THE first session of Pakistan’s National Assembly appears to have taken place in a bizarre legal vacuum. No one even knew which constitution they were taking an oath of allegiance to. If the members felt perplexed, here is a tale of two former inspectors-general, both pilloried endlessly but who were at least following the law.

On Friday, March 9 around a year ago, the inspector-general of the Islamabad police would have probably heard the news that the President of Pakistan had called in the Chief Justice of Pakistan and confronted him with some illegal fuel bills, some garbled medical claims and a letter by one Naeem Bukhari.

He would have also heard that the Chief Justice was reluctant to resign so the president had suspended him and consigned him to the Supreme Judicial Council which had of course gleefully decided to deal with their now ex-colleague. It would have at that stage been business as usual for the inspector-general of Islamabad.

The next day would have been slightly off-plan. The independent media which had been delightfully absent from previous derailments of parliament started depicting the issue as one of independence of the judiciary. The lawyers and civil society, oppressed by a strange military regime which existed in a bizarre political space comprising a rigged parliament and a free media, started reacting.

The mainstream political parties, totally deprived of activity in the country, immediately detected an opportunity. Luckily they were confronted by a general who, unlike the ruthless

Zia, has delusions of his own popularity. As a result, instead of the usual military crackdown he opted to try and argue his case in the media.

At that stage the inspector-general of Islamabad (who by chance had the same name as the Chief Justice) would not have been a particularly worried man. His orders, possibly from Kamal Shah, the interior secretary, would have been pretty clear: “Do not let the Chief Justice go to court tomorrow.”

The way the orders were carried out was a public relations disaster. A few days later the inspector-general was facing charges of manhandling the Chief Justice and under threat of a prison sentence. Nobody considered his dilemma: if he had not tried to stop the Chief Justice he would have been guilty of neglecting lawful orders, particularly as the suspended CJ could have disrupted the functioning of the then legal Supreme Court.

In effect, Constable X (he should thank me for not naming him) had probably given a legal order to the suspended Chief Justice that he should proceed to sit in a car as his remaining on the street could result in a security risk. Of course the legal basis of the order and whether it is lawful or not can be challenged. But if everyone were to immediately challenge every order of a constable the streets of Pakistan would be very much the way they are.

If anyone is aggrieved by an order the right course is to judicially challenge it. As a consequence the constable can be reprimanded, and if he does not desist from such behaviour then the superintendent of police or even the inspector-general can be held responsible for permitting the constable to conduct himself in that manner. If this sounds like idealistic nonsense then so be it. This is the way civilised countries around the world run their business. Our public figures know that the poor constable armed with an order is helpless, which is why they ignore the order and make a fuss when force (which looks ugly) is used to enforce it.

Given the public hatred of the police and the fervent nature of the lawyers’ protest against the dictator I did not argue this point earlier. As a matter of fact I wrote an article titled ‘Why are the judges alone?’ but as we move forward we need to also discuss the bigger issue of the role of the police.

Even more interesting is the case of another inspector-general of police, Rana Maqbool, who found himself a co-accused (with Mr Nawaz Sharif) in the by now infamous plot to hijack Musharraf’s airliner as it made its way into Karachi airport in October 1999 with a dismissed general on board.

Mr Maqbool was the inspector-general of police at the time. If as inspector-general of police he had received information that a person was contemplating committing an offence then he should have moved to stop such offence. It should not have mattered if the offence was a subversion of the Constitution and the perpetrator a general.

For being suspected of trying to stop the offence, Mr Maqbool paid a heavy price including stints in prison. In other words it is Musharraf who should have been charged with resisting arrest rather than the inspector-general being charged with hijacking.

No doubt, Mr Maqbool was controversial before all this happened because of political partisanship, particularly against the Pakistan People’s Party. But on this count in the post-reconciliation Pakistan, should history not be written his way?

Given the circumstances, how are the police supposed to bring uncompromising law not only to you, me and Boota round the corner but also to chief justices and the chiefs of the armed services. Obviously, the last two are not enthused and God will look after you, me and perhaps Boota too (as long as he chooses his corner well).

As a result of this tricky environment, adventurers within the police service have made fortunes. They are considered savvy. Others who have tried to enforce the law have mostly perished.

The larger space is occupied by self-seekers who never disagree or take a stand. They prosper but contribute to the continuing professional disaster and the public has to deal with the resulting horror.

The police may well be the first battleground within the new coalition. Everyone in Pakistan be he a chief justice, the chief of army staff or a politician secretly wants to wield the powers of an SHO. To take advantage of this culture, the worst of the police lot are already sharpening their political knives.

From the fantastic reception such police officers are getting at the doors of their political friends, one can see that two years from now the independent media may again be an independent frustrated media reporting on police excesses.

In these pages a few weeks ago I had requested readers to vote for the PPP, PML-N and the ANP as they were entering the election with a road map for democracy. Today I hope I will not need to apologise to this paper’s readers when democracy finds it is continuing to act through the SHO’s uncertain baton. Messrs Zardari, Sharif and Wali will ignore this column but I pray the tale of two inspectors general does not return to haunt them.

The writer is a corporate lawyer and political analyst.

lawgroup.q3@googlemail.com

WHILE the whole nation is focused on the subject of democracy and public discourse is awash with setting things right by restoring the original Constitution of 1973, it is pertinent to raise the issue of the educational qualification for becoming a member of the National Assembly.

The condition that a person must have a bachelor’s degree for becoming a public representative is undemocratic and indefensible for a number of reasons.

Firstly, disqualifications based on education, and the possession of private property, belong to a distant past when citizenship was not equally available to all members of society. People were excluded on the basis of sex (women were not allowed to vote), possession of property (the poor and dispossessed were excluded) and education which is a privilege of those who can afford to pay for it.

Over time, as liberal ideas, freedoms and values were extended to include larger numbers of people in the government of the country the liberal state also became a democratic state.

Ultimately, citizenship came to be based on the principle of universal adult franchise. All citizens above a certain age level could vote and stand for public office. The only condition was age based on levels of psychological, mental and emotional development and maturity.

All other bars on exercising citizenship rights were abolished so that common people could have a say in the affairs of government. The abolition of slavery and suffragette movements, along with other social movements, fought hard for the right of every citizen to participate in matters that affect them.

The condition that only a graduate can contest elections flies in the face of one of the most fundamental principles of democracy, that is equality of all citizens irrespective of class, caste, ethnicity, sect, race or gender. It abrogates the widely accepted notion of universal adult franchise and leads to the exclusion of vast swathes of people from the right to represent their constituents in elected assemblies and stand for public office.

Secondly, it is a form of double discrimination, in particular against the background of the recent thrust towards privatising education. First our government is unable to provide universal primary education for all and then imposes the possession of education as a condition for entering elected assemblies. A very large number of Pakistan’s children are unable to reach even the primary levels of education given the dismal state of government educational institutions and/or the unavailability of schools in the remote rural areas of all the provinces.

The dropout rate for girls at puberty is extremely high when parents fear for their security due to the distance of schools, and they are withdrawn also to help with housework. The dropout rate for boys is also fairly high as they see no relevance of the school curriculum to their lives. Teacher absenteeism combined with dull and boring curricula, harsh punishments and absence of any returns on educational investment have made schools an unattractive option in a large number of remote areas.

Poverty further forces many parents to withdraw children from schools so that they may help earn a living for the family. With an increasing emphasis on private education which is expensive and accessible to only those with some means, a large part of the poorest of the poor may never even reach primary or middle levels, let alone intermediate or graduate levels of education.

Given these conditions the BA qualification for election becomes a tool of discrimination against those with lesser means, especially women. The National Assembly thus becomes a house for only those who have the means to educate their children. In other words, it becomes an assembly of those from the better-off classes and those residing primarily in urban areas.

It also becomes a means of discrimination against women who are not allowed to attend school in certain parts of Pakistan due to cultural, religious or traditional practices. In some parts of the NWFP, for example, girls’ schools are bombed from time to time to discourage women’s education. Given our sociocultural and socio-economic realities, it is an injustice to institutionalise the exclusion of such a large number of citizens from political processes.

The graduate condition is flawed for another reason which has become obvious from an examination of the decisions made by the outgoing graduate assembly. By some of its actions, the previous assembly proved itself to be an ignorant and ill-informed mass of chattering opportunists. One would have thought that the degrees which became their passports for entering the august house would have at least educated them about the Constitution and fundamental principles of democratic functioning.

However, their decisions indicate that they probably did not even bother to read the Constitution or understand its basics. A large number of them voted for a Grade-22 officer in the presidential election despite the fact that the Constitution expressly prohibits this and requires a civil or military officer to resign and a period of two years to elapse before standing for a political office. This is designed to create the necessary separation between the state which represents everyone, and parties which represent their political constituencies.

Some members of the ‘educated’ assembly proudly announced that they would elect the president in uniform ten times over.

A large number of the members of this so-called educated house never uttered a word against the dismissal of the supreme judiciary and the promulgation of ‘emergency’ by a COAS who was constitutionally not authorised to do so. The examples of being politically illiterate are too numerous to be recounted here. Suffice it to say that the graduate assembly proved itself to be uneducated.

Educationists have for long pointed out that schooling and degree-holding cannot be equated with being educated. Education, in the wider and more accepted sense of the term, means having an understanding, wisdom and critical awareness of social and political issues.

There are many people who do not possess BA degrees but exhibit a far greater understanding, knowledge and political acumen and awareness than the illiterate graduate assembly we witnessed in our recent past.

The only condition that needs to be added is that each and every potential lawmaker should acquaint him/herself with the fundamentals of our Constitution and express respect for its institutions such as the judiciary, parliament and above all the will of the people who are the fount of sovereignty.

ONE of the routines every French president has been expected to diligently adhere to under the Fifth Republic is to attend the agriculture show held at the beginning of each year just outside Paris.

The ritual consists of first causing some minor degree of traffic befuddlement on the Périphérique, the ring road around the French capital, as the presidential convoy zooms past other cars to get to the fairgrounds. Once there the head of state strolls by, stopping now and then to taste a sampling of foie gras or goat cheese, shaking hands with farmers and patting a cow or two in the same stride to get the message across that he is one of them. Farmers, that is.

Sticking to this rite on Feb 23, as Nicolas Sarkozy grinned telegenically and shook hands warmly, a man, no doubt a Socialist sympathiser, shrank back in an exaggerated demonstration of horror, repeating over and over: “Not me, not me! Don’t even try to touch me!”

To which Sarkozy responded by dropping his extended hand and advising the offender in these words: “Alors casse toi, pauvre con!” A phrase that was translated by the English-language press as: “Then get lost, you poor jerk!”

The presidential outburst was promptly posted by daily le Parisien in a 45-second video clip on YouTube. Everyone saw it, and some more.

To Sarkozy’s critics the episode was a godsend and no occasion was lost to prove to the public the absolute cantankerousness of the presidential disposition. The anarchist daily Libération repeated Sarkozy’s words in oversize typeface on its front page with a cartoon showing him green as a Martian, his brain bursting forth through his skull like a cannonball.

The Socialist party head François Hollande qualified the president’s reaction as unfit for a head of state. At the same time there were many others who were convinced the presidential tantrum fitted into the pattern of Nicolas Sarkozy’s arrant disdain for all sorts of taboos.

“I think it’s very good that the president of the republic expresses himself like any other French person,” remarked Brice Hortefeux, the immigration minister.

The president himself has provided ample evidence of his behaving like any other French person. During the suburban riots in October 2005, when he was interior minister, Sarkozy went to see for himself a bunch of youths pelting government property with stones and burning cars in the northern Parisian neighbourhood of Clichy-sous-Bois.

“Are you fed up with these hoodlums?” he came out of his car and asked a frightened family watching the scene from their balcony. “Don’t worry, we’ll hose them down with a Karcher,” he said, using a commonly recognisable German brand name for water cannon.

That phrase was much repeated all over France and the Left convinced itself that any man treating suburban immigrant youths with such disdain could never be elected president of the country. The Left was proven wrong a year-and-a-half later in May 2007.

Soon after his election Sarkozy appeared for an interview on the CBS Sixty Minutes show in October 2007. The questioning had hardly begun when he was asked to explain his relationship with his then wife Cecilia. “If I had anything to say about Cecilia I wouldn’t do it here,” he told the show’s lady presenter, at the same time getting up, tearing the translation earplugs off, rolling his eyes skywards, muttering that his press secretary was an “imbecile” and announcing in the same breath that the interview was over.

A month later television screens showed him in Normandy talking to a group of protesting fishermen when a voice from a platform above was heard hurling insults at the president. “Come down to face me and repeat what you just said,” rejoined Sarkozy, his reddening countenance making it clear that the irreverent intruder should also be ready to have his jaw broken with a presidential left hook.

His critics say Sarkozy’s volatile temperament is to be blamed for the vertiginous drop from 63 per cent in June last year to 41 per cent in the latest voter satisfaction poll taken on March 10 this year. His supporters say the slump had to do with local elections whose run-off was held on March 16, giving a slight edge to candidates from the Left.

It is true that French voters traditionally love to mete out a shock treatment to their leaders before each election and the ruling majority often loses its hold on the municipalities without its legitimacy being seriously challenged in future major ballots. As proof, the Sarkozists cite Prime Minister François Fillon’s ratings at a respectable 55 per cent — an unmistakable sign, they say, of popular approbation of the president’s policies.

The phenomenon of political figures resorting, on the record, to street parlance may be relatively new but it is definitely not exclusive to the current French president. We all remember President Ronald Reagan’s warning that “everything” was about to hit the fan if the Republicans failed to unite before the congressional polls. Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once summed up the situation of growing violence in Iraq in two words: “Stuff happens.”

President George W. Bush during his visit late last month to Ghana exclaimed during a news conference in the presence of President John Kufor: “What’s this talk about my being here to negotiate a secret military base? That’s bull, as we say in Texas.”

To come back to France, another affair concerning Sarkozy that was much in the media spotlight recently was a cellphone text message posted online by the weekly le Nouvel Observateur. The journalist who had pulled the ‘scoop’, Airy Routier, claimed Sarkozy had sent the SMS to his ex-wife on Feb 2, just eight days before he wedded the leggy former supermodel Carla Bruni, assuring Cecilia that he was ready to ‘cancel it all’ if she was willing to return to him.

Nobody knows if the president lost his temper at this. What is common knowledge is that he sued the journalist who faced three years in prison should he have failed to prove to the judges the authenticity of the message. The latest word is that Routier publicly admitted his scam and apologised to the new first lady who has forgiven him and the case has been withdrawn.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

WHILE working with juvenile prisoners in Karachi a few years ago I made some interesting observations. A number of these children had been inspired by the violence they had seen on TV. That had led to their involvement in crime.

Others reported feeling confused when they saw such scenes on the screen. They could not quite understand what the acts of violence meant and felt afraid, so much so that they were unable to cope with family relationships and felt distrustful of people — even family and friends. They reported having frequent recollections of such scenes that haunted them.

It has now been scientifically established that unprocessed and disintegrated memories of childhood trauma could affect an individual in adulthood, causing immense suffering. Moreover, this could also result in this adult posing a threat to society.

In view of these findings, a country like Pakistan which has been in the grip of violence for a long time has much to worry about in terms of the people’s mental health. The level of violence to which the common man is exposed is of a serious magnitude. Its effect on the mind is enormous. The stress it causes can be devastating psychologically. Most profoundly affected are the children who do not understand very clearly what they see and cannot reason why the violence is taking place.

It is strange that notwithstanding the serious impact of violence on the mental health of people, especially children, the media continues to portray violence so graphically on the screen and in pictures in the print media. After all television is watched avidly by everybody — that includes young children — and has a great influence on the psyche of people of all ages.

With the growing incidence of violence in Pakistan — what with suicide bombers and snipers prowling around — the level of violence on television has also risen. Be they the May 12 incidents in Karachi or the suicide bombings in Lahore, they have found their way to the small screen. Given their competitiveness some channels try to outdo the others by resorting to sensationalism. What can be more thrilling than violence?

But scenes of violence telecast live can be most devastating for the mental health of people, especially children. Not surprisingly, a large number of children are being brought to mental health professionals with problems such as aggressive behaviour, social withdrawal, depression, bed-wetting, academic failure and phobias of serious magnitude. When children watch television it affects them differently, depending on their attention span, their capacity to process information, the mental effort they invest, and their own life experiences to which they relate what they see.

Children do not become full-fledged ‘viewers’ until around the age of two and a half. The three- to five-year-olds adopt an exploratory approach. They pay attention to violence — particularly violence in cartoons. Ages six to eleven are considered a critical period for TV to impact on the child’s aggressive propensities. The later ages are more insightful in terms of understanding the magnitude of violence. Imitation of violent acts by children is well known.

At times, media violence desensitises children to real violence or leads them to believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is.

Viewing televised violence can lead to an increase in aggressive behaviour and/or induce changes in attitudes and values, causing youngsters to resort to aggression to solve conflicts. It can also inculcate greater tolerance to increasing violence in society or instil greater fear in a person leading him to overestimate the risk of victimisation.

When children view violent scenes, their psyche is liable to get disturbed. Depending on the age of a child, one should be cautious as the level of perception and understanding of such scenes can have long-lasting effects. This can speed up the impact of the adult world on the child. He/she may experience great bewilderment while maturing into an adult, leading to maladjustment.

The child may develop distrust towards others and his/her moral equilibrium may be upset, distorting the image of the real world. Such disordered and unhealthy thinking could manifest itself in violent and aggressive behaviour without adequate insight and remorse.

Addressing mental health issues is at times more difficult and complex than treating physical ailments. Nevertheless they must be addressed since that is how the mental health of the future torch-bearers of Pakistan can be safeguarded. Thus alone can young minds heal and the damage be undone that their exposure to violence on television must have caused.

On our part, we as professionals are working to remove the ill effects of violence in society. We also need to ask ourselves: shouldn’t the TV channels also do something? They can avoid showing graphic images of violence as they do when a bomb blast occurs or killing takes place as happened on May 12 and later. In the West the media avoids doing this as it could jeopardise the mental health of people.

From a psychological perspective, it is better that TV masks violent scenes with a caption and is not too liberal in their portrayal. Restricting the amount and types of programmes is probably the most effective way. For older children, it would be more useful for parents to discuss, explain and challenge television. It is important to encourage children to express their opinions and to analyse TV content. Children often lack the resources and experience needed to handle the trauma associated with actual or televised violence and need a lot of support from parents.

We must keep in mind that the children of today are more intelligent and sensitive and are the future of this country. With this wild frenzy of violence, we are doing harm by damaging the psyche of youngsters who will end up in a psychologically fragile state which will mean, for Pakistan, a psychologically fragile nation.

amin.muhammad@med.mun.ca