OPPOSITION leaders have been addressing several demands to General Musharraf: (1) he should resign as president; (2) he should, presumably before quitting, lift the emergency, restore the Constitution, and reinstate the judges sent away on Nov 3; (3) release all political prisoners; (4) suspend local governments (nazims); (5) set up a non-partisan interim government and reconstitute the election commission, both with the consensus of all political parties.

They are professedly committed to the rule of law, and we may assume that they would now want things to be done according to law and the Constitution.

The Constitution requires the president to appoint an interim government when the National Assembly has been dissolved and new elections are to be held. I imagine he is to act in this matter, as in most others, on the advice of the prime minister. He is not required to consult the opposition parties regarding the formation of this government. It may be noted also that in most democracies it is not customary for the existing government to resign and yield to another because new elections are to be held.

Given the current political turmoil in the country, consultation with some of the opposition notables would have been politic and expedient. But the demand that a consensus of all political parties should have been obtained is simply out of this world. For one thing, more than 150 outfits are registered with the election commission as political parties. Second, it is most unlikely that PML-Q and PML-N or the PPP and the Jamaat-i-Islami will agree on the composition of an interim government.

General Musharraf would have done well if in choosing the interim prime minister and his cabinet he had looked for politically non-aligned persons. By no means does Mr. Mohammadmian Soomro answer this description. He is an active politician, chairman of the Senate, elected as a PML-Q nominee.

A few retired judges, distinguished educationists, and administrators would have made a good team and inspired confidence. It is, after all, a government that will hold the fort, so to speak, for some 45 days. It is not expected to make new policies or introduce other innovations. In forming the interim government, General Musharraf may not have been wise, but he has done nothing unlawful.

The election commission is a body mandated by the Constitution. Its chairman and members are appointed in a prescribed manner for specified terms of office. The president has no authority to remove them simply because he does not like them any more or because they were appointed without the approval of opposition parties. The Constitution does not allow political parties (opposition or otherwise) any say in the matter. It follows that an opportunity for the president to reconstitute the election commission will not arise until the term of its present members ends or unless they choose to resign voluntarily.

Opposition spokesmen have been stressing the need for an independent and adequately empowered election commission. This sounds like a legitimate concern. But to the best of my remembrance, none of its exponents have ever told us in what way the present commission is wanting in requisite independence or authority and power. Consider also that even if the opportunity to reconstitute the commission did somehow arise, a consensus even of all major political forces regarding its composition would be just as unlikely to develop as it would be with regard to the composition of an interim government.In sacking the majority of the Supreme Court judges, and forcing many of them in the high courts to leave, General Musharraf has severely wounded the higher judiciary. It seems to me, however, that the deed, having been done, cannot now be undone. The general removed the judges under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO). He could have conceivably empowered himself to reinstate them by further amending the PCO. He is not likely to take that road.

All of the opposition leaders and many other observers agree that the PCO is an unlawful instrument. That the Supreme Court has validated it does not change their opinion. It is then not proper for them to ask the general to use the same unlawful instrument to right a wrong done under its authority. One way of reinstating the judges might open if the parliament resulting from the forthcoming elections were to pass a constitutional amendment to the effect of annulling the PCO and all actions taken during its operation.

General Musharraf is going to stay as president for the next five years. Nevertheless, let us ask what course events might take if he were to go away right now. If the Constitution is followed, he will be succeeded by the chairman of the Senate. (Mr Soomro will likely give up the post of interim prime minister, go back to the Senate, and then ascend to the presidency.) He will then appoint an interim prime minister and his cabinet. One cannot be sure that he will do so in consultation with the opposition parties, or that the elections held under his supervision will be more credible than the ones the present government might hold.

A certain amount of rigging in the elections, whenever they are held, is inevitable. It will be done for the most part at the local level by the candidates themselves. Its scale will increase if local officials at the district and sub-district levels (nazims) choose to intervene to the benefit of preferred contestants. A majority of them is linked with the ruling party in each province. Even though interim governments have been installed in the provinces, we may assume that the former ruling party notables continue to have influence with the nazims. Whether the district coordination officers and the district police officers, and their staff, will intervene in the electoral process at the nazims’ bidding remains to be seen. The opposition parties fear that they will.

In my reckoning elections will be held as scheduled even if some of the opposition parties carry out their threat of boycotting them. If that is a reasonable assumption, there is simply no time left to implement the opposition’s demands: that is, enter into consultations with all and sundry to form a new interim government, reconstitute the election commission, suspend the nazims and establish the legal and administrative framework for instituting alternative arrangements for local governance.

In case the opposition parties do stay away, there will be no need to rig the elections; the PML-Q and its allies will almost effortlessly take a majority of seats in the assemblies. The greater likelihood is that the PPP, JUI-F, and some others, possibly even the PML-N, will participate. Those who don’t (Jamaat-i-Islami and fellow travellers) will be the losers. Some combination of the winners will form a coalition government. General Musharraf, having given up his army post, will remain as president but his powers and functions will be limited to those which the Constitution allows him. Return to civilian rule, which all of us want, will happen.

The writer is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.
anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

GENEVA — The 21st century will be defined by the mass movement of people from one country and continent to another. The number of women, men and children living outside of their homeland already stands at some 200 million, almost the same as the population of Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world.

Looking to the future, it seems certain that the world will witness new and more complex patterns of displacement and migration. Unless corrective action is taken, climate change, environmental degradation and natural disasters will make life increasingly unsustainable in many parts of the planet. Armed conflicts will be initiated and fuelled by a growing competition for scarce resources such as water and grazing land.

Rising sea levels may lead to the disappearance of certain island states and the displacement of entire populations. At the same time, the growing gap between the winners and losers in the globalisation process will induce millions more people to look for a future beyond the borders of their own country.

These developments have created a number of important challenges that demand a coherent and coordinated response from the international community.

The first challenge arises from the increasingly complex nature of human mobility. The majority of people who move are migrants who leave their own country because they are unable to establish sustainable livelihoods, because they want to improve their standard of living and because their skills and labour are needed elsewhere.

Others are forced to abandon their homes and seek sanctuary in another state as a result of persecution and armed conflict. Under international law, these people are considered as refugees. As such, they have been granted specific rights, including protection from being forced to return to their country of origin.

The responsibility of UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, is to uphold the rights and meet the needs of this latter group. In many parts of the world, however, refugees and migrants are to be found travelling alongside each other in what have become known as ‘mixed movements’, heading in the same direction and using the same forms of transport.

These include flimsy and overcrowded boats of the type seen in the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Gulf of Aden. In most cases, the people involved in such movements are not in possession of passports and visas.

Such ‘irregular’ movements have prompted many states to erect new barriers to the arrival and admission of foreign nationals. These measures have had some negative consequences, including that of preventing refugees from seeking the safety they need.

We must therefore ensure that border controls enable people to exercise their right, recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to seek and enjoy asylum in other states.

A second challenge, and one which falls beyond the mandate of UNHCR, is to provide more opportunities for people to move in a safe and legal manner. Most states have now recognised the need for goods, services, capital and information to flow freely across national borders.

But governments are generally apprehensive about applying the same principle to the movement of people, even when they have an evident need for migrant labour.

The result has been a massive growth in the scale of irregular migration and the rapid expansion of an industry whose purpose and profit lies in smuggling and trafficking people across international frontiers.

As well as cracking down on such criminal and exploitative activities, states should consider opening new channels and expanding existing programmes of legal migration, whether it be for the purpose of seeking a job, joining family members who have already moved abroad, or gaining access to a better education.

In addition to reducing the number of irregular migrants, some of whom submit unfounded asylum applications in order to avoid deportation, such action would bring substantial economic benefits to receiving countries, who would gain from the presence of a young, active and tax-paying migrant population.

It would also have advantages for countries of origin, who would receive a substantial income from the remittances that such workers invariably send home.

The forces that are prompting many people to migrate are deeply entrenched within the international economy. It is probably an illusion to think that their numbers can be brought down substantially in the current dynamic phase of globalisation.

But greater efforts are needed to prevent the emergence of situations where people are forced to leave their homes, whether that be as a result of human rights abuses, armed conflict or other calamities that disrupt lives and livelihoods.

If this third challenge is to be addressed in an effective manner, serious efforts must be made to promote equitable and environmentally-sensitive forms of development in countries where the daily struggle for survival threatens to lead to violence and a breakdown in the rule of law.

Particular emphasis must be placed on consolidating the peace building process in fragile states which are embroiled in or emerging from armed conflict.

Above all, governments in every part of the world must be encouraged and supported to protect the lives and well-being of their citizens, thereby enabling them to live a peaceful and prosperous life in their own country. When people move from one country to another, they should do so out of choice and not because it is the only way they can survive.

The writer is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

THE last two chief secretaries of Sindh each had a tenure of four months, give or take a week or two. Both of them — Shakil Durrani and Ejaz Qureshi — at various times earlier had served their full terms of three years or more as chief secretaries of NWFP. Why in the last lap of their career in the country’s highest administrative cadre they were asked to leave, and indeed were happy to leave, within weeks, provides an occasion to look at the problems of governance peculiar to Sindh.

The disturbing fact however is not that Sindh’s problems are more numerous and complicated than of the other provinces but the cynicism, shared by the politicians and bureaucrats in equal measure, that with the passage of time they would get only worse.

The view of one civil servant in a key position whom this writer informally quizzed was that nothing can be done. Another, more senior, drew satisfaction from reports, which of course can be disputed, that the things were worse in Balochistan.

The government jobs and lands lie at the root of maladministration in all provinces. And how the recruitment is made and land is allotted or sold is the chief source of discontent. Irregularity or injustice in both these activities is more in evidence in Sindh than in other provinces.

Every provincial administration tries somehow to use the jobs and the lands at its disposal to gain political advantage or to favour friends and kin. The Punjab chief minister, for example, publicly promised government jobs to the youth who work hard for the ruling party. But the normal process of recruitment went on there with whatever deviation from the rule of merit that inducement to the party workers entailed.

Taking an example from Sindh, school teachers could not be recruited for a number of years because of a wrangle on how the posts were to be distributed over the political parties forming the government. Resultantly, 20,000 posts of teachers lay vacant as the term of the government drew to a close. The number of vacancies in the other departments was smaller but still considerable.

It was a desperate attempt to fill all these posts in the dying days of the government which brought the two chief secretaries in clash with the chief minister. Both of them, the press reported, directed the concerned officials not to implement the orders of appointment issued without observing the criteria and procedure prescribed for selection.

The chief minister felt compelled to deny the accusation publicly. Without judging the right or wrong of it, the undeniable fact remains that the vacancies had accumulated to this staggering number while an argument went on in the government circles for years on how and by whom they were to be filled, and the unemployed kept knocking on one door or the other.

In this decade-long tussle four secretaries came and went in quick succession, the education minister lost her powers and even a mediation effort by the president’s personal confidante and sensitive agencies (as some newspapers put it) failed. Alongside, recruitment to all posts that lay in the jurisdiction of the public service commission was also suspended and so it remains till today though a high court judge is believed to have held that the suspension was unjustified.

One has not heard of a public service commission having ever been stopped from performing its functions while the government takes it upon itself to make appointments on contract.

The premature departure of the two chief secretaries and closing down of the public service commission appear inconsequential when one looks at the human and material cost of making public jobs a source of patronage or bribe. Across the province thousands of new schools could not be opened, the ranks of unemployed swelled, the officials lost their credibility and a World Bank concessional loan of $300m for strengthening the educational infrastructure stands in danger of being withdrawn.

By way of contrast and to the shame of Sindh’s progressives, the mullahs of NWFP (Ejaz Qureshi was chief secretary there) filled every post of teacher on the basis of the merit ranking of the candidates in the relevant university examination. No fake tests were to be held nor had results to be rigged.

Recruitment of teachers has been discussed at some length here only to illustrate how an administrative issue when handled politically in Sindh caused friction and instability while NWFP avoided both by following the rule of merit. The underlying broader problem however is inherent in the policies of the Musharraf regime that have put the relationship between the politicians and bureaucracy in Sindh under much greater stress than at the centre or in the other provinces.

The introduction of checks and balances at the provincial level and the creation of district governments has sharpened Sindh’s urban-rural ethnic divide. The province now has not one but two chief executives. Whether it is the governor or the chief minister who acts depends on the subject, area and occasion. Then the nazim matters more in Karachi than the chief minister.

Such divisions which do not conform to the laws or Rules of Business subject both the ingenuity and integrity of the career officials to enormous stress. The clever and connected among them use it to their advantage. The forthright get sidelined. The abolition of the central and provincial cadres has localised the bureaucracy.

The civil servants of all disciplines are seen increasingly aligning themselves with the politicians.

The service cadres must be restored if the civil servants are to be enabled to work under the laws and not just carry out, or defy, the orders of the minister or the nazim. The principle of separation of administration from politics that has been the cornerstone of our edifice of governance is now seriously threatened. The merger of the two, or subordination of one to the other, increasingly in evidence, would destabilise the country — multi-ethnic Sindh more than the rest.