THE headline above has been borrowed from a direction issued by then Vice President Al Gore on the eve of one of the most notorious judgments delivered by the US Supreme Court. This was the case by means of which the conservative judges, by a bare majority of five to four, handed over the presidency of the US to fellow conservative George W. Bush.

In the election of 2000, Gore had a comfortable majority of the popular vote. But by a quirk of American electoral law the election was to be decided on the basis of electoral college votes and whoever won in Florida would be the next US president. The electoral results in Florida showed Bush as leading but there was a dispute on the under-votes (i.e. votes not recorded in the voting machines). When Gore demanded a recount, Bush went to court. His case was weak. He wanted that there should be no recounting at all.

Obviously the correct view would be that recounting should be allowed to go on and if either party was dissatisfied with the result that could have been challenged. The Florida State Supreme Court decided in Gore’s favour. One of Bush’s basic objections was that the under votes in only four counties were being checked and that there were different standards of voting in different counties — he contended that this denied him the equal protection of the laws.

The Florida State Supreme Court however decided that the under votes in all the counties in Florida should be recounted. Ironically it was this judgment which was then challenged successfully in the US Supreme Court by Bush. In fact the case was taken twice to the Supreme Court, with Bush winning both times.

The most extreme of the Supreme Court judges was Justice Scalia — a hard line judge who is a great favourite of neo-conservatives. His response to the Florida court judgment was scarcely believable. In its internal deliberations in the US Supreme Court, as soon as the decision came on Friday, he demanded that the US Supreme Court should pass an immediate order of stay, grant permission to Bush to appeal to the Supreme Court and then reverse the decision of the Florida Supreme Court — all by Saturday morning and without hearing any oral arguments at all.

The proposal was simply outrageous in its sweep. The conservative majority in the court eventually ordered that a stay would be granted immediately, the parties would file their written arguments on Sunday with arguments scheduled for Monday. Never before in the history of the Supreme Court was a case scheduled for such a swift disposal. When this order was announced on Saturday it was obvious what the final result would be; the court had advertised its intentions in clear language.

At that point of time Al Gore sent a message to his spokesman, “Please make sure that no one trashes the supreme court.” There could be no better display of grace in the face of adversity. His political career was on the verge of being destroyed by a biased court but he accepted the coming decision with dignity. For him, the institution of the supreme court was more important than his personal career.

When the majority decided in favour of Bush a powerful dissent was penned by Justice Stevens: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

Is there a lesson to be learnt here by military or civil politicians, past, present or future, in Pakistan? Let us now turn to events here. The Supreme Court was yet to render a verdict regarding General Musharraf’s eligibility on Nov 3 when the emergency, which had been looming on the horizon, was imposed. Ominous warnings were being given by government representatives that martial law, in pristine, hybrid or attenuated form, was in the offing.

How were the judges supposed to respond? Obviously they could only observe that they would not be cowed by these scarcely veiled threats. Were they supposed to say, “Yes, we’re scared!”?

An outsider to their counsels cannot say with certainty what they were planning to do. Certain it is that the government inferred the worst. That the judges were operating under the surveillance of the agencies is not open to doubt — the ISI’s right to spy is the only permanently operating fundamental right in the country.

The president has made his war on terror the frontispiece of his assault on the judicial system. It is worth pausing for a moment to explore who exactly is a ‘terrorist’. The word ‘terrorist’ is commonly used these days to refer to a person who uses methods of terrorism to dislodge, damage or destroy an established government — an art in which the CIA has specialised. The historical provenance of the word is, however, the exact opposite.

Its etymology is traced out in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (Vol. II) which defines ‘terrorism’ as “government by intimidation as directed and carried out by the party in power in France during the reign of terror, the system of the terror.” (The word is derived from the French terroriste).

Who were the original terrorists? The Jacobins, the ruling faction during the French Revolution. In other words, the original connotation of the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’ relates to a ruling party which controls the apparatus of the state and relies on methods of coercion i.e. terrorism in order to rule the country.

A little reflection will indicate why this meaning is not merely lexical but reflects an underlying reality. The worst type of coercive or terrorist activities are those which are employed by misusing the full power of a modern state apparatus against the people of that state.

It is emblematic of governments which seek to suspend basic human rights, ostensibly to combat what they term as terrorist activities, that they, in fact, employ those very methods which they condemn in individual terrorists.

The US government has refused to accept, in blatant violation of public international law, that the Geneva Conventions are binding on it and has also refused to allow terrorists imprisoned by it in Guantanamo the right to defend themselves in courts of law.

The good news is that the US has stopped torturing suspected terrorists; the bad news is that it has done so by redefining torture.

Pakistan’s armed forces are currently waging a war in the tribal areas and Swat. It is said that the declaration of an emergency was necessitated because of judicial impediments in fighting terrorism. But we have still to be informed as to what court order prevented the Pakistan army from carrying out military operations either in Swat or the tribal areas. We have not been informed about this for the simple reason that no such order was passed.

The phrase ‘war against terror’ even otherwise is a semantic monstrosity. The word ‘terror’ is an abstract noun. How can war be conducted against an abstract noun? Yet this meaningless phrase is repeated ad nauseam to justify repeated violations of basic human rights.

Any resident of a major city in Pakistan knows that violent crime is a lucrative and risk-free endeavour. Every day scores of mobile phones, wallets, etc. are snatched at gunpoint. The assailants are neither arrested nor prosecuted.

Why? Because the police have other priorities — such as arresting superior court judges and beating up lawyers and journalists. Judges are also citizens. If they, or any of them, have committed a crime they should be charged with it. If they have not, they should be released forthwith and paid substantial damages as compensation.

The fact is that in the past few years the Supreme Court has made an enormous contribution to enforcement of basic human rights. The change has been paradigmatic and not merely incremental. The rule of law is but a theory but praxis is something different. In a country where the unwritten assumption has always been that the most vulnerable members of society have no enforceable rights whatsoever this represents a huge step forward.

The judicial battle against police atrocities is something which will remain to the eternal credit of the former Chief Justice. A balanced assessment, no doubt, requires notice to be taken of the fact that there has also been a marked decline in the intellectual trajectory of judicial pronouncements. It seems that hermeneutical skills have been trumped by the emphasis on speed of disposal of cases.

For a court of ultimate jurisdiction to emphasise quantity over quality is not a wise choice; a plethora of hurried judgments, which are sometimes self-contradictory and often rooted in shifting theoretical postulates have not enhanced the court’s prestige.

But, in the final analysis, nothing is more important than the enforcement of the basic rights enshrined in all the great statements of human rights relating back to the Prophet’s (PBUH) last sermon.

WHILE political parties, activists, lawyers, journalists and a host of other sections of Pakistan’s society have clearly drawn the battle lines against the martial law imposed by President Pervez Musharraf, and are actively engaged in protesting against the unconstitutional acts of the general, there is another, equally grave, crisis affecting all Pakistanis.

This other crisis, or emergency, affects all so-called apolitical people, regardless of class, gender or ethnicity. In fact, it affects the working classes and the working people, perhaps most importantly, women, far more than it does other sections of society.

This newspaper reported recently that food inflation was up by around 13 per cent per annum, a trend which may have been pushed up due to Ramazan, but will, in all likelihood, get worse. Overall inflation is still well over seven per cent, and this too is expected to see a rise in the immediate term.

The caretaker government is proposing a rise in petrol prices by 15 per cent (Rs7) within the next 10 days, and with international oil prices above $90 a barrel, another increase can be expected soon thereafter. With an expected rise in domestic oil prices of 25 per cent in two tranches, one would not be surprised to see petrol prices rise to around Rs67 per litre, by the time we get out to vote early next year.

Food prices usually respond to shorter term supply and demand pressures, where a shortfall in one crop or produce could raise its price way above trend levels, as the recent price of tomatoes at Rs140 per kilogram revealed.

Similarly, powerful vested interests and lobbies, or mafia-like cartels, in a country where collusion and collaboration with those in power is central to economic gain, also manipulate and raise prices.

The prices of sugar and flour, at a more mundane level have suffered from such manipulation, but so too have the prices of paper assets as depicted by the artificial stock market boom.

Moreover, demand too, tends to raise prices of essential items. With the rise in urban incomes and in the purchasing power of many Pakistanis, the prices for items such as fruit, meat, vegetables, milk and poultry have also shown a higher trend as demand has exceeded supply.

The sudden rise in food prices is often easier to deal with, as supply adjusts to meet demand through the market mechanism, or when governments intervene by putting price controls or, as is now more often the case, by addressing short-term supply constraints by importing goods. We have seen on numerous occasions in the past that chillies, onions, tomatoes, wheat and other essential food items have been imported to ease price pressures.

Whether there is a structural shift in food prices due to higher iniquitous economic growth as a more permanent phenomenon needs to be studied. If, it is indeed the case, for which there is considerable evidence that while economic growth has taken place over the last seven years it has resulted in the growth of regional and personal income inequalities, we can expect a more persistent trend in rising food prices. This will continue to have serious effects on a very large majority of Pakistanis, regardless of which form of government or political party they support.

Clearly, the domestic price of oil is affected by its international price, as much as by the domestic demand for the product. Moreover, there are issues of the use of that imported oil, and the revenue that the government generates from selling petroleum products. If much of the consumption of oil is going into industry or services which produce exports, since imported oil has to be paid for in dollars, one can counter the negative impact of a higher oil bill.Also, if oil is being used for domestic productive purposes providing employment, that too can be countered if there are other sources of foreign exchange, such as foreign investment or remittances. If oil is being used largely by a growing elite which has been able to buy cars through cheap credit, one can see how the problems of a rise in oil prices will affect us all.

The ‘political economy’ problem regarding oil affects the budget deficit and issues of revenue acquired through duties on oil sales. At least 30 per cent of the price of each litre of oil is taken by the government as duty.

Hence, if the government does not raise the domestic price of oil when international prices have risen, the overall collection from that duty is affected. This has implications on the budget deficit of the country. The debate on how to fund the fiscal deficit has political consequences.

The rise in petrol prices affects poorer people far more than it does the rich, especially as the price rise is passed on. So, in order to meet the budget deficit, why not tax rich people more? Or the tax evaders? Why impose a higher duty on a commodity like petrol, which affects all people and is a regressive tax?

The Shaukat Aziz government has passed on the buck to the caretaker government over the issue of petrol prices. Little does it realise, that even this interim government, under the same uniform-wearing general, is seen as his government. The government may be an interim caretaker one, but neither power nor authority has been handed to it by Gen Musharraf. People will continue to see the rise in inflation as part of the Musharraf regime, and might, if given a fair and free opportunity to do so, register their dissent in January.

One of the more amusing aspects of the justification of higher petrol prices comes from a comment reported in the press and attributed to a senior government official at the petroleum ministry. He is reported to have said that if the oil price rise is not passed on to consumers, the budget deficit will grow to five per cent of GDP this fiscal year.

This, he said, “will also mean a violation of the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act, which is unacceptable to the government”! A government fails to object to the abrogation of the Constitution of Pakistan, but is more concerned with a minor act?

Pakistanis of an older generation will remind us that in 1968 when the price of sugar was raised by a mere 50 paisa by the government of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, popular resentment against the military regime turned into political action.

Many today continue to hope that 2007 and 2008 will be similar to 1967 and 1968, but this is improbable. While prices continue to rise and affect all Pakistanis alike, the principled and ideological basis of the politics of the late 1960s no longer exists in Pakistan. Popular protest seldom transforms itself into a political movement without political parties giving such protest direction.

With most of Pakistan’s political parties without principles or clear ideological moorings, and with their interest only in their own ambition to be junior partners of the military, a repeat of 1968 seems highly unlikely. It seems then, that the opportunity to mobilise popular protest on account of one emergency into political action on account of another will once again be lost.

A CRITICAL strategic problem faced by modern day corporations is how to shore up the propensity of their managers and employees to adapt to change, to remain creative under pressure, work enthusiastically, and stay healthy.

Change is a constant, and people have adapted as it happened. However, what makes change different now, and harder to adapt to, is the rapidity with which it occurs, and its intensity. This permanent state of adapting is what makes change the greatest of all modern day stressors. However, businesses which have a significant stake in the psychosomatic and physical well being of their employees have discovered ways to make this struggle with change a more upbeat experience. An anxious and frazzled manpower is hardly the stuff of successful companies.

If anxiety amongst employees is of critical importance to conglomerates, it has to hold greater meaning for the rulers of the people.

For most progressive countries, a general ambience of wellness propagated through good governance and other people related measures, is a prime objective. Sadly, the welfare of the people, psychological, physical or otherwise, has never been of much concern to those who have ruled Pakistan.

And the fractured connection between the rulers and the ruled has only been intensified by this neglect. Pakistan has remained a country of un-empowered people struggling to survive under unrepresentative rulers with personal agendas. Its people have long been denied the freedom of information and robbed of a free will to express themselves through either words or the arts. Their creativity and enthusiasm to move with the times has been under continuous assault through intense, often violent, pressures to conform to a prescriptive model. Such a country is not unlike a business with stressed employees that is limping along, as a pitiful laggard on the verge of going under. All of the above has put the people of Pakistan amongst the most stressed in the world.

The signs of this are to be seen in their disdain for civic responsibilities such as traffic rules, punctuality, commitments, common courtesies and other societal obligations which are deep-seated in stable societies but mostly absent in Pakistan.

Crimes and scams of all shapes and sizes prevail in all societies but here, they have become deep rooted and car snatching, armed robberies along the roadside, burglaries, kidnapping for ransom hardly raise any eyebrows any more. These are all pointers of a malaise that strikes betrayed, poorly governed and, therefore, stressed societies.

The country is ailing, its people are weary and drained by the state of perpetual political bedlam.

Therefore, two recent developments such as the new-found freedom of the judiciary and a free electronic media were embraced by the people as portents of a sane and urbane political way of life. There was gladness in the air, the kind that Pakistan has not known in its turbulent sixty years.

To the rulers, however, a free judiciary and electronic media were threats to personal preeminence and this coupled with its fear and dread of an empowered and informed people, made the rulers deal devastating blows to both. The nation’s gladness, as always, was short lived. However, history is witness; the strength of any peoples’ cause has always been the central truth and has triumphed.

The writer is a retired corporate executive.

husainsk@cyber.net.pk