, political and moral overtones involved whenever our courts are tested with cases pertaining to issues that in most democracies are considered settled and beyond the pale of controversy. Our political history has, unfortunately, been vastly different, and we have created hybrid systems of laws and regulations and oscillated between what is desirable and what is practical. The “doctrine of necessity” is a classic example of this.
The immediate problem is posed for the country’s opposition political parties. With the Supreme Court’s ruling, they appear to have been, on the face of it, deprived of a legal basis for their agitation against the dual-office or the 17th Amendment. If there were opposition legislators ready to side with the PML-Q to facilitate the passage of the amendment through parliament, then they have only themselves to blame for their present dilemma. If there were politicians available to be herded by the establishment into a political party only with the objective of forming their governments in the provinces and at the centre, then they too have no one else to blame for having to defend the indefensible. The great harm inflicted on the Constitution by the amendments grafted on to it by the present government remains glaring; the retention by the president of his military uniform an unjustifiable imposition. The struggle to have these distortions corrected will have to go on, but this will have to be waged on the political front and by political means. The opposition should have learnt the lesson that striking bargains for short-term gains or for a share in power ultimately proves self-defeating and only entrenches authoritarianism further in our body politic.
A return to genuine democratic politics is the only way out of the tremendous mess we have got ourselves into. Political parties have to realize that they only have the people to rely on, and protecting the people’s interests the only way to gain popular support. A fresh and honest general election promises to solve many of our existing constitutional and political problems. But some of the parties in the opposition seem unwilling to part with what they have and concerned only with raising one non-issue after another; the others seem hopelessly unprepared for a contest at the hustings. A supreme effort is required on the part of everyone, including the present government, to agree on a charter that is democratic in spirit and promises to meet the aspirations of the people for a better, more civilized life.
THE Punjab government and the People’s Party have become engaged in a totally needless confrontation and at a time when there were signs of efforts to mend fences between General Pervez Musharraf and Ms Benazir Bhutto, with positive implications for national politics. If the PPP has turned Mr Asif Zardari’s plan to travel to Lahore into something of a spectacle, the Punjab government, now joined by the federal information minister, has done no better by issuing harsh warnings to the PPP against any attempt to create a commotion. Section 144 has been imposed throughout Punjab, and the provincial government has said that anyone violating it will be taken to task. This administrative device of issuing a restrictive order and thus in advance automatically converting everyone who attends a rally or takes part in a procession into a law-breaker is an old and a tired one. It is seen as a sign of weakness and as an administration’s unwillingness to accept any political challenge and its lack of confidence in its own political strength.
Mr Zardari went to Dubai to meet his family after a long incarceration. It was always presumed that he would come back. He is not a political exile in the sense that Ms Bhutto, the Sharifs or Mr Altaf Hussain are. It is difficult to discover who first turned a simple Dubai-Lahore journey into an event that now appears to have become the number one issue before the country. But this is how it is now being depicted. If the PPP wanted to put up a show of strength on Mr Zardari’s arrival in Lahore, it should have been permitted to do so and have its catharsis, just as the MMA was allowed to hold its so-called million marches (many are learning their arithmetic all over again). The PPP on its own is hardly in a position to stage a street show, and it is not surprising that it should seek to capitalize on Mr Zardari’s return to mobilize party cadres. Why the Punjab authorities should feel so unsettled by this is more difficult to understand. Good sense should prevail on both sides, and attempts be made to avoid what promises to be a messy affair.
The deaths of six villagers, including three children, in Larkana district after drinking contaminated water is a grim reminder of the official apathy at all levels to providing even the most basic of amenities to citizens like clean drinking water. According to reports, dozens of people have been hospitalized and it is possible that the death toll will rise. From all accounts, it seems that this tragedy could have been avoided if homes in the affected village were supplied clean drinking water through a piped network. The fact of the matter is that close to 60 per cent of Pakistanis do not have access to clean drinking water and water-borne diseases continue to be the leading cause of death for children under the age of five. Over the years these statistics have not come down, which means that successive governments have said much but done practically nothing to provide clean drinking water to the people, especially those living in the rural areas.
Increasing population pressures, coupled with unchecked industrial pollution have meant that most sources of groundwater can no longer be relied upon for even household use, let alone for drinking. The Larkana village concerned is not very far from Hyderabad district where dozens of people, including many children, died last June, also because of drinking water contaminated by industrial pollution. Had some officials been punished or proprietors of the polluting industries penalized, and had a province-wide check been ordered to ascertain the suitability for human consumption of all sources of water, perhaps the tragedy in Larkana could have been avoided. Aiming at becoming an Asian tiger or attracting billions in investment is very well but surely the government cannot lose sight of a responsibility and duty as basic as providing clean and safe drinking water to citizens.