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| March 04, 2007 | Sunday | Safar 14, 1428 |
Bull in a china shop
An alarming trend
What civil society must do to assert itself
THE fragility and pusillanimity of Pakistan’s civil society owes as much to the overarching hold of the civil and military bureaucracy of the land as it does to the obeisance, insensitivity and lack of courage of its intellectual elite, who survive largely on the sufferance and patronage of the former. The heavily security-laden atmosphere of the country has become increasingly suffocating in recent months, but civil society has hardly demurred.
THAT the PPP Patriots have virtually ceased to exist is not an apocalyptic event. In fact, in whatever way one looks at it, the disappearance of what is called the Rao group is not going to affect the outcome of the next general election in any significant way or boost or undermine the chances of this party or that. What happened at Friday’s press conferences in Islamabad and Lahore was the culmination of a drama that began after the general election in 2002 and is the classic example of how principles give way to expediency when the chips are down. Four years back, some PPP MNAs against whom there were corruption charges appeared vulnerable to the generals looking for MNAs who could help forge and strengthen a ragtag coalition to keep the PPP out of power. What came in handy then was the shibboleth called accountability and the corruption charges the National Accountability Bureau had against some of the PPP MNAs. In a move that was mutually beneficial, the government promised to forget all about accountability in these cases if the MNAs would agree to sit on the treasury benches. That is how the PPP Patriots came into existence, with many turncoats becoming ministers. NAB kept its part of the bargain and looked the other way.
For the last more than four years, the so-called Rao group had at least the fig leaf of a name; now their surrender to the dictates of expediency is total, since they have agreed to abolish their very identity and get lost in the labyrinth of the PML (though Mr Aftab Sherpao has for some reason refused to go along). To add insult to injury, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain gave no guarantee to the five ministers and several lawmakers who switched loyalty on Friday that they would get a party ticket in the next election due this year. All that the PML chief would say was that the ticket issue would be decided by the party high command later. This was in sharp contrast to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi’s statement that every one of the former Patriots would get a ticket.
Speaking at the press conference, where Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was also present, Rao Sikander Iqbal, who is also the defence minister, said he and his party men had joined the PML because they were inspired “by the leadership qualities” of the president and the prime minister. There is no doubt that without those qualities the twosome would never have succeeded in prevailing upon the Rao party to dissolve itself. But unfortunately those qualities do not seem to be available when it comes to things far nobler, like giving Pakistan true democracy and ensuring the next general election to be fair and free. The evidence of pre-poll rigging which the opposition fears is to be found not in such a minor non-event as the well-planned disappearance of the Patriots; it is to be seen in the decision, made official, that the existing assemblies will re-elect Gen Musharraf as president for another term. Once this controversial re-election takes place, the larger electoral exercise loses all meaning, for it does not really matter who the prime minister will be in a new dispensation where the president will call all the shots. No tears would be shed at the Patriot group’s demise, nor would anyone celebrate it, except perhaps the Patriots themselves.
THE world is becoming America’s china shop where it goes on a rampage, with little thought given to what happens the day after. The Democrat senators who have called for US strikes on Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan must be out of their minds; the Americans’ unwillingness to learn a lesson from the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is palpable. The mindless way the Bush administration has conducted its global war against terrorism has added to America’s and its allies’ predicament. The reason: unilateralism combined with a penchant for military adventurism. The radicalisation of Iraq is a bitter harvest of this policy; the US has created Al Qaeda in a country where it did not exist before. The alleged presence of Al Qaeda and its sympathisers in Pakistan who the US says are using this country as a staging post for attacks in Afghanistan, too, are a demon of America’s own creation. They are a direct threat to Pakistan’s own stability and must be rooted out by Pakistan in a way that does not win them sympathy and support among a growing number of alienated Pakistanis. For this Pakistan needs no prodding by outsiders.
Recent acts of terror targeting anti-terrorism courts in Quetta and Multan (which resulted in the killing of one and maiming of another presiding judge) are part of an emerging, frightening reality that Pakistan must confront and put down with an iron hand. The killing of a woman minister in Punjab by a fanatic the other day is no less a manifestation of this growing menace in action. The job of taking the terrorists head-on has to be done and taken to its logical end until extremism ceases to exist. The least the Americans can do is to stop pointing a finger at their own ally; this will only trigger more anti-American feelings here, with the government seen as a stooge of the US and not one taking steps on its own to root out a menace that threatens Pakistanis today no less than others. Unless sanity and realism prevail in Washington, the world will remain a very dangerous place, indeed.
THE extent of the threat that fanaticism poses to society can be gauged from an incident in Mandi Bahauddin where a police officer shot dead a man who had converted to Qadianiyat. He then turned himself in, saying that he had done nothing wrong as, according to Islam, one is supposed to kill a person who renounces Islam. This is the level of intolerance in the country that a man entrusted with protecting life has no compunctions about committing murder. He should definitely be held answerable for his crime, but how does one fight this kind of mindset? Mandi Bahauddin was also the scene of a horrific crime two years ago when unknown assailants fired on a Qadiani congregation and killed eight worshippers. The crime remains unsolved and the assailants are spreading their hatred elsewhere. Over the years, incidents like hate crimes have taken an alarming toll: a young man accused of blasphemy was shot dead outside the very court that had just acquitted him of the crime in Lahore; a judge was also murdered for acquitting another man of blasphemy; a Muslim man was lynched by a mob for allegedly committing blasphemy. There are many such horrific incidents showing the growing intolerance, but sadly, no concrete steps are being taken to show that serious efforts are being made to curtail the disturbing trend.
It is tragic that the government doesn’t seem to have the will to fight fanaticism. It will have to muster more than just courage if it wants to curb violence bred by religious bigotry and fanaticism. It is important to ensure that perpetrators of such crimes are tried for their actions. However, it is equally important to launch awareness campaigns through the media to enlighten society on the ills of fanaticism so that people think twice before committing a hate crime.
Particularly affected is the nation’s capital. It is besieged with the visits of a continuing inflow of the regime’s benefactors who are now demanding their pound of flesh in return for billions of dollars which the rulers claim to have received as “prize money” from the CIA. While the country’s elite enjoys the false prosperity brought about by the largesse received during the past five years, the rest of the population is engulfed in an atmosphere of fear from the daily occurrence of violent incidents - the nemesis of our eagerness to become a frontline state in the war on terror.
Caught in this surreal scenario is the visit of last year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the pioneer of the microcredit movement, Professor Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh. He and Professor Amartya Sen are the only two living Nobel laureates in South Asia. Professor Amartya Sen who received the Nobel award in economics in 1998, is known for his seminal work on hunger, poverty and famine and is originally from the part of Bengal which is now Bangladesh.
Both have acquired celebrity status around the globe for their practical and theoretical work on one of the most important developmental challenges - the eradication of poverty.
The late Professor Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate, who was accorded only subdued recognition in our country because of his religious affiliation, was enthusiastically felicitated on his achievement not only by the scientific and academic community, but also by governments and civil society organisations in many developing countries, including India and Bangladesh.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has not only ignored its own Nobel laureate, but also those of its neighbours, even though their work is of great relevance and inspirational value to our country. The celebration and recognition of their achievements should do no harm to our national ego. Instead, it would greatly encourage the emulation of the universal virtues of the search for knowledge, scientific inquiry and societal change. It would have been most befitting if such persons were invited and honoured by civil society and academic organisations of the country. But our civil society and academic institutions are so dysfunctional and so closely tied to the apron strings of the government and donor agencies that they have no autonomy left to act together and take such initiatives.
It is indeed a shame that the visit of Professor Muhammad Yunus is being organised under a cloak of secrecy (reminiscent of the visits by terror warriors such as Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice) which would embarrass, rather than flatter (as is probably intended), a war-on-poverty crusader like Professor Yunus. Ironically, the event is being organised by the investment wing of the ministry of finance.
The official invitation issued by the “senior joint secretary” to selected institutions (including some universities) for an interactive session with CEOs/heads of microfinance institutions and a “three-member delegation of Grameen Bank Bangladesh led by Professor Muhammad Yunus visiting Pakistan from March 3-6, 2007, on the invitation of the government of Pakistan”, describes in typical bureaucratese the nature of Professor Yunus’s visit.
The invitation continues in the same way: the advisor to the prime minister on finance and revenue will deliver the welcome address to be followed by the keynote address by Professor Yunus and thereafter an interactive session of one-hour duration. Refreshments will also be served to the participants. A premier educational institution has been requested to nominate the professors and associate professors (about 10) along with five brilliant students of its economics department to attend the session. Furthermore, the institution has been requested to provide the list of participants along with their identity card numbers.
The only other event connected with Professor Yunus’s visit to Pakistan to which there is limited public access, again strictly by invitation, is a “short function” by a microfinance foundation, based in Lahore, run along the lines of the Grameen Bank, at a hotel in Islamabad.
Professor Yunus’s visit is totally controlled by the ministry of finance and even the government-sponsored NGOs in rural development and poverty alleviation have not been consulted in the drawing up of a befitting programme for the distinguished guest visiting Pakistan for the first time after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
International dignitaries - of much lesser stature than Professor Yunus - visiting Pakistan are often accorded ceremonial welcomes along the route from the airport to the Aiwan-e-Sadar with colourful banners flying on flag poles and awarded the country’s highest awards. It is not unlikely that the humble professor from Rajshahi who sowed the seeds of a people’s revolution in his country may well receive that treatment if his announced intention to throw his Grameen hat into the political arena bears fruition in the near future.
If so, he may well be able to set the precedent in South Asia of replacing by popular movements the civil and military elites who at present control the destinies of most countries in the region, with the possible recent exception of Nepal which has followed a politically more radical route.
The mandarins in Islamabad are either unaware of the potential of their unassuming guest or they are too well aware of it and are trying to guard against the contagion of his egalitarian influence spreading too widely on Pakistani soil.
The way Professor Yunus’s current visit is being stage-managed and appropriated by the Pakistani bureaucracy and by the thought-control being exercised by the military in various subtle and unsubtle ways highlights the ineffectual role of civil society institutions in Pakistan.
They are, with a few exceptions, being used by the military regime as decoration pieces in its living room of “enlightened moderation”, to impress the visiting foreign dignitaries, donors and the media. One only hopes that his hosts will not be able to pull the wool over Professor Yunus’s perceptive eyes which discovered a major source of poverty in his country.
Although it would be unfair to be dismissive about the many good initiatives taken by individual civil society organisations in Pakistan, especially in the field of raising public awareness, their major failure has been their inability to work together to remove the curse of poverty, marginalisation and exclusion of a large section of the population and to take an independent stance.
Rather than look upon each other and evolve joint strategies and a common agenda to solve issues through the mobilisation of internal resources, they have tended to compete with each other for financial and other favours from the government and the donor community.
This has seriously compromised their ability to criticise the policies of their benefactors and to take a united stand on major social and economic issues, while both the donors and the government use them for their own self-serving agendas. This prevents a serious and holistic debate on the various issues facing the nation.
Apart from the problem of deliverable agendas, Pakistani NGOs carry a heavy overload of cultural baggage which they are unable to shed because of the continuing hold of the feudal, military and bureaucratic dominance of the governance structure.
The so-called second generation reforms which were supposed to have taken place for the rehabilitation of the Washington Consensus doctrine have failed to take root and new forms of bureaucratic structures have emerged with marginal, if any, improvements over the older ones. The NGOs themselves have become bureaucratised and have tarnished, if not totally lost, the pristine vision of development that many pioneers such as Akhtar Hameed Khan had dreamt of.
Much more culpable are the country’s institutions of higher learning and research, especially in economics and the social sciences. There is a total absence of the assertion of the autonomy theoretically available to them.
The universities are highly centralised under the Higher Education Commission which micromanages and controls all activities in the academia, with minimal inputs from within the academic community. Except for a few academics, few dare to exhibit any degree of dissent or challenge established orthodoxies.
The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, which is regarded as a leading think-tank, has always been under the administrative leadership of the Planning Commission. In recent years, the director has often acted as the chief economist and has implicitly identified the institute with the government’s policies, rather than articulating alternative policies.
The institute’s major activity in the last 20 years is the holding of an annual conference under the auspices of the Pakistan Society of Development Economics which is run primarily on whims and personal predilections, rather than on the basis of internal or external consultation. The main effect of the PSDE on the economics profession has been the stifling of the Pakistan Economics Association which has been dormant since the PSDE’s birth.
The episode relating to Professor Younus’s current visit to Pakistan should serve to awaken the academic community and civil society institutions in Pakistan to assert themselves in a manner that their space is not taken up by the civil and military bureaucracy.
They should endeavour to play a proper role in enabling the society at large to benefit from interactions with prominent foreign experts such as Professor Yunus and Professor Sen, who should be considered as shared intellectual assets of the subcontinent, deserving of our respect and their achievements worthy of our rejoicing.
Email: sm_naseem@hotmail.com