Waffling on

IT is not that difficult to decipher. On the face of it, much of what Mr Asif Ali Zardari has been saying these days is repetitive, with a new, odd idea thrown in here and there to arouse interest. Occasionally, he drops hints that appear pregnant with possibilities. Thus he recently said his party would soon control the presidency — making people guess at who he had in mind as the next head of state whenever a change is wrought. On Tuesday, he spoke at length, and some of his ideas were quite new, though controversial. Aware of the popular feeling about the judges’ reinstatement and the inflexible position adopted by the PML-N, Mr Zardari has been performing quite a balancing act. While he takes a dig at President Pervez Musharraf — ‘a relic of the past’ — and says his party does not recognise him as a constitutionally elected president, he makes it clear that he does not believe in impeachment either. Then mindful of the fact that the army is the army, he says he does not approve of the weakening of this institution because that could lead to ‘warlordism’. There is also a display of ego: the judges would be restored ‘at a time of our choosing’.

Tuesday’s press talk by the PPP co-chairman makes two things clear: he is keen on keeping the coalition going, and he does not believe in getting rid of President Musharraf. Differences are inherent in democracy and politics, he says, and points out that Balochistan’s PPP chief minister had not accepted the police chief nominated by Islamabad. This way he wants the PML-N too to accept the reality of the two parties’ divergent positions on the judiciary. Benazir Bhutto, he said, gave her life not for Iftikhar Chaudhry but for an independent judiciary. One wishes the PPP chief had been as clear as that in his mind at Bhurban. What he is saying today he should have had the courage to utter in March. The somersault on the Bhurban declaration turned what could have been a robust, development-oriented coalition into a dead horse.

It is time Mr Zardari stopped equivocating: let him make it clear once and for all that he regrets his party is not going to upset the present arrangement, based as it is on the PCO and NRO. Elucidating the PPP’s position will not shell-shock the Sharifs; they already stand thoroughly disillusioned. But such a categorical statement will be a signal to the coalition allies — and the confused bureaucracy — at the centre and in the four provinces to put the judiciary issue behind them and get on with the job of governing Pakistan and working for giving the hard-pressed people some relief from food inflation and blackouts.

The Benazir card

NOT everyone is convinced that the Benazir Income Support Programme will benefit the right people. While one can expect those with reservations about a PPP-led government to voice concern at the scheme that aims to cushion the poor from the impact of inflation, the government’s allies too seem to harbour apprehensions. On Monday, a resolution adopted by Karachi’s MQM-dominated city council demanded the ‘Benazir card’ be operated through the union councils to ensure that its benefits were distributed fairly. The demand is reasonable enough. After all, the main thrust of devolution is to empower the people and the way to reach them is through the union councils and nazims that are well-positioned to identify the truly needy. The implementation of the scheme at the federal level might be seen as an attempt by the majority party to favour its own workers. No doubt, many union councils are politicised and backed by one political party or the other. Still, the overall division of benefits is not confined to a single set of people subscribing to a particular ideology.

Unfortunately, corruption and poor transparency are endemic in our political culture when it comes to the execution of any major scheme by any government department. Poverty alleviation schemes like the Rs34bn Benazir income programme are especially vulnerable to misuse. This is so because without adequate information, education or strong forums for dispensing justice, the target groups find their voices suppressed. Even the zakat scheme, which for reasons of faith would appear to have a higher moral standing, has not been without flaws. There have been allegations of favouritism and embezzlement where the disbursement of zakat funds is concerned. Nevertheless, a decentralised system of distribution is bound to find greater public support than one which is perceived as being at a distance from the grassroots.

Finance Minister Naveed Qamar has said that the selection of needy families would be based on information provided by the National Database and Registration Authority. But neither this nor the assurance that the data would be constantly updated to include the maximum number of deserving households in the selection process has dispelled suspicions. It is in this context that the city council resolution must be carefully considered. At the same time, it would profit all to guard against corruption, bureaucratic hassles and favouritism. To achieve this end and to avoid past mistakes, a simple, low-cost, apolitical structure to oversee the implementation of the Benazir income scheme makes infinite sense.

Danger at sea

WITH the monsoons gearing up to rule the waves, beachgoers in Karachi should ideally be reminding themselves that extra precaution is needed at a time when the sea will be particularly rough. However, the number of drowning incidents each year makes it fairly obvious that lessons are rarely drawn from the fate of those who are swept away by strong tides, never to return alive. It is, in fact, the lack of public discipline that can be cited as a major reason for deaths caused by drowning each year. Bathers, most of whom have never learned to swim, go much beyond the shoreline placing their lives at considerable risk. They pay heed neither to the seasonal ban of the city government on bathing nor to the advice of lifeguards who warn them against going into the sea. The job of safeguarding those who frequent the beach is thus made harder by a public that is not in the least cooperative — even when it is its own safety that is in question.

Sadly, the government, too, does not seem to care much. A recent news item in this paper described the appalling state of the city government’s Emergency Response Centre that appears to be chronically under-resourced. With only a handful of divers numbering some 30 men, its lifeguards can hardly be expected to man a 22-km stretch of the coastline. Their services may be supplemented by the divers of an NGO like PALS which has some 100 trained lifeguards. But even then there is not enough protection for the throngs of reckless beachgoers who visit the seaside during the summer months when the water is at its most turbulent. All over the world people enjoy the seaside and there is no reason why Karachi residents should not do so as well. In fact, swimming and other water sports should be promoted. However, leisure must be combined with adequate safety measures to ensure that a dip in the sea does not prove fatal. As for those who violate the law, stiff, on-the-spot monetary penalties should be part of the strategy to deter would-be bathers when there is a ban on entering the waters.

OTHER VOICES - Middle East Press

Thoughtful proposal

Jordan Times

The Financial and Economic Committee of the House of Representatives made a sober and responsible proposal to the government: to use some of the money that municipalities collect from the public to subsidise gas and kerosene prices.

The committee is making a distinction between gasoline for cars, which will continue to be subsidy free, and gas and kerosene, which can and should be subsidised in part at least.

Unlike fuel for vehicles, gas and kerosene are basic, essential products for the majority of people.

Municipalities collect about JD120m a year; only half of this amount is earmarked for municipal affairs. Municipalities collect six per cent duties on fuel, over and above the 16 per cent sales tax that the government collects.

Many governments suspended sales tax on fuel products because of the surging prices.

Why should Jordanians pay a hefty 16 per cent sales tax on fuel when the market prices are hitting the roof and subsidies for them have been lifted?

— (June 16)

Guantanamo verdict

Khaleej Times

THERE are far-reaching implications of the US Supreme Court’s latest blow to the Bush administration’s ‘Guantanamo policy’. After twice sidestepping similar decisions by manoeuvring the then Republican dominated Congress, the White House will have practically no chance of springing a similar response.

Granting Guantanamo inmates the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts not only refutes the ‘enemy combatant’ rationale for rubbishing the Geneva Convention, it also upsets Bush’s entire war-on-terror philosophy.

The Guantanamo Bay gulag has been at the heart of the prisoner treatment argument since practically the start of the… terror-war. Looking back, analysts will remember it as one of the first reasons for the u-turn in international and domestic support, which were at record high, following the 9/11 tragedy.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama has been quick and smart to side with the ruling, drawing support from rights organisations as well as concerned quarters, governments and influential pockets. — (June 14)

Fate of the lawyers’ movement

THE six-day-long long march ended before dawn in Islamabad on June 14 with conflicting — almost Rashomon-like — perceptions about its failure or success.

For those who participated in it, either as individuals or as members of a group, it was a statement of their resentment of what happened on and since March 9, and of their hopes of what would follow if the central demand of the lawyers-led march, the restoration of the higher judiciary, is met — sooner rather than later.

The lawyers themselves were divided as to whether the march should have ended as anti-climatically as it did. Some, presumably younger and hot-headed amongst them, would have liked it to continue both in time and distance [Aitzaz Ahsan’s evocative couplet “dekho manzil door nahin hai” (look the destination is nigh) visibly pointed towards the destination which was almost a stone’s throw away from where they had gathered, although there was no trace of the fleeing tyrant].

Some of the non-lawyer groups, especially the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Tehreek-i-Insaaf (TI), as well as the PML-N, were inclined to get more political mileage from the march than the lawyers could ill-afford to do. Some even called it a ‘sell-off’; others thought its agenda had been ‘hijacked’.

For those who had little or no sympathy with the lawyers’ movement as a solution to the country’s mounting political problems, the long march was a failed exercise, if not a fiasco and an admission of defeat by the lawyers who were forced to call off the indefinite sit-in threat that some of the more firebrand leaders had given. Many, including Mr Rehman Malik, assigned by the government to camouflage its opposition to the march with a display of indulgence towards the participants, put the numbers participating in it at a few thousand, rather than a few hundred thousand to half a million, as claimed by its organisers.

Whatever may have been the exact count, it was undoubtedly the most impressive rally ever held in Islamabad, barring the annual independence and republic day parades which are notable more for their military precision and official pomp than for their spontaneous fervour. Its ambience, bonhomie and cultural and class diversity, stood in marked contrast to an evening thirteen months earlier in the same location in which the president, the prime minister and other dignitaries did the bhangra in the midst of a hired crowd brought by the Q-League supporters to celebrate the foiling of the chief justice’s visit to Karachi on May 12, 2007.

The memories of that vulgar display of power, authority and insensitivity stand erased after the long march. While the Zardari regime may be accused of hypocrisy and equivocation on the judges issue, it has at least demonstrated the difference between a democratic and a dictatorial regime in dealing with public protests.

On its own merits, the long march has achieved much that the lawyers’ movement can be justly proud about. But questions are being asked about the possible political ramifications of the lawyers’ movement if its immediate goal of restoring the judges dismissed on Nov 3, 2007 is soon achieved and if it expands its agenda to becoming a movement for social and economic reform.

When it began in March 2007, its limited aim was to protest against the high-handed action of the president and his military and political allies in dismissing the chief justice and initiating an illegal reference to the Supreme Court against him. This incensed not only the lawyers’ community, but also most of the opposition political parties and the public at large.

The political parties, which had almost despaired of the prospects of fair and free general and presidential elections scheduled in 2007, found in the lawyers’ protest an opportunity for prying open the door of democracy long padlocked for them by the military. There emerged a convergence between the interests of the political parties and the lawyers.

The lawyers’ movement, which also received strong support from the media, despite pressure on the owners by the government, was focused on convincing the public as well as the judiciary, that the chief justice had received a raw deal and needed to be restored.

In this it finally succeeded on July 20, 2007 when a 13-member Supreme Court bench reinstated him unanimously and unequivocally. There is no doubt that without the mobilisation of public opinion by the lawyers, it would not have been emboldened to take that decision.

However, the chief justice’s reinstatement was a bitter pill to swallow for the Musharraf regime, which had made preparations for getting it elected for another five-year term with the president in uniform and without Benazir and Nawaz Sharif returning home. Musharraf, piqued by the revived Supreme Court’s challenge to his authority and perceiving it as a threat to the continuation of his rule, decided to disband it and recreate it in his own image by rewriting the constitution with an executive order.

The political landscape has undergone a sea change since the epic struggle that began 15 months ago. It is not unlikely that PPP-PML-N coalition in the interests of its survival may accept the restoration demand in some convoluted form, spelling the demise of the existing lawyers’ movement.

Such a sudden death would be unfortunate both for the lawyers’ movement and society at large. The movement has now changed its goal posts well beyond its initial objective. It now aims at achieving a ‘social revolution’ and changing the mind-set of the rulers and the character of the state.

Laudable as these objectives are, it is questionable whether these can be achieved by lawyers without coalescing with other professional and political groups. (Lenin was criticised for assigning the nascent proletariat the vanguard role in transforming feudal Russia. Pakistani legal community is similarly ill-suited to perform a social catharsis). Pakistani lawyers can at best play a catalytic role in bringing about a social and political revolution.

The lawyers’ movement will have to transform itself into a Chinese-style cultural revolution or its more recent South African incarnation as a Truth Commission, if it wants to pursue those broader objectives. In such a reincarnation, the movement can play an important role as a pressure group on ruling elites and governments to achieve the establishment of a just, democratic and progressive society. For that it may have to re-invent itself as a keeper of the country’s conscience, not merely as a trade union for the legal profession.

syed.naseem@aya.yale.edu

The masses must awaken

PAKISTAN is floundering in a maelstrom of crises. The future of the judiciary is likely to pivot one way or another depending on how, or if, the judges’ restoration conundrum is resolved. The growing budget deficit has compelled us to crawl before foreign powers, begging bowl in hand, compromising any shreds of national sovereignty and pride that remained.

The electricity shortage has made life unliveable for everyone in the searing summer heat and is also bound to have profound economic repercussions.

Spiralling poverty, runaway prices of oil and essential food commodities, lack of opportunity, uncertainty, corruption and a harrowing law and order situation, because of which no one is safe even in their homes, have all but destroyed the common man. The collapse of the writ of the state and virtually all state institutions has prompted some to label Pakistan a failed state.

The promise of meaningful change heralded by the verdict of the masses at the Feb18 polls has been reversed by those who crept into power by virtue of a tragic kink of events and who, even before the polls, allied themselves with the forces of the status quo through a shady deal. That the concept of change is lacking from their intent is proved by the dubious constitutional amendment package they are promoting as the panacea for our pains.

In it, they dangle the carrot of restoring the judges, but in such a handicapped form as to make their restoration meaningless, hamstringing the judiciary forever. They propose to restore genuine parliamentary democracy by curbing the president’s powers, but at the same time wish to give the president a constitutional umbrella to sanctify his actions, including the illegal Nov 3 Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), which they continue to vilify in public.

They beat their chests in public, calling for the president’s impeachment, but at the same time maintain a backdoor channel with him. This constitutional package has been deliberately designed to be unacceptable by mingling good with bad. It is an exercise aimed only at buying time.

That this government appears to show no genuine commitment to implementing real change should come as no surprise. They are products of a deal hatched under the status quo and, therefore, have a vested interest in preserving it. Though the electorate delivered an unequivocal verdict against the status quo, they could not have placed the responsibility for change on more ill-suited shoulders.

These are the ‘hollow men’, T.S. Elliot wrote of in his famous poem. But not everyone in politics is hollow. The people had a choice. However, the voters rejected all others to elevate those with a failed and stained past to power. They made a decision through the ballot box based purely on emotions rather than reason and are now paying the price for it.

They should expect no better from these leaders than the current mess. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Abolition of Man, writes: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful.”

This government is what it is and can do no better than that which its natural propensities permit. The people must suffer the consequences of their choice until either providence or their own initiative provides an opportunity for them to redeem themselves. But what is really shocking is that though the people now realise their mistake, they seem to be in no mood to make amends for it. As if in a trance, they continue to bear the brunt, mumbling their discontent, rather than holding their leaders accountable.

At a time when many are forced to scavenge for food on rubbish heaps for mere survival, hundreds of ministers and advisors live it up on a lavish state-subsidised ego trip and are squandering millions from the public coffers on luxurious vehicles, palatial homes and other perks and benefits. Yet the people remain silent. While the country squirms in the grips of multiple crises, our leaders jet set all over the world and make decisions regarding our future on flights to Dubai and London! But the people remain unmoved. Millions of rupees are wasted on protocol and security arrangements for those who hold no public office and relatives and friends of those in power. But the people remain mute.

Far from holding them accountable, people actually legitimise their perverse rule by flocking to these rulers to seek jobs and other favours. They are baton-charged and humiliated to keep them at bay, but still they keep coming. It is a sickening sight.

Sooner rather than later, people will have to understand that they, not the rulers, are the masters. They must realise that the succour they crave from burdens and hardships comes not from degrading themselves by begging and crawling before unworthy rulers. It comes from establishing a sound system run by clean, honest and competent leaders, so that they no longer have to de-humanise themselves to obtain that which is theirs’ by natural right.

This can only come about by taking a firm, principled stand against all that is wrong and making rational, sensible choices at the polls rather than being swept away by emotions and sycophancy.

Left to the devices of corrupt, incompetent and self-serving leaders, this ship will inevitably sink. The masses must awaken and become masters of their own destiny. No one should expect that changing the course of a nation’s destiny will be an easy affair. Of course it will involve hardship and sacrifice. As the saying goes, revolutions are not made with rose water.

This is where the problem lies: everyone wants something now and no one is prepared to bear hardship and make the requisite sacrifices. But the alternative is far more painful and ruinous. Plato wrote, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” We have had more than our share of evil over the last six decades. Time has come to clean house. This is a task no one but the masses can fulfil.