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| October 12, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramzan 7, 1426 |
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Quake-proof buildings
China’s manned space flight
Why president Kalam must resign
FROM the ruin and rubble left behind by Saturday’s devastating earthquake has arisen a new spirit of fellow-feeling among Pakistanis that the nation can be justly proud of. While the international community has rallied to the support of the quake victims with considerable aid, it is the average Pakistani’s response to the catastrophe that stands out as a heart-warming example of solidarity and self-help. Even before the true scale of the disaster was known, people from all walks of life had sprung into action, donating, mobilizing, volunteering, caring. Thanks to advancements in telecommunications, the mobile phone played a pivotal role in advising people where to converge and what to give — all in the form of simple text messages that guided people to various aid collection points. The PAF museum in Karachi, for example, became a centre where people could deposit money and relief material, which have been pouring in since Sunday. Even a cursory glance at the quantity collected at just one centre is an indication of the people’s generosity. And when the time came to sort out the piles of supplies, once again it was the common citizen who responded: scores of volunteers, many of them teenage students, were working round the clock to help officials load and despatch the donated goods.
The story does not end there. Makeshift collection centres have cropped up all over the country — on the roadsides, in mohallas, in apartment complexes — to facilitate the process of donations. While there may be sporadic reports of looting in the affected areas, no one dare touch goods at the relief camps left unattended at night. The willing and the able-bodied are thronging relief centres and agencies offering themselves as volunteers. The phenomenal response has been as heart-warming as it is spontaneous — a rebuff to the cynics amongst us. It disproves the notion that we have become an apathetic lot, hardened by years of misgovernance and popular frustration. The quake tragedy has united and, in some ways, empowered the nation, and made even bickering politicians set their differences aside for the present and work together for the relief and rehabilitation of the stricken people. NGOs involved in health, education and development too have stepped forward, but given the rulers’ hostility towards them, many may not know how to participate in the on-going relief effort. The government must try to draw them in and utilize their networks to provide succour to the quake victims.
It cannot be stressed too much that donated goods should get to those most in need in an effective and efficient manner. The government is under attack for not reaching the victims in time, and the newly set up federal relief commission has a monumental task ahead of it to ensure that the survivors — many of them living under the open sky — are provided the necessary means of sustenance. In this gloomy scenario where there is much to mourn, we can only hope that the spirit of fellow feeling and help seen all around today will continue long after the international aid workers have gone home. This spirit should also sustain and strengthen the on-going national effort for the rehabilitation of the people, families and institutions devastated by Saturday’s ravaging earthquake.
WITH the full extent of the utter devastation caused by Saturday’s earthquake still unfolding before our eyes, one thing seems crystal clear: that the death toll could have been substantially lower had the structures and buildings in the affected region been built keeping in mind the seismic-prone nature of the region. According to many reports and eyewitness accounts, almost all government buildings, offices, schools, hospitals and even the AJK university’s facilities have collapsed. This seems to suggest that the construction of these buildings was done using substandard material and that the government agencies responsible for monitoring the quality of such construction were not doing their job. Unfortunately, this is not a problem confined only to AJK or the NWFP or even Islamabad but is a pervasive shortcoming that afflicts the rest of the country.
Building control and monitoring authorities rarely if ever do their job properly and instead many of their officials tend to look the other way, quietly allowing developers and builders to indulge in all kinds of illegalities. That is precisely what seems to have happened in the case of the collapsed apartment block in Islamabad where it has now come to light that senior officials of the Capital Development Authority had allowed unauthorized construction of one extra block of flats and had also overlooked the use of substandard building material. In Karachi, it would be a fair assumption that the proportion of buildings that violate the building code and which use substandard material is far greater than those which follow the code and are built according to the proper specifications. The same seems to be the story in the NWFP and the AJK with regard to hundreds of government buildings, especially schools. In light of what has happened, the government must order a survey of all buildings in the entire area and pull down those unfit for living. Then, when reconstruction takes place, it should ensure that the buildings have features which make them earthquake resistant (especially for tall structures) and that the material used is not substandard. Hopefully, the devastation caused by Saturday’s quake will act as a catalyst for this to happen.
UNLESS there is a last-minute hitch caused by weather conditions, China’s second manned flight goes into space today. Exactly two years after Yang Liwei became China’s first astronaut, the Shenzhou VI spacecraft is scheduled to blast off today from a space station in Inner Mongolia carrying two Chinese into space. Yang’s 21-hour flight through space turned him into a national hero and made China the third nation after America and Russia to send a man into space. Today’s two-man flight is much more ambitious and provides an indication of China’s future space plans. Zhia Zhigang and Nie Haisheng will be in space for five days to carry out experiments designed to check the effects of space journey on them. Western space experts agree that the purpose behind the Chinese launch is to have a permanent space station. What are Beijing’s future space plans? A November 2000 white paper, issued on the first anniversary of the launching of China’s first unmanned space flight, made China’s goals clear. Its aim included a scientific exploration of space, strengthening China’s national security, and raising the country’s prestige in the world. There are no plans yet for a Chinese to land on the moon, but the white paper made it clear that China hopes not only to land a man on the moon but to colonize the earth’s only satellite.
Pakistan is among the countries with which China has cooperated in space technology. Badr I, Pakistan’s first satellite, was fired into space at China’s Xichang space station on July 16, 1990. Launched into space by a Long March 2E rocket, Badr was placed at an altitude of 375 miles and completed a circle round the earth in 96 minutes. Closer cooperation with China in space and rocket technology should help Pakistan develop satellite imagery technology which will help in weather forecasting and gathering vital geological data about its quake-prone areas.
AN alibi is the respectable sister of a scapegoat. Hunting the scapegoat is a common aspect of politics all over the world. There is nothing particularly Indian, or partisan, about it. Anyone seeking to wound a chief executive must slaughter a clutch of scapegoats that line the path to his or her office. That is ritual procedure.
Opposition leaders were quick to demand the resignation, in order of merit, of Laloo Prasad Yadav, the don of Bihar; Buta Singh, the governor of Bihar; and Dr Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India after the Supreme Court decision striking down the proclamation by the president of India on May 23 dissolving a Bihar assembly that had been duly elected but not yet sworn in. The opposition leaders are missing the point. The person who should resign, if he has any respect for the office that he holds, is the president of India, Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam.
The Bihar assembly was not dissolved by the wish of Laloo Prasad, the obedience of Buta Singh or the recommendation of the prime minister. All three may have been politically necessary for the decision. But the order came with the signature of the president of India. It was his decision, taken in atrocious circumstances, that has stained the history of Indian democracy.
It did not require a decision of the Supreme Court to see that the president was wrong. Common sense could have suggested this. The members of the aborted house had been properly elected in a legitimate election. An election is not complete until the elected members are sworn in. Instead of completing the process, the election was arbitrarily revoked and the will of the people annuled. Bihar is famous for rigging. This was unique in the sense that the rigging was done after the results were declared. This was appalling, in that the president of India rigged the outcome. The others — governor, cabinet, prime minister — gave their recommendation. The president of India took the decision.
The manner in which he took the decision was utterly reprehensible. The president was in Moscow on the night of May 22-23 when the cabinet decided that the Bihar assembly should be dissolved even before it had met. The president was woken up at night to sign the proclamation. Why did he do it immediately, at that unseemly hour? Why could he not wait for daybreak and send the cabinet’s recommendation for legal opinion, which he was fully within his rights to do? It was not as if he was being told to declare war, unless of course it was war on the Bihar voter.
The political crisis in Bihar had simmered for a long while. Buta Singh had sent his report to Delhi that no party or coalition had secured a majority on March 6, and there was president’s rule in Bihar from March 7. Parliament had approved this by March 21, and there was no need to return to parliament for an extension for some months.
There was absolutely no time compulsion. The president could have taken a decision on his return from his foreign tour. And while he is bound to accept a recommendation of the cabinet, he also has the right to check the legality of any recommendation and indicate his personal displeasure by returning it to the cabinet for reconsideration.
If the cabinet insisted, the president would have no option but to sign, but he would have upheld the dignity of his office as well as reinforced the concept of check and balance that is essential to prevent any tendency towards dictatorship. The president abdicated the dignity and demands of his office when he put a hurried signature to an act of blatant political manipulation.
Why is the political class less culpable? Precisely because it is political. Power is its dharma, and that is both understood and accepted. Laloo Yadav’s sole desire was to retain office after losing an election he had bungled. If Nitish Kumar had been in his place, or a BJP leader, he would have done the same. The BJP’s behaviour in next-door Jharkhand has been as cynical.
Laloo Yadav used his clout as an ally in Delhi to bully Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh to rush through a shoddy cabinet decision only in order to pre-empt his opponents, who were on the verge of cobbling together an alternative coalition. There was nothing more idealistic in the stampede.
Equally, it would have been extraordinarily foolish of Dr Manmohan Singh to risk his coalition for the proprieties of Bihar. I am certain about Dr Singh’s personal views. Privately, he would never have approved of what he was being forced to do publicly. But he is not naive.
He does not believe in sending an invitation to civil war. He went by the letter and passed on the cabinet’s recommendation to the president.
Why has the constitution of India found room for a president and vested in him the “executive power of the Union”? After all, the president is not directly elected by the people, and logically it is the prime minister, a creature of a directly elected Lok Sabha, who should be the final arbiter of executive power.
But the office of president was created not to teach schoolchildren how to live a better life, although that is always a good thing to do. It was created because the system needed a person who was solely the guardian of the constitution rather than the representative of the legislature.
While taking his oath, the president swears to “protect and defend the constitution and the law”, not the parliament or the government.
The framers of our constitution knew that an elected executive would be occasionally tempted to bend the law to suit a political purpose and created a president to prevent such deviation. It gave the president the means to do so, by permitting him to seek legal opinion in case of any doubt from a constitutional authority. President Kalam did no such thing when faced by an obvious malfeasance. If his doubts had been placed on the record, then he would have done his duty, and indeed the supreme court would have removed those doubts.
The fact is that the politicians have flouted the law and won the politics, because the fresh elections to the Bihar assembly have not been stopped. They could not be, because the Supreme Court has to be at all times cognizant of realities.
So Laloo has got the second chance he wanted, and corrected some of his mistakes in the search for a different outcome. What guarantee is there that what has happened in Bihar cannot be repeated at the national level by another president?
We are in coalition politics, in which deals will be made both before and after elections. What if a president seeks to subvert the will of a general election by dissolving the house before MPs are sworn in?
You cannot be disillusioned if you are not illusioned. President Kalam was good enough to induce illusions. Like the rest of my countrymen, I do believe that he is a sincere and honest man, a simple man who has been placed amidst pomp and majesty by the curious dance of fate.
I do not believe that he has been spoilt by his circumstances, or that he has been tempted by the luxury around him to the point where he has, like so many politicians, placed his conscience hostage to the luxury of office.
He has sought, during his term in office, to be a role model to the most precious asset of a nation, its children, its future generations. He has told them over and over again to place principle over gain. This is the moment for the president of India to teach those children he loves by the example of his own convictions.
The Supreme Court of India has indicted the president of India. Either the president takes a stand and says that the supreme court is wrong, and must be held accountable for bias and misjudgment. Or he should accept the validity of the judgment and hold himself accountable.
It would have been meaningless to present this choice before those of our past presidents who were politicians. The one exception would be, of course, President Rajendra Prasad, who belonged to the cloth of Gandhi and therefore had principles.
This question could have been placed before the academicians, Dr Radhakrishnan and Dr Zakir Hussain. All three would have chosen principle over power. But only a very naive commentator would have demanded such standards from Giani Zail Singh.
The choice is before President Kalam. He can choose to be remembered as Dr Radhakrishnan and Dr Zakir Hussain are. Or he can hide behind an alibi and be forgotten, as Giani Zail Singh is.
The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.