ABOUT a score of laws have been amended through extraordinary methods over the last few weeks. One measure has been widely hailed and another strongly resented while the rest of the changes have been received with customary indifference. This is something to be regretted because the amendments raise substantial doubts about the lawmakers’ comprehension of the issues before them, their methodology and the effect of their assumptions about the sections of society sought to be extended relief.

At the moment the centre of debate is the ordinance promulgated by President General Musharraf on July 7, 2006, to amend Section 497 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The ordinance added a proviso to the section to the effect that except for terrorism, financial corruption and murder, all offences committed by women, including offences under the Hudood ordinances, had been made bailable.

The noise made by official spokespersons for days, both before and after the ordinance was issued, gave the impression that the women had been favoured with something they had not been entitled to earlier. In fact, the law already provided for special treatment for women and the effort to enhance relief for them had been going on for quite some time. As for allowing bail in non-bailable cases, the relevant CrPC provision deals only with bail in such cases and a great many people are released every year under it.

Let us take a look at this provision as it stood before July 7:

“497. When bail may be taken in cases of non-bailable offence: (1) When any person accused of a non-bailable offence is arrested or detained without warrant by an officer-in-charge of a police station, or appears or is brought before a court, he may be released on bail, but he shall not be so released if there appears reasonable grounds for believing that he has been guilty of an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life or imprisonment for 10 years.

Provided that the court may direct that any person under the age of 16 years or any woman or any sick or infirm person accused of such an offence be released on bail.

Provided further that a person accused of an offence as aforesaid shall not be released on bail unless the prosecution has been given notice to show cause why he should not be so released.”

What the new ordinance does is this: The words ‘or any woman’ are deleted from the first proviso and a new proviso is added that says a woman accused of a non-bailable offence shall be released on bail as if her offence is bailable. However, the bar to bail mentioned in the main provision given above will apply to women, and no woman will be allowed bail if the court has grounds to believe that she has been guilty of an offence “relating to terrorism, financial corruption and murder” and the offence is punishable with death, life imprisonment or jail for 10 years. (It is easy to guess the name of the famous woman the drafter had in mind while putting the words “financial corruption” into the amendment, since they did not occur in the section earlier.) The new ordinance also offers relief to women whose trial does not begin for six months for no fault of theirs.

The ordinance has made it easier for over a thousand women to be released on bail and made the grant of bail mandatory in many cases in future. As such the measure is welcome and the relief offered to hundreds of women prisoners is substantial.

But was Section 497 the sole cause of women’s extended distress on coming, or being pushed, into conflict with law? As pointed out above, the law as it stood before July 7 did admit the possibility of bail being granted in non-bailable cases and included a special provision favouring women of all ages, both healthy and infirm.

The issue was, partly, that women could not avail themselves of bail mostly for want of sureties. This because in most cases they were poor and suffered as a result of the social tradition that abandons women accused of Hudood or drug offences. Indeed, in many instances those who could arrange surety for them (parents, siblings, husbands) were the complainants and prosecutors. Women also suffered as a result of the subordinate judiciary’s extreme reluctance to allow bail under the unduly sanctified Hudood, anti-terrorist or narcotics laws. At the moment the state is providing surety for bail. Is it feasible to make such arrangements permanent and for women across the country?

As regards the Hudood laws, especially the main instrument of women’s torture, the Zina Ordinance, the bail facility may be accepted as a mitigating factor but it offers no protection against unjustified prosecution, humiliation and disruption of normal life that results whenever a woman is charged under these patently bad and arbitrary laws.

Besides, how does one explain the government’s failure to act on moves made earlier to facilitate the grant of bail to women? The law commission had proposed in 2002 an amendment in the law to make the grant of bail to women easier.

Then, on November 10, 2003, the government moved a bill in the National Assembly — Code of Criminal Procedure (Second Amendment) Bill, Bill No. 12 of 2003 — to provide for mandatory bail to a woman accused of a non-bailable offence punishable with less than a 10-year prison sentence. The statement of objects said the women accused of non-bailable offences and committed to prison pending trial “often fall prey to sexual harassment and other illegal demands of the unscrupulous elements in jail — There are many complaints of such happenings in the jails.”

This was called the second amendment of 2003 to the CrPC because on the same date another bill to amend the CrPC had been tabled in the National Assembly. It was meant to make the offence of rioting under Section 147 and 148 of the PPC compoundable if committed along with other compoundable offences. This bill was titled Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill. Obviously, the law ministry gave greater importance to providing relief to rioters than to women in prisons.

Quite obviously, there is need to pay more timely attention to the reform proposals made by the law and justice commission. Somebody should also be answerable for the lopsided priorities in legislative work. If a parliament can adopt bills favouring the rulers in a matter of days and does not proceed with due speed on a bill promising relief to women, the inescapable conclusion is that display of concern for poor women is merely a seasonal fit of politically motivated emotionalism.

In addition to the ordinance of July 7, 20 laws have been amended vide the Finance Act 2006. Only eight of these laws — Profession Tax Limitation Act 1941, Public Investments (Financial Safeguards) Ordinance 1961, Customs Act 1969, Securities and Exchange Ordinance 1969, Finance Act 1989, Sales Tax Act 1990, Income Tax Ordinance 2001, and Federal Excise Act 2005 — fall in the category of tax-related laws which alone, it is said, can be changed through a finance bill. Eight other laws amended vide the latest Finance Act belong to the labour code — workmen’s Compensation Act 1923, Factories Act 1934, Industrial and Commercial Establishments (Standing Orders) Ordinance 1968, Companies Profits (workers’ participation) Act 1968, Shops and Establishments Ordinance 1969, Minimum Wages for Unskilled Workers Ordinance 1969, Workers’ Welfare Ordinance 1971, and Employees Old Age Benefit Institution Act 1976. Three laws deal with institutions of different kinds — Price Control and Prevention of Profiteering and Hoarding Act 1977, Microfinance Institutions Ordinance 2001, and Public Procurement Regulatory Authority 2002. And the 20th law amended by the Finance Act is the unavoidable Criminal Procedure Code 1898.

For the present we are concerned with nine non-tax measures — the eight labour laws and the CrPC. Let us briefly examine what the amendments are and how they can be categorised:

1. Criminal Procedure Code: A new section-14-A has been added to empower provincial governments to appoint special magistrates to try cases of violation of price control laws. While ideas such as price control and trial of traders who exploit the citizens will be welcomed by people groaning under spiralling prices, the wisdom of appointing special magistrates is not clear.

2. Workmen’s Compensation Act: Workers with higher wages made entitled to compensation, that is, the number of beneficiaries raised.

3. Factories Act: Working hours in factories increased and working hours for women also increased. Change termed anti-labour.

4. Standing Orders: Contract worker included in the definition of workman. Positive change.

5. Companies Profits Act: Changes in definition of ‘workers’, relaxation of condition of payment of interest and penalty by an employer who defaults on creation of a trust, enhancement in paid-up capital and assets for companies to pay profit share to workers, and changes in categories of workers for entitlement to share in profits. A mixed bag.

6. Shops and Establishment Ordinance: Provides for non-day weekly rest to each worker and fixes weekly holiday for establishments, raises overtime hours per year from 150 to 624 for adults and from 100 to 165 for young persons (14 to 17 years old), excludes piece-rate workers from payment of overtime, and limits working hours upto 12 hours a day.

7. Minimum Wages Act: Raises minimum wage for unskilled workers from Rs 3,000 to 4,000 per month. A welcome move.

8. Workers Welfare Fund: Largely technical changes.

9. EOBI: Minimum pension rate revised.

Most of the changes noted above are unlikely to invite adverse comments except for the increase in working hours. On this point trade unions have already launched a vigorous campaign.

Under an amendment to the Factory Act (Section 38) the spread of duty has been extended from 10.5 hours to 12 hours per day in ordinary factories and from 11.5 hours to 12 hours per day in seasonal factories. No justification can be advanced for this increase. Traditionally the trend in labour legislation has been to reduce the working hours for factory workers. For instance, in 1946, when a number of progressive labour measures were adopted the spread of duty hours was reduced from 13 hours to 10.5 to 11.5 hours per day for ordinary factories, and seasonal factories respectively. Now we find a movement in the opposite direction.

Similarly, the amendment in the Shops and Establishment Law increases the period of overtime for adults four-fold from 150 hours in a year to 624 hours and by more than 50 percent for children. This can only be described as a prescription for turning factories and other commercial establishments into sweat shops.

Further, the extension in working hours for women cannot be defended. The condition of provision of transport by employers for requiring women to work up to 10 clock at night is meaningless in an environment marked by absence of control and inspection and where employers are free to throw workers out at the slightest pretext.

More objectionable than the contents of the amendments is the manner of making them. It has been vigorously argued, and with substantial justification, that the Finance Bill cannot be made a vehicle for legislation which bears no nexus with taxation. Backdoor tampering with laws can under no circumstances be condoned.

Nobody has been told why the amendments are considered necessary. In case of labour legislation, the bypassing of the system of tripartite consultation is always reprehensible. If the Criminal Procedure Code can be amended through the Finance Bill the government can bring all the changes in this code and the Penal Code and the anti-terrorism laws without going through the hassle of debate in the houses of parliament. The quick fix method employed in the instant case circumvents the need for public debate as well. Where the call of law-reform institutions is not heeded, parliament is deprived of its right to debate legislative proposals, and the public is completely excluded, such fault lines in lawmaking can make any state liable to be indicted for bad governance.

ALEXANDRA PALACE is not a mosque, but last week it looked like one. Set designers had gone to work, painting domes and minarets, so that the interior of the building where British television began looked more like north Damascus than north London, more Makkah than Muswell Hill.

The change was for Islam Expo, a four-day festival of debate, music and culture that brought in tens of thousands of people, instantly becoming the biggest event of its kind in the history of Britain’s Muslim community.

I was at a panel on the origins of terrorism: “religious or political?” The star turn was Palestinian-born Dr Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). Asked whether Hamas should recognise Israel and renounce violence, he launched into a full-throttle rhetorical assault, insisting: “It is the same as asking rape victims to recognise that their rape was legitimate ... We will never do that, never!”

While the audience were loudly applauding and cheering, I was struck by two related thoughts, both of which have become especially pressing in the globalised world of the 21st century - in which it is now common, rather than unusual, for people to live far away from the lands with which they strongly identify.

For this is the age of the diaspora. There are Indians in America, Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, and everybody in London. Many of these communities stay passionately connected to the politics of the old country. But their view of that politics is different from those who are living it, day to day. Thus is born the phenomenon of the irresponsible diaspora.

I saw it up close in the US, when I met Irish-Americans whose nostalgic brand of Irish nationalism made them much more stubbornly hardline than the leadership of Sinn Fiin, those who lived the reality of contemporary life on the Falls Road. As one senior republican put it to me, these third-generation Americans in Boston and New York were “more Catholic than the Pope”.

The phrase doesn’t fit Dr Tamimi, but the sentiment does. For most Palestinians on the ground had to give up the luxury of such dogmatism long ago. Even Hamas, which stands alongside the MAB in the worldwide fraternity of the Muslim Brotherhood, is quite clearly on its way to reaching an acceptance of Israel’s existence within the 1967 borders.

It has taken tentative steps in that direction already, most recently in its backing for the so-called “prisoners’ document” that implies acceptance of Israel. For the sake of trying to end the distress they live with every day in Gaza and the West Bank, they can no longer afford the ideological purity of Dr Tamimi’s “never”.

Intriguingly, tension on the other side of this conflict, between Israel and the Jewish diaspora, often runs the other way. True, in the Oslo period of the 1990s the minority Zionist Organisation of America stood to the right of Yitzhak Rabin, insisting it understood Israel’s security needs better than Israel itself.

But a more frequent clash is of the kind seen last week, when 300 British Jews took a full-page ad in the Times to call on Israel to halt its “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza. I share the signatories’ horror at the bombing of a Palestinian power station and cutting-off of fuel supplies: such actions are morally indefensible. And I reject the complaints of those Israelis who denounce their diaspora critics, saying that only those who live with the Israeli reality have any right to comment.

That said, I do wonder why these concerned Jews did not place an ad in an Israeli newspaper. If their motive was moving Israeli policy, that would surely have been the right place. Instead, they have allowed their opponents to say their prime interest was advertising their own dovishness to their fellow Britons.

Still, the move has served as a timely reminder that no diaspora community, no ethnic minority, is a monolith: they are as varied as the societies with which they identify. Timely, because right now the government faces serious criticism of its view of the British Muslim community — or communities — specifically in the way they are represented.

On Friday Channel 4 will air a documentary by Martin Bright of the New Statesman in which he argues that ministers have in effect anointed as the official representatives of British Islam those who represent some of its most radical shades of opinion. Central is the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body but one that is, Bright argues, sympathetic to a robust form of Islamism. Others recall the MCB’s former head, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who at the height of the Salman Rushdie affair wondered if “death is too good for him”.

Bright traces the origin of this approach to the Foreign Office, which has long believed in engagement with political Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Using a stream of leaked documents, Bright shows how civil servants have argued for the same policy of engagement to apply domestically. The result has been the admission to Britain of one of the Brotherhood’s spiritual leaders, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — who blesses suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, denounces homosexuality, and defends the physical disciplining of women by their husbands — on the grounds that he is in tune with “mainstream” British Muslim opinion (a move rather at odds with Tony Blair’s stated belief that the Brotherhood is partly responsible for the global spread of the ideology that underpins Islamist terrorism). A succession of other, less strident Muslim leaders testify that they have been shut out of government dialogue — and denied financial help — in favour of the privileged MCB.

The key question is where, in fact, the British Muslim mainstream lies. Bright says the majority are from the more non-political Sufi tradition; others insist that young British Muslims see the MCB as, if anything, too mild and insufficiently hardline. Which is it?

Polling offers a mixed picture. Last month the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that British Muslims had far more negative views of westerners than Muslim communities elsewhere in Europe. A significant majority viewed western populations as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral — attitudes more prevalent in Muslim societies in the Middle East and Asia than among other European Muslims. Another poll last week further found that 13% of British Muslims believe the 7/7 bombers should be regarded as “martyrs”.

Of course, the flipside of that finding is that a majority of British Muslims believe no such thing. Indeed the poll found most saying the government has failed to combat extremism - a greater proportion with that view than among the British population as a whole.

There is, then, evidence available to both sides of this argument: those who say British Muslims are radical and therefore have to be met where they are — not where others would like them to be — and those who say that this community is essentially moderate, but is regularly stirred up by hardliners who enjoy the misguided support of the government.

My own view is that the government is making a mistake if it hands the franchise of dialogue over to a single organisation or strand of opinion. It may be more convenient, but it is mistaken.

For diasporas and religious communities are diverse organisms, with complex, contradictory views. They can be irresponsible and irritating, but they are never monolithic. The annoying reality is, you have to speak to all of them. — Dawn/Guardian Service

THE UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s second five-year term expires on December 31 this year and the race to succeed him has already begun.

The consensus at the United Nations is that based on the principle of regional rotation, the next secretary general of the United Nations should be from Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has also declared its support for this proposal.

As of now, the four declared Asian candidates for the post of secretary-general hail from Sri Lanka, Thailand, South Korea and India. The possibility of more countries joining in cannot be ruled out. It may be recalled that the UN General Assembly’s resolution, adopted in 1997, provides that in appointing a secretary-general due regard must also be given to gender equality and, therefore, it is possible that some countries may field women candidates for the coveted post.

Under a well-established convention, the permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) do not field their candidates for the secretary general’s post. Also, according to a time-honoured tradition, the post in question has not been held so far by any of the world’s major political or economic powers which, evidently, makes the Indian candidature incompatible with the long-standing practice.

It is not, clear as to why India has taken a calculated risk on this issue. India also seems to fear that the five veto- wielding permanent members of the (Security Council) may block its candidature and, therefore, it has initiated a resolution that calls upon the Council to provide a slate of two or more well qualified candidates for the consideration of the General Assembly.

Apparently, by moving this resolution India is seeking to deprive the five permanent Council members from having a final say in the selection of the secretary general. It may be mentioned that traditionally the Security Council recommends only one name for the post of secretary general which is usually approved by it. It is unlikely that the it will be willing to abdicate its power to the General Assembly for the selection of secretary general.

In recent years, the United Nations has been severely criticised for its poor performance, and scepticism is growing about its usefulness as a multilateral institution. This criticism basically stems from the failure of the organisation to address contemporary challenges but it also reflects the dismal performance of the secretary general who, it must be conceded, instead of harmonising the interests of all member-states showed, on a number of occasions, scant regard for their common good and negated the fundamental UN principle of multilateralism.

The secretary-general is described by the UN charter as the “chief administrative officer” of the organisation. Some people interpret it to mean that the secretary general’s role is purely of an administrative nature. This however, is a misleading view. The fact of the matter is that the secretary-general is a symbol of the United Nations’ ideals and a spokesman for the interests of the world’s peoples. This is in keeping with the original vision of US President Franklin D Roosevelt that the United Nations should be headed by a “world moderator”.

Regrettably, the major powers, the United States in particular, look for a compliant secretary-general so that they may use the United Nations to advance their national interests without any hindrance. These powers have deliberately undermined the position of the secretary-general, eroding his confidence to act independently.

It is, therefore, necessary to redefine the role and powers of the secretary-general in the charter with a view to enhancing his ability to deal with emerging challenges and complex emergencies. An overwhelming majority of UN member-states favours the secretary-general playing a stronger role to maximise his effectiveness.

At present there are no established criteria to determine the suitability of a candidate offered by a member-state for the post of secretary general. It is, therefore, necessary to establish a formal set of ‘candidate qualities’ to provide guidance to the member-states when nominating a candidate for the top position in the world body.

Needless to say, it is necessary to put more premium on the competence and integrity of a prospective candidate for UN secretary-generalship than on other extraneous considerations. The proposed candidate should not only possess the necessary managerial qualities to enable him to perform his job efficiently, he should also be possess the qualities of statesmanship. He should be assertive and not forced to play a subservient role. He should be of impeccable integrity and remain impartial in a range of situations.

Unfortunately, the unipolar world and single power hegemony has made the job of secretary-general more difficult. Therefore, he must show extra perseverance and take courageous decisions to address the extraordinary challenges and situations facing the international community, even at the risk of being in the bad books of the big powers that have made the United Nations almost subservient to their whims. He must, at all costs, uphold the values that the United Nations was created for. As international civil servant he answerable only to the United Nations for his actions.

The secretary-general is appointed for a five-year term. However, previous secretaries-general have usually served two consecutive terms. Canada has, however, proposed a single five or seven- year term thereby ruling out a second term for the secretary general. The permanent representative of Canada to the UN, Allan Rock, has argued that, “by ruling out a second term, member-states would remove any basis for suggestion that the secretary-general’s conduct was influenced by expectations of re- appointment.” The Canadian suggestion merits careful consideration. It would be difficult to implement the proposal in question this year but it should be made part of the rolling agenda of UN reforms.

The promotion of effectiveness and efficiency of the United Nations with a view to accomplishing the purposes and principles of set out in its charter and the universal declaration of human rights is the primary responsibility of the secretary-general.

To achieve the desired objective it is necessary to make the UN a more vibrant and agile institution which indeed is a colossal task. However, a secretary-general, with outstanding qualities, can play a significant role in making the organization far more effective than it is today. He will also have to strive relentlessly to ensure that international relations are governed by universally accepted rules.

The writer is a former ambassador.