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| February 18, 2008 | Monday | Safar 10, 1429 |
Whither industrial policy?
Childcare centres
Myth of international community
OTHER VOICES - American Press
ONE has suspected for a long time that the so-called ‘international community’ is a major global myth that serves to cover up a lot that needs to be revealed.
IT’S a shame that insecurity should come as a unifying trait in a nation divided on most issues. Many who will venture out to vote today will do so with mixed feelings. Those opting not to vote will also wait with bated breath as polling is held across the country. The heavy presence of paramilitary forces in the streets is not a very inviting scene; their absence would have been dangerous. On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked the PPP’s election office in Parachinar killing many people. In South Waziristan, where the local administration says election cannot be held under the existing law and order situation, and in Swat, where election is being held under virtual curfew, it will be remembered as a sad day. Recent violence and acts of terrorism have had a sorry impact on national psyche, taking away the traditional feeling of jubilation and political activism associated with the occasion. Allegations of rigging, even by those contesting the polls, and fear of violence for whatever reason, though the pattern defies all rationality, have further strained the atmosphere on this election day. President Musharraf’s controversial actions in recent weeks, his latest, contemptuous dismissal of the people’s views as expressed in globally accepted opinion polls and shrouded threats as to what the state machinery may resort to in case election results are not accepted by the opposition, inspire little confidence in a free and fair conduct of the polls. The election commission, the caretaker administration, and now the attorney-general as well as the erstwhile associates of the president, come with an equally heavy baggage, lacking credibility. It’s as if the gods had willed it to be this cheerless an election.
That said, the saving grace is that in spite of the odds stacked against the holding of elections, the process is going ahead. To avoid it being seen as an exercise in futility, it must be said again that the responsibility to hold fair elections in a peaceful manner and free of any coercion lies with the government. These should be least of the worries for the voters turning out to cast their ballot under the challenging situation obtaining in the country. There is a dire need on the part of the political parties, too, to exercise caution and restraint in the face of any provocation by their opponents. Voters should be respected for braving the odds and not used as a motley crowd to be held hostage to mob mentality. Premature reactions to election results which may lead to violence must also be guarded against. Let it not be said that democracy does not suit the genius of our people, as Ayub Khan had famously said in the 1960s; today everyone knows that it was more than a fair self-assessment of the autocratic ruler’s own failings than those of the people of Pakistan.
THAT it is almost impossible to achieve the current year’s industrial growth target of 10.5 per cent is indicated by the trends in the first five months during which the growth remained depressed at about 6.9 per cent.
In November 2007 industrial growth rate had hit the bottom at 4.74 per cent which is said to be the lowest ever monthly performance in the recent past. After achieving a peak at 19.9 per cent in 2004-05, industrial growth slumped by almost half at 8.8 per cent in 2006-07as capacity constraints started biting and cost of doing business began soaring In fact, there is not much by way of industry in Pakistan except textile and its made ups. There are of course large numbers of sugar, cement and ghee units in the country and also a handful of automobile manufacturing plants producing four and two wheelers, besides consumer electronics and white goods making factories. Except for the textile sector, none of these plants produce exportable surpluses and some of them still enjoy invisible protection against imports. Islamabad appears to have shied away from the rough road to genuine and sustainable economic growth abandoning efforts to formulate an industrial policy to make the most of its comparative locational advantage in the region and also at the same time missing an opportunity to take advantage of the economic boom that the immediate neighbours India and China had started enjoying lately.
It may sound sacrilegious to those who dream of making Pakistan a hub of engineering goods industry. But it is time to wake up to the bitter truth that Pakistan does not enjoy any comparative advantage in this sector. No doubt, such an industry with its backward and forward linkages would help in rapid industrialisation of the country. But with so much policy and financial focus on this sector all these 60 years Pakistan could save only about $3.75bn annually through import substitution and its share in meeting local demand is only 25 per cent and Pakistan’s share in the world’s export of the engineering goods of $6tn is only $0.27bn. So, instead of wasting time, effort and finances on chasing a dream let us try to enjoy the advantage of our commercially strategic location in the region and become a warehouse economy value adding to the goods passing through Pakistan from East and South Asia to the rich Central Asia and the Middle Eastern countries. This will bring in appropriate technologies and create a low level engineering base as well as a consequence. Ours is an agricultural economy. Let us make a policy to make the most of it. Let us promote small scale agro industries. Let us take industrialisation to rural Pakistan.
FOR a growing number of working women who have infants or toddlers to raise but no extended family support to help care for their children while they are at work, professional and reliable day-care centres constitute an essential support service. These are not widely available in Islamabad — or other cities of Pakistan. A few private organisations and schools may have some form of childcare facilities on their premises to retain their female employees. But generally working women in the capital who need such a service have had to depend on the few private day-care facilities whose fees are beyond the reach of many, or the couple of comparatively less expensive public crèches run by the government and the community. Thus, the plan to establish eight more day-care centres in various parts of Islamabad, with professional help from the International Labour Organisation, is encouraging news. Investment in this project is in line with the global commitment to the development of early childhood care and education (ECCE) as well as to the advancement and empowerment of women.
Since this initiative is likely to encourage the proliferation of private child-care centres in Islamabad, on the pattern of the earlier mushroom growth of private schools, we might need to focus on the regulatory and licensing aspects of these institutions. Rules must be drawn up to ensure the provision of safe and quality child-care. Security is also an issue that will need to be addressed by these facilities, considering the few cases of infant kidnapping from hospitals in Rawalpindi. A child-care advisory committee could also be formed, representing day-care centres, the organisations that support the provision of quality childcare as well as parents, to provide advice and support on child-care issues, as it is being done in some cities abroad. Finally, to improve and widen access a subsidy system would also need to be instituted to assist deserving women in meeting the costs of care for their children while they are at work.
Generally it is believed that the ‘international community’ consists of the different countries of the world with the UN as their embodiment and a reflection of their aspirations.
It is also commonly assumed that the ‘international community’ is a moral space – a space that represents international human rights norms, standards and values to which the individual countries are expected to conform. There is also an unspoken assumption of the equality of nations and of shared values, principles and beliefs.Upon closer examination, however, one finds that the so-called ‘international community’ does not seem to conform to any of the standards and values associated with it. More often than not, the term ‘international community’ is a euphemism for the United States and its allies. The assumption of equality falls apart as soon as one realises that this ‘community’ follows mostly US dictates and chastises and affirms nations, countries and governments according to the extent to which they toe the US line.
In fact, it is neither international as many countries that are not in favour are excluded from this deadly brotherhood nor is it truly a community as the values, norms and standards are far from shared. If anything characterises this so-called community it is double standards and hypocrisy. For example there is one standard for Israel, another for Iran, one standard for India and another for Iraq.
There is hardly any moral consistency with which nations are rebuked, reviled or rewarded within the power oriented and unequal system underlined by the UN and its totally unequal membership in which some are permanent members and others temporary. In a morally twisted sort of way if you have a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, considered morally unacceptable for Iran, Iraq or Syria, then you are permanent and a ‘good’ member.
If, on the other hand, you have no weapons of mass destruction and are not at war with anyone as for example Iran or Iraq, you are a pariah state that must be punished and bombed out of existence. The possession of nuclear weapons qualifies you to be a moral and good state in a position to redraw world maps and design the moral order. Barring that you are a ‘failed state’ or a ‘terrorist state’. However, a state that has actually used nuclear weapons against civilian populations is never defined as a terrorist state and the same is true of states that occupy the lands of others and kill them on a regular basis.
However, nowhere is the hypocrisy of the ‘international community’ more obvious, glaring and absurd as in the case of Pakistan. A country in which a dictator popular with the ‘international community’ has violated every norm of constitutional and democratic rule, and where law, morality and legality have been destroyed like never before is constantly described as ‘on the path to democracy’, ‘in the right direction’, and so on.
One wonders how the US and Britain would react if the entire Supreme Court were to be sent packing by the defendant for fear that the verdict may go against him. Most defendants in the world change their lawyers if they are not satisfied with their work. Pakistan has the unique distinction where the entire bench was dismissed by the defendant. This is equivalent to dissolving the people and electing a new one if a dictator does not like the electorate and its choices.
One wonders how this famed ‘international community’ would react if its army chiefs took over by overthrowing Gordon Brown or George Bush; how would they like their civilians being court martialled; how would they like their Superior Court judges manhandled by the police, lawyers beaten up and judges incarcerated for crimes never committed or proven in any competent court of law. I wonder how BBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC, CBS or Channel 4 might react if they were ordered by the UK and US army chiefs to go off the air for 77 days.
How would Americans like their constitution to be first suspended and then amended by one single man? One wonders how the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups would react if hundreds of citizens just disappeared into thin air and their relatives never knew their whereabouts.
Yet, Pakistan’s government has been consistently praised as it goes through all these actions. The so-called neutral caretaker government has proved exactly how ‘neutral’ it is by its clumsy handling of SCBA President Aitzaz Ahsan’s release, then re-arrest and then release again. They have made a joke out of arresting and releasing lawyers and judges. The fact is that the terrifying undertakers are fast taking the country down under. Along with flour, electricity, oil and gas, Shaukat Aziz, the imported miracle economist, is also gone. So who is accountable? No one.
But the ‘international community’ no longer seems to believe in the universality of human rights. It has bought the argument of cultural relativism and cultural specificity put forward by the creator of Pakistan’s miracle of disappearances – people, flour, power all made to magically disappear without a trace.
The general has argued that Pakistanis are not ready for the kind of rights enjoyed in western countries, that we are different. Human rights were supposed to be universal and available to all human beings. Now however, our general seems to have convinced the West and the elusive ‘international community’ that Pakistanis are different and the standards used for others should not be used for them.
While arguments for universality were based on the essential sameness of all human beings, arguments for cultural specificity are based on difference in culture and religion. The latter forms of argument, based on cultural and moral relativism, are almost always used to deny rights and express reservations against human rights instruments.
So Pakistanis can have their will expressed through elections cancelled by one man’s desire to seize all power for himself. Elected governments can be dismissed at will. The Constitution can be suspended at the slightest whim and then amended to suit one and only one man. Pakistan’s judiciary can be dismissed by a defendant!
What can be more appalling? Every citizen is presumed guilty until proven innocent – human rights standards are made to stand on their head. Yet, terrorists run amok in the country, killing at will. No one is there to stop them because the government is too busy jailing and beating judges and lawyers.
And the ‘international community’ bereft of all morality, stripped of all norms and standards of decency, ethically bankrupt and emasculated stands by watching in silence as a progressive and law-abiding Pakistan is steadily deconstructed and all vestiges of civilisations destroyed.
Read their lips
A YEAR ago, before Barack Obama’s prodigious fund-raising powers were clocked in at $1m a day, the senator made a great show out of raising a good idea: He would take the narrower road of public financing in the general election if he secured the nomination and his opponent did the same. Senator John McCain, then a long shot, agreed. Mr Obama even secured a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that he could return unused private donations and then accept public financing….
Representatives of Mr Obama are cautiously saying this plan was an option, not a pledge, and it will not be definitively addressed unless Mr Obama secures the nomination. Campaign seconds will spar eagerly over what ‘option’ and ‘pledge’ mean. But researchers from government watchdog groups found a candidates’ forum from last November where Senator Obama answered with a firm ‘yes’ when asked if he would participate in public financing, should the Republican nominee do the same. He promised to ‘aggressively pursue’ this route.
We urge Mr Obama to return to that position, and Mrs Clinton to follow suit. She has not made a firm commitment. After the hundreds of millions in private donations being splurged on the primaries, public financing would limit the general election nominees to $85m each.
Enacted after the big-money political scandals of Watergate, public financing served the nation well as the major nominees’ chosen option for 30 years. But Congress failed to keep public financing in pace with inflation and private money is king once more. This election presents a chance to revive the public option. — (Feb 16)
Puget Sound: the silent crisis
THE new state agency created to restore and protect Puget Sound needs your help to return a beloved, complex body of water to robust health.
Puget Sound Partnership is holding an opening series of workshops in nine communities to acquaint the public with the current condition of the Sound and identify the greatest threats to it. Information collected will be used to help develop an action agenda to be presented next fall to Gov Christine Gregoire.
A fundamental challenge for David Dicks, executive director of the Partnership, is convincing Puget Sound residents there is a problem.
An updated report, State of the Sound 2007, describes the current condition “to be one of decline, with continuing harms to the clean water, abundant habitat and intact natural processes that are the foundations of a healthy environment.”
Restoring Puget Sound means rethinking some of how we live, work and play along its shores and near the waterways that feed into it. The days of easy targets are past. A thriving population and the prospects of a million new neighbours are part of the calculation.
Part of the solution is very close to home, but it will take resources and political cooperation at the federal level to make a difference. Puget Sound is a beneficiary of the lessons learned from restoration projects in the Great Lakes, the Florida Everglades and Chesapeake Bay.
Dicks sees a primary function of the Puget Sound Partnership to be something akin to an auditor, who holds all the mix of agencies and working groups accountable for progress and getting something done. — (Feb 16)