|
| August 11, 2008 | Monday | Sha’aban 8, 1429 |
Lyari revisited
Health hazards
OTHER VOICES - North American Press
Bankruptcy of leadership
Resistance in Burma
UNPREPARED and unreceptive minds are more lethal than any economic or political threat. In fact intellectually and morally bankrupt leaders initiate and instigate the downfall of their country.
Aung Moe Zaw still lives in the hope that democracy will take root in Burma, 20 years after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Rangoon to oppose that country’s military dictatorship.
WHERE does the impeachment of President Musharraf leave the non-functional judges of the superior courts? According to the joint communiqué issued by the partners in the ruling coalition last week the judges are to be restored “strictly in accordance with the Murree Declaration immediately after the impeachment of the president”. This statement has been met with some dismay by leaders of the lawyers’ movement. Hamid Khan, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), told an international news agency that the lawyers are “shocked that coalition leaders just did not really discuss” restoration of the judges. The coalition is “obsessed with the departure” of the president, Mr Khan added. Meanwhile, Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the SCBA, has demanded the restoration of the judges by Aug 14, rejecting the impeachment of the president first.
For those wanting the non-functional judges to be restored, the joint communiqué has indeed given rise to fresh uncertainties. First, the joint communiqué did not clarify the mode of restoration — a key sticking point between
the PML-N and the PPP for months. Reference to the Murree Declaration is no good because the declaration itself did not clarify if the judges were to be restored directly by a parliamentary resolution or if a constitutional amendment is permissible. Second, what if the impeachment motion fails? The communiqué only says the judges will be restored “after the impeachment” of the president. Does this mean the process of impeachment, whether successful or not? Or does the communiqué only pledge restoration if the president is successfully impeached? If it’s the latter, the politicians have clearly spelled out that failure is not an option. In the world of Pakistani politics, this may be a stretch too far for the judges and their supporters.
The lawyers’ movement is also worried about the possibility of President Musharraf using Article 58-2(b) to dissolve parliament. Constitutionally, the president is required to refer dissolution to the Supreme Court. Mr Khan pointed out that, unless the judges are immediately restored, it will be in a court where “Musharraf’s hand-picked judges are working”, implying a fair judgment may not be forthcoming. The PML-N, however, rejects this charge. “The president should be impeached first, because if he stays he would conspire against the restoration of judges,” Ahsan Iqbal has stated. The problem for the non-functional judges, however, is that the lawyers’ movement is struggling for traction with the public. The day before the joint communiqué was issued, the APDM announced a country-wide strike on Sept 1 to protest the government’s failure to, inter alia, restore the judges. In the wake of the communiqué, the APDM component parties lauded the bid to impeach the president and suggested the strike would be called off if the coalition keeps its promise of impeachment first and then restoration. Nine months since their ‘dismissal’ by President Musharraf, the judges would be forgiven if they are sceptical of more promises.
KARACHI’s cauldron of Lyari may still have to wait before it knows harmony again. Long considered the most underdeveloped of localities, Lyari has a population of 600,000 and its strife-torn territory constitutes merely six per cent of the area with close to 15,000 people. Unbridled crime and gang wars razed countless homes to the ground, cost scores of lives and maimed many more. Drug mafias, extortion, street crimes, rape and murder became the order of the day and hundreds abandoned their abodes and valuables to seek shelter elsewhere. However, the police and rangers’ operation in July to oust gangs led by Arshad Pappu and Rehman Dakait brought much hope as definite winds of change ensued. A decrepit ghost town witnessed some life; people returned to their homes, shops opened as ‘Dakait’ escaped to Balochistan and another leader, Ghaffar Zikri, reportedly fled the district.
This spirit of revival was further strengthened by the announcement that the government was devising a comprehensive plan to root out criminal elements from the locality by improving employment, economic activity and ensuring peace. Meanwhile, in early July, Lyari Town council approved a surplus budget of Rs552.606m for the fiscal year 2008-09, allocating Rs154.32m for development expenditure with promises by the city government of turning Lyari into a ‘model town’. On his visit to the effected areas, Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza had assured compensation for losses caused by plunder and violence. Residents claim to have filled approximately 21,000 forms, out of which some 200 were selected. But things are not so bright anymore; few can claim to have benefited from the scheme and despite official claims of arrests and recoveries of ammunition, fears abound that if peace and rehabilitation efforts are anything but unswerving, the next round of gang wars will be bloodier than those of the past. They also claim that criminals are flooding back and tension is palpable.
Without doubt, Lyari’s future depends on the sustainability of peace and development endeavours. This makes it critical for provincial and city governments to see their declarations through with the implementation of foolproof security apparatus such as CCTVs, regular patrolling and check posts, the eradication of political patronage to criminals and establishment of area-specific helplines. Regrettably, barely a month after the operation, Lyari is once again sliding into disappointment and dread. Perhaps, its scepticism is rooted in the concern that relevant departments may fail Lyari again. Therefore, restructuring and reimbursement policies must not fold over under either political pressure or change or plain complacency — the suburb has to become a ‘model’ of humanity before anything else.
IT is ironical that modern medicine that has saved countless lives from natural maladies has proved to be a double-edged sword. It can also be a health risk, considering that it also produces hospital waste that poses a serious hazard to human life. Occasionally fatal, sometimes toxic and always hazardous, this waste needs proper disposal to stop it from become disastrous. With this in mind, the Punjab government framed rules in 2005 for getting rid of hospital waste in an orderly and scientifically safe manner. These rules made it mandatory for hospitals to separate toxic and non-toxic wastes, install incinerators for burning toxic waste and set up monitoring committees with help from health and environment authorities. But during the last three years these rules have not produced anything more than separate waste bins for separate wastes at a few public and private hospitals. So when the news came last week that Lahore’s city government has raided factories recycling hospital waste into plastics used for kitchenware no eyebrows were raised. Equally unsurprisingly it was learnt that some of this waste was being stolen from government hospitals. So apathetic have we become to health risks that such incidents do not appear to disturb one’s equanimity.
Though the culprits have been caught and jailed, the 2005 rules are hardly mentioned. Also, the mute coverage the news received shows how oblivious we are to the danger of extremely hazardous materials making their way to our dinner tables. It’s as much a failure of the government as it is collective indifference to our own safety. The government, therefore, needs to not just implement the 2005 rules which it framed itself, it is also required to launch campaigns on how man-made hazards like hospital waste can endanger our individual and collective safety. After all, warnings have always played a big role in checking hazards from becoming disasters.
Cutting Aids prevention is short-sighted
The Gazette, Montreal
THE battle against HIV/Aids has seen some major successes, but it’s far from over. This is no time for Canada to be reducing its efforts to prevent new infections, to improve treatment, and to keep researching the disease.
This week’s International Aids Conference in Mexico City reminds us once again of the dreadful toll Aids takes: Today, more than 33 million people around the world are infected with the virus which, since it first emerged in the early 1980s, has killed more than 25 million.
An estimated 58,000 Canadians were living with HIV infection in 2005, with around 15,800 of them unaware they were infected. Despite prevention efforts, between 2,300 and 4,500 Canadians were newly infected in 2005. An estimated 13,000 Canadians had died of Aids by 2005.
News stories from the conference prompt Canadians to wonder if our government is doing enough, at home and internationally, in the struggle against this epidemic.
The Harper government should be credited for efforts on a number of fronts, giving $45m to African Aids efforts and another $26m to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccine research, and allocating $72.6m to be spent in Canada. These are not negligible numbers.
On the other hand, front-line Aids workers across the country have protested against this year’s funding cuts to what they consider important prevention programmes. Ottawa cut $1m — or 30 per cent — from funding for Ontario programmes to prevent HIV and to provide support services for people already infected. Quebec’s funding was cut by 24 per cent.
The federal cuts, amounting in all to $26m from a $84.5m annual budget, come at a bad juncture. People with HIV and Aids are living longer, thanks to antiretroviral therapy, and new infections add constantly to the demand for services. Front-line organisations estimate the combined increase in demand to be in the order of 43 per cent.
Preventing HIV is much cheaper than treating it, pointed out Lyse Pinault of the Coalition des organismes communautaires québécois de lutte contre le SIDA.
There is also the intractable problem of reaching at-risk populations — primarily men who have sex with men, who account for 51 per cent of all HIV infections, and injection-drug users at 17 per cent. Canada was criticised this week in an international report card for its inadequate protection of girls and women. Women’s rate of infection has doubled to 28 per cent over the past decade.
Getting the word out is a labour-intensive effort. Canada needs its frontline workers on the job. That means we need to fund them. This is not the time for cutbacks. — (Aug 8)
In this era of deficits of all sorts, there is a surplus of minds among our political decision-makers who cannot see the obvious, who cannot focus on the important, and who cannot take the responsibility of finding solutions to the many ills besieging the country.
The prime minister’s visit to the US was a typical example of unprepared and purposeless leadership where the only achievement was a further deterioration of the image of our leadership. Unwittingly made but truly reflecting ignorance was his statement, “The US knows more about Pakistan than I do.”
Confusion and chaos are the best ways to describe the state of affairs in the country. With an overdose of statements and announcements coming from every ministry it has become almost impossible for any ordinary person to make sense of all this political noise. Let us take a look at the reasons for this confusion.
Who’s the leader of them all? This is the big question mark hanging in the minds of everybody. Who is responsible for providing a direction to this country? Who is finally going to walk the talk?
A team full of many captains always ends up with a contest of egos rather than a contest of expertise and achievements. This is precisely how our leadership is projecting itself. From Musharraf to Gilani, from Zardari to the Sharifs, we have a surfeit of proclaimed leaders who issue statements from time to time which are contradictory. From democracy to justice and from the economy to energy, we have seen and heard claims so ludicrous that what is being enacted has become a comedy of errors. Who is loyal to whom is the billion dollar question? Is the president on good terms with the PPP? Is the PPP on good terms with the PML-N? We have vague answers to these questions, but one thing is certain that none of them is loyal to the people of Pakistan. They have taken the public for a ride in the past and been forgiven for it and they are confident that they will get away with their political hypocrisy yet again.
Who is responsible for all this? Another burning question. Our political leaders are world champions in the blame game. The president leading the show conveniently blames Shaukat Aziz for the present economic mess, as he earlier did for the judicial crisis. The suicide bombings are a typical example of the irresponsible attitude of the government. The last bombing in Islamabad was a result of the government’s failure to act against the Lal Masjid culprits. Most opposition and religious parties blamed the president, and the president blamed the extremists while the extremists blamed America.
The PPP blames the earlier government for the economic mess and the PML-N for impeding economic recovery by exaggerating the importance of the judicial crisis. The PML-N blames the president and the PPP for blocking the restoration of judges. With this irresponsible attitude there is very little hope of any meaningful progress. So much energy and planning goes into berating and bringing down the opposition that little time and effort is left to plan strategic and far-reaching reforms to handle an economy needing critical and fully focused and united attention.
Who is saying what? One does not know. Important and strategic decisions have been left to a bunch of incompetent men and women. Whether it is making statements at the highest international level or making sensitive announcements to the public, a careless and irresponsible stance is evident. The prime minister started his US visit by saying that “the next 9/11 may originate from Pakistan” and continued to make strategic blunders throughout his visit which was more of a summer holiday for family and friends rather than serious business.
Conclusion: The political and economic turmoil in the country is caused by a leadership paralysis. None of the present leaders have the ability to take control of the situation and lend some method to this economic madness. Weak leadership always settles for compromises where everybody gives in to everything. What we need are leaders who can take responsibility of the situation and instead of placating, pacifying and downplaying their own incapacities, own up to their weaknesses, be honest about what is possible, and take charge instead of having these so-called diplomatic middle-of-the-road policies where eventually they will be run over by their own indecisiveness or by more politically speedy opponents.
As James Madison outlined in his Federalist Papers, the two essential attributes for good government are, “First a government must be able to control the governed, and then it must be able to be controlled itself.” This is a critical balance which most governments fail to maintain. Either their desire to control the governed far exceeds their ability to control themselves, as we saw in the last eight years, or their inability to win over the majority to their point of view makes those who are governed directionless, as is being witnessed currently.
May be it is time for the public to demand fresh blood in our leadership by looking for people who are bold, honest and driven by a mission to lead their countrymen to a clear destiny of financial, mental and emotional security. To stop this tragic political satire perhaps we need to give an ad: “Wanted: leaders of the rare kind.”
The writer is a consultant and CEO of FranklinCovey Pakistan.
andleeb@franklincoveysouthasia.com
“More people have joined our democracy movement. We are very optimistic about it,’’ the 41-year-old said in an interview on the eve of that anniversary better known in Burma as ‘8-8-88’, the day when this spirit of democracy flowered, Aug. 8, 1988. It happened 26 years after the military had grabbed power in a coup, in March 1962, and ruled the country with an iron grip and a policy of isolationism.
“The momentum is still with us, if you look at what has happened since then. The international community is with us and is better aware than it was in August 1988,’’ added the leader of the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS), the second largest political party in the country.
Yet against such feelings of hope for a moment that has been pivotal in this South-east Asian nation’s struggle to become a democracy is the brutality and the bloodshed that also marked those heady days. The military dictatorship at the time crushed the pro-democracy uprising with force, troops firing into unarmed crowd, leaving over 3,000 protesters dead.
But that is not all. That brazen attack on unarmed citizens has hardly diminished, taking other oppressive forms in the ensuing years. It has consequently undermined the pro-democracy leaders that emerged out of the 8-8-88 protests to build a country that celebrates political and civil liberties.
Aung Moe Zaw typifies this predicament of Burma’s pro-democracy leaders, men and women who have been denied a chance to shape their political vision. He cannot talk freely and champion democracy in his country. He has to do so as a political exile in Thailand.
He is not an exception. Many Burmese who won seats at the 1990 parliamentary elections -- held due to the pressure of 8-8-88 -- have had to flee the country. The regime refused to recognise the results of the poll, where the National League for Democracy (NLD), an opposition party that was formed after the pro-democracy protests, won with a thumping majority. These elected Burmese parliamentarians who escaped set up the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma (NCGUB) in exile.
And for the country’s democracy leaders who chose to stay behind and fight, the regime responded with arrests and long periods in jail or under house arrest. The most famous among them are Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who leads the NLD, and has spent over 12 of her last 18 years under house arrest. The other is Min Ko Naing, a leader of the ‘88 Generation’ university students who spearheaded the 8-8-88 protests, currently in jail for the third time in the past two decades.
The junta’s repression of democracy is best captured in Burma’s notorious prisons, where over 10,000 political activists have been jailed since the protests of August 1988, of which 2,000 still remain behind bars. And during the two decades, 137 political activists have died in Burmese jails or while being interrogated.
The junta’s use of Burmese jails to crush the hint of democracy since 1988 has been amplified by the longer prison sentences jailed political activists have been given than during the years before the pro-democracy uprising.
—IPS News
