The exploding mangoes

WHAT a coincidence it was to read Mohammad Hanif’s novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes at a time when nothing seems to be changing in Pakistan. The novel — gripping and well-written — captivates the reader from the first line onwards as it mixes facts with fiction and provokes the reader’s imagination in connection with the mysterious death of General Zia and the dark days under the dictator.

Recalling the days under Gen Zia, there was a kind of despondency which had descended on society regarding the dictator’s departure. His exit seemed not only unlikely but almost impossible until, of course, his plane exploded. It may be tempting to draw parallels with the situation today. Since November, twice there have been rumours of President Musharraf leaving his position. The recent stories about the president preparing his household to board a flight to some unknown destination may well have been the expression of the wish of some people rather than a reflection of the ground reality. But the president might have taken it as an indicator of the desperation of some to see him resign and go. Obviously, this did not happen which leaves one to assess the other likely modes of exit, such as parliament developing the muscles to force him out or even more radical ways.

Recently, a friend with whom I was discussing the subject said that this might not happen because of the sense of camaraderie within the armed forces. The unwritten code in the military is to honour and respect the higher command. However, such a code may have been flouted should one believe those who say General Zia’s death was not the result of an accident and was actually an assassination. An assassination could not have happened without the involvement of insiders.

Musharraf is still a powerful man but is now up against divergent power centres in the country. Let’s consider the events of the recent past, especially the rumours of his departure. Is it just a coincidence that the media people, who are normally considered part of the deeper establishment, were the ones writing stories about the former general’s departure, with the normally obscure details of military officers’/units’ redeployment adorning the front-pages of their newspapers?

Or was it just the independence of the media that was on display when it aired the dance or thumka of the chairman of the CBR in front of his VVIP audience? No matter how entertaining the video was, a far more important question is whether the release of the film was an example of friction within the deeper establishment. Someone may have wanted to embarrass Musharraf. Someone may want him out.

Musharraf continues in office to serve as a bridge between American interests and certain Pakistani interests. Moreover, after taking off his uniform he has completely turned into a political animal who would like to depend at least partially upon the army for survival. No matter how resolutely Gen Kayani intends to stay away from politics, the fact is that he wouldn’t be able to stick to his guns if he is sucked into the game by others.

Already, there is friction between Musharraf and some politicians. And then there is the lawyers’ movement which wants the former general to quit. Certain sections of the media also seem to be calling upon General Kayani to move against his former chief in order to secure his exit. The economy appears to be in a tailspin.

However, even against this backdrop, General Kayani’s most important task is to save the integrity of his own institution with its independent goals and ambitions. While President Musharraf is there to watch over American interests such as the Pakistani military continuing to fight the war on terror or nuclear weapons not falling into the hands of unsavoury characters, the military is more concerned about a situation where the US or Nato forces might choose to directly attack Pakistani territory. The entire peace process with the jihadis is not just the idea of politicians, it was also conceived and implemented by the military.

This was not just on account of the Islamist influence but also to create space for the defence forces which were coming under attack from the jihadis. The military could always adopt the option of conducting surgical strikes in the form of targeted assassinations of the jihadi leadership but then some would argue why kill the jihadis when they could prove to be a formidable line of defence against external threats, including one from the US and India.

Now General Kayani, and not President Musharraf, represents the interests of the Pakistan Army and he could be getting uncomfortable with the president’s political game. To reiterate an earlier point, while Musharraf now plays a political game, Kayani has to look after his organisation and his own interests. It is significant that Musharraf did not take off his uniform until he had made sure that he filled many key roles in the organisation with people he could trust. Such a move naturally restricts the army chief.

The relative freedom of A.Q. Khan and rumours of the president’s departure and hostile statements of former officers are all part of the same plan to give Musharraf an opportunity to exit. Of course, the president is comfortable due to the unflinching support of the present US administration. In an attempt to hedge its bets, Washington also maintains close contact with General Kayani and has often made public the esteem in which it holds Musharraf’s successor as the army chief. All this leaves one element unclear: when it is the considered opinion of all those who matter that it’s time for the president to go, how will his exit be effected?

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

Manmohan Singh, four years on

FOUR years is a long enough period in government to prove one’s mettle. A few days ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s fourth anniversary in office was celebrated in Delhi with Congress president Sonia Gandhi hosting a dinner.

Public participation was nowhere to be seen. Probably, this epitomises the four-year-old rule of Manmohan Singh.

The distance between him and the public has been too visible.

Is it because he stays away from politics? He continues to be a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House. All his predecessors sought election to the Lok Sabha which is the House of the people. His reluctance to do so once again underlines his disdain for the rumble and tumble of politics.

He is capable, clean and competent. But these qualities, however endearing, do not necessarily make a person an outstanding ruler. Somehow one has the feeling that he could have done much more than he has.

After completing his first year in office, he gave himself six out of 10 marks. I think if the average of the last four years was to be taken, he would be somewhere between four and five. This year has been the worst. He has had all the opportunity but it is probable that his political acumen has failed to keep pace with the demands of governance.

I realise that Manmohan Singh is heading a coalition. There are groups within the cabinet and one of his ministers tells me that only Congress members support him. This is indeed a handicap because the attitude of unwilling ministers, even if he ultimately prevails, shows up in the implementation of policies.

This is in contrast with the working of a few other prime ministers whom I have observed from close quarters. Lal Bahadur Shastri took some important decisions without even consulting the cabinet. For example, he did not tell any of his ministers in advance how he ordered the army to cross the international border in Punjab to relieve Pakistani pressure at Chum-Johari on the Jammu-Srinagar road, then the only land link with India.

Mrs Indira Gandhi ousted Morarji Desai from her cabinet for political reasons. Although the contest between her and Desai for leadership exposed the rupture, she had her way. Of course, after she reconstituted the Congress there was no question of anybody differing with her. When the emergency was imposed, Swaran Singh merely inquired in the cabinet whether it was necessary to do so when an emergency was already there post-1971 Bangladesh war. He was quietly dropped.

True, Manmohan Singh does not have the political stature of Shastri or Mrs Gandhi. But his greatest limitation is that Sonia Gandhi is always looking over his shoulder. He has to consult her even on trivial matters. And sometimes he has been embarrassed because Sonia Gandhi has decided something contrary to what Manmohan Singh had announced.

Given that he is a globally recognised economist, people expected a lot from Manmohan Singh in the economics field. If one were to go by the rate of growth, one would say that he had done a tremendous job, with growth averaging eight per cent annually in the four years he has been in power. But a person like him, who was once considered close to the Left, has pawned the growth rate to the top five per cent of the country.

No doubt, India’s middle class has expanded to 350m, but the 20m at the bottom is destitute. The government’s own report published earlier this year says that more than 70 per cent of the people live on less than a dollar per day. What does development or progress mean when roughly 70m people are deprived of the basic necessities? At least he could have given them clean drinking water, even if unable to provide one electricity bulb to brighten their dark homes.

His finance minister, P. Chidambaram, has said in an interview that poverty was no less belittling before they came. True, but then Manmohan Singh promised to spend on health three per cent of the GDP. It is hovering around one per cent. In the field of education, the performance has not been up to the mark, although the government did far better last year than before.

When Manmohan Singh was the finance secretary and subsequently deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, he had to run from pillar to post to raise money for India’s foreign exchange requirements. In Delhi recently, former Reserve Bank governor Bimal Jalan commented at a seminar that India for the first time in its history had sufficient capital, manpower and technological expertise to resolve its age-old problems of poverty and deprivation.

Yet, somehow for hundreds of millions of those living below the poverty line, the country has not moved on and is still stuck in the same old rut. Delhi, Bombay and Chennai may be bursting at the seams with billionaires, but the wealth is not being transferred to the needy. What has gone wrong and why is there no spillover of wealth and skills to where they are most required are the questions which only the prime minister can answer.

The obvious inference is that the policies devised are in the air-conditioned rooms of the South Block, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Planning Commission. They do not tally with the aspirations on the ground. When millions go without food at least once a day, there is something wrong somewhere.

Inflation is a sign of wrong priorities and wrong policies. After all, it stood at 3.5 per cent last December. Now it is around eight. People at the top do not suffer because they do not have to look after pennies. It’s the common man who is bearing the brunt. Manmohan Singh has been found wanting. What does development mean to the person who is as helpless and as hungry even today as his forefathers were before independence?

Leave the economics field aside, even the law and order situation has not improved. The police are as callous as before and human rights violations are equally appalling. As a person, Manmohan Singh has been one of the best prime ministers the country has had. Not even his most severe critics would question his honesty and integrity. But as an administrator he has not come up to the required level that a country of India’s size and complexity requires.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.

What about the earlier illegalities?

THE goings-on in Islamabad are reminiscent of events of the past. No package designed to right the constitutional wrongs perpetrated in Pakistan can be complete unless it totally repeals the consequences of Yahya Khan’s first Legal Framework Order of March 31, 1969, and the PCOs that were the unconstitutional legacies of Ziaul Haq.

Here it would be pertinent to recall the past and ask how the illegalities of an earlier period impact on the present.

The distortions inflicted on the constitution by Ziaul Haq were far-reaching and the doing of one man. This was something unheard of in constitutional history. A constitution is a consensus document for the governance of a country and not a dictator’s personal statement of power as was the case with the basic law bequeathed by Ziaul Haq. However, none of the Majlis-i-Shoora (parliaments) elected since 1988 ever tried to undo these illegalities and anomalies.

The 1973 Constitution was adopted unanimously by the National Assembly on April 10, 1973, amidst a political tug-of-war, backdoor conspiracies and an attempted army coup. It had federal parliamentary features but was essentially unitary in its working and gave the prime minister supreme parliamentary authority. The president could not promulgate an ordinance even in an emergency.

When Ziaul Haq struck on July 5, 1977, he dissolved not only the National Assembly but also the Senate, which could never be constitutionally dissolved. Thereby, he introduced the basis for a series of subsequent illegalities. Through the Governors’ Oath of Office Order of July 5, 1977, the chief justices of all the high courts became the governors of their provinces and administered the oath of office to the judges of their high courts. Thus the entire judiciary was enslaved.

On March 24, 1981, Ziaul Haq promulgated the Second Provisional Constitution Order which further enslaved the judiciary. The only honourable exceptions who refused to submit to this scheme of things were Justices Dorab Patel, Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim and M.A. Rashid. Since parliament had been dissolved, Zia nominated a Majlis-i-Shoora, sacked Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry and became president himself. Ziaul Haq’s dictatorial steps were resisted by the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) formed on Feb 3, 1981, which demanded the restoration of the 1973 Constitution but to no avail.

In 1984, Ziaul Haq declared himself elected through a referendum, but did not lift martial law. He made the lifting of martial law hostage to the unicameral assembly endorsing a series of changes in the constitution proposed in his Revival of Constitution Order, 1985, whose validation came to be known as the Eighth Amendment. By amending Article 270 A, he secured blanket cover for all his actions and held non-party elections in 1985.

These elections were boycotted by the MRD and Benazir Bhutto challenged these amendments in the Supreme Court which gave its verdict on three major issues after Ziaul Haq’s death in 1988:

1. Elections are valid only if held on a party basis; non-party elections carry no weight.

2. If the National Assembly is dissolved, elections must be held within 90 days.

3. If the National Assembly is dissolved, the federal government is incomplete without a caretaker set-up.

In view of the foregoing, the following questions of great importance for the country and the constitution arise:

1. Should the protection given in the 1973 Constitution (Article 270) to martial law regulations, martial law orders and presidential orders issued under the first Legal Framework Order of Yahya Khan, be deleted?

2. Was the dissolution of the Senate by Ziaul Haq constitutional?

3. Can a single House elected on a non-party basis amend the constitution and rubberstamp the steps of the martial law administrator?

4. Should the bicameral legislature be renamed ‘parliament’ as it was originally known rather than being called Majlis-i-Shoora as it has been since the Eighth Amendment was adopted?

5. Did the inclusion of provincial assemblies — through the Eighth Amendment — in the electoral college for the president, originally comprising only the Senate and National Assembly, create constitutional anomalies?

6. Should the parallel judicial system introduced by the Eighth Amendment (Federal Sharia Court) be retained?

7. Was making the Preamble and Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the constitution a valid step? Should it be reversed?

8. Should Article 6 of the constitution, which has been suspended and revived at will, and has never been invoked, also be enforced retrospectively?

Under the original 1973 Constitution, elections were held under the system of joint electorates and only the president and prime minister had to be Muslim, with separate oaths of office given in the Third Schedule. The chairman Senate, speaker National Assembly, members of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies could be of any faith with identical oaths for Muslims and non-Muslims. A non-Muslim could become the chairman of the Senate or speaker of any assembly.

Ziaul Haq unconstitutionally changed both the mode of election from joint to separate electorates and the oaths of offices in the Third Schedule, introducing his own Islam, gender discrimination, hadd, taazir, blasphemy laws and deprived the minorities of their constitutional rights. The oath introduced by him is still part of the constitution. Every member of the Majlis-i-Shoora and all judges of the superior courts are enslaved by this oath.

Any constitutional package, which aims to restore constitutional order and ensure democracy in trichotomy in Pakistan must focus on repealing the Eighth Amendment and Articles 270, 270 A, 270 AA and 270 AAA. These amendments deprived the people of Pakistan of their fundamental rights and provided the basis for further constitutional abuse.

The writer is a senior constitutional lawyer and president of Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party.

fatehyab@cyber.net.pk

Noise damage

THE audiologist didn’t mince her words. ‘You’ve got the hearing of someone 30 years older than you.’ The results on the audiogram showed that I have ‘severe’ hearing loss with high-frequency sounds, she said. It’s not what a 44-year-old expects or wants to hear.

It wasn’t a surprise, though. I’ve struggled for many years to hear clearly in almost every situation: at work, in bars or restaurants, at parties, in front of the TV, at the cinema, or on the mobile. Partial deafness is very frustrating. It’s also usually irreversible. Unlike most parts of the body, damaged inner ear hair cells don’t regenerate.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve missed out on hearing a joke, gossip or discussion of a film. But for many years a reluctance to wear hearing aids meant I did nothing.

But as of ten days ago I am no longer one of what the UK’s Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) says is the four million Britons who could benefit from wearing a hearing aid but don’t, and am now among the two million who do.

Nanotechnology and modern design mean my silver Sonic Ion hearing aids are probably less noticeable than a Bluetooth. Hardly anyone has spotted them. A see-through plastic tube connects the oblong microphone-cum-processor-cum-amplifier behind my ears to the tiny tubing that sends the sounds down into each of my ear canals. My hearing hasn’t become perfect overnight, but I am hearing an awful lot more, and hearing it more clearly. Sounds that were dull are sharp. Running water in a sink can sound positively cacophonous.

I already feel much more confident in social situations. I’m relishing attending a friend’s book launch. Usually such gatherings involve missing much of the chatter or having to ask someone to repeat something; or, worst of all, leaning so close to someone in order to hear them properly that they think you’re some sort of stalker. It’s great not having to keep saying: ‘Sorry, I missed that — I’m a bit hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?’

The likeliest reason I’m a bit deaf is the first love of my life: music. Between 1979 and 1985 I drummed in bands, and regularly went to gigs and clubs until the early Nineties. The three audiologists I have seen all described how they are now seeing DJs, musicians, factory workers, road diggers, and people who shoot — and now have hearing loss well before their time. Now that people spend more time in louder bars, at all-night clubbing, with MP3 players or at music festivals, more of them are hearing more loud music more often and for longer than ever before.

Noise-related hearing damage is not new, but the Sixties brought the creation of deliberately loud music as entertainment. From the Who to Deep Purple, through to Motorhead and more recent bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Mogwai, to many who play and appreciate music, loud is good and louder is better still.

Our inner ear hair cells pick up the mechanical energy of sound, convert it into electrical signals and transmit it to the brain. When we’re born, each of us has about 30,000 such cells, and this number decreases slowly after the age of 25. But prolonged exposure to noise makes cells less sensitive. And once they’re gone, they don’t come back.

A survey in 2006 by Deafness Research UK concluded that today’s youth are at risk of going deaf up to 30 years earlier than their parents because they are listening to MP3 players too loudly and too often. They blamed the fact that a large percentage of them now own a personal music player and sophisticated sound systems in their car and homes, which allow them to blast out music day and night. The survey also found that people generally also spend more time in clubs where the noise is so loud we can barely hear the person opposite and few people, particularly in the 16- to 34-year-old age group, are aware of the damaging effect all this can have on their hearing.

Neil Cameron, 44, has been a musician for 22 years. He has had tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, for several years. Recently, after playing double bass almost every night for several weeks with an orchestra, and standing next to some loud trumpet playing, it suddenly worsened. Recently he began wearing earplugs to prevent any further damage. ‘ I was holding my hands over my ears during performances and rehearsals when I could, when I wasn’t playing, to block out the noise. Now I don’t have to do that.’

As a musician he needs to do all he can to protect his hearing, and his livelihood. The earplugs, though, won’t lessen or reverse his tinnitus. ‘It can keep me awake at night, sometimes for hours. It’s irritating. I hear anything from one ringing sound to three or four at the same time, all of different pitches,’ he says. ‘After that run of shows I noticed that certain high-pitched sounds, like trumpets, oboes or xylophones, had started to distort, as if I was listening through a bad set of speakers.’ Cameron has been helped by the Musicians Union, which points out that either sustained exposure to excessive noise levels, or just a short burst of loud noise, can damage those vital inner ear hair cells.

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive warns that hearing can be damaged irreversibly by exposure to any noise above the recommended 80 decibel limit, and especially if it’s anything over 105dB for more than 15 minutes. But clubs, gigs and festivals often top 110 decibels. When the RNID monitored a Justin Timberlake show in London’s Docklands last year they recorded a high of 121 decibels.

Embarrassment, denial of the problem and the stigma around hearing loss all lead people with problems to cover up or fail to seek help. The average length of time someone with hearing loss waits before seeking advice is 15 years. That’s an awful lot of unnecessary suffering.

—The Guardian, London