Pakistan in its labyrinth

WHAT began as an extra-constitutional step on Nov 3 came to its logical end on Saturday with President Musharraf’s lifting of emergency rule. He pointedly said that all his objectives had been achieved, and the conspiracy against him quelled. How one searched, in vain, for some poignancy in the president’s speech on the occasion. The expectation, as it turned out, belonged in the past as a ‘nicety’ practised by dictators who came and went before him. There was no need felt for any humility, for the entire nation stood humbled before one man’s conviction of himself as its saviour and his vision for a guardedly democratic Pakistan. The maverick lawyer and successive military rulers’ guiding spirit, Sharifuddin Pirzada, was equally gung-ho in his disclosure to a western newspaper that the president needed no approval of his actions from the incoming parliament, lacing his legal opinion with the indictment that all Pakistani leaders, military or civilian, had been despotic and corrupt. The candid observation must do wonders for the country’s image abroad, which has admittedly been an obsession with President Musharraf.

The lifting of emergency and the restoration of the amended Constitution was welcomed by friendly governments worldwide, besides India. Reaction by politicians back home has been understandably varied and cautious. Ms Bhutto said she was pleasantly surprised by the promise kept, but set the holding of free and fair elections as a precondition for her willingness to work with the president in a post-election dispensation; Mr Sharif said the action came as a result of foreign pressure on Mr Musharraf, and had little to do with the Pakistani people’s aspirations. What is clear is that since the imposition of the Nov 3 emergency, everything has worked according to the president’s wishes. He imposed emergency rule as the then army chief and put the Constitution in abeyance. The judiciary was sent packing and media freedom restricted — changes that will stay in place even after the lifting of emergency; all extra-constitutional powers assumed by the army chief under emergency rule were transferred to himself as the president; he doffed his military uniform only after the post-PCO Supreme Court endorsed his re-election by the outgoing parliament as a head of state in uniform, and amended the Constitution to give cover to all actions taken by him since Nov 3 before finally restoring the Constitution in an amended form. All of these actions remain highly controversial.

As far as the Jan 8 election is concerned, there was precious little in the president’s Saturday night speech to allay the opposition’s fears as to the polls’ transparency, even though Mr Musharraf has invited any number of foreign observers to witness the process. At the same time he made it amply clear that he will not allow any agitation or rejection of election results by anyone. Under the circumstances, poet Faiz’s prophetic lines come to mind: ‘Take a vow of fidelity or of separation, do as you please/ What do we control? What will you have us endorse?’ The people of Pakistan have never been this helpless in shaping their political destiny.

Food for the mind

BOOKS and libraries have been the subject of long discourses since time immemorial, and bibliophiles never tire of talking about them. This is true in Pakistan as well. But when it comes to setting up libraries and reading books, the situation in our country turns out to be quite different — even disappointing. Small wonder then that the speakers at a seminar in Karachi on the role of public libraries ended up lamenting the paucity of libraries and the near-absence of a reading culture in Pakistan. These are actually two sides of the same coin. A society that is fond of reading generates the demand for libraries, bookshops and reading rooms. With a literacy rate of just 50 per cent — and not each of the so-called literate can actually read — the demand for books is very low in Pakistan. That would also explain why the need for libraries has never been urgently felt.

But a beginning has to be made somewhere. If Francis Bacon’s succinct observation, ‘reading maketh a full man’ is to carry a message for us, we will have to pay greater attention to books and libraries. Rather than opt for huge public libraries that would naturally be scattered and quite inaccessible to most people, it would be practicable to establish small mohallah libraries where people can drop in to browse through the magic world of books. Were libraries to become centres of intellectual activities and attract people, they would help enhance the public interest in books as well. A concerted effort to develop a network of libraries throughout the country calls for a library law. One hopes that the elected government will pay attention to this important sector. A law of this nature would make it mandatory for every province to create a body to promote libraries and ensure that the government sets aside a reasonable sum of money for the purchase of books. One of the speakers at the seminar called for the private libraries to be opened to the public. This would certainly promote scholarship since most of such libraries are known to have collections that are specialised and useful for research. But for promoting the reading culture among the people generally — that is reading for entertainment — the libraries will have to be easily accessible places at the grassroots level with lighter fare for the common man.

Voters’ list

THE Election Commission of Pakistan has posted the statistics pertaining to the voters’ list on its website. To the great relief of all, the so-called missing voters have been found and the total number of registered voters is said to be 81 million — only a few months ago it was barely 50 million. But one can still not be too certain about the accuracy of the list which shows women outnumbering men in a few districts of the country. This is odd given the fact that the gender ratio in Pakistan’s population tilts heavily in favour of men. In other areas men have an unbelievably high representation. Has the Election Commission not been meticulous in registering the voters? Be that as it may, some doubts will be expressed about the voters’ list. With all kinds of allegations being levelled about bogus voters being registered by those who were in the government or are still in the local bodies, it is not very reassuring that such discrepancies should be there. They only detract from the credibility of the polling process which must be fair and free if the January elections are to resolve the crisis the country finds itself in.

Here it may be pointed out that an issue that needs to be addressed by the Election Commission and also the NGOs working at the grassroots level and civil society is that of the participation of women in the election process. Over the years more and more women have been taking part in the polls, thanks to the efforts of advocacy groups that have conducted consciousness-raising campaigns to educate women politically. But the aspect that gives rise to major concern is the fact that in some constituencies the female turnout has actually been nil. This has been attributed to a patriarchal culture with male elders forbidding women from casting their ballots. This is reprehensible. The Election Commission must look into this matter and take measures to pre-empt the use of social pressure to stop women from exercising their right to vote.

‘Development’ since 1999

“THE basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time.

People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation in community activities.

The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives.”

These are the words of Mahbubul Haq, Pakistan’s most famous economist and one of the brains behind the creation of the Human Development Index. Together with Amartya Sen and a few others, he came up with a series of formulas to calculate how developed countries (or regions) are, by looking at how long people live, how much they know and how much money they can spend. In other words, health, education and consumption.

The latest Human Development Report was published last month. Shall we look at how they have graded Pakistan’s performance? In fact, let’s look at the previous reports to compare the country’s performance over the past eight years.

Starting with health, we notice from the latest Human Development Report that only 31 per cent of births in Pakistan are attended by skilled health personnel. Compared with the remaining 177 countries for which the report has data, this indicates that Pakistan is the twelfth country with the lowest percentage.

Nearly 24 per cent of Pakistan’s population is undernourished. This means that it is the 35th country in terms of the most number of undernourished people, percentage wise. If we remove the African countries from this list, Pakistan takes tenth place percentage wise. But there’s another interesting, and sad, fact: this figure (24 per cent) was exactly the same in the 90s. Then Pakistan was 47th in the list, meaning that while most countries have improved their figures of malnutrition, Pakistan has done nothing.

Why these pathetic results on health? Let me give you a hint. Pakistan in the past few years has been spending, on average, 0.4 per cent of its GDP on public health. The result: Pakistan’s expenditure on public health, as a percentage of GDP, is the lowest among 177 countries. Another sad fact: this is a downward trend, as public health expenditure in the ’90s was 0.7 per cent of GDP.

Now let’s look at education. Pakistan’s combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary education is 40 per cent. In other words, 60 per cent of the population that should be in school isn’t. This ratio is so low that it places Pakistan 15th from the bottom in terms of combined gross school enrolment ratio. By the way, the 14 countries worse than Pakistan are all African.

Public expenditure on education over the last few years has been, on average, 2.3 per cent of GDP. This is the 17th lowest public expenditure on education out of 177 countries. Sadly, just like health expenditure, public expenditure on education also shows a downward trend, since it was 2.6 per cent of GDP in the ’90s.

Finally, let’s look at consumption. The easiest, but very crude, way to look at how much people consume is to link GDP growth to inflation. Here, we notice that despite GDP growth being above six per cent (especially since 2003), except in 2002 and 2003 inflation has always been higher than GDP growth. And even worse, food inflation has always been higher than GDP growth. The result is that the majority of people have been consuming less, while paying more for what they consume.

Summing up, Pakistan today has the 39th lowest human development rating, sixth if we remove the African countries. Interestingly and sadly, Pakistan’s rank for the past three years has been 135, 134 and 136 — just like in the late ’90s. This means that since 1999 there has been very, very little human development in Pakistan.

So what has changed in the last eight years? Let’s look again at Mahbubul Haq’s words.

Do all Pakistanis have greater access to knowledge? Despite a slight improvement in primary education enrolment and increased funding for higher education, Pakistan’s education figures are (still) amongst the worst in the world.

Do all Pakistanis enjoy better nutrition and health services? Apart from hiring a few thousand Lady Care Workers, and infant mortality decreasing slightly, health figures are (still) amongst the worst in the world. And an added fact: Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where HIV/AIDS is on the rise.

Do all Pakistanis have more secure livelihoods? The famous “more than six per cent GDP growth” has benefited only a couple of million Pakistanis (do remember that there are more than 160 million in the country), with the obvious result that inequality has been on the rise. Plus, we have been faced with the worst wheat and sugar shortages in history.

Do all Pakistanis feel safer vis-à-vis crime and physical violence? Crime rates are up, there are still quite a few feudals with private jails, we still have bonded labour, domestic violence figures are high, reports of sectarianism and terrorism have increased, and these days if you demand democracy you get beaten up by the police.

Do all Pakistanis enjoy satisfying leisure hours? With little or no money in their pockets and with mouths to feed, for about 80 per of Pakistanis (the not ‘non-poor’ according to the government’s official poverty line) the last thing in their minds is fursat or leisure.

Do all Pakistanis enjoy political and cultural freedoms? Attacks on civil rights have increased (especially since Nov 3), as well as attacks on the independence of the judiciary, opposition parties, journalists, human rights activists, academics and students.

Do all Pakistanis have a sense of participation in community activities? Since 2001 Pakistan has implemented a plan to devolve power to the local level; the so-called Devolution Plan. But this plan has largely been a failure due to Pakistan’s systemic, endemic and syndicated corruption of democracy. Systemic because it affects most of the local leaders, government officials, politicians and donors; endemic because it is limited to the corridors of power; and syndicated because it is a group of people who have always held power and won’t let go.

What has, indeed, changed in the past eight years.

The writer is a researcher currently pursuing doctoral studies in the UK.

OTHER VOICES - North American Press

Aqsa’s tragedy

LIKE most Canadian teenagers, Aqsa Parvez just wanted to grow up her own way, hanging out with her friends, dressing like them and pushing her curfew. Her tragic death this week, allegedly at her father’s hands in the family home in Mississauga, has shocked our community to the core, and has also highlighted the cross-generational and cross-cultural pressures that many families face.

… The courts will ultimately judge innocence and guilt, and whether this was a cultural dispute rooted in Aqsa’s desire to wear tight-fitting clothes and remove her hijab … or in some other as-yet-unknown factors…. But whatever the facts, Aqsa’s friends believe that a culture clash was playing itself out in the Parvez family before her death, which contributed to the other, inevitable strains that any immigrant family faces. The family came from Pakistan, and the parents are religious.

Reacting to that perception, thoughtful community figures such as Atiya Ahsan of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women have been quick to urge Muslim parents to take an understanding approach to their teenage children, to focus on the core values of their faith and not to obsess over a piece of clothing.

“If you know that your girl is good and she practises her faith … then for heaven’s sakes, you know, let the girl have a chance,” she says. That would be good advice for any family…. Moreover, family violence is not a ‘Muslim issue’, in any narrow sense. Or even an ‘immigrant issue’. It is a deeply rooted problem in our society, regardless of race, religion or length of time in Canada.… It is easy to find cases of conflict between parents and teens in families that have been here for generations, who do not profess any particular religion, and who share common cultural values. And occasionally, such conflicts spill over into violence, with tragic results…. — (Dec 13)

Too graphic for the CIA?

ONCE the CIA got hold of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two leading Al Qaeda operatives, agents interrogated them harshly in 2002 and taped the sessions as an instruction video for future grillings. Then-chief of CIA operations Jose Rodriguez was wrong to order the tapes destroyed in 2005, but the true outrage is that the president and vice president of the United States gave the CIA permission to use torture.

George Bush and Dick Cheney deny that’s what it was. But the two Al Qaeda men, according to The New York Times, were subjected to loud noise, put in painful positions, isolated, and waterboarded. That’s torture.

The administration acknowledged as much when it issued a new policy this year for CIA interrogations. The allowable methods remain severe, but government officials told the Times that they forbid waterboarding.

Authorisation for the CIA’s use of torture came from on high, in the days just after the Sept 11 attacks…. Bush contends that these interrogations produced valuable information. Perhaps they did, but that does not justify the use of torture.

This barbaric practice violates the basic dignity owed every human being, defies international law, puts future American prisoners at risk of the same treatment, diminishes US standing in the world, and pre-empts the use of less coercive techniques that might yield the same or better information.

… Lawmakers should focus most intently on the underlying issue: that CIA agents have engaged in torture. Congress needs to approve a measure, now before a conference committee, that would ban any interrogation techniques not in the Army Field Manual, which prohibits abusive methods. If a CIA spymaster can’t allow anyone to see what his agents are doing to prisoners, Congress should not allow the agents to do it. — (Dec 12)