| September 26, 2007 | Wednesday | Ramazan 13, 1428 |
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Doctrine of necessity anew
The troubled nation
What bothers me not
Well played
Wake-up call for CAA
Siachen – a ruse?
Botanical garden
Civilian casualties
Obscene rights
Nawaz
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
THE Supreme Court is about to give its verdict in one of the most difficult of cases in our recent history. Its decision will have wide-ranging implications for its own future and that of Pakistan. So I pray that God would bestow the requisite wisdom on the nine judges to give the right decision without fear or favour.
The pro-establishment politicians and lawyers are taking the stance that the three branches of the state: the parliament, the executive and the judiciary: should only work in their respective areas of jurisdiction. They are absolutely right.
But should this principle not apply to the military? Is it the job of the military to run the politics of the country?
The answer is a definite ‘no’, and it has been accepted by the world after a long experience of failed military rules in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere in ancient history.
However, Pakistan, along with Myanmar, is the only state today where the military is ruling the country and thinks that it has the natural right, necessary training, requisite talent and real patriotism to govern the country and protect its political independence and territorial integrity, although our experience of 35 years of absolute and uninterrupted military rule out of 60 years of Pakistan’s existence belies this claim.
At present most Pakistanis feel that, as in 1971, we are once again standing on the precipice of a national disaster. Most foreigners also feel the same way. The use of the phrase ‘failed state’ for Pakistan has never been so commonly used by the foreign media, observers and writers as today.
The fact has been established beyond doubt that legitimacy is indispensable to good governance and that comes on the basis of popular votes cast in a free and fair election rather than rigged elections or guns. So even if the Supreme Court verdict facilitates the Oct 6 polling and produces the desired results, it will give this result only a technical legitimacy rather than a real one necessary for internal harmony and good governance.
A patriot-like President Musharraf should, therefore, choose to contest election by the new parliament out of uniform. Whatever the result, he will earn a unique place in the history of Pakistan.
MANSOOR ALAM
Former ambassador of Pakistan
IT is rather satisfying to know that everything appears to be falling in place in terms of the country’s Constitution. Clear indications are that Qazi Hussain Ahmad and the rest of the opposition are supportive of a retired judge’s presidential candidature. Indeed the resignations that were threatened from the assemblies may well not be tendered at all.
The astonishing thing is that the doctrine of necessity so widely condemned, foremost by lawyers, appears to have been rehabilitated by the very same legal fraternity -- where the election of the president is concerned. And no less a person than retired Justice Wajihuddin Ahmad appears also to have adopted the doctrine in pursuing his candidature.
My reason for saying so arises from the fact that the lawyers’ fraternity, whose candidate the retired learned judge is, has consistently asserted that the current assemblies are not legally competent to serve as electoral college twice for the presidential election. Now the retired learned judge has seen legal merit in the electoral legitimacy of the assemblies by announcing to file his nomination papers for election to the presidential office.
In a TV interview, retired Justice Wjihuddin Ahmad appeared to say that his candidature was basically tactical, to acheive an important objective, presumably to unhorse a uniformed ‘dictator’.
It follows, therefore, that the lawyers and their learned candidate have taken refuge in the very doctrine of necessity which they have so noisily been condemning decade after decade.
And the latest news (Dawn, Sept 25) is that resigning from the NWFP Assembly is not desired by the chief minister. So, the bottom line that is now taking definite shape is that the threatened resignations were a hoax — no one is going to resign from the assemblies.
The presidential election will be held just as the establishment ordained — without further constitutional ado; that the doctrine of necessity is good if employed to support a learned judge’s even hopeless candidature. And all the agitation about the constitutionality or legality of election through the assemblies by lawyers and Qazi Hussain Ahmad and others was a waste of time.
SULTAN AHMED GEELANI
Karachi
SYED Mohibullah Shah in his otherwise thought-provoking article, ‘Two states and a troubled nation’ (Sept 10), has made some strange observations. According to him, Mr Jinnah’s model of modern democratic governance “was captured through the 1973 Constitution”.
This is contrary to the facts because the 1973 Constitution is primarily based on the colonial days’ Government of India Act 1935. It is because of this that the original Constitution of 1973 did not even mention the words democracy, independence of judiciary and rule of the law.
It creates only the civilian dictatorship of the elite whose gross misrule attracts the unfortunate military interventions. The last seven elections bear clear testimony to this fact.
Mr Jinnah would not have tolerated the 1973 Constitution even for a single day because it was based on the colonial Act for which he uttered the harshest criticism. On April 12, 1936 in the Bombay session of the Muslim League, he said: “Why new constitution?” He equated it with the infamous Treaty of the Versailles, unjustly imposed on Germany.
On Feb 2, 1940 in New Delhi, Mr Jinnah said: “The anti-people Government of India Act 1935 must go lock, stock and barrel and the whole constitutional problem should be considered de novo.”
Unfortunately many educated Pakistanis equate the colonial Act of 1935 with parliamentary democracy.
Mr Jinnah on Aug 5, 1939 in Bombay said: “In such a country comprising different nationalities, system of parliamentary government was an impossibility”.
On about half a dozen other occasions Mr Jinnah sharply criticised the colonial Act of 1935, the foundation of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan.
SYED FEROZ SHAH
Lahore
TRUST all is fine. There have been a few things up my mind these past couple of years that fail to bother me any longer. The fact that they used to, and now cease to bother these days, this in itself has put me into the botheration mode again. I would wish to elucidate the same, and liberate any unexpended energy there be within.
What bothers me is the Benazir and Musharraf deal. The fate of around a hundred and sixty million individuals cannot be left to these two alone. Imagine!
What bothers me next is being thrust into the same vicious whirlpool of engineered, and more so, rigged elections yet again.
Reminds me of the promises made by, well, almost everyone in the past, of holding ‘free, fair, and impartial’ elections. A joke!
What bothers me still is the transcendence of embarrassment we feel at home, to a more wider, distinguished, and a respectable audience abroad. Like the Saud and the Hariri families.
Our friends and well-wishers abroad would customarily be forced to think twice before shaking our hands again. From what I have heard and learned over the years, save charity, everything else that starts at home, must end at that too. And it didn’t take me too long to understand that. Shameful.
What bothers me least is what is to become of ‘the chosen one’ at the PM House. I am sure he wouldn’t mind being snapped out of the narcotised haze into reality at all. Half my salary (and not a paisa more), he would end up bagging more respect as a past master in his field of expertise, than soon being dubbed as the last master at home. Or serving one, for that matter. I am confident he would do well again. Hopeful.
What bothers me not is, if it is five or 10 years. Irrelevant. After all, the concept of entropy is all too natural, and unfortunately inevitable. So it doesn’t quite make a difference whosoever is at the helm of affairs here, or for how long. We’re headed there anyways.
But what bothers me most is that all that happens around these days (including the bomb blast in the busy Peshawar Cantonment area a few days back, which me and my colleagues managed to come out of unscathed) doesn’t bother me at all. Hence, a thought process that ricochets immunity under even the most radical scenarios. A credit or a discredit to all successive governments since the early 80s? Or even for those before that? I wonder. Callous! Sad!
IMRAN WISAL SHAH
Peshawar
WHATEVER the cricket pundits and analysts may say, two facts emerged from the nail-biting final of the T20 tournament — India deserved to win, and Pakistan didn’t deserve to lose. It was heartening to see that the two subcontinental teams which were ousted in the initial stages of the World Cup a few months ago emerged as giants in the tournament.
Shahid Afridi had the grace and finesse to congratulate the Indians on their victory, when he was given the player of the tournament prize.
The Pakistani captain failed on this count and the Indian captain had to be reminded by Ravi Shastri to acknowledge that his rivals played very well too.
One last point, Gen Pervez Musharraf reminded us of the knee-jerk response which is characteristic of his best friend, Nawaz Sharif, when he announced $10,000 as reward to each Pakistani player when the team defeated the mighty Australians.
Surely our cricketers, monetarily well-looked-after by the cricket board, did not need the money as much as the government hospitals, which are perennially short of medicines and the state-run schools, which need fans and furniture.
The president’s gesture also proved that he doesn’t have much confidence in his own country’s currency, which is why he chose to be generous in parting with the hard-earned foreign exchange. But give him his due, at least he, unlike the Punjab chief minister (currently the most visible face on different TV channels), did not spend the taxpayers’ money in promoting his own self.
ASIF NOORANI
Karachi
AFTER the withdrawal of SAFA ban on PIA flights, the CAA was expected to wake up to the ground realities. As a responsible regulatory body, they should have analysed the cause of their failure to check PIA, an airline regulated by them. The failure was due to lack of professional skills within the CAA to carry out their regulatory functions, primarily due to its domination by retired officers of armed forces.
Commercial aviation is a specialised service-oriented industry with emphasis on safety, passenger comfort, flight regularity and adherence to international regulatory standards. Military or air force aviation, on the other hand, is a mission-oriented discipline, with emphasis on achieving the target, irrespective of safety concerns, in accordance with the orders given by the commanding officer.
PIA faced the ban, because of failure by its engineering, safety and quality departments to heed repeated warnings issued by the EU. PIA’s engineering head was totally unfamiliar in the intricacies of working in a highly regulated industry.
The safety division was headed by a retired PIA pilot known for his compromising posture, but he had the support of a key political party.
It is now widely believed that collusion between retired air force and army aviation officers working in PIA and the CAA added to the airline’s woes.
It is only after the PIA engineering department was relieved of former air force engineering officers’ domination that PIA was able to get relief from EU censure. In the process the national airline has had a loss of credibility, which has adversely affected its revenues.
Both PIA and the CAA have still not been out of the woods, while we see that complacency has set in. The recent CAA advertisement No 15/2007 for flight inspector vacancies has specifications tailored to favour candidates with background or training in air force establishments.
PIA has, in the meantime, already appointed an army aviation retired officer as head of its quality control division.
Although the EU ban has been lifted, not a single aircraft censured by them has since flown to Europe. It is time that upright professionals trained in commercial aviation be assigned professional assignments instead of appointments made on recommendations and contrived advertisements.
ABRAR AHMED
Faisalabad
IN the darkness of a night in 1984 Indian troops entered the distant glacier in violation of international law. Before this, it was Pakistan that used to issue permit to the visiting climbers.
Till last year, occupation of the Siachen was a pain in the neck of the India army. Their troops are neither willing to defend the heights with ice-clad peaks, nor can they sustain their physical capability weatherwise. It was all of a sudden that an Indian force advanced from Ladakh to the Siachen Glacier in the spring of 1983-84 to confront our forward defensive lines in the inaccessible barren ice glaciers.
After occupation of icy wilderness with naked cliffs and biting blizzards, the Indian army realised their folly. There were huge weather casualties and logistically high expenses costing India more than Rs20 billion a year.
The Indian public asked questions about the wisdom of dying in the snows that never belonged to India. India, to justify their presence, attacked our posts in 1995 at a colossal cost. Since then, India is seeking a respectable gimmick to create circumstances to make both countries vacate the glacier.
India will welcome to get rid of the place but with honour. It previously also tried to involve international interests through projects of sorts like making videos to attract world sympathy to the ‘agonised’ occupation of human beings where only death and doom can prosper.
The present ruse of international tourism is a way to involve international voice to get the area vacated. But for Pakistan, the vacation of Siachen is connected with resolution of the Kashmir issue. India wants Pakistan to vacate Siachen but retain Kashmir.
BRIG (r) A. Q. ANJUM
Rawalpindi
THE inauguration of the first botanical garden with 2,000 indigenous and exotic plants grown on 35 acres at Karachi University campus (Sept 13) is distinct from the common botanical gardens generally used for recreation and picnic under the canopy of lush green trees.
The fact that the garden will be housing living plants is also different from the preserved dried specimens of plants kept in a building known as herbarium.
The climate is now changing rapidly due to global warming. The rate of plant extinction is becoming fast due to the adverse effect of climate change. In order to preserve the food, fibre, forage and medicinal plants, which have evolved and got acclimatised in the semi-arid and arid conditions of southwest Pakistan, it is very necessary to maintain a nursery (seed bank) of these plants for our sustenance.
Our food security cannot be guaranteed with exotic plants in agro-ecological niche for endurance in the long run in the weather conditions of southwest Pakistan.
The idea of establishing a very important and useful branch of scientific discipline is highly praiseworthy. It will benefit and promote studies and research in pharmaceutics and agriculture in Pakistan. We must preserve the inherited plant wealth of Pakistan.
DR M. JALALUDDIN
University of Karachi
MORE than a million civilians are reported to have died from war-related causes since the US invasion in March 2003, including those directly killed by American soldiers.
The killings are a reminder of American missile attack on Pakistan in Bajour Agency in the wee hours of Jan 13 last year, though in that case there was US suspicion behind the killings that militants were hiding in the targeted area. In any case, most of the 18 victims, who were slaughtered as they slept, were confirmed civilians, women and children among them.
The attack in Baghdad was similarly followed by scenes of wailing women, to which global television audience has become inured in these six years of the US ‘war on terror’. The US command in the Iraqi capital refrained commenting on the report, although it did say it was ‘aware’ of it.
It can be forgiven for its reticence because that was an initial reaction. The Americans, including President Bush himself, pointedly refused to regret for the atrocity in Bajaur Agency and they stick to that position to this day.
In one of his speeches following the September 11 attacks, Bush had accused terrorists of despising the United States because “they hate our freedom”. The truth of the matter, however, is that the increasing hatred of the Americans in most parts of the world has more to do with US double standards and policies, especially vis-à-vis the Muslim world.
DR KHAQAN BAKHT YAWAR KHAN
Lahore
READING Hamid Aghar’s report on ‘Divine man – obscene rights’ (Sept 19) to emblazon “Badshah Ghosia Qalandar Baba Sarkar’s” car with flag, ‘786’, flashing light, etc., backed up with a letter from the Punjab chief minister’s secretariat, made even an old retired pensioner like me think of the values of indulging in self-aggrandizement.
After all, my very own ‘phupha’ (uncle) was Shamsul Ulema Syed Ahmad Bokhari, the ‘peshimam’ of Jamia Masjid in Delhi in the days before the partition.
I am myself a Syed and, therefore, a shah and pirji to boot.
The only thing that stops me from similarly applying for a flag and flashing light insignia, etc., etc., is the fact that I am the proud owner of a nine-year-old small car which might collapse under the sheer weight of such heavy regalia.
S. ASIF MAJEED
Karachi
SAUDI Arabia is a leader of the Muslim world and friend of Pakistan. AS regards Nawaz Sharif, we Pakistanis understand that Saudi Arabia should not intervene in our internal matters.
The people of Pakistan are against dictatorship and would like that no country should intervene in the matter between them and their government.
EJAZ JILANI MALIK
Bhimber, Azad Kashmir
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