Time for change is now

THE lull in attacks on security forces, the supercession of the Lal Masjid confrontation by other concerns, the conclusion of the Chief Justice’s case and a mood of resignation to the havoc caused by rain and flood could breed complacency in the establishment that the hydra-headed crisis of the state has abated. In the present situation nothing could be more dangerous to the state than indulgence in such wishful thinking.

Pakistan’s increasingly severe tribulations have not entirely been due to the nature of the problems confronting it; they have also been due, and perhaps to a greater degree, to the way these problems have been handled. A possible change of the guard through the coming general election alone is unlikely to put the country on the path of redemption; much more essential is the need to change the system of governance and to do this soon enough.A serious fault in the establishment’s mind-box has been revealed in the reaction to the Supreme Court judgment of the July 20. The official statements that the court verdict was going to be fully respected was good as a preliminary gesture, though the fact that in this country acceptance of the apex court’s will is something to be affirmed in so many words leads on to quite a distressing story. Now a search is on for scapegoats to take the blame for a flawed charge sheet and ineffective prosecution / defence. This line of argument amounts to gross and unfair over-simplification.

The poverty of the official brief and its counsel was a matter between the lawyers and the honourable judges. This was not the only factor that incensed the nation; the people were also outraged by extra-legal happenings – the Chief Justice’s public humiliation, the scandal of documents whose delivery nobody could own, the circulation of libellous material through post, and so on. Much happened that made the personalities of principal figures in the high drama less important than the people’s rejection of some state employees’ hautier. The regime lost the moral battle much before it lost the legal argument.

Everybody now knows who should be held responsible for the reverse suffered by the government and it will only compound its misery if continues to pretend ignorance of, or inability to read, the writing on the wall – that too in bold letters.

Or take the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been uprooted from their homes by rains and floods (and many, as in Karachi, by killer winds). To say that all of them have wholly been victims of nature’s ferociousness and caprice will be adding insult to injury. The disaster that has overtaken them is as much man-made as it can be attributed to uncontrollable elements.

They have paid, and are still paying, for putting up with a system that has placed human life at the heaviest discount ever, that has brutalised the ruler and the ruled both, that has concentrated all power and all resources in the hands of a few at the central command and has reduced the provincial and local functionaries to liveried errand boys who must beg for small mercies such as helicopters to drop food for the marooned skeletons.

The wounds caused to the already lacerated bodies of Balochistan and Sindh will take long to heal and this is unlikely to happen until the people can trust the hands administering the healing touch. Not only the medicine but the dispenser too must be replaced.

Above all, there are no two opinions on the enormous size of the challenge to the state posed by the quasi-religious militancy. But there is no agreement on how to lay the monster created during more than a decade of suicidal adventurism. True, militancy and extremism must be completely routed. But by whom and how? Pakistan has already paid a heavy price for begging this basic question. It cannot afford to pay any more.

The Lal Masjid affair was comprehensively botched up. The people are convinced of this because they saw what happened and how. At the beginning of the affair the administration was in undisputed occupation of moral heights. These were vacated for the adversary in a most incredible manner. Neither the civilian wing of the regime nor its more privileged military counterpart had its heart in the battle and the failure of both was apparent from the very beginning of the standoff. Now the state apparatus is working overtime to rehabilitate the victims of its floundering.

Not dissimilar is the story of the costly operation in the tribal areas. Nobody could oppose the intention to pluck out armed mercenaries who had bought shelter there. However, the dangers in the Pakistan state’s very first appearance in some parts of the traditionally autonomous land in military uniform need not have been ignored, especially in view of the warnings issued from several knowledgeable quarters.

The situation was further aggravated when non-combatant casualties, many of them caused by predators from across the border, mounted. All this the people have not seen as well as they could watch the thunderous sequence of Operation Silence, but there should be little doubt about the regime’s loss of moral ground there too.

Another factor that was always present in the tribal belt has acquired increased seriousness — signs of impatience in the ranks of anti-terror high command. The need for a new approach to terrorism, militancy, extremism, whatever the term one fancies, is manifest.

That only the armed forces have the wherewithal and the capacity to overcome the menace of terrorism cannot be denied. What is not equally undeniable is the view that the armed forces can win the war on terror by themselves. At some stage adequate space in the decision-making councils must be found for the non-military majority of the country, the vast population that has been divested of its sovereign rights and privileges and then maligned no end for being dumb and docile.

Every passing day makes it clear that the war on terror cannot be won by armed forces operating without the umbrella of a popular, democratically constituted and democratically functioning civilian authority, nor will it be won by such an authority without the backing sensible military leaders extend to representative rulers in any democracy worth the name. The sooner this fundamental reality is comprehended the easier and less painful the journey to salvation will become.

Most people, including some political stalwarts, are hoping that the coming general election will ensure the people’s deliverance from anarchy. For all one knows the people may well be in for another betrayal. Under an Election Commission that tries, quite unconstitutionally and illegally, to refuse entering a citizen’s name on the voters’ list only because he/she does not possess a National Identity Card, which may be needed only at the time of casting of ballots, though then too unjustifiably, it is unrealistic to expect free and fair elections.

Only a few are prepared to bet on a satisfactory transition to democratic governance under the existing dispensation. Besides, can Pakistan afford to wait for another few months before beginning the long haul to salvation? The only safe answer will be in the negative.

Where does all this leave us? There seems to be no option other than the establishment of an independent, fully authorised transitional regime not only to guarantee free and fair polls but also, and more essentially, to regain the moral authority that has over the years been mindlessly squandered. The time for change is now.

What Turks have rejected

THE best thing about the outcome of the Turkish election on Sunday is that now the army can't make a coup. It may still want to: it was certainly making menacing noises about it recently. But after almost half the voters (47 per cent) backed the incumbent AK (Justice and Development) party in Sunday's election, the army simply cannot move against it.

A great many officers would just refuse to act against the popular will in such a blatant way, and the army would never risk a split in the officer corps. The even better thing about this election is that Turks have decisively rejected the false dichotomy between "political Islam" and "democracy" that paralyses politics in so many Muslim countries.

That matters, because Turkey is a rapidly developing middle-income country of 75 million people that still has hopes of joining the European Union. (The current obstructionism of leaders in France, Germany, Austria and a few others countries is irrelevant, since they will probably all be gone by the time a decision is taken in ten or twelve years' time.) But the election outcome is also important for other Muslim-majority countries.

Most foreign reporting of the Turkish election followed the script provided by the main opposition parties, the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), in which they were defending enlightened, secular democracy in Turkey and the AK Party was just a front for ignorant hordes of rural Muslim fanatics who wanted to shove shariat law down the nation's throat. It was a "test of Turkish secularism," they claimed --and if it was, then secularism lost. But that isn't what really happened at all.

The real struggle in Turkey was between the "republican elite" and practically everybody else. The "republican elite" are a privileged and well-educated class of people who have virtually monopolised senior jobs in the military, the judiciary and the state bureaucracy for several generations on the pretext that they must have control in order to defend Ataturk's secular reforms (in the 1920s!). But these days, that is only a pretext for preserving their power: secular democracy in Turkey is not in danger.

There are certainly fanatics in Turkey who would like to force all their fellow-citizens to conform to their particular brand of religion on pain of death. Every country has some of those, but they are as rare in Turkey as they are in Spain -- and while the ones in Turkey probably do vote for the AKP, since it is the only party that openly espouses "Islamic values," they are a tiny proportion of its supporters.

Indeed, it's likely that quite a few of the people who voted for the AK Party this time are not even believers. Although officially 99 percent Muslim, Turkey has lots of unofficial non-believers, especially in the big cities, and many of them would have been attracted by the party's impressive economic record (five unbroken years of high-speed growth), by its unwavering commitment to membership in the European Union, and above all by its determined attempts to liberalise Turkey's legal system.

The AK Party has consistently used the need to make Turkish law conform to EU norms as a justification for changing the law in ways that expand individual rights. Of course, that also undermines the ability of the "republican elite" to control the state from behind the scenes, so they are fighting back by accusing the AK Party of being a Trojan horse for religious fanatics who want to stop Turks from drinking alcohol and force women into "Islamic" clothing. The AK Party denies it, it has spent the last five years in power moving consistently in the opposite direction, and most Turkish voters believe it.

The larger significance of the AK Party's success in Turkey is that it demonstrates that devout Muslims can co-exist with their less devout fellow-citizens in a democratic constitutional order. All the devout need in order to prosper is recognition of their equal rights, not a monopoly of power and control over the personal behaviour of the less devout and the non-believers.

In Muslim-majority countries where the secular holders of power and the Islamist revolutionaries see one another as mortal enemies -- which is to say, in about half of the countries of the Muslim world -- peaceful democratic change, compromise and co-existence of the sort that we can see in Turkey are regarded as impossible. It is war to the death between the establishment and the fanatics, and there is very little space between them for people who would quite like more democracy and civil rights but don't fancy living under shariat law as interpreted by extremists.

Opening that space up is the most important political task these countries face. The interesting thing about Turkey is that it has been the Islamic activists, not the secularists, who did the hard work that made it happen. But let's be honest: even the AK Party would have found it hard to open the Turkish system up if it had not had the prospect of membership in the European Union as an inducement for everybody to be reasonable and cooperative -- and it's unlikely that the EU will be offering Egypt or Pakistan membership any time soon.

–– Copyright

Expectations after the verdict

THE Supreme Court’s ruling against a sitting military ruler has brought solace to the struggling legal fraternity and the common man. No doubt, the decision will have far-reaching repercussions. But how and in what manner the verdict will affect the political dispensation and the rule of law is the moot point.

Much has changed since 2005 when the Supreme Court decided in favour of Gen Pervez Musharraf on the uniform issue. The situation in both the political and judicial forums has changed drastically. Just before the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Gen Musharraf said that he would seek re-election from the present assemblies. The silence at that time of the PPP on the issue of the resignation of its parliamentarians if this came to pass was seen as an indicator of the shape of the next political dispensation. Not any more. Political parties have said that not only would their members resign, they would also challenge such an election in court. The PPP, too, has had second thoughts about striking a deal with the president under the changed circumstances.

The recent court decision will reverberate in three areas: the future political dispensation, governance and the rule of law. These cannot be completely separated from each other. A responsible and accountable political dispensation, which comes into being through free and fair polls, is the basis for good governance and the rule of law.

Similarly, good governance and the rule of law cannot operate in a void. They are the consequence of a strong and viable political system, which must be reviewed by an independent and efficient judiciary.

If a stable political dispensation ensures good governance and the rule of law through an impartial, independent and efficient executive, then the task of the judiciary becomes less cumbersome. It can direct its energies to criminal, civil and commercial litigation by streamlining its administrative system to ensure speedy trials. There are fewer challenges to government actions in the presence of an accountable and independent executive.

So far, we have seen a corrupt, inefficient, arbitrary and biased executive lorded over by politicians engaging the courts in the unnecessary job of protecting fundamental rights, something that should have been ensured by the state.

It is for the first time that the people have come out with such massive support for the judiciary. In the past, the people extended such support to the politicians. When such mass support for politicians could not be translated into positive action, can the judiciary, strengthened by similar support, make a difference?

People have expectations of the judiciary because, one, the Chief Justice had nurtured hope amongst them by taking suo motu notice of public complaints and, two, they had been let down by politicians as well as the generals who held the reins of power but had done little for the common man. People were looking for a new messiah and the judiciary, entrusted with the task of dispensing justice, qualified as one, especially when all others had failed.

Had political governments provided better governance to the people millions could have turned up on their call and not depended on the Supreme Court in their struggle against military rule. Had they taken up rights violations in the form of thousands of applications like the present Chief Justice did, the people would have wholeheartedly given their verdict against army rule.

Instead, such governments established the rule of political tyranny making the executive subservient to their party leaders and activists, and not responsive to the needs of the people. In their hands, the executive became a tool of vendetta and victimisation. It was under such circumstances that the masses were constrained to consider a military general as their saviour. But this sentiment did not last long, especially when a similar political dispensation was introduced through a questionable electoral process in 2002.

No doubt, the term of the parties was cut short by presidential dismissals and the military takeover in 1999, but their own failure to ensure good governance and social justice through an independent and impartial executive is no less responsible for their present predicament.

However, this judgment should not culminate in ushering an era of judicial tyranny where every action of the government is questioned. Through this verdict, the people have got but one element of good governance and rule of law i.e. an independent judiciary. What is equally important is a fair political system that has yet to be achieved.

Since such a system is still in the offing, the challenge for the judiciary is mammoth. Can it come up to the expectations of the politicians and people? At present, they want two things from it: interpretation of the Constitution on presidential elections and the uniform of the president and ensuring a mechanism for free and fair elections.

A bare reading of Articles 41 and 63 of the Constitution shows that the present incumbent is not eligible to contest presidential elections not only from the present but also from the next assemblies. A government servant holding an office of benefit is disqualified from contesting the presidency or any other electoral office unless he has left the official job and two years have elapsed since he has quit.

The Supreme Court has already dealt with this question in a constitutional petition filed by the Pakistan Lawyers Forum where it declined to interfere when the President to Hold Another Office Act 2004 was challenged before it for being in conflict with the provisions of the Constitution. This act passed by the present parliament permits the president to hold two offices for this term.

The presidential elections are likely to be held either from the present or next elected parliament and provincial assemblies as the Seventeenth Amendment clearly stipulates that the term of the president is co-terminus with the present parliament.

With regard to the holding of free and fair elections, the Supreme Court may not be of much help to the political parties. The interim caretaker government has to be appointed by the president in his discretion as per Article 48(5)(b) of the Constitution. Similarly, he has already exercised the same power under Article 213 of the Constitution by appointing the Chief Election Commissioner. The responsibility of conducting free and fair polls rests with the election commission headed by the CEC and the caretaker government.

Any malpractices in the electoral process can be addressed by separate election tribunals after the elections. The Supreme Court cannot interfere in the electoral process on a day-to-day basis.

While the task before the apex court is gigantic, especially in the light of recent events, how realistic is it to expect it to meet all the expectations of the people, especially if these involve minute aspects that should ideally be addressed by other institutions and organs of the state?

The writer is a barrister-at-law based at Karachi
barrister_zamir@hotmail.com

Feminism, Turkish-style

SEEN around the world, photographs of Sunday's parliamentary election in Turkey showed women — their happy faces framed by head scarves — cheering the overwhelming victory of the Justice and Development Party, known in Turkey as the AKP.

How should Americans read these images? To those who worry about the rise of political Islam, it may look like another step toward strict Muslim control over the long-secular nation of 70 million. The conservative AKP, those photos recall, is the party that tried to lift a ban on head scarves and outlaw adultery a few years ago. Are veils and Sharia law secretly on the AKP agenda?

I don't think so. I believe that the AKP, despite its religious roots, has been good not just for democracy but for women's rights.

The secular state created by Kemal Ataturk 84 years ago gave Turkish women their first taste of freedom, ending centuries of Islamic law and polygamy. But it is only since Turkey began pursuing membership in the European Union six years ago that Turkish women have made their biggest breakthroughs.

They still have a long way to go. I have spoken to too many Turkish women who say that they don't yet feel free to go to school, to choose who they marry, to work outside the home, to decide how many children to bear. Two government education campaigns have made great strides, but 15 per cent of women remain illiterate. In Istanbul and other cities, the situation of women has improved significantly, but the villages lag far behind.

But since 2001, Turkey has undergone enormous political and social improvement. There is plenty to criticise about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but more feminist organisations have been founded under the AKP than during any part of Turkey's 80-year democracy. These women's organisations were smart: They got their issues on the national agenda just as Turkey needed to show the EU that it was making progress on human rights.

As a result, finally, men and women in Turkey have equal rights concerning marriage, divorce and property ownership. For the first time, the law says explicitly that women have autonomy over their own bodies. Before this change, women belonged to their male relatives or husbands. Turkish feminist Duygu Asena, the granddaughter of Ataturk's personal secretary, died a year ago but, happily, lived long enough to see this profound change in the law. Her women's magazines and newspaper columns were an inspiration to a generation of Turkish women. She was the first to dare speak the word "orgasm" in public, and she shocked Turkey with her 1987 book, "The Woman has No Name," excoriating marital oppression.

While westerners wring their hands about secularism, they miss the larger point: Turkey is getting more and more democratic. The lively public debate leading up to the election illustrates the progress that was already visible in legislation, media, employment and politics. Fifteen years ago, few people argued politics or took a public stance for one party or another. Now everybody is free to do so.

Yes, a party led by religious conservatives remains in power. But my expectations of progress for Turkish women remain high. The mentality is changing there -- across the secular-religious spectrum. Religious women may not be associated with feminism, but they now use the same laws to gain access to schools, universities and the media. Even if they wear head scarves, shouldn't we encourage them in these pursuits? Aren't religious women allowed to be ambitious? Isn't that pure democracy?

I see similar changes in mentality among men, who want to benefit from the nation's economic boom. Economic necessity and the desire for more freedom (mobility, property) are bringing men around to the idea that women can work and earn their own income. Highly educated Turks in particular are proud of their successful wives and supportive of their careers.

—Los Angeles Times

High price for freedom

TAKE five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor who are working in an ill-equipped hospital. Accuse them wrongly of infecting 426 children with HIV-contaminated blood. Then lock them up for eight years, torture confessions out of them and sentence them to death, and you end up with a full partnership deal with the European Union.

This is what has just happened to Libya. The release of the nurses is welcome, but it is not the first time that the Libyan leader, Muammar Qhazafi, has reaped reward from past misdeeds.

The colonel supplied the IRA with battlefield weapons and then gave Britain details of past shipments. He handed over two intelligence officers for their involvement in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, and paid $3bn in compensation to the families of the victims of that flight and the French UTA airliner which his agents downed in 1989.

In 2003 he handed over his nuclear programme to the US, revealing precious secrets of an illicit international trade in bomb-making equipment. The result today is that western investors are queueing up to modernise the oil-rich country.

The final stages of the eight-year drama over the Bulgarian nurses were carefully choreographed, and it is still not clear who paid what to whom. Neither the Bulgarians nor the EU wanted to be seen paying compensation to the families of the 426 children, as that would have been an admission of guilt.

A fund was set up by Qhazafi's son and possible heir, Seif al-Islam, but, as the Financial Times reported last week, the $460m compensation package may have come from Libya. Bulgaria, the EU and the US have made separate payments in kind to support the hospital in the city of Benghazi where the infections took place, but the settlement enables both Libya and the EU to save face by claiming that the other side paid up.

The deal was negotiated by the EU but, in a bizarre twist to a sad tale, Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Cecilia turned up in Tripoli to gatecrash the delivery of the nurses.

––The Guardian, London