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| June 25, 2008 | Wednesday | Jamadi-us-Sani 20, 1429 |
End capital punishment
Refusing to go away
OTHER VOICES - European Press
Fly less, save the planet
WHEN environmental groups began calling foul over carbon offsetting, one of their main concerns was the message it conveyed: that carbon offsetting made it fine to carry on flying as before. To save the planet, they said, people and businesses needed to fly less.
IS there any other country besides Pakistan where law and constitution are a source of such chaos? Double trouble: that is what the Sharifs now have. Monday’s Lahore High Court (LHC) judgment that went against Nawaz Sharif is less unsettling for the PML-N than the implications of Shahbaz’s election to two seats in the Punjab Assembly. While the PPP felt disappointed by the LHC verdict, the PML-N termed the decision ‘political’. Also a source of embarrassment to the PML-N is the issue of enhancing the number of judges in the Supreme Court to 29. The party voted for the budget and for the 29-judge provision and now seems to be regretting it. Its members have a point. Voting for the budget does not mean an approval of the concept behind having 29 judges. If that is so, they should put the issue behind them instead of letting it become a source of acrimony in their ranks. It is time the PML-N leadership realised the ground they have lost over the last four months. On the morning of Feb 19, their position was unassailable. Punjab was in their pocket, and the PML-N had emerged as the second largest party in the country. When the federal government was formed they were co-sharers of political power. They could have used this situation to consolidate their position and achieve gradually whatever their political aims. Instead, they let the advantage slip when they chose to quit the federal cabinet. What the Sharifs should know is that the more they focus their attention on one point — the restoration of the judiciary — the more they play into the hands of Asif Ali Zardari. The PPP co-chairman has used his position effectively and often kowtowed to the Sharifs to advance his own agenda carefully.
If the PPP is sincere about letting the second biggest party in parliament play its due role it should help the Sharifs overcome the legal hurdles. The petitioner who challenged Nawaz Sharif’s participation in the by-election accused him of being ‘dishonest, a defaulter and a convict’. Evidently, the LHC tended to agree with him. The only way out of this legal tangle is adopt a political approach — in other words go in for a democratic version of the NRO. If President Pervez Musharraf could frame a national reconciliation law by decree for the benefit of the PPP and hundreds of MQM convicts and under-trials, there is no reason why the coalition government cannot enact a similar law through parliament for the Sharifs’ benefit?
Pakistan faces enormous challenges. The food inflation, power outages, the situation in Fata, and the menacing tone of some of Pakistan’s “allies” in the war on terror need a leadership combined in thought and action. Instead we have a hopelessly divided and confused leadership that makes the people wonder whether those they voted for have anything in mind for the nation’s good.
JUSTICE will be better served if the death penalty is abolished in Pakistan. The PPP-led government has suggested on more than one occasion that it may substitute capital punishment with life in prison, and this plan was reiterated by the prime minister on Saturday in a birthday tribute to the late Benazir Bhutto. Yousuf Raza Gilani announced in parliament that a recommendation to this effect will shortly be forwarded to the president, though some analysts believe new legislation is required. Whatever the legal position might be, we urge the centre to expedite this move before anyone else is sent to the gallows. Pending a final decision, a moratorium ought to be placed on any further death row executions.
Capital punishment clearly has its supporters in a land as lawless as ours and the emotions of family members of murder and kidnapping victims are understandable. Still, the death penalty can and should be opposed for a number of reasons. First there are some ethical issues at stake. Killing a murderer does not resurrect his or her victim, and it can also be asked whether the decision to take a life falls under human jurisdiction or is best left to a higher power. Consider also that the death penalty has been in place all along but the country has only seen a steady rise in violent crime. Death sentences have done nothing to arrest the trend and public executions, the favoured choice of those mired in a medieval mindset, will fail just as dismally. Instead of state-sponsored hangings, what is required are measures that can address the deeper malaise afflicting our society. To curb crime we need tighter gun control, better policing, universal education, less unemployment, checks on inflation and a bridging of the growing divide between the privileged and the have-nots. Capital punishment won’t get us anywhere.
There is a chance even in developed nations that a person might be convicted of a crime he or she did not commit, as highlighted by the release in recent years of death row inmates whose sentences were overturned because of advancements in DNA technology. Miscarriage of justice is much more likely in Pakistan, where police excesses are routine and torture is the preferred mode of ‘investigation’. Innocent people can be made to confess to all manner of crime, the police readily register false cases out of fear or favour and it is known that the courts too are not immune to corruption. Capital punishment has no place in a system as flawed as ours.
ENCROACHMENTS have a surprising ability to survive official efforts to remove them. Going by the number of drives to clear up encroachments in Lahore in the recent past, the city should have by now assumed a cleaner and a much less congested look but for the resilience of encroachers and their brazen refusal to stay away from where they should not be. Critics of official anti-encroachment measures call them eyewash, not at all geared to resolve the issue for good. The officials attribute their failure to the confusion about who holds what power and who is in charge and where. They also claim that most drives fail because they are not backed by political will from the top because it is beholden to pressure from below. Influential businessmen, big home owners and other wealthy encroachers get away with their acts because of their political links. The brunt of anti-encroachment drives, therefore, falls mainly on subsistence traders whose makeshift kiosks and stalls are as easy to remove as they are to rebuild and relocate.
In a recent incident a fire-brigade engine could not reach a house on fire in time only because Ichhra’s powerful encroachers have reduced access to the bazaar in the area to a narrow walking strip. That their shameless hankering after extra bucks meant that somebody lost their home seems to matter little to them and their backers. On the other hand, an on-going anti-encroachment drive is daily removing carts, kiosks and roadside stalls by the dozens with effortless ease because most of them are owned and run by inconsequential poor people. It goes without saying that encroachments give the city an unattractive look and make commuting and navigating on its roads and streets a problem many would love to avoid. But it should also go without saying that no anti-encroachment drive can deliver unless it has the city’s political bosses and a clear legal mandate behind it. But most importantly, it needs to be even-handed too. An official effort that discriminates between the wealthy and the worthless is bound to encourage violations of the law more than it induces abiding by it.
‘Just for the girls’ won’t do
Slovak Spectator
YACHTS, fast cars, and lavish parties: it all sounds very “cool.” Except that if you happen to be your country’s finance minister and if that yacht just happens to be owned by a tycoon who just a few days later just happens to make a small fortune trading the currency in whose future you are intimately involved… well, it all starts to look a little tawdry.
The finance minister in question is Ján Pociatek who… with the general director of Bratislava Airport, Karol Biermann, enjoyed the hospitality of Ivan Jakabovi partner in the J&T financial group, aboard Jakabovic’s yacht in Monte Carlo a few days before the European Central Bank revalued the Slovak crown’s central parity….
The response of Prime Minister Robert Fico has been to sack not only Biermann …but the entire senior management of Bratislava Airport. …they have been found guilty by association. Curiously, Minister Pociatek has avoided their fate with a…telling-off.
Of course, in a healthy and transparent political environment Pociatek would be long gone. ...to be fair to Pociatek, there are other people who are significantly less compatible with political decency…. In a standard and healthy political environment, this government would not exist….
Pociatek’s Mediterranean antics come only a couple of weeks after the resignation of Health Minister Ivan Valentovi ang2057…. Three ministers departed and one condemned is the balance of Fico’s political account at this parliament’s half-time. One problem with Fico sparing Pociatek is that the prime minister does not apply the same criteria to all his ministers.
Pociatek swore that his loyalty to the government remained unshaken and that he only underestimated the situation, which he attributed to being a political greenhorn. What is puzzling though is that for Pociatek there should have been no confusion about the prime minister’s map of friends and enemies. …Pociatek’s trouble is not really the prime minister’s professed affection for financial groups “as a goat likes a knife,” … Fico’s own…metaphor.
Pociatek is … the minister who oversees the anatomy of the money markets and…can move the currency and confuse traders or inspire businessmen to make deals. So Pociatek’s presence aboard a private yacht owned by a financial group which subsequently made a fortune trading his currency will inevitably alert…the European Union and any decent political partner, who will be left pondering the Slovak government’s reliability.
...What might have looked “cool” and “innocent” for a businessman …can spell doom for a politician who fails to understand that sometimes the borders between private and public life dissolve and everything he does will have wider implications…. — (June 23)
However, if you really, unavoidably have to take a business flight, carbon offsetting can still be a valid conscience pacifier. Well, as long as you do your research and avoid the more suspect schemes.
But, while carbon offsetting has grabbed the headlines, there are other ways to reduce the effects of essential flights.
Firstly, travel light. Airlines charge you if you go over your baggage limit because it requires more fuel to carry heavier bags. And the more fuel used, the more emissions produced. You could follow this line of argument further and go on a diet, but that may be going a bit far.
Using the same travel-light logic, you could also fly in a lighter plane. The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, for example, is made from lightweight plastic, which supposedly makes it 20 per cent more fuel efficient.
Another thing you can do is book daytime flights. According to scientists at the University of Reading in southern England, flying at night or in the winter is more environmentally damaging. Researchers found that, although night flights only account for 25 per cent of air traffic, they contribute 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the global warming caused by flying.
There’s also the slightly questionable theory that it is more eco to fly economy than business class. Without business-class passengers, airlines would be forced to raise standard ticket prices, fewer people would fly and there would be less pollution. If you follow that logic, then fly economy.
—The Guardian, London
