|
| July 12, 2006 | Wednesday | Jumadi-ul-Sani 15, 1427 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Deadly Fokker crash
Doctors’ negligence
Widening the gulf of Mexico
LAST week’s presidential election in Mexico had for months been touted as a
crucial stage in the phenomenon whereby Latin America has democratically been
drifting leftwards during the past decade. The accuracy of that assessment has
been questioned by those who see Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as more of a
rhetorical radical than a visionary.
CALL intervention by any name, it remains intervention. On Monday, the White
House spokesman said “pre-emption” did not necessarily mean war. While the
US still stood by its policy of pre-emption, it did not, he said,
necessarily mean military action. The new definition of pre-emption flies in
the face of the two wars America launched during the last five years and
which are still continuing. The first of these wars was on Taliban-ruled
Afghanistan. The provocation for the US was indeed great. The terrorist
attacks in New York and Washington, masterminded by Osama bin Laden, shook
the world. Besides causing the death of nearly 3,000 civilians, the attacks
highlighted the danger to the world from terrorists and those who harboured
them. At one stage, a war could have been averted if the Taliban had handed
over Osama to America. However, what has really shocked the world is
America’s post-Taliban policy, especially the behaviour of its troops. The
vast majority of those flown to Guantanamo Bay had nothing to do with the
Taliban or terrorism. Anyone caught on the streets of Kabul after it fell
was flown to Guantanamo so as to be outside the jurisdiction of American
law. They were denied PoW status and subjected to torture and humiliation
and their Holy Book was desecrated. In addition, American military action in
the ongoing anti-Taliban operations has led to horrendous human rights
violations.
However, it is Iraq which epitomises the dangers inherent in pre-emption.
There was no justification whatsoever for the war unleashed on Iraq. The UN
inspectors had found no traces of weapons of mass destruction, and whatever
else President Saddam Hussein might have been, he certainly was no friend of
Osama’s. In fact, he frustrated Osama’s attempt to turn Iraq into a base of
operation for Al Qaeda. The war was launched because it served America’s and
Israel’s interest to destroy the only Arab country that Tel Aviv thought
posed a threat to its security. Once in Iraq, America has found it difficult
to get out, having suffered over 2,500 fatalities. As for Iraqi civilians
dead, a rough estimate puts it at 100,000.
If a new definition of pre-emption is an indication of a possible change in
US policy, then it deserves to be welcomed. In fact, the US attitude towards
Iran and North Korea seems to indicate a softening of American policy and
marks what one hopes would be a shift away from the unilateralism that has
characterised the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But then let us not
be overly optimistic, for a US National Security Strategy document, released
in March, made it clear that America had not abjured the use of force to
tame a perceived enemy. While emphasising that diplomacy should be given a
chance, the document states that “under the long-standing principles of
self-defence we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even
if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”
Against this, one has the White House spokesman’s view that the strike-first
strategy did not necessarily imply military action. Indeed, one hopes
Washington has learnt its lessons from its experience in Afghanistan and
Iraq. With only two years left to the Bush presidency, it remains to be seen
how the next administration interprets pre-emption and whether that will
mark an end to a policy that has only brought disaster to the countries
targeted, without making the world any safer.
MONDAY’s plane crash near Multan has revived the debate over the
airworthiness of the national carrier’s ageing fleet of Fokker F-27s. The
PIA chairman has been quick to insist, no doubt out of the best of motives,
that the fleet is fit and will not be grounded. Coming so soon after the
disaster, the claim seems somewhat hasty and certainly ill-advised. At a
time of tragedy such as this, what is required of senior officials is
introspection and a firm resolve to rectify the factors that led to Monday’s
crash. Also unseemly is the attempt by some to gain political mileage out of
a tragedy. Mistakes may have been made in the past but the need now is to
plan the future. There is no doubt that PIA’s Fokkers of 1960s vintage are
well past their prime and should have been replaced with new aircraft at
least a decade ago. Any lingering financial or other constraints in the way
of speedy retirement must be overcome as soon as possible. All seven of the
ATR-42 aircraft that are to replace the Fokkers are expected to join the PIA
fleet by May 2007. This process must be expedited.
The larger issue at stake is overall aviation safety, not just Fokker
airworthiness. There are reports of growing flight fatigue among pilots who
are flying long hours without adequate rest. Not surprisingly, cases of
‘medical groundings’ are said to be on the rise. Air traffic control staff
also complain of being overworked. Skilled technicians are reportedly
leaving the national carrier in favour of better-paying foreign airlines — a
trend that is bound to affect PIA’s maintenance standards. These are
critical areas of operation with no room for oversight or laxity. Yet these
are precisely the areas where PIA is in imminent danger of falling short
even of the acceptable. Improvement is urgently called for in the working
conditions of pilots, engineers, air traffic controllers and cabin and
ground crews. To overcome pilot shortages, PIA also needs to look into
raising the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 — a move that would be in
line with the recommendations of the International Civil Aviation
Organization and the practices of the European Joint Aviation Authority.
WHILE suspicions of foul play are growing by the day in the case of the
doctor arrested in Karachi on charges of removing a patient’s kidney instead
of his gall bladder, there is no definitive evidence as yet to prove an
ulterior motive behind his actions. Until fears of his involvement in the
growing phenomenon of illegal kidney sales are substantiated, it would be
more appropriate to treat it as a case of medical negligence at the private
clinic where the surgery was performed. But regardless of whether the
doctor’s actions were deliberate or a mistake, the fact is that the patient
in question faces risks to his health in addition to footing heavy medical
bills.
Unfortunately, this sort of medical negligence — if this indeed was the case
— is prevalent across the country. Earlier this year, two cases were
reported of a pair of forceps being left in a patient’s abdomen, resulting
in the death of one woman. When such cases are highlighted by the media, the
higher medical authorities do initiate an investigation into the actions of
the doctors responsible, but the affair is hardly ever followed up. In fact,
so far only a handful of doctors have been penalised for medical negligence,
and most hospital administrations and doctors manage to evade
responsibility. Emboldened by the absence of checks, they continue to
indulge in medical malpractices. This is not only true of government
hospitals, notorious for their poor level of health services, but also for
private medical institutions that, unfortunately, are not being monitored,
although the government has promised to introduce laws to regulate them.
Unless this is done, it will be difficult to make erring doctors, or the
institutions they work in, face legal action. In the absence of the latter,
doctors will carry on flouting all norms of proper patient care.
That probably isn’t an entirely unfair evaluation of the Democratic Revolution
Party (PRD) candidate, who was popular as mayor of Mexico City not least because
he, unlike previous holders of the post, spurned many of the privileges that
came with the office. During this year’s election campaign, he had vowed that,
if elected, he would turn the elaborate Los Pinos presidential compound into a
national park.
That seems like an admirable gesture, but gestures can arouse suspicions if they
come across as a substitute for policies. This is not to suggest that Lopez
Obrador’s platform was a policy-free zone. Its mainstay was a huge public works
programme deliberately reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, to be
funded by slashing the salaries of bureaucrats and other public office-holders,
including the president.
That, again, sounds good on the face of it. A closer look at the numbers,
however, reveals that the figures don’t add up: the savings from the salary
cuts, even if the latter could be implemented without sparking a bureaucratic
rebellion, would be only a fraction of what would be required to fund the
projects Lopez Oprador evidently had in mind.
He also said he was planning to challenge aspects of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (Nafta), particularly its provisions on agricultural subsidies,
which heavily disadvantage Mexican farmers vis-a-vis their counterparts in the
United States. As Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University,
put it last week in a Washington Post article, “Before Nafta, Mexico was
self-sufficient in corn and bean production. Today, one out of three Mexican
tortillas is made with cheap corn meal from the United States.” As a result,
since the introduction of Nafta, the number of Mexicans making their living off
the land has diminished by three million, chiefly because “Mexican farmers
simply can’t compete with capital-intensive US agribusiness, which continues to
enjoy generous government subsidies.” What’s more, Grandin points out, there’s
worse to come: “In 2008, the agreement’s final provision is set to go into
effect, eliminating the last tariffs on US corn and beans and ending the
subsidies Mexico gives to its peasant farmers, leaving untouched the far larger
subsidies doles out to its own agricultural sector.”
These are precisely the sorts of factors that explain why the US-proposed Free
Trade Area of the Americas has encountered so much resistance across Latin
America. Mexico, by virtue of its geographical position, had the dubious
privilege of being incorporated in the so-called free-trade scheme back in 1994,
at a time when it was still ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), which had monopolised power since 1929, invariably employing fraudulent
means to stave off rivals after shedding its radical pretensions back in the
1940s.
Even in 1994, it was obvious to some Mexicans that getting into bed with the US
would entail a great deal of unnecessary pain: the Zapatista rebellion in
Chiapas province, which borrowed its name from the early 20th century peasant
revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, coincided with the inauguration of Nafta. The
Zapatistas represented some of the poorest agricultural workers in a country
where 40 per cent of the population lives beneath the poverty line. The
movement’s ski-masked spokesman was an articulate and romantic figure,
Subcomandante Marcos.
On January 1 this year, exactly 12 years after the Chiapas uprising, Marcos,
having chosen to pursue Zapatista goals through purely political means, embarked
on a nationwide tour to promote the movement’s ideas. He evidently reserved much
of his scorn for Lopez Obrador, whom he described as a traitor who would “give
it to all of us” if he won on July 2. On election day last week, he marched down
Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue with thousands of supporters, denouncing all the
political parties.
The extent to which the Zapatistas and other radical left-wing groups might have
determined last week’s result by seeking an electoral boycott is impossible to
pinpoint, of course, but given that Lopez Obrador lost the contest by less than
250,000 votes out of 41 million, it is quite possible that even marginal
influences proved crucial. The candidate — who was, rightly or wrongly,
perceived by the majority of Mexico’s poor as a vehicle for their possible
salvation — hasn’t blamed his defeat on the far left: he believes he was
deprived of victory by the machinations of the ruling National Action Party
(PAN), whose candidate, Felipe Calderon, has provisionally been declared the
president-elect.
In a legal complaint filed with the election commission, Lopez Obrador has
accused the right-wing PAN — which rose to prominence six years ago when its
candidate Vicente Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, ended the PRI’s monopoly on
executive power — of conduct ranging from the use of state funds in the campaign
(which is illegal under Mexican law) to the manipulation of computerised vote
tallies.
There is certainly some evidence that Lopez Obrador’s accusations aren’t
entirely gratuitous: there are documented cases of substantial numbers of votes
being voided or remaining uncounted in certain polling stations.
Observers from the European Union gave the election a tick of approval, but such
overseers generally tend to discount relatively minor instances of possible
misconduct. However, in instances where the result is so tight — Calderon and
Lopez Obrador are separated by 0.6 per cent of the vote — every ballot counts.
Therefore the latter’s demand for a thorough manual recount isn’t unreasonable.
However, under Mexican law, this is apparently illegal: ballots from only a
limited number of polling stations can be subjected to manual scrutiny. It
remains to be seen how seriously the election commission will take Lopez
Obrador’s complaint, even though large numbers of Mexicans — his protest rally
in Mexico City last Saturday attracted 100,000, many of whom were less than
thrilled when the candidate insisted on peaceful conduct — are clearly
disappointed by the electoral outcome.
Of course, large-scale disappointment isn’t unusual in the wake of closely
contested elections. However, charges of electoral fraud have a particular
resonance in Mexico, given its long history of political corruption. And while
it remains to be conclusively determined whether the PAN is following the PRI’s
pattern, there can be little question that a misleading scare campaign lay at
the heart of its election propaganda.
Lopez Obrador was comfortably ahead of Calderon in opinion polls until the PAN
sought to insinuate that the PRD leader was a Hugo Chavez clone. The business
community — wary of any party that pledges to work “for the good of all, but
first the poor” — quickly jumped on the bandwagon with its own television ads
warning implicitly of the dangers that would lie ahead with a Chavez-like leader
at the helm. Some of the PAN’s TV spots juxtaposed Chavez’s (fairly accurate)
denunciations of Fox as a US lackey with comparable quotes from Lopez Obrador.
The background to this line of attack consists, of course, of an international
anti-Chavez campaign that seeks to paint the Venezuelan president as a
borderline lunatic with an authoritarian streak who is bent upon defying the
ways of the world. That characterisation is partly valid: Chavez is indeed
determined to contribute towards a different world, primarily because the one we
are confronted with leaves a great deal to be desired in terms of disparities of
wealth and power. He questions and defies Washington’s imperialist tendencies at
every opportunity.
What’s more, much to the despair of the comprador bourgeoisie in Venezuela, his
domestic policies have begun to make an appreciable difference to the lives of
the poor, large numbers of whom have gained access for the first time to
education and health care.
He supplies oil to Cuba in exchange for doctors, and sells the precious
commodity at concessional rates to Caribbean nations, as well as to impoverished
sections of the population within the US.
Although it is unlikely Lopez Obrador would have made a particularly radical
president, it is nonetheless intriguing to note that the US was seemingly
remarkably complacent about the prospect, apart from pointing out that Nafta
provisions on subsidies were non-negotiable. One is reminded of the famous
instance from the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, in which the detective
alerts his companion to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”.
When Dr Watson points out that the dog did nothing in the night-time, the
detective responds: “That was the curious incident.”
There are two possible explanations for Washington’s complacency: either it had
some sort of an assurance that Lopez Obrador’s radical rhetoric would not
translate into seriously reformist policies, or it knew his electoral bid would
be unsuccessful. Take your pick.
Email: mahirali1@gmail.com