AL makes fresh attempt to breathe life into its power struggle

THE Awami League has entered into a dialogue with other opposition parties to forge a broad-based electoral alliance for the next general election, expected to be called late next year or in early 2007. An alliance is very important for the League, the main power contender along with the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, as the latter has already established a strong relationship with its allies, particularly with the religious parties.

But a prerequisite for the success of the League’s initiative is that it must announce that the new alliance, and not the Awami League, would contest elections and form a government if it is victorious.

The Awami League made an identical move against the ruling coalition in October last year, holding talks with leaders of different opposition parties and groups.

The process culminated in an understanding between the AL, an 11-party alliance of leftist parties and a faction of the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal on the basis of a nine-point common minimum programme.

Subsequently, the parties went for some agitation, most of the time from their own platforms instead of acting in unison. But the agitation failed to make any impact.

The movement eventually fizzled out, due mainly to the Awami League’s reluctance to enter into a long-term electoral alliance, as was the desire of the left parties.

Besides, two components of the 11-party combine _ the Communist Party (CPB) and the Socialist Party (SPB) _ rejected the AL’s plea to whittle down their radical programmes.

The CPB and the SPB contended that they found ‘hardly any qualitative difference between the ruling BNP and the Awami League, particularly when it comes to the genuine struggle for secularism and democracy of the poor majority’.

However, the process was revived very dramatically, on April 30, when Dr Kamal Hossain, Gano Forum supremo, called upon AL chief Sheikh Hasina to ‘strengthen the anti-government movement by forging greater unity’ and proposed ‘countrywide massive tour programme to mobilize the people’s support’.

Kamal Hossain, a former AL leader who left the party after being publicly humiliated by Sheikh Hasina’s men in 1991, shared a common platform with Sheikh Hasina for the first time in 14 years.

Both of them were attending the maiden convention of a pro-Awami League coalition of professionals on the eve of May Day.

Sheikh Hasina readily responded to his call, publicly ‘vowing to work unitedly’.

She also assured the audience that her party ‘is ready to make concessions’ (to the opposition parties) for the sake of ‘greater unity’ against the government, and that she ‘is ready to begin a fresh dialogue, if (Kamal Hossain) Chacha (uncle) wants’.

The AL started fresh dialogue without delay, on May 3, with the Workers Party of Rashed Khan Menon, which was followed by talks with the Communist Party and the Samyabadi Dal the next day.

Dr Kamal Hossain had a meeting with Sheikh Hasina on April 6.

During the talks with the opposition parties and groups, Ms Hasina stressed to them the need for bringing in changes in the constitution for holding elections under a non-party caretaker government.

However, the League is yet to decide as to what kind of changes it wants in the constitution.

INTERPRETATION: Some leaders of the left camp interpreted Sheikh Hasina’s willingness to ‘make concession’ as readiness to share seats with smaller partners.

“The fresh round of dialogue is likely to be productive, particularly when Hasina has realized that a solid broad-based opposition alliance is essential to defeat the BNP-led alliance in the next elections, and that she will require to leave some parliamentary seats for the smaller partners of the alliance,” says a leftist leader.

The left camp, however, is likely to do tough bargaining on the nitty-gritty of an electoral arrangement. “We are ready to forge unity with the Awami League to oust the government of Khaleda Zia because of the latter’s right wing political orientation and subservience to the World Bank and the IMF,” said Rashid Khan Menon.

“Besides, mere change in the composition of the caretaker government will not ensure free and fair elections, particularly free from the influence of money and muscle. We want a movement for major electoral reforms.”

Manjurul Ahsan Khan, the CPB president, told a newspaper that his party ‘has no objection to launch a simultaneous movement with the Awami League against religious fundamentalism, repression of the opposition, sponsored by the government’.

“The Awami League wants changes in the composition of the caretaker government before elections. We are not opposed to it, but we want genuine electoral reforms to rid the polls from the influence of black money and muscle — a demand that hardly appeals to the political parties like the Awami League and the BNP,” says Ahsan Khan.

However, AL leaders are still optimistic of a successful outcome. They believe an alliance will take shape after the party’s central executive committee meeting on May 12.

Family killings reflect social moods

LET us face it. The very thought that this column seeks to focus on a man killing his immediate family in this city is depressing.

It makes you ask in sadness whether everything is well with this society, whether there is truth (and how much) in the assertion that the national economy is on the road to recovery, doing well, and it is time to feel good. How good is the feel good factor? one asks in disbelief.     A man killing his family is horrifying news, and many thoughts come to mind. Is this an individual act, which has no reflection on Pakistani society? Or is it symptomatic of a deeper malaise which we as a people simply overlook. We assume that all change is for the better. We measure life in economic terms alone, where ethics and values don’t matter.     For instance, do family members mean little, the extended family means far less, and the neighbourhood irrelevant. Communication breakdown, interpersonal, is immaterial, and instead telecommunication and information technology are promoted and publicized as being the answer to human need. The need to belong, share, and sustain human relationships is underrated.

The last fortnight has brought into deeply disturbing focus what Dawn has described as “three ghastly murders — all committed by fathers killing their children”. The unemployment factor is relevant to the three instances, and news reports have stressed this dimension immensely. Is it economics alone, this desperation? Does this insanity not have an ethical side to it in this Islamic society?

What disappoints is that the educated and upper class are visibly nonchalant to such crime. In fact unless crime and violence hit them directly and hard, they are unmindful and apathetic to the suffering that goes on around them. At best they do social welfare for style, for socializing, to keep the party circuit, and the merry making loop operational. This indifference of the rich for the poor is hurting. And in a context of growing poverty, the consequences in human terms could be dangerous and disastrous, observed one Karachiite who finds himself pained at what has happened.

What has happened in the fortnight that I am referring to? Man kills wife and four sons, said a story on April 24th. Man kills seven-year-old daughter in Malir, stated another story on April 25th and then on May 3rd “Jobless man kills two daughters” yet another story. I have read the news stories more than once each one. It is natural that one tries to understand the details as reported.

Take the man who killed his seven-year-old daughter. Locality: Model Colony. The police said: “Mohammad Younis, 35, slaughtered his daughter Marium inside his house at before dawn. The little girl was asleep when the father slit her throat”. It is further said that when the police reached that house the suspect was sitting besides the body soaked in blood. Reported details reveal that the man had quarrelled with his wife who had gone to her parental house in New Karachi. He was a mason, and out of work for some time.

Now look at the second sad story wherein a school teacher murdered his wife on suspicion of infidelity, and then killed his four sons too, in the KMC quarters, within the jurisdiction of the Artillery Maidan police station. It is reported that the school teacher Nadeem Ahmed, 40, allegedly pulled out a dagger, (which he bought a day earlier) and killed his wife Shahjehan, 35, and the four children who were fast asleep. The sons were 18-month-old Fahad, Haseeb Ahmed, 13, Faseeh, 10 and Hamza, 8.

In the third instance, it was reported that 40-year-old Ayub, an unemployed father of seven, stabbed to death Sheza, 16, and Sheba, 15, in his home in Mohammadabad, Golimar No 2. He was a plumber, jobless for some time and his wife worked in a food product factory. The two girls were students of class VIII and IX at the APWA School No 2, and had returned from their examinations.

The details of this case are also very sad, reflecting the mood of so many families in our lives. However in the details reported there is one aspect that is unusual. His wife said that there were “visible changes in Ayub’s behaviour after he saw TV reports about the killing of a family by a man in Civil Lines. He wasn’t much into watching TV, but he saw the “entire report of the multiple murder case with deep interest which was telecast by a local channel.” He had been sent to Saudia Arabia by his in-laws for a job as a plumber, but he failed to get employment. One wonders about the role television played in this particular case.

Unemployment? This is indeed very much a serious and problematic aspect of Pakistani society, and the frustration gets compounded as a consequence of other inadequacies, and injustices that we have. Official comfort and government sponsored advertisements and newspaper supplements don’t help really. In fact they erode the credibility process, and distract from the mainstream of deprivation and sorrow. Is unemployment, as is being stated by psychiatrists in town, the only cause of why an individual can be driven to such acts of desperation? To murder!   The President of the Pakistan Association of Mental Health, Prof Syed Haroon Ahmed, has been quoted as saying that “the killing of two girls by their father in the city on Monday depicts the height of desperation and frustration suffered by the poor”. He added: “Suicides and homicides are becoming more violent with the growing malignancy and aggression in this society”. He has also talked of the vulgar display of power and wealth on the one hand, and on the other of a vast majority condemned to poverty and destitution.

A political analyst has been quoted as saying that despite the claims of the government about reduction in poverty the fact was that the poor were becoming poorer with the passage of time, and it had become virtually impossible for the lower strata of the society to survive. It was also stated that 40 per cent of the people were living below poverty line. Somehow it seems that we have taken this point as yet another statistic in our lives. We do not comprehend, or want to understand that this means misery, frustration, and even a humiliation.

To these killings mentioned above, and the suicides that are taking place, in Pakistani society there is a very pertinent point that has been reminded by Mufti Munibur Rehman, Chairman of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee who has been quoted as saying that “Killing is forbidden (haram) in Islam. If a man kills a person, even for the sake of Allah, he commits crime and drags himself out of the fold of Islam.”

This message has to be explained to the people in our kind of circumstances, underlined one worried Karachiite. He added that the virtues and teachings of Islam could be projected by the ulema in “Khutbas” in the mosques, calling upon the people to show courage and patience in their distress, and respect life even in the worst case scenarios. He has faith that this will prove effective.

Where is our conscience?

THE death this week of 29 people, including women and children, caused by LPG cylinder bursts in Allama Iqbal Town has left city residents in a state of shock. Three apartment buildings came crumbling down when tragedy struck at around 2:30 in the morning. The timing of the accident resulted in a high toll because most victims had been fast asleep when death came knocking at their doors.

The city government’s response to the tragedy which, we are told, could have been prevented if the LDA building inspectors had been doing their job, was quick enough for sure. The next day, the Nazim shook up the dormant authority by transferring and dismissing an officer here, another there. The Punjab government also moved fast by offering a compensation of Rs150,000 for each life lost to the families of victims. But, can ‘blood money’ ever make up for the loss of one’s near and dear ones? Not a chance.

To many angry residents, all this was too little, too late. In a city where workshops, warehouses and illegal factories, manufacturing and dealing in hazardous material, have proliferated unchecked over the years, all anger is justified. If it is not a gas cylinder that kills you, it is chemicals stored in a residential area that catch fire and create panic, as was the case earlier on Bund Road.

How many such life-threatening factories and outlets has the government sealed following the blasts at the chemical factory operating in a residential area of Bund Road? Surely, that wasn’t the only illegal factory in the city? Before the latest tragedy struck, Allama Iqbal Town residents said they had filed at least three applications with the city government regarding the illegal business going on in the ill-fated buildings, but no action was taken.

Also conspicuous by its absence is a louder public outcry over the state of affairs. It is not that people have accepted their fate and the lingering danger that the presence of hazardous materials pose to their lives in their immediate neighbourhoods; it is simply cynicism and a feeling of helplessness that have left them numb for action.

Where are the rights groups that champion civic causes and claim to be the public’s watchdog? Where are the mothers who want to ensure that their children have the basic right to live and play in a safe urban environment? Where on earth is our collective conscience?

WHILE Mr Zardari happily joined, and ended up leading a workers’ rally on May Day, journalists were beaten black and blue by the police when they tried to march from the Charing Cross to the Governor’s House on the international press freedom day here. The city remains under the ubiquitous Section 144, which bans the assembly of more than five people at a given point, and has nearly made someone like Mr Zardari look like a popular leader ever since his return from Dubai last month.

The irony of it all is that we are told repeatedly that these are democratic times, and the measure has been put in place to ensure law and order. If the city’s crime statistics, growing encroachments and rowdy traffic are any indicators, you can safely say that there is little law in this place and the only order around is out of order. Nothing epitomizes the reigning chaos more than a VIP’s visit to the city, when the main arteries are blocked for security reasons and motorists are kept waiting in side streets.

And sure enough, journalists have continued to demand an apology for the police manhandling of the presswallahs, but those in authority have ensured that none will be forthcoming. Interestingly, the latest incident took place on a day when another group of Lahore journalists had gathered at the press club to protest against curbs imposed on the press in Nepal. As someone said, the lesson learnt is that all protests henceforth be confined to the safety of four walls, which even the police have learnt to respect.

THE cantonment authorities are definitely on a banning spree. Last week, it was the rickshaws that were banned entry on certain roads, including those leading to the airport, and this week, with some public good in mind, it is plastic bags that have come under the axe.

Plastic bags, or ‘shoppers’, have simply meant ecological disaster since their proliferation in recent years. These are not infinitely recyclable, and also fail to get absorbed in natural environment when disposed of. One hopes the ban imposed by the cantonment authorities will be enforced across the board, and not just on street vendors. Supermarkets, department stores and designer outlets are perhaps the biggest proliferators of this menace.

It is intriguing to note that such bans are enforced only on socio-economically lower and middle class offenders. The banning of rickshaws in the cantonment has meant that many schoolchildren who used rickshaws for commuting have been deprived of this facility, while the authorities have not bothered to provide any alternatives.

Still to have escaped the ban on speeding in cantonment limits are 1300cc and above cars that use the Khyaban-i-Iqbal in DHA as a racing track, especially on Sundays. All this, while a poor man’s child is restrained from entering a public park in the same locality on an assumption as snobbish and foul as that the child is likely not a Defence resident and comes from an adjoining katchi abadi. A notice board affixed at the gate of a park in DHA unashamedly prohibits a maid or a male servant from entering the park, with or without children.

THE Tourism Development Corporation of Punjab has announced plans to build a human resource development centre at a cost of Rs80 million. The purpose is ostensibly to train professional tour operators and other tertiary service providers. Lahore, after all, has been the country’s most visited city for the third consecutive year now, but it cannot always cope with the big number of tourists that descend on it from time to time.

Hoteliers say that the need for more tourist accommodation and related services is so pressing that it is often hard to find a decent room in the city on an average day. For events like Basant, bookings are now being made a year in advance. When demand is high, it also means higher prices, which means that an average Pakistani family wishing to visit Lahore, say, for a couple of days during the summer vacation, has little hope of finding an affordable accommodation.

The Punjab government has done well by thinking ahead and planning now to cater to the city’s growing tourism needs. But at the same time, as the TDCP sets out to establish a tourism resource centre, it must also tackle the dearth of affordable accommodation in Lahore. Neither the TDCP nor the PTDC offers any boarding and lodging facilities in the city. The government would do well to increase the Rs80-million fund earmarked for building a resource centre and include in its plans the construction of a budget hotel too.

Now that we are cozying up to India and, as many of their nationals will be visiting Lahore, especially after the start of the Lahore-Amritsar bus service, we could learn a thing or two from Delhi’s tourism department. It runs an immaculately efficient and affordable multi-storey budget hotel in the heart of New Delhi where visitors are taken on a first come, first served basis, and no one is allowed to stay longer than three days at a stretch.—Observer