Democracy & foreign advice

IT is a pity that foreigners should tell us about the importance of transparent elections, and that government and opposition leaders should queue up to meet the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State to seek his advice on Pakistan’s internal political matters. On Wednesday, Mr Richard Boucher met Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri. That was understandable because as a State Department official dealing with South Asia, Mr Boucher was here to discuss bilateral issues and the situation in the region, especially the Afghan imbroglio. However, the US official also met the Chief Election Commissioner, and later had a meeting with PML leaders and those representing virtually all parties in the opposition. Mr Boucher even wanted to know who would win the next election, to which an opposition leader replied that if fair elections were held, the PPP could get a majority. Secretary Boucher did not say anything specific about President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election plan, but he is reported to have said that the US was “pressuring” the general for free and fair elections and that President Musharraf had given certain assurances to his government.

Foreign diplomats — visiting or stationed in Islamabad — meeting opposition politicians is nothing new. After all, today’s opposition leaders could be in power tomorrow. For that reason, it is part of a diplomat’s job to try and have a correct picture of a country’s political situation by meeting a cross-section of politicians. Pakistani diplomats abroad, too, meet parliamentarians to apprise them of Pakistan’s position on a given issue and to know what the MPs or Congressmen think about Pakistan or about a given political issue. However, foreign diplomats’ interaction with local politicians cannot be stretched to a point where it could constitute interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. The responsibility here basically lies with the government and the opposition leaders and stems from a lack of democratic institutions in the country and the absence of a rapport between the ruling party and the opposition.

Before the military takeover in 1958, the relationship between government and opposition leaders in Pakistan used to be cordial and free from personal animus despite political differences — Iskander Mirza used to play bridge with some opposition leaders. From Ayub onwards, however, the two sides have aimed at eliminating each other from politics, and a spirit of compromise in the nation’s larger interest has been conspicuously lacking. During the PNA movement against Bhutto, the Saudi ambassador acted as a mediator. There are rumours these days that British and American diplomats are involved in the “deal” between the government and Ms Benazir Bhutto, and that the Imam of Kaaba was here to shore up the government’s position on the Lal Masjid stand-off. All these constitute a serious reflection on the quality of politics which governments and the opposition in Pakistan have been practising.

A free and fair election is the basic ingredient of a democratic system, and it should not take a foreign diplomat to tell us this. The manipulation of elections and the fraud that the three referenda were have weakened the people’s faith in the electoral process and contributed to a low voter turnout. America’s purported pressure notwithstanding, it is the people of Pakistan who expect the government to hold a transparent general election so that a parliament, truly representative of the people, could stand up to a man who combines in him the powers of the head of state and of the army chief.

Human face of poverty

THE toll poverty can take on families was made evident by Wednesday’s story of a pregnant woman in Karachi who wants to sell her unborn child because she does not have the means to raise it. This must be the hardest decision for a woman to make. In this case, the woman and her husband, who is a daily wage earner, have already five children to care for, and lots of debts to pay off. They simply cannot afford another child. Any government would have been shamed by this news, for it reflects its failure to eradicate poverty, but not ours. It holds forth on how this year’s budget is for the poor when nothing is further from the truth. While figures on poverty have been brought down from the previous years’, the number of poor people may not have. That number is going to grow unless the government acts. Part of the problem is that very little attention is paid to the social sector, so that there aren’t enough avenues for the poor for employment or earnings. There must be more low-income housing projects, more schools in far-flung places, more healthcare centres and, of course, more job opportunities so that they can make both ends meet.

But how will this happen? The government needs to set up and encourage more microfinance institutions modelled after the Grameen Bank, which can empower poor people by providing them with small credit. There has been much talk of poverty alleviation and much money earmarked for it — but where has it all gone? For example, where have the funds from the zakat been going? Or the funds from the proceeds of the privatisation of organisations? For that matter, what about the Poverty Alleviation Fund itself — what success does it have to show? There must be an audit of those funds so that one knows where the money has been spent thus far and to what effect. This will indicate what strategy needs to be developed to help steer people out of poverty and enable them to live a decent life.

Promoting safe blood donations

ONE of the concerns cited by Pakistani doctors on the occasion of World Blood Donor Day that was observed on Thursday, was the absence of the culture of voluntary blood donation in the country. Statistics show that 300,000 voluntary donations are made every year to registered blood banks. However, this figure falls far short of the required number. What we see, instead, are donors who are required to give blood to replace what has been given to a relative in need of a transfusion. They constitute the majority of blood donors. There are also a substantial number of paid donors, many of them drug addicts whose use of shared needles may have infected their blood. This is frequently unscreened and can be a source of disease when it enters the bloodstream of a patient.

While the health authorities have lately woken up to the problem of contaminated blood donation, and have undertaken periodic campaigns to seal blood banks storing expired or unscreened blood, they have not done enough to address the need for encouraging voluntary donations. It has been observed that the blood of regular voluntary donors is generally safe. It is properly screened and the volunteers’ medical history is carefully noted to ensure that they are suitable candidates for donating blood. This is a trend that must be encouraged so that the need for paid donors can be gradually eliminated and voluntary donors can become the main source of blood supply. At the same time, health authorities must ensure that donors themselves are not at risk from unsafe medical practices in hospitals and that no more than the specified amount of blood is taken from them. In the absence of these safeguards, those willing to give blood might think twice before coming forward to donate.

Science in Quran’s light

AL-QURAN, the main source of Islamic faith, is the book believed by its followers to be completely of divine origin. Muslims also believe that it is for entire humankind and since the message of the Quran is for all times, it should be relevant to every age. But the question arises; does the Quran pass this test.

The Quran challenges mankind to produce the like of it. “And if ye are in doubt as to what we have revealed from time to time to our servant, then produce the surah like there unto; and call your witness or helpers (if there are any) besides Allah. If your doubts are true. But if you cannot, and surely you cannot, then fear the fire whose fuel is man and stones which is prepared for those who reject faith” (Al-Quran 2:23-24).

According to famous physicist, and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” George Lawairte pointed out in 1931 that if the outward movement of all the galaxies were traced backward, then they would presumably meet at a single point i.e. singularity. This large blob of matter known as the “Primeval Atom or Cosmic Egg.” He suggested that for some reasons this giant blob of matter exploded flinging outwards like the bomb. This marked the creation of the universe. Lawaitre’s idea later became known as the “Big bang theory.”

The Quran states in (21:30), “Why don’t the unbelievers realise that the heavens and the earth were refused into the singularity, and then we parted them.”

Later in 1950s, the big bang theory was first propounded by Rah Alpher, Hans Bethe and George Gosmow. This fact has been described in the Quran 1400 years ago. Can we still say that it is not the God’s word?

Fourteen hundred years ago neither science was advanced nor did people have enough knowledge about astronomy. So how can one come up with such a scientific fact which is still the hypothesis theory in the 21st century? It is only God. It cannot be the word of human being or any Prophet. The Quran states in (7:67) “For every announcement there is a term, and ye will come to know.”

Science tells us that we have created the single light system but it is in the process … and they will take time to establish a Multiple Light System. As we all know our Prophet (P.B.U.H) travelled in Buraq while going to the far distant place in the speed of light. Buraq is the plural of Barq meaning light … And our Prophet travelled in the Mulitple Light System 1400 years ago which science established more than 100 years later. Is it not a miracle?

Our universe is expanding. The Quran gives the Shadah of it in (35:1). “All praises are for Allah. The Creater of the spatial strata of the universe, heavens and the earth. He keeps expanding in his creation what He wills. Indeed Allah is potent over things.” Newton theory could not find out the reality, even Einstein’s in 1915.

It was in fact Alexander Friedman, a Russian physicist, who gave the assumption of expanding universe in 1922,which was scientifically discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929 and finally certified by Arno Penzias and Robert Willson in 1965 in New Jersey, who were awarded the Noble Prize in 1978. But it was stated in the Quran 1400 years ago in (51:47). “And we have built the heaven with might and undoubtedly, we are expanding the universe vast”. It is the undoubtedly a scientific miracle of the Quran.

Scientist agree that before galaxies in the universe were formed, celestial matter was initially in the form of gaseous matter, In short huge gaseous matter or clouds were present before the formation of the galaxies. The Quran states: “Moreover, He comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as) smoke.”

It studies the process of birth of human life and the steps involved in the creation of the foetus. These processes can be divided into two parts.

1. Cellular division

2. Organ formation and getting shape

Modern science tells us that the beginning of human creation is by the fertilisation of female ovum with the male spermatozoa resulting in the formation of a Zygote. The Quran states: “Indeed we created man from a mixed or mingled fluid.” (76:21)

Modern science tells us that this Zygote or fertilised ovum divide into two and then keep on dividing. The Quran states in (4:1): “Who created you from a single cell and then created another one from it to make it a pair and then from those created multitude of men and women.”

A verse of the Quran describes the whole process involved in the creation of foetus. The Quran states in (23: 12-14): “And indeed we created man from element of dust. Then we put him in a secure place (uterus) in the form of a cell. Then we made him a being like a hanging nest fixed (in the wall of uterus). Then, we fashioned him a chewed lump. Then out of chewed lump we made bones and clothed bones with muscles. Then gradually out of it, we developed another creative. So blessed is your Lord who is the best of the creators.”

When such Quranic verses were placed before Prof. Keeth Moore, a leading expert in the field of embryology, for his comments, he said he could say about some verses and it is established. But for another, neither he could say it was right nor it was wrong. Because it is still established by science.

Further, he said he believed that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the Messenger of Allah and this divine book (Quran) is the God’s word.

India: the price of choice

CHOICES usually involve a price, but people persist in believing that they can avoid paying it. That's what the Indian government thought when it joined the American alliance system in Asia in 2005, but now the price is clear: China is claiming the whole Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, some 83,000 sq. kms of mountainous territory in the eastern Himalayas containing over a million people.

China has claimed Arunachal Pradesh for a century: during the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 Chinese troops briefly occupied most of the state before withdrawing and inviting India to resume negotiations. However, most Indians thought the dispute had been more or less ended during Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's visit to New Delhi in April 2005, when the two sides agreed on "political parameters" for settling both the Arunachal Pradesh border dispute and another in the western Himalayas.

Indians assumed that the new "political parameters" meant that China would eventually recognise India's control of Arunachal Pradesh. In return, India would accept China's control of the Aksai Chin, a high-altitude desert of some 38,000 sq. kms next to Kashmir. And that might actually have happened, in the end -- if India had not signed what amounts to a military alliance with the United States.

Informed Indians knew perfectly well that Wen Jiabao's visit was a last-minute attempt to persuade India not to sign a ten-year military cooperation agreement with the United States. Two months later Pranab Mukherjee, then India's foreign minister, went to Washington and signed the thing. Yet most people in New Delhi managed to convince themselves that Wen's concessions during his visit were not linked to India's decision about the American alliance.In June 2006 I spent two weeks in New Delhi interviewing Indian analysts and policy-makers about India's strategic relations with the US and China. With few exceptions, their confidence that India could "manage" China's reaction to its American alliance was still very high. "India knows what it is doing," insisted Prem Shankar Jha, former editor of the Hindustan Times, citing confidential sources close to Prime Minister Singh. "It is not going to make China an enemy."

On the face of it, India got a very good deal in the lengthy negotiations that led up to the military cooperation agreement. It got access not just to current US military technology but to the next generation of American weapons (with full technology transfer). The Indian military are predicted to buy $30 billion of US hardware and software in the next five years. They got all sorts of joint training deals, including US Navy instruction for Indian carrier pilots. And Washington officially forgave India for testing nuclear weapons in 1998.This was the only part of the deal that got much attention in Washington, where the Bush administration waged a long struggle (only recently concluded) to get Congress to end US sanctions against exporting nuclear materials and technologies to India. Stressing the military aspects of the new relationship would only rile the Chinese, who would obviously conclude that it was directed against them. Especially since America's closest allies in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan and Australia, have also now started forging closer military relations with India.

It took a while, but China was bound to react. Last November, just before President Hu Jintao's first visit to India, the Chinese ambassador firmly stated that "the entire state (of Arunachal Pradesh) is a part of China." This took New Delhi by surprise, defence analyst Uday Bhaskar told the Financial Times last week: "The Indians had taken the (2005) political parameters (for negotiating the border issue) as Chinese acceptance of the status quo." They should have known better.

It's mostly petty irritants so far, but they accumulate over time. Last month, for example, Indian Navy ships took part in joint exercises with the US and Japanese navies in the western Pacific, several thousand kilometres from home and quite close to China's east coast. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, chief of naval staff, said the exercise had "no evil intent," and two Indian warships also spent a day exercising with the Chinese navy to take the curse off it -- but Beijing knows which exercise was the important one.

Also last month, India cancelled a confidence-building visit to China by 107 senior civil servants. Why? Because Beijing refused to issue a visa to the one civil servant in the group who was from Arunachal Pradesh, on the grounds that he was already Chinese and did not need one.

A year ago, Indian foreign policy specialists were confident that they could handle China's reaction to their American deal. In fact, many of them seemed to believe that they had taken the Americans to the cleaners: that India would reap all the technology and trade benefits of the US deal without paying any price in terms of its relationship with its giant neighbour to the north.

But there was confidence in Washington, too: a quiet confidence that once India signed the ten-year military cooperation deal with Washington, its relations with China would automatically deteriorate and it would slide willy-nilly into a full military alliance with the United States. Who has taken whom to the cleaners remains to be seen. ––Copyright