| March 21, 2006 | Tuesday | Safar 20, 1427 |
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Stocks manipulation
Lyari Expressway: a new land scam?
Nursing college closure
Quality of life
Too late
Milosevic’s demise
Writ of the government
National emblem
TV channels
Balochistan
Foreign policy
Soft drinks
‘Islamist’
Karachi road
WE watch with dismay and distress as Pakistan becomes a victim of bad planning and poor policy decisions. Two countries that achieved independence in 1947 are today poles apart in terms of their broad based industrial infrastructure, human social development index and domestic institutional development. India had an edge over Pakistan at the time of independence. Apart from inheriting an industrial setup, it started at the very outset to strengthen democratic institutions, including a sound judiciary, while banishing the remnants of colonial rule like princely titles. It reorganised its civil bureaucracy and its armed forces to serve the people of India instead of its rulers.
Pakistan, on the other hand, was hounded by political intrigues of the former collaborators of the Raj. It failed to strip them of their ill-gotten wealth that had been doled out to them by their colonial masters. It also failed to reorganise its civil service and armed forces which were trained to serve the interests of British empire. The loot and plunder of evacuee property left behind by affluent fleeing Hindus further added to the woes of the new state. The political intrigues by a particular section of Muslim Leaguers, in collaboration with former toadies of the Raj (Unionists), put much stress on the Quaid, who was already sick, which ultimately led to his death. The basic document on which a modern democratic state was to be built, the constitution, was deliberately delayed, by those who wanted to gain time to establish a constituency for themselves, before elections were held. The very purpose of the creation of Pakistan, that is self governance through free and fair elections, was derailed in 1954 when Ayub Khan, the serving commander-in chief was inducted as defence minister in violation of all democratic norms.
The Quaid, being a man of vision, had expressed his distrust of Ayub Khan very soon after independence. Ayub Khan took over the country in 1958 and thereafter started the process of giving the delicate and sensitive posts of ministers of finance and planning commissioner to nominees of the World Bank and the American administration. While India continued to work towards achieving self-sufficiency in technological development by focusing on transfer of technology, we imported finished products, luxury cars and expensive defence gadgets.
Pakistan became a client state of the US and all its policies were evolved to serve American interests. Autocratic regimes relied on America to remain in power. For this they compromised the future of Pakistan. India invested in developing its education system, by laying an infrastructure of Indian institutes of technology, involved in research and development to achieve self-sufficiency in all fields of science. Pakistan’s education system was not in sync with demands of a fast developing world, where a nation without a solid technological base and know-how had no future.
Today this country is being run like a business venture, intent on immediate gains, with no investment for future growth or development. There are no respectable jobs or proper remuneration for engineers, scientists, PhDs or doctors in Pakistan. They are not wanted in this country run by MBAs and men in uniform, with the aid of an outdated and corrupt civil bureaucracy. This is the tragedy of Pakistan. It was created as a modern democratic welfare state, but instead it is being run as a fiefdom.
GULL ZEE
Paris, France
PRICE manipulation in the stock exchanges is a basic ground reality. Everybody knows it. There are a few big brokers who indulge in it. Their appetite is insatiable.
It is a fact that a few of them, who not long ago were single-room brokerage houses in the Stock Exchange building, have amassed fabulous amount of wealth, so much so that they now own separate posh buildings as offices and conglomerates of businesses. Besides that, a substantial portion of Karachi’s prized real estate is now in their hands.
They have now started diversifying into industry. It won’t be long before these few will sit on top of the entire Pakistani economy.
Where has all this money come from? Of course, it has come at the cost of small investors. I shudder to think of the number of small investors who have gone bankrupt to fill their coffers.
What has facilitated them in having a field day is the fact that all members of the board of directors of all stock exchanges in Pakistan are brokers themselves. This is a violation of the principle of conflict of interest. The Stock Exchange board is the regulating body that is supposed to look after and protect the interests of all stakeholders doing business in the exchange, specially small investors, and not leave them entirely at the mercy of a far.
Another regulating body that has failed them is the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, due to the incompetence of its bureaucrats.
Who they are and what their modus operandi is no more a secret. Several committees that were set up to investigate the March 2005 crisis have unearthed the names of each and every culprit along with the amount they have made in the scam. What is now required is implementing the inquiry’s recommendations.
The prime responsibility for doing this lies with the four non-broker members who have been nominated on the board. Of course, the job of reining in these people is not an easy one. That is the reason such high calibre individuals have been selected for the job. It would be a misfortune of the country and the small shareholders if they don’t put in the required time and effort to deliver solid results.
N.A. KHAN
Karachi
MS Zubeida Mustafa has done an excellent job by exposing the land scam which is unfolding in the name of the Lyari Expressway Resettlement Project (March 8 and 10).
The most condemnable aspect of the project is that 24,400 families have been uprooted, snapping their social linkages with their old abodes and that too without taking them into confidence. This treatment has been meted out to them in the name of a mega project of doubtful utility, especially as the Northern Bypass is being built simultaneously.
President Pervez Musharraf (then chief executive) was told initially that the total cost of the Lyari Expressway would be around Rs5 billion, that hundreds of acres of valuable land would be Reclaimed, that people living in the riverbed would be resettled on the reclaimed land but from the articles by Ms Mustafa one can see that none of this has happened.
The cost of road construction has doubled; no one is talking about the land reclaimed or its future use; the number of those shifted has risen from 16,000 to 24,400 families, and the cost of resettlement process alone is now estimated at Rs4.4 billion.
On top of it all, no one knows how many deserving families have been left out, how many plots and cheques have been doled out to outsiders, how many of those shifted have sold out their plots (ignoring all official restrictions), where have they gone, and who is the real beneficiary of the land scam in the resettlement project.
Since huge amounts of public money are involved in the project, it is necessary that a judicial inquiry is immediately ordered to fix responsibility for the bungling which has taken place in the name of development.
M.H. KHAN
Karachi
I AM writing in response to the article “NWFP govt orders closure of nursing college” (March 17).
I am a foreign nurse working in Pakistan. I am disturbed by the news about the closure of a nursing school in the NWFP to accommodate female medical students in the facility. My colleagues in the nursing profession share the same views.
I have identified two issues concerning women in Pakistan. The first is the apparent subordinate position of women in society as shown in a related news report of the same day (“Independent status for KMC girls campus irks students”, page 24) where female medical students were asked to return their identity cards because their school would change the structure for a medical college for females only. The second is the overt discrimination of women based on status as evidenced by the closure of the nursing school to pressure the nurses to vacate their hostel in favour of female medical students.
Both these issues are indeed very sad. I pray that the government, NGOs, private and public institutions, and professional organisations working to emancipate women will join hands to give women in Pakistan the status they rightly deserve.
IRMA BUSTAMANTE-GAVINO
Karachi, Pakistan
WE often hear Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz saying on television, that “the quality of life has improved in Pakistan”. If it had not been for an old man I met in a local market a few days ago, I would have believed the prime minister.
Twenty years ago, I used to visit a local market and a young man there would always help me with my things, for which I used to pay him. A few days back, I visited the same market and I found the same man, now appearing very old and decrepit, doing the same work. I wondered why there been no change in the man’s life in twenty years. Why is he the same impoverished man that he was years ago? If the quality of life has generally improved, then why hasn’t the life of this semi-skilled labourer changed?
SAEEDA ALTAF
Karachi
APROPOS of the news item “Osama offered to buy votes for Nawaz: Qazi” (March 19), it does not make any sense for Qazi Sahib to make such disclosures at this late stage.
His purpose is quite obvious; he seeks political rehabilitation and to prove himself a man of principle.
However, once a religious party registers itself as a political party and participates in elections, it loses its commitment to religion and has to abandon its principles for the sake of share in power.
Qazi Sahib is morally obliged to take serious notice of the allegations made by the son of the late Maulana Maudoodi against some of those who matter in JI and offer an explanation.
ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
Karachi
FOR some abnormal reason, Mr. Raza Naeem of Lahore (March 18) has invented Nazi style history to defend the late murderer and dictator Slobodon Milosevic. This is shameful on his part and absolutely without merit as there is not one iota of truth in his statements. The Soviet Union (USSR) ceased to exist in 1991, some eight years before the US and Nato rightly came to the rescue of European Muslims under the murderous extinction attacks of Mr. Milosevic in Kosovo and elsewhere.
It amazes me that a man from Lahore, Pakistan, who I assume to be a Muslim, would write such untrue and flagrantly false allegations, when no historic facts whatsoever exist to justify his remarks and opinions. I am sure that most Pakistanis would strongly disagree with his fiction.
COLONEL (RETD.) GEORGE L. SINGLETON
Alabama, USA
I READ Raza Naeem’s letter regarding Slobodan Milosevic and I have to say that I have never read such rubbish in my life. I watched the genocide that was carried out against the Bosnian Muslims. I saw the body parts of Muslims being scraped off the streets of Sarajevo. For three years Milosevic supplied weapons to the Serbs to bomb Sarajevo from the surrounding mountains. In the end, even they became so fatigued with the senseless slaughter that they had to get drunk so that they could forget they were blowing apart innocent humans who wanted freedom like every body else.
Yugoslavia was an artificial state created by the communists. Its people were forced to change their names and anyone who dared to practice religion was tortured or killed. Yugoslavia was governed by fear and persecution and it was only natural for its citizens to yearn for self-determination.
UN peace keepers stood by and let Serb war criminals butcher at will and chase the survivors like animals through forests where they tried to find shelter. The West gave the Serbs three years to do the job of wiping out native European Muslims but they could not do this. When it seemed the Bosnians might liberate their country, the Americans jumped in to make sure that a unified Bosnian state did not come into existence and forced the Bosnians to accept the division of their country. If Alija Izetbegovic was a Muslim fundamentalist, then I am the Pope.
Most of the Muslims of Bosnia were Muslim in name only. They inter-married with Serbs and Croats. Yet the hatred for Muslims was so deep among Serbs that they raped and butchered these poor people who did not even know what Islam was about. Rape centres were opened were Bosnian women were continuously raped so that they became pregnant. The men were kept in concentration camps and tortured to death. If Mr Naeem wants to see the evidence I have it all dating from 1992 to 1995 on video. The images will remain etched in my mind forever.
ROB NAWAZ
UK
THIS refers to the column “Bluster and performance” by Ayaz Amir (March17).
The main topic was the “writ of the government” and to make his point the writer reviewed the performance of Hitler as well as Sher Shah Suri. He mentioned kite flying, Balochistan, South Waziristan, the sugar crisis, as well as NAB, respect for the judiciary, democracy and the rule of law. He then made a passing reference to the incumbent authority saying “not that Musharraf is to blame for everything”.
In my humble opinion, the “writ of the government” can be established only if the man at the top disciplines himself first, then his cabinet, his political party, his government’s functionaries and so on.
MIR TABASSUM MAIRAJ
Islamabad
IN her letter (March 16) Ms. Maheen Qureshi stated that Pakistan’s national emblem has become inaccurate after 1971. She suggested removing the illustrations of jute and tea, and replacing them with those of rice and sugarcane. I suggest the national emblem be made even more representative by replacing it with that of the Pakistan Army.
ABID SHAIKH
Karachi
APROPOS of Maheen Qureshi’s letter drawing attention to the outdated national emblem, may I suggest that we adopt the seal featuring a bull from the ancient artifacts of the Indus Valley Civilization? There are other seals too which may be more suitable.
FARAKH MALIK
Karachi
A NUMBER of private Pakistani TV channels are operating round the clock. It appears that these channels are short of local programmes and are therefore filling the gap with Indian programmes. A number of Indian TV channels were banned by the Pakistani authorities a few months back but these private Pakistani channels appear to have effectively filled the vacuum.
If Pakistani channels have a dearth of domestically-produced programmes they should reduce their timings and restrict themselves to local programmes.
GHULAM MUHAMMAD
Karachi
REFERENCE my letter “Balochistan operation” (March 19), the year in which the first military operation was launched was 1948 and not 1946.
BRIG.(RETD.) A.R.SIDDIQI
Karachi
I WOULD like to draw the attention of your readers to an excellent paper recently published by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The paper, entitled “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, is by two eminent and well known researchers, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University. It deals extensively with the damage the lop-sided American policy, vis-‘-vis Palestine and Israel has done to American interests overseas.
The paper is available on the Internet. It goes without saying that this important review of American foreign policy has generally been ignored by the American mass media. A review of this paper will explain why.
SYED SAULAT SHERE
Virginia, USA
THIS has reference to Mr Rashid Ashraf’s letter (March 3) on soft drinks. The consumption of soft drinks, especially carbonated, caffeine-containing coloured drinks. To safeguard the health of our youth, it is important to control and limit the intake of such drinks. Perhaps, if healthier alternatives such as pure, natural fruit juice (not the artificial ones that are available in abundance and are probably as unhealthy as other soft drinks), lemonade or ‘lasee’ are made more widely available, the consumption of soft drinks may decrease.
Z. MAJOKA
Sargodha
I AM shocked by the use of the terms “Islamism” and “Islamist” by some English language newspapers in Pakistan. These terms were invented and given to the world by Jewish lobbies who declared Islam their next target after the fall of communism.
They replaced the words communism with “Islamism” and communist with “Islamist” to undermine the image of Islam. So we must correct our use of these terms to defend our faith and to counter this media onslaught designed to harm the renaissance of Islam.
AHMED BIN BABAR
Via email
FROM Karachi’s Islamia College to the Jail roundabout the road is broken, dug up and has been closed for months, causing loss of fuel, time and traffic problems. It seems like an orphan, no one to look after it. Please repair and open the road.
ANWAR AHMED
Karachi
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