October 27, 2007	Saturday	Shawwal 14, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) I. A. Rehman said here on Friday that the civil society’s role to constructively participate in the affairs of country was increasingly squeezing.

“Citizens are alienated and losing trust in their capability to bring about meaningful change”, Mr Rehman said.

Delivering a keynote address on Civic Courage in Pakistan at the National Conference on Active Citizenship arranged by the Centre for Civic Education Pakistan, the political activist said the people of Pakistan would be successful in the endeavours to realize the dream of people-centred Pakistan but it required the sacrifices on their part.

Political parties were legitimate forum of participation but the corruption in them was engendering political apathy among the masses, he said, adding that the rampant corruption at the institutional level had seeped down to the electoral processes, which has eroded their trust in the strength of vote.

“Politics and institutions have been systematically destroyed in Pakistan,” he lamented. Mr Rehman contradicted the general impression that the country’s future lies with the elections and said that free and fair elections were not possible under the present setup.

He said the constitution forbids ‘defamation’ of armed forces and the judiciary but it had become a popular hobby to malign politics and the politicians. He termed the electoral corruption as the fountain head of all the corruption in the country.

The people have realized that the governments are not formed by their votes and that was the reason of their alienation from the political process, the activist said.

I. A. Rehman said the cases involving public interest were pending for years before the courts. He said the identity of the people stood marred as they were divided on the basis of class, faith and ethnicity. He said equal opportunities for all was the major challenge facing the country.

Women rights activist Samar Minallah presented her efforts against the custom of Swara. Apart from shocking statistics regarding women rights violations, numerous cases of Swara, a custom that exists nationally under different names, were shared with the participants.

In the second half of the conference, the latest CCE- Pakistan publication entitled “Freedom of Information: 5 years on, Window yet to be Opened” was launched. Zafarullah Khan, executive director of the CCE-Pakistan shared the findings of the report with the audience. The participants were given a detailed overview of the FIO-2002 implementation.

The research report says the FIO promulgated in October 2002 to make Pakistan the first South Asian nation to have a sunshine law continues to be scarcely implemented and underutilised even after five years.

According to the report, only fifty nine requests seeking information under the ordinance were made till December 2006, at an average of about 11 per annum. Out of these, only forty were lucky to receive the information requested, it adds. There appears to be a lack of political and parliamentary will, absence of financial resources, continuation of orthodox record keeping practices, missing trained human resources and reluctance to adopt open mendacity for access to information, says the report.