The ides of March & May

WRITING for a foreign newspaper, I recently described Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’s 25 hours on the road to Lahore as a tipping point for a significant change in Pakistan’s politics one way or another. The ambiguity about the outcome was a tacit acknowledgment of the historical fact that the people of Pakistan had on more than one occasion generated an irresistible momentum for a shift in power but then failed to control the unfolding events.

They have always lacked the hard core organisation that turns the white heat of a popular upsurge into the cold steel of a revolutionary regime. At the same time, counter-revolution in Pakistan can summon precipitate power at any time.

It has failed only once and that was in the distant province of East Pakistan where it was severely circumscribed by a hostile neighbour determined to seize “the opportunity of a century”. The question today is if we are witnessing once again peoples’ power sucking away the substance from an existing order only to usher in a far more draconian regime.

Less than a fortnight before he was ousted from power, I said to late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Kabul that history might remember him as a committed parliamentarian who pre-empted and prevented a possible revolution in Pakistan after the great Bangladesh debacle. He explained that in December 1971 he saw the country drifting into disorder and disintegration and not headed for a classical revolution. He had picked up the pieces, he reminisced, by working out a new parliamentary consensus.

Shortly after this conversation, huge demonstrations held by his opponents produced not a free and unfettered election but a military coup. In an earlier era, another great agitation by the people, which Mr Bhutto had supported, obliged Ayub Khan to transfer power to General Yahya Khan.

Is Pakistan once again in the iron grip of the same kind of historical determinism? Will the soft authoritarianism of a self-assured military-controlled oligarchy be replaced by the harsher emergency of an insecure but still powerful regime? Is there no chance that Pakistan’s political arbiters, be they from the military or the civilian elite, make a break from the past and accept together the logic of change and the responsibility of a peaceful transition to a new and stable dispensation?

The long march to the Lahore High Court on May 5 was all the more dramatic as it took place in a sequence of events which nobody had foreseen. Pakistan was a nation that had left the tradition of concerted political action far behind. This alone has surrounded that day with romance.

It has reminded a very senior civil servant, who was a pillar of the established order in his own day, of Bastille and of the moment in the French history when a revolt became a revolution. A leading intellectual has spoken of a cleansing experience, of redemption and of honour being saved. This is a valid and perhaps a necessary response. Renewal of hope and resurrection of human spirit cannot but be celebrated.

But this is only half of the story. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry does not mean to lead a revolution. His rhetoric is measured. He tells us that in this time and day dictatorship will push us into an abyss from which there is no escape. First and last, he is fulfilling his constitutional responsibility. At the cutting edge of constitutional exegesis, law and politics overlap. The Supreme Court is where the provisions of a written Constitution overcome ambiguities of competing interpretations.

Undeterred by the untenable allegation of politicising a strictly legal matter, he is showing the way forward and this is a professional initiative that must be valued irrespective of his personal story. A mature nation, on either side of the political divide, should seize the moment to redress the balance.

The moment calls for innovative rethinking that would take it back to the spirit of the Constitution. In a democracy, the most creative response to dissent is the ability to mediate it. The good in it must be appropriated into state policy, not spurned wantonly.

The lay participation in the present situation is a clamour for change, adaptation and accommodation. This is why the participants — the people of Pakistan — have shown peaceful solidarity with the lawyers. They want President Musharraf to facilitate the transition to a more representative political system after almost eight years of his absolute rule, not obstruct it any further.

Over-centralisation of power has already led to a serious situation in the country. There has been an institutional decay that would not be easily rectified. There is no better example of this decay than the performance of an ostensibly elected parliament. It exists but does nothing to impart a living impulse to the body politic.

Parliamentary traditions wither while the elected assemblies show no particular desire to figure, as they should, in national decision-making. Democracies all over the world monitor the impact on the common people of their economic policies and make adjustments and mid-course corrections.

Pakistan too has forums for this purpose but they have little inclination to break out of the hypnotic trance produced by the perpetually repeated mantra of doctored statistics and see the explosive polarisation that an outdated brand of raw capitalism is creating in society. Social desperation multiplies the spaces that defy all governance, spaces where violence is a way of life. The state raises new and better equipped security forces but is unable to make distributive social justice an integral part of economic growth.

The intervention made by the highest judiciary in the case of the privatisation of the Steel Mill was almost a last resort to tame an unbridled and crass form of capitalism. Its own management had failed miserably to force a comprehensive review of the factors that should have been taken into account while determining the terms of privatisation.

When the judiciary stepped in to realign the process with national interest, an arrogant executive turned it into a casus belli against the highest court of the land. We must not forget that the judiciary did what the National Assembly should have done. This is equally true of the matter of missing persons, the mystery of disappearances. Parliament did not think that upholding the rule of law was its business.

The higher judiciary cannot, and did not, evade its responsibility in such cases; it is literally the last court of appeal for the ordinary citizen. Part of the crisis today is that an oligarchic executive wants to perpetuate the same inconsequential role for the parliament while the people see their salvation in its empowerment.

Unfortunately, the power structure that has emerged during the last eight years, with General Pervez Musharraf at the helm of affairs, has always been reluctant to embrace the inclusive procedures of decision-making in a modern state.

The greatest dichotomy in Pakistan today is that the state constantly talks of modernity while it uses coercive power to medievalise the life of its citizens. The government describes Justice Chaudhry’s activities as unacceptable politicisation of a legal case and then enters the same arena to outdo his supporters.

From all evidence, the government has put pressure on its own Muslim League and the MQM to prove their credentials as partners in power by joining the politics of demonstrations. The choice of the date betrays totalitarian tendencies.

This will sooner or later be exploited by elements that flourish by disturbing the peace. It seems that the government is now less sure than before of winning the legal battle. Pakistan’s seemingly inviolable power structure is showing signs of unprecedented strain. If issues are to be henceforth weighed by the size of processions, Pakistan may face a very hot summer of discontent and confrontation.

Do the mainstream political parties in opposition have the capacity to turn the current ferment to national advantage? Musharraf has shown an uncanny ability to create a formidable power equation that the dispossessed political class found difficult to challenge. In fact, the opposition became increasingly fragmented, marginalised and directionless as the years rolled by.

It is but natural that it sees in the present upsurge of the people an opportunity to make itself relevant again. Chaudhry’s refusal to fade away quietly has become a cause célèbre. He is being forcibly cast into the role of an icon of resistance by the milling crowds. In Pakistan’s history, such movements have undergone a dramatic metamorphosis. Musharraf had successfully depoliticised the broad masses. Their inertia is giving way to a nationwide revival of political activity.

We see the brilliant barrister from Lahore, Aitzaz Ahsan, reading correctly the interface between law and politics but can the same be said about his party which has allowed itself to be mired in an inexplicable series of claims and counter-claims about its secret negotiations with the military?

The least that the people should demand is a clear and authoritative statement from Ms Benazir Bhutto not only about the confidential parleys but also about the way forward. The same applies to the other parties avowedly supporting the cause of an independent judiciary.

Musharraf’s main policies — economic reconstruction in a centre-right political framework, secularisation of society, cultural westernisation and continued collaboration with the United States — will be threatened if peace is disturbed. Before long he has to take a fundamental decision. He would either take steps to defuse the crisis by making his regime more democratic or snuff out existing freedoms to revert to more authoritarian rule.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has dropped the first hint of national emergency. In a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual federation beset with problems of great disparity in economic development, suspension of fundamental rights would further weaken national unity.

The present movement has not as yet attained a critical mass to force the issue but national interest demands that all the stakeholders give up the path of confrontation and work together to bring about a peaceful transition to a more democratic era.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Time to do without the Rangers

ALL over the world, paramilitary troops are called in extreme emergency situations when the police cannot control matters. In Karachi, however, we have a situation where the Rangers are posted in the city almost permanently. There is perhaps no other metropolis in the world where paramilitary forces are posted perpetually and that too with a high profile.

In 1989, the Rangers were called in to tackle violence sparked by a students’ group at the University of Karachi. Since then, they have stayed without a break at least for the last 10 years. Press reports indicate that the Sindh government has not only requested the federal government to let them stay another year, as per the usual system of annual renewal, but has asked for their permanent stay. The Karachi police could not have willingly supported the proposal of the Sindh government.

An extra amount of security does no harm and if the government could afford it, as seems the case here, the more the better. However, there are a number of negative factors in the proposal for the Rangers to remain. First, their continuous stay takes away their shock and awe value that paramilitary troops are supposed to have for restoring order. They are supposed to be the second line of defence after the police, followed only by the army. As a result of their long-term stay, the Rangers have lost their impact. Resultantly, the army has had to be mobilised on relatively minor issues, e.g. in the aftermath of a blast during a public rally. If Rangers were not already deployed, they would have been the force mobilised rather than the army.

The presence of the Rangers makes the police complacent and enables the latter force to hide behind them in times of crisis. There is also resentment among police ranks to have to share their jurisdiction, although the plus point is that they can pass on the blame of their failures to another force. In any case, duality of command is a recipe for disaster as per any principle of organisation control.

In a commercial metropolis like Karachi, the sight of armoured personnel carriers parked at vantage points or vehicles patrolling with mounted submachine guns is going to make any investor nervous, even if the actual state of law and order is no different from that in a number of other commercials cities around the Third World. The high-profile approach is difficult to avoid; the flag march approach and display of strength as deterrence is the main strategic plank of law enforcement of paramilitary troops.

In the process, what is happening is that the Rangers who are trained and paid for by the government to man the international borders and the contiguous hinterland during peace-time and support the army during war, have no option but to neglect their main role. If, however, they can perform their statutory role satisfactorily and also be permanently based in Karachi, then obviously they are oversized.

The Rangers’ training and organisation culture is not suited to the demands of normal policing, and most of the time they sit idle and merely display their presence. Their ample availability in town, and the inefficiencies of crucial civil departments, like water supply in Karachi, have encouraged administrators to hand over the managing of the water supply to them. While this gives the Rangers something to do, it stops the civil department from learning how to handle its affairs.

We decide to use one institution beyond its mandate, making it do another institution’s work, but we do not know when to stop and in the process destroy both institutions. This reflects our national state of affairs.

While the continuing presence of the Rangers in a city like Karachi may not be desirable, there is a need of a special security force in all our big cities. We see that the police are hard pressed to control rallies, take measures against possible bomb or suicide attacks or protect VVIPS. They, line routes every time they move, leaving few personnel to do the actual policing, which entails providing security to citizens by detecting, preventing and combating crime.

This writer is not aware of the current strength of the Islamabad police, but some time ago, out of a total of 7,000 policemen in the capital city, only 1,300 were assigned to police stations. The rest were a disgruntled lot because they had to line routes for VVIP movement, control rallies or man pickets in front of sensitive buildings. Not only was this a harder task, but they were deprived of the official and supra official perks of being posted at a police station.

The result is that while most of the force being posted for duties other than those at the police station is disgruntled, those at police stations feel constantly threatened and insecure for fear of being replaced by members of the large force undertaking other responsibilities.

The regular police have hardly any specialised training for guard duties, VIP protection or crowd control, where younger and fitter people are required (not that they are adequately trained for normal policing functions). Many policemen assigned to protect a building or person appear in need of protection themselves. It is quite common to see fifty-five-year olds with grey hair and pot bellies taking on responsibilities that should be undertaken by younger, fitter men. So what is the solution?

There is need to have a separate security force for all police forces of large cities. These should be set up under a separate statute, similar to a legal framework of the employment, recruitment and career plan of a paramilitary force like the Rangers or the Frontier Constabulary.

This force should have an entirely different uniform from the police, and be younger than the latter at the time of recruitment and retirement. It should be well looked after in terms of accommodation, transport, salaries and perks like the Rangers.The only difference required is that it should be part of the police and recruited, trained and looked after by the city police chief and be paid directly from the police budget. Since it would be a force recruited under a separate statute than the Police Act/Rules, there would be no provision for inter-transfers.

Recruitment and training would be specific to the security needs of the city, and the command of all law enforcement agencies would be in one place. This would also reduce the workload of our politicians who are constantly pestered by policemen to have them posted in “lucrative” police stations. Something to this effect was attempted in Islamabad some years ago (more often than not, a civil servant does not get enough time to complete a reform process started during his tenure), but the mangers of the reform did not go the whole hog, i.e. a separate force was raised but not under a different statute.

Islamabad, therefore, still needs supplements from the Punjab police, the Rangers and the Frontier Constabulary. With so many different forces becoming necessary, even if it is only the commotion caused by a Supreme Court appearance of a Chief Justice on forced leave, it is not possible for the IG police to harness the force under his command effectively. The incident of the attack on Geo TV by a force which had come from outside the city is a case in point.

A large portion of the Frontier Constabulary, which was raised to secure the borders between the tribal areas and settled areas, is deployed in Islamabad for guard duties in front of embassies and other sensitive establishments. The Frontier Constabulary is similarly deployed in Karachi in addition to the Rangers. We, therefore, have a situation where our special forces are doing the wrong job at the wrong place, at the expense of neglecting its own core function.

There is, therefore, a real need to urgently restructure the city police of large cities (all provincial capitals and Islamabad) by the raising of a new paramilitary force by the police command itself so that the permanent placing of the Rangers in Karachi can be obviated and the need of their frequent requisitioning in other cities like Islamabad and Lahore is also not felt.

Having gotten so used to reforms in the police, this idea should not bother anyone. Perhaps the National Commission on Government Reforms or the National Reconstruction Bureau can brainstorm this idea, so that we can release the Rangers to concentrate on their core function.

The writer is a former interior secretary.

Gun country

YOU can imagine lots of countries where a candidate for the presidency might lie about owning a gun so as not to alienate the voters, but only in the United States would he lie and say he does own a gun when he doesn't.

That was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's sin earlier this year -- and he compounded it by claiming that he was a lifelong hunter. Diligent reporters checked and found that Romney had never taken out a hunting license anywhere. (Where were they when President Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction"?)

The notion that the voters might punish a candidate for not owning a gun would seem simply bizarre in most jurisdictions, but it is a serious political reality in the United States. That's why hardly anybody in the US is using the latest mass slaughter by some enraged loser (33 dead at Virginia Tech) to argue for more gun control. There's not even pressure to renew the federal law banning the sale of assault rifles, which was recently allowed to lapse. Gun control is a dead issue in the United States, and it isn't coming back. There is a sound political reason for this, and there is also a rational explanation for it (which isn't the same thing).

The political reason was simplicity itself: the Democratic Party realised that it wasn't going to win back a majority in either house of Congress if it didn't stop talking about gun control. The party's leaders looked at the political map after the 2004 election, a sea of Republican red with a narrow strip of Democratic blue on either coast, and realised that their problem was more than just George W. Bush's fatal charm. They weren't winning in "heartland" states because they were seen as trying to take Americans' guns away.There are other issues even in Montana, of course, but enough people care passionately about their guns in Montana that it's hard to get elected there if you are seen as anti-gun. So now the Democratic Party's national platform commits it to uphold the Second Amendment -- the right to keep and bear arms -- and in the 2006 election it won both the Senate seat that was being contested in Montana and the governorship of the state, for decades a Republican stronghold.

The campaign manifesto of the new Democratic senator from Montana, Jon Tester, claimed that he would "stand up to anyone -- Republican or Democratic -- who tries to take away Montanans' gun rights." The new Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweizer, says that he has "more guns than I need but not as many as I want....I guess I kind of believe in gun control: you control your gun, and I'll control mine." It's a whole new image for Democrats, and it won them control of both houses of Congress in 2006. (Yes, the war helped, too, but by itself it wouldn't have been enough.)

The Democrats were not going to lose the coastal states (where the effete intellectuals and most of the old urban working class live) even if they did drop gun control. They were not going to win in the heartland (where the born-agains and the Marlboro Men live) if they didn't drop gun control. So they dropped it, and now no large party supports it. That's the politics of it, and you can't argue with that.

There is another, quite rational reason why gun control doesn't get much traction in American politics any more. It's simply too late. This is a society that owns approximately equal numbers of wrist-watches and guns: around a quarter-billion of each. There's no going back -- and if practically everybody else has guns, maybe you should have one, too.

As various commentators will be pointing out soon, if just one of those 33 murdered students had been carrying a concealed handgun maybe the killer would have been stopped sooner. It’s perfectly legal to carry concealed weapons with a permit in Virginia, but not on college campuses. This loophole must be closed. At least, that is the way the argument is usually put in America, although the reality is not one gun per citizen over the age of twelve, but some citizens with a great many guns and most citizens with none at all.

More fundamentally, the gun control argument may be missing the cultural point. Most Swiss and Israeli households with a male between the ages of 18 and 45 also contain a fully automatic weapon, because the national military mobilisation model in those countries requires reservists to keep their weapons at home. Yet the Swiss and Israelis don't murder one another at a higher rate than people in countries like Britain or Turkey, where there is relatively strict gun control.

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is the best-known slogan of the National Rifle Association, the most effective pro-gun lobbying organisation in the United States. But it's really a cultural thing: the British have bad teeth, the French smell of garlic, Americans tend to have more bullet-holes in them than other people. The slogan should actually go: "Guns don't kill Americans; Americans kill Americans."—Copyright

Skilled masses

THE IMMIGRATION reform debate in the US has largely revolved around immigrants who do jobs Americans are not willing to do. But what about immigrants who do the jobs Americans are not able to do?

The H-1B visa, for "specialty occupation workers" in high-tech fields such as medicine, computers and engineering, is capped at 65,000 a year. Many of those industries face a shortage of skilled American labour. So, on April 2, the first day visa applications were accepted for fiscal 2008, few were surprised that the quota was hit within hours. By law, the 123,480 applications received in the first two days will be processed by lottery.

The tens of thousands of H-1B rejects will constitute some of the world's best and brightest, and America is foolish to block them from the US economy. After all, according to the National Science Foundation, a third of all science and engineering doctorates awarded in the United States go to foreign students (whose numbers are not limited). And according to the National Venture Capital Association, over the past 15 years one out of every four public companies backed by venture capital was started by an immigrant (including Google and eBay). The current H-1B cap is outdated, having been set by Congress before the Internet boom and the related blossoming of high-tech companies. Recognising the need for foreign talent to keep U.S. high-tech industries on the cutting edge, Congress temporarily raised the ceiling to 195,000 for fiscal 2001 through 2003, only to let it relapse out of neglect. Every year since, the cap has been reached well before the start of the fiscal year, though this year was the first time it was met the first day.

For those applicants not selected in this year's lottery -- or who were shut out of the process entirely because they need a diploma to apply but had not graduated by April 3 -- the next opportunity to file an H-1B petition is not until April 1, 2008. If those applications are accepted, the applicants will be able to start work on Oct. 1, 2008. But by that time, immigration experts and leaders in high-tech industries fear, many of the workers will have returned home or moved to countries such as Australia.

—The Washington Post