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| March 12, 2007 | Monday | Safar 22, 1428 |
A flawed vision
Ensuring safe blood
Public perceptions of judicial crisis
ON March 9, the chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, was charged with “misconduct” and “misuse of authority” by President Musharraf and a reference was sent to the Supreme Judicial Council for a decision. Justice Javed Iqbal was sworn in as the acting chief justice presumably because Justice Bhagwandas, the senior-most judge after the chief justice, was out of the country. All these actions were justified under Article 209 of the Constitution.
TRADE deficit surged in the first eight months of the current fiscal year to a new record of $8.890 billion, up 18.47 per cent, as compared to the same period last year. With this trend persisting and getting more pronounced, the trade gap soared from a mere one billion dollars in 2003 to $12 billion in 2006, hitting new highs every year. It is the outcome of abnormal annual fluctuations in export earnings and import bills. A positive development this year is the drastic fall in import growth from last year’s 38.8 per cent to the current 9.95 per cent -- a factor which, unfortunately, has been more than neutralised by the dismal export performance. The export growth plummeted from 14.3 per cent to less than four per cent in the same period.
The government and the business have both failed to tackle the worsening problem though both are engaged in considering the subsidy required to give the textile exports a competitive boost. Just this week, the ministry of textile reportedly recommended Rs29.76 billion tax incentive but a final decision is yet to be taken. The subsidy would not be a permanent solution as it would adversely affect the already deteriorating terms of trade. The textile industry would need to do without its crutches as quickly as possible and to improve productivity by seriously addressing its own structural problems. It suffers from low-scale operations, deficient labour and management skills, poor quality of goods and slow movement from the middle to high value-added chain. The clothing industry is not integrated into global distribution system under which direct involvement of retailers helps exporters acquire the competitive skills. Similarly, at home the big industrial units are not integrated into organised production network through strategic alliances, sub-contracting and outsourcing that could provide small and medium-size industries markets through improved productivity. The industry needs a higher per capita output, on-job training, skill upgradation and dissemination of new knowledge and technique about changing fashions and shifting markets. Many experts have come to believe that the textile industry has is a weak case for subsidies as it cannot even compete with newcomers like Bangladesh and Vietnam. A view gaining ground is that the government being too focused on textiles has neglected many other sectors with potential for export. About 75 per cent of the exports originate from four basic sources: cotton, leather, rice and sports goods. Exports are concentrated in few items and few countries. Diversification in terms of items and destinations needs a sound and effective strategy for export-oriented industrialisation. Unless export earnings rise at the required pace, trade deficits would be difficult to manage with the external financial flows drying up sooner or later if foreign exchange earnings do not keep pace with hard currency spending.
While boosting exports, there is also a need to conserve foreign exchange earnings by reducing imports, wherever possible. The current level of imports at over $28 billion indicates the potential for increasing indigenous production that could meet much of the rising domestic demand in areas of comparative advantage. This opportunity is being neglected by business. Import substitution and boosting exports should be the core element of any effective trade policy. Foreign direct investment that involves transfer of technology, skill development and marketing should be attracted in export-oriented industries, which is not the case now.
IT IS the absence of a well thought-out master plan which clouds most of Karachi’s on-going development schemes, many of them, unfortunately, of the showcase variety. These include plans for raising one of the tallest buildings in the world on land to be reclaimed from the sea, high-rise complexes along the beach front, underpasses, flyovers and elevated expressways. These may give the city a facelift and its managers some short-lived pride, but precious little besides. More pressing needs of the general public, such as an urban mass transit system, adequate provision of water and power supplies, affordable housing close to the places of employment, public health and sanitation services and facilities, etc., do not seem to get the priority they deserve in the city district government’s scheme of things. Instead, every new project worth the name seems aimed only at catering to the needs and preferences of the affluent. As a result of this policy, only the rich and their big businesses will benefit from provisions such as luxury housing estates and high-rise commercial plazas to be built along the beach front; new expressways, too, will cut commuting time only for those with personal vehicles and not the average commuter who is condemned traveling back and forth in bumpy, rickety buses. The controversial plan to develop two islands off Karachi, whose ownership has caused a dispute to erupt between the Sindh and federal governments, is still a far cry from what this mega-city needs in terms of infrastructure development that will serve its teeming millions. There is much that is obviously flawed with this kind of a future vision for Karachi.
Pressures exerted by a huge, annual influx of the rural migrants from the upcountry make Karachi unique in more ways than one. To save the growing working class from falling into the trap of urban poverty and the resulting ills, the government’s development plans must focus on the needs of the many and not the wishes of the privileged few. Creating islands of prosperity surrounded by long swathes of urban poverty and destitution must be stopped to save Karachi from disaster over the longer term.
IT can be matter of life and death. Family members of a patient in urgent need of a blood transfusion often have no recourse other than to approach private blood banks, many of which are poorly equipped and staffed by unqualified personnel. In the absence of a deep-rooted culture of voluntary donation, such institutions tend to depend on professional donors including drug addicts who fall in the high-risk category for blood-borne diseases such as HIV and the more deadly forms of hepatitis. This is particularly disturbing in a country where an increasing number of addicts are injecting drugs and sharing needles. Malaria too is widespread in the country and there is the danger that blood sold to private banks may carry the disease. Lack of quality control and proper blood-screening facilities further compound the problem. While some progress has been made lately in terms of the registration of private blood banks, much more needs to be done to ensure the availability of safe blood.
A welcome development in this connection is the move by two German organisations to establish 28 regional blood transfusion centres in all four provinces as well as Azad Kashmir. The proposed centres are likely to be established on government premises in urban and rural areas, and will be well-equipped to screen blood for communicable diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and malaria. Following initial discussions and surveys, set-up assistance and operational funding may soon be forthcoming from the German Development Bank and the German Society for Technical Cooperation. The government must extend full support in making this generous offer a reality. Campaigns promoting voluntary blood donation should also be given priority. With diseases such as thalassaemia on the rise, the demand for blood transfusions will only increase in coming years. The time to act is now.
However, members of the bar, opposition leaders and many commentators, speaking a few hours after the event, condemned the action on several grounds. Moreover, the public has its own perceptions of what promises to become a landmark event, similar to the Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan case which laid the foundations for the erosion of democracy in Pakistan.
The charge against Justice Chaudhry is based primarily on a letter by TV personality and Supreme Court advocate Naeem Bokhari. In his letter of February 16, 2007, Naeem Bokhari accuses the chief justice of announcing decisions in court and then giving an opposite decision in the written judgment, insulting and intimidating lawyers, insisting on ostentatious protocol and using expensive cars and airplanes, and influencing decision-makers to help his son make his career in the bureaucracy without due merit. Bokhari says he is not complaining about the first two items but the fact that he mentions them obviously makes the reader cognisant of them. As the letter was published in the press, it must have caused his reputation a lot of harm.
Now let us turn to the perceptions of the public regarding these accusations. These are that the press was initially discouraged from reporting against the chief justice’s son but for some time all mud-slinging against him has been encouraged. Secondly, people say that there is a VIP culture in the country anyway.
Ministers and generals go about in fleets of expensive cars. Moreover, the highest officials of the state have been targeted by terrorists so that bullet-proof cars are used by functionaries of the state for reasons of security. Aircraft are also used by people at the helm of affairs. So, if a chief justice adopts this prevalent VIP culture is he really deviating too much from the norm?
Of course, it is for the judicial council to decide the legality of the acts but surely they do not seem so very terrible to the people of this country. Similarly, the common perception is that it is unusual for someone in a powerful position not to help his relatives climb up the social and economic ladder. If this was done in the case of his son, it is again what Pakistanis have gotten used to. That it may still be against the law is not for anyone to say because this is exactly what the judicial council is supposed to establish one way or the other.
More to the point, the common public perception is that cases are never brought up against anyone, especially anyone in such high offices of the state, unless the real power wielders of our ruling elite are annoyed with him. In this context, the newspapers of March 10 point out that Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is the fifth judge to be proceeded against by the council. Justice Akhlaq Hussain was removed after such proceedings by Ayub Khan. Justice Safdar Shah, involved in the Bhutto case, was proceeded against by Ziaul Haq.
In both cases the highest power in the land, both military rulers as it happened, were said to be annoyed with the judges. In two other cases, the charges were so flimsy that they were ridiculous. Justice Shaukat Ali was removed on the charge that he was doing business while being in the judiciary.
Actually he was a co-partner in an arms firm of his family. Justice Fazal-e-Ghani was removed for having sold a gun he had brought from Britain for personal use. In a country as corrupt as ours, where cases of corruption and crime are condoned if people join the king’s party, these kind of charges do not convince the public, whatever their legal validity
Thus the people perceive the bringing of such charges against judges as attempts by the executive to keep the judiciary from interfering in the running of the state.
Another perception of the public is that the judiciary has been degraded. This is because the order by the government states that the chief justice was “called” by the president. Moreover, the president chose to wear his uniform when he met the chief justice. At a symbolic level, as it appears in photographs, this implies that the army chief has summoned and confronted a chief justice.
This is obviously detrimental to the dignity of the highest judicial office in the land. As many members of the bar pointed out, chief justices are not summoned by presidents or prime ministers. Government spokesmen defend this action of the president on the grounds that he was only trying to find out what the chief justice said to the charges i.e. how he defended himself against them.
But then, the point is that the president was judging the chief justice whereas the only persons who can judge him are his brother judges. It is possible that the president was merely apprising the chief justice of the charges but if that is the case he could have done that through the mail or on the telephone. The summons is seen as detracting from the dignity of the judiciary.
In this context the public perception is that the chief justice was asked to resign and since he refused to do so he was proceeded against. This is seen as being the chief justice’s sense of his innocence though resignation is still not ruled out because most of the judges whose cases went to the SJC preferred to resign rather than be removed after a negative judgment by the president.
Despite all the negative rumours, the public does not see Justice Chaudhry as a bad judge. He may be all what Naeem Bokhari says he is but the public sees him as the man who gave an impeccably brave and patriotic judgment in the Steel Mills privatisation case.
The privatisation was considered as being irregular and it would have cost the public dearly had it gone ahead. Similarly, the fact that he had brought down the cases in the Supreme Court from 38,000 to 10,000 during his tenure is seen as an achievement by the bar. The public does not know anything of this but it does know that he took notice of housing schemes which were environmentally disastrous.
Above all, he took suo motu action against the disappearances of citizens in violation of the habeas corpus act and the law of the land. The public thinks this has annoyed the really powerful sections of the civil and military establishment which has moved in to reassert itself at the expense of the chief justice in particular and the judiciary in general.
The case has brought Pakistan again to a judicial crisis. I am reminded of the Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan case. At that time, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad had dismissed the government of Khwaja Nazimuddin. Tamizuddin Khan, the president of the Constituent Assembly, went to court against the judgment. The Sindh Chief Court ruled against the governor-general. However, the Federal Court, under Justice Munir, dismissed the case upholding the governor-general’s action on purely technical grounds.
Since that day, everybody has accused Justice Munir of having opened the door to dictatorship in Pakistan. Justice Munir later hinted that he was under pressure and the courts would not have been obeyed if they had challenged the governor-general. It is possible that Munir thought the governor-general, who was supported by the army chief, would suspend the courts and declare emergency or martial law. However, if he had not given a wrong judgment he would have upheld the dignity of the judiciary. Marital law came anyhow but how much better it would have been if the judiciary had not sanctioned it.
Now that the case is with the Supreme Judicial Council let us remember that there have been what Dr Inayatullah has termed “democracy-supporting judgments” in Pakistan’s judicial history. Among these are: the Usif Patel case (1955), Asma Jilani case (1972), Benazir Bhutto case (1988), Haji Saifullah case (1988) and the Nawaz Sharif case (1993). Most did not make any real difference to the power structure, but in the Nawaz Sharif case President Ghulam Ishaq’s decision to remove Nawaz Sharif was overturned and he returned to power. But whatever the decision of the SJC the image of the state will suffer in some way or the other.
If the chief justice is acquitted the image of the presidency will be tarnished and at a juncture when extremist elements may become powerful as a moderate president weakens, this is not good for Pakistan. If the chief justice is convicted as charged there will be those who believe that the charges were true and those who do not. The former will bring disrepute to the highest judicial office of the land, the latter will tarnish the image of the judiciary.
Both are unwelcome alternatives since we have to build up a good image of the judiciary if we want a functioning democracy. Again, this too endangers liberal democracy in the country which threatens us with autocratic rule, either seeking legitimisation through Islamic appeals or supported by military power, which the country can ill afford. In short, we have a crisis on our hands and public perceptions of it are important if we want to understand how people really feel about the way they are ruled.