Reforming the world body

MANAGEMENT experts know that it is much easier to create a new institution than to overhaul an existing one that has been in existence for several decades. The truth of this is confirmed by the reform exercise being attempted at the United Nations in New York. Last September the UN General Assembly held a summit session in an attempt to get world leaders to adopt a reform package but not surprisingly this could not be done because the world body with 191 members has become too unwieldy to take vital decisions by consensus. The UN is now proceeding to introduce reforms in bits and pieces. Probably this is the only way changes can be brought about. Thus, expanding the membership of the Security Council, which is universally recognised as a key and essential item on the reform agenda, has proved to be the hardest nut to crack. Since it would involve giving more powers to states which do not have these at the moment, there has been a lot of controversy on this issue. More important, the power equations between competing states in the international system have also determined the attitudes of governments as to who should be made a permanent member with veto power. As against this, the world body has proved to be more successful in reforming the human rights watchdog mechanism and the moribund Geneva-based Human Rights Commission has been won over to make room for a more compact and effective Human Rights Council to be elected next month by the General Assembly. Not that resistance was not there: the US tried hard to obstruct the move but failed. Given the commitment of an overwhelming majority to create a new body, the council should be in place in June.

Another issue that has been of concern to many members is that of the efficiency, accountability and working of the United Nations that came under a dark shadow when corruption at a high level in the Iraqi oil-for-food programme was detected. In September the UN Assembly adopted the “summit outcome document” that called on the secretary-general to prepare a plan to improve the management of the world body. Mr Kofi Annan presented his proposal in March and it is to be discussed by a 15-member group with the high sounding nomenclature of “UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel on system-wide coherence in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance and environment”. Co-chaired by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the panel will prepare a package of reforms and its phased implementation plan. Although this may appear a simple issue, it is not. The UN’s budget has gone up from $4.5 billion 10 years ago to $10 billion now. How this money is spent is of direct concern to all members. Moreover, the secretariat’s functions have also undergone a shift. From a passive role of holding conferences, the UN bureaucracy is now involved in activities in many countries to improve people’s lives and provide relief in emergencies. The package under discussion envisages a 2,500-strong rapid action force, the modernisation of the UN’s information system, outsourcing of some services from New York to cheaper locations and enhancing the secretary-general’s authority to move staff when needed. Obviously, any change has far-reaching implications and faces resistance from the status quo forces. If one keeps in view the transformed world landscape since 1945 when the UN was founded, the urgency of reform becomes evident.

A sustainable move

THE Punjab government is pressing ahead with the completion of a model, modern industrial city being set up near Faisalabad. The M-3 value-added industrial city, as it is called after the motorway linking Faisalabad with Lahore and Islamabad, is being commissioned with significant foreign, mainly Chinese, investment as a component. It will help generate 100,000 direct and 300,000 indirect jobs. That the mega-project is being set up in the heartland of Punjab where unemployment is rampant is a welcome move. Spread over 4,500 acres, the estate will be home to new, expanding industrial sectors, comprising chemical, pharmaceutical, textile engineering and cement factories. The provincial government has also approved the installation of a water treatment plant at the estate to ensure safe disposal of effluent at a cost of one billion rupees. Roads to and through the industrial city are nearing completion, as electricity and gas connections are being provided. From the pace of the work being done, it is estimated that the project will be completed in about a year’s time.

It is such well thought-out, ecologically safe and economically sustainable industrial zones that need to be set up at various places across the country, especially in the rural hinterland. This is the only way to make the majority rural population a stakeholder in the country’s economic progress, and to arrest the migration of rural people to the urban centres. The industrialisation initiatives taken by Punjab in recent years need to be emulated by the other federating units also, which have higher levels of poverty among their rural populations. The federal government should step forward to help the smaller provinces, the Azad Kashmir government, the administration of the Northern Areas and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in setting up similar ventures where funds for such development may not be readily available with the respective governments and political administrations. This will help reduce the sense of deprivation among the people of the smaller provinces and save them becoming pawns in the hands of political manipulators.

The ulema and karo-kari

THAT 40 religious leaders of various schools of thought declared karo-kari unIslamic at a conference held in Larkana the other day is a positive development. Already, several religious leaders and organisations have condemned honour killings as being against the tenets of Islam but the message needs to be reinforced at all levels. It is not enough for religious or political leaders in Islamabad to issue strong statements against heinous crimes against women; the message must be driven home to the people directly affected by the menace so that they can understand how criminal an act karo-kari is. This is why it is heartening that the conference was held in Larkana, an area where honour killings are fairly prevalent, as it carried the message to reach a large section of the rural population. Any kind of awareness campaign must be supported by the government which has to accept that crimes against women — be they honour-related, rape or domestic violence — are rising at an alarming rate and can only be contained through a process of social enlightenment. It is equally important that laws against such crimes are implemented, which unfortunately has not been the case. More often than not, the police are reluctant to register karo-kari cases or influential tribal leaders succeed in using their clout to suppress any protest or action against honour killings or similar other offences against women.

If the government exhibits a serious political will to tackle social ills prevailing in the country, it can find an ally in enlightened members of the ulema to win the war on atrocities like karo-kari. It has tried to engage the ulema on family planning but to take it further ahead, it must ensure that a dialogue is a continuing process that includes all members of society.

Living in a world of make-believe

THERE is a waning sense of reality in national politics as each day passes. The ruling party with Gen Musharraf as its godfather is flexing its muscles in preparation for next year’s general elections, and the curtain rises on a theatre of the absurd yet again.

There is a sense of urgency in demonising the Bhuttos and the Sharifs, but more despicable is the regime’s fixation on crowning ethnic and religious mavericks, including those running private prisons in the rural hinterland; in short, all those known to hold the people hostage. If this is what Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the Chaudhries of Punjab call ‘real’ democracy, then Lord have mercy on us.

The ‘sympathisers’ within the civil-military establishment of the fire-breathing religio-political groupings, such as the erstwhile banned sectarian outfits — the Sipah-i-Sahaba and the Sipah-i-Mohammed in Punjab and the ‘local’ Taliban in South Waziristan — seem to have been given the charge yet again to ‘manage’ the 2007 elections. This is being done ostensibly to curb the influence of the six-party multi-sect religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which the intelligence agencies now believe has grown too big for its boots.

The MMA’s impressive showing, with or without help from intelligence operatives, in the 2002 elections, whereby it swept the polls in the Frontier, bagged the majority vote in Balochistan as well as got its key leaders elected from most big cities in Sindh and Punjab has become a real cause for concern for the establishment. More so, because the religious alliance was reared as a partner in power by the military intelligence, but the subsequent falling out of the alliance with the military-led regime mostly under pressure from the Jamaat-i-Islami leadership, has necessitated the official shift in seeking loyalties elsewhere for the generals’ tailor-made political dispensation. The JI, smitten by last year’s rout in Karachi’s local elections, is going all out to oppose the military-approved democratic set-up, and has, thus, fallen out of favour with the civil-military establishment.

These are indications that those with little proven credentials to fit the political roles assigned to them will continue to rule the roost in the post-2007 scenario. The ad-hocism that every military ruler must continue to practise in order to stay relevant to a political dispensation of his own creation has yet to come full circle on the home front.

It has nearly run full circle on the foreign policy front, with many western governments losing interest in the pseudo-liberal rhetoric being mouthed by the ruler here in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. Many in Washington are now openly doubting Pakistan’s sincerity in following Gen Musharraf’s blueprint for a forward-looking, nuclear-armed Muslim state that can be trusted, even if not positively engaged over the longer term.

Forget George Bush’s South Asia visit and Pakistan’s failure to get anything valuable out of it. Much has been written about what was essentially a non-event; even ambassador Jehangir Karamat knew the unimportance of the trip and decided to stay back in Washington when the US president came visiting Islamabad. Take the expansion of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation by inducting Afghanistan into the grouping as a tell-tale example of Pakistan’s foreign policy failure.

Subsequent exchanges of accusations between Kabul and Islamabad have made it clear that the hasty decision will not bring home any likely dividends. Kabul has all but proved to be an Indian Trojan horse in Saarc so far, with the doublespeak from the other side of the Durand Line receiving a tacit approval from Washington.

The political failings at home and abroad of this regime are staggering. This realisation would have sent chills down the spine of any genuinely elected government gearing up for a re-election. The promises mad about social reform have remained just that. No substantive lawmaking has been undertaken to reverse the sorry fate of the hapless women of this country. Women MPs elected to the assemblies on reserve seats have remained a muted lot during the past four years and laws repugnant to women continue to be on the statute, despite the promise made by Gen Musharraf to do something about them. Violence against women has seen no significant decline, and that against minorities has even recorded an increase in the corresponding period.

The accountability process initiated after the 1999 military take-over has been a witch hunt of the opposition leaders, while the government’s own allies and its sitting ministers have been virtually exempted from the process. The promise of good governance made to the people in the name of the devolution plan has been subjected to the whims of provincial governments that operate more as heads of fiefdoms when it comes to getting the goods delivered down to the grassroots level.

Likewise, the police reform has not taken off the ground at all, with police brutality and abuse of power being the hallmark of that discredited institution. The seamy side of promised ‘real’ democracy is all too obvious. This is as obvious as the failure of the political system that was reinvented, in hindsight, perhaps only to keep certain individuals out of the political fray.

Not only on the political front is the theatre of the absurd unveiling itself, the spin-doctoring of the country’s state of the economy and its in the years ahead is also in full swing. Rather than being embarrassed by the sugar crisis, for which many of the mill-owing ministers are believed to be directly responsible, the government has started harping on the so-called economic turnaround that has shown few signs of trickling down to the masses. It is not even funny how the largely prosperous bunch of MNAs — treasury and the opposition combined — gave themselves a whopping pay rise last year to offset inflation, which the PM says is an indication of a growing economy not likely to affect the common citizen. The gap between the perception of the ruling and the ruled has never been wider.

Other flimsy claims of a turnaround have come in the form of the rising ownership in the country of personal vehicles, import of luxury cars, proliferation of luxury housing estates in major cities and of selling off of national assets such as the PTCL, the KESC, Pakistan Steel, etc. to private parties. There is no accountability as to the expenditure of the wealth the government has thus amassed on public welfare projects or on building and upgrading the socio-economic infrastructure that could benefit the people at large.

Forget health and education, for these sectors have long been in a neglected state. The recent failures in education include the government’s inability even to implement its own commissioned, standardised examination system that the Aga Khan Examination Board was prevailed upon to take up. In the health sector, public hospitals are not able to cater even to the medical needs, including critically required surgery, of its own ranking civil servants. Last but not least, when was the last time one heard of affordable housing or public transport systems being launched for the urban middle class, especially in the big cities?

A lopsided emphasis on the big and grand seems to be the only preoccupation of the government, whereby existing good roads in our cities’ posh areas are being further upgraded and beautified, prime urban land is being commercialised for the building of glossy glass-front high-rises and high-end digital technological media and security services are being offered to the richest of the rich.

The emerging Defence Housing Authorities in Lahore and Islamabad, for instance, are prime examples of the last mentioned gambit, involving what we are told are mini-digital revolutions underwritten heavily by foreign investors for their own benefit and of those who can pay for such luxuries. Where in all of this does the blue-collar urban worker fit? What is being done to ease the suffering of the middle class on account of a constantly rising cost of living?

Policy disasters abound. So much so that agriculture has also borne the brunt of lopsided policy-making. An acute water shortage continues to strain inter-provincial relations as well as shrink the acreage of irrigable land. Produce of staple crops has seen an actual decline in recent years as there are more and more mouths to feed, with the country having to import wheat, sugar and vegetables. All this, while the president prides himself on felting to the nation that the country is moving from an agriculture-based to an industry-based economy.

Who, you might ask, will feed the teeming millions already living below the poverty line and with no access to jobs in the years ahead? Surely, the underprivileged won’t be able to buy imported sugar, grains and vegetables at international prices. Agriculture is the hand that has been feeding the rich and the poor of this country, and now we hear that that sector, too, is being sacrificed at the altar of this regime’s obsession with a show-case modernity that will only benefit the rich.

These are all grim realities that the prime minister, even as the figurehead of the present government, seems all too blissfully ignorant of. For the thinking few out there, these are the obvious challenges that stare us in the face: any grand road leading to a ‘real’ democracy will have to be built on a humbler, even if bumpy, road of democracy. Not doing so simply means that our present set of dream merchants live in a world of make-believe. The pockets of affluence we see today are surrounded by boiling pools of discontent all around. For how long the newly constructed underpasses and flyovers will continue to transport the rich and famous in and out of their comfortable grooves is anyone’s guess.