Cabinet expansion

THE long-awaited federal cabinet expansion finally took place on Monday when 22 federal and 18 junior ministers were sworn in, increasing the tally to 55. The present cabinet is smaller than the one under former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, which along with advisers and politicians and officials given ministerial status had more than 70 members. Nevertheless, it is still said to be among the largest the country has ever had. There is no doubt that there was a need to fill vacant ministerial slots in Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s cabinet, especially after the PML-N left the coalition government last May. Many, including crucial ones like education, had been lying vacant while a number of ministers were burdened with more than one portfolios as disparate as, say, women development, health, culture and information that were being handled by Minister Sherry Rehman. But at a time when the economy has hit rock-bottom, can we really justify the expenses that the upkeep of this large number of ministers and advisers would entail? Austerity has hardly been the hallmark of any government and past experience shows ministers to have been a considerable burden on the exchequer. Moreover, there is also an undignified rush to take over lucrative ministries like ports and shipping and communications said to be a bone of contention between the government and the MQM which has not been given its desired slots. This raises misgivings about the intentions of those angling for particular portfolios.

But financial constraints alone do not call for a ceiling on the size of the cabinet. The unwieldiness of the final ministerial product must also be considered. Last year, the National Commission on Government Reforms, a consultative body, had recommended merging some of the ministries and bringing down the total number from 41 to 23. For instance, it advised the creation of a ministry of energy development that would incorporate the ministries of petroleum and natural resources and of water and power as divisions. The implementation of such suggestions for streamlining ministries is essential to avoiding the overlapping of interests and maintaining a higher level of efficiency.

Of course, a more long-term project for regulating the ministries would involve constitutional amendments to devolve greater powers to the provinces, which, incidentally, were promised by the prime minister when he said that the Concurrent Legislative List would be abolished. The fact that population, health, education and labour are provincial subjects should obviate the need for ministries related to these at the federal level. But will the government consider such proposals? So far, it appears that ministers and advisers are appointed with abandon more out of political compulsions — as rewards for loyalty or attracting support of other parties. Merit and administrative need appear to be the last consideration. What is worse, in this scheme of things new entrants are ushered in without any regard for the sensitivities of the people. The new cabinet has in its ranks Mir Israrullah Zehri who, a few months ago, provoked women all over the country by his thoughtless defence of archaic tribal customs such as honour killings. Smaller cabinets would call for greater political discretion in the selection of ministers which will improve the image of the government and improve governance.

Hospitals without blood

THERE is a blood relationship between desperation, haste and failure. The decision by the Punjab government to restrict all public sector hospitals in its jurisdiction to arrange blood on their own is desperate and hasty and bound to fail. Coming in the wake of some recent deaths caused by wrong blood transfusions, the restriction will increase rather than decrease the patients’ woes. It will have an immediate and drastically negative impact on the supply of blood for those awaiting surgeries or undergoing transfusion-related treatment. It will also leave the patients exclusively at the mercy of hospital employees who are either ill-trained or ill-equipped or both to handle the scale as well as the scientific requirements of the job. Blood transfusion is a matter of life and death for the sick. It, therefore, requires the authorities to give it a long and deep thought. True, most private blood banks are run as mints with scant regard for human lives. But tackling their shortcomings does not lie in further curtailing the already scarce blood transfusion facilities in the province. It calls for proper regulation of private blood banks with strict and routine monitoring.

Official restrictions on transfusion also raise two important issues about public sector hospitals: blood, like all medical supplies, does not come cheap and public sector hospitals generally have limited budgets. Similarly, public health facilities exhibit a woeful lack of internal and external monitoring. How the hospitals will meet their extra expenses without extra money is anybody’s guess but the absence of monitoring definitely means that the corrupt and the unscrupulous among health employees will have a field day in milking money from the discrepancy between the demand for blood that will shoot up and its supply that will nosedive as a result of the provincial government’s decision. In a sector requiring thorough reform, massive injection of resources and immediate introduction of institutionalised oversight, no piecemeal effort will ever bring about a change for the better. Improving the healthcare system is a comprehensive process. Better not to mess it up more with desperate and hasty steps.

Armed guard in class

A PHOTOGRAPH in Tuesday’s issue of Dawn graphically represents the state of our society. The picture from Larkana shows children studying in a class where an armed tribesman stands guard. The threat to the children does not come from some Taliban wanting to blow up a school attended by girls; the school children are in danger on account of tribal rivalry. The man with the gun stands there to provide security to the students, who are exposed to the risks of a tribal shootout. Most of the rural areas of Pakistan live under the shadow of feudalism. Even though there have been three bouts of land reforms — once during the Ayub regime and twice under Bhutto — the large land-holdings did not really break up, because the powerful land-owners, who are also entrenched in politics, managed to evade the reforms. In most cases they are educated, and send their scions abroad for education, but are hesitant to spread knowledge in their own backyard. Working for the welfare of their people from whom they demand votes at the time of elections has a low priority on their agenda. Their interest lies in maintaining the socio-economic status quo, since it helps them control not only the state structure but also society. Both the police and civil bureaucracy in the rural areas kowtow to the land barons. All of them keep private armies and settle scores through violence. The rule of law bends to their advantage. The result is that rural society in many parts of Pakistan has not entered the modern age.

The state of the classroom shown in the picture also betrays a lack of official interest in providing better facilities to the youth. The authorities do not consider it important that students should study in a healthy physical environment. As for the armed guard, one can guess what effect his presence in the classroom will have on the students’ psyche. They will grow up considering guns and violence to be an intrinsic part of society.

OTHER VOICES - European Press

Crasss and false remarks

The Telegraph

WE reported on Saturday that Maj Sebastian Morley, the SAS commander in Afghanistan, had resigned because of the Ministry of Defence’s “gross negligence” over the provision of equipment.

Three of his men had died after their inadequately armoured Land Rover was blown up by a roadside bomb. Today we report the reaction of Quentin Davies, the minister for defence procurement. Mr Davies, a former Conservative MP who defected to Labour, has blamed commanders, not equipment, for such tragedies. He said: “Obviously there may be occasions when in retrospect a commander chose the wrong piece of equipment, the wrong vehicle, for the particular threat that the patrol or whatever it was encountered and we had some casualties as a result.”

Mr Davies’s remark is breathtakingly crass. Leave aside the callousness of the throwaway nature of “we had some casualties as a result” when in fact soldiers had died.

What he is effectively saying is that it was a fatal misjudgement by a commander that led to this, not inadequate equipment. He implies that a commander carelessly chose an unsafe vehicle for a patrol when there were safer, better armoured alternatives available.

Such an assertion is not only offensive, it is not true. The idea that the vulnerable Snatch Land Rover is used out of choice by commanders in the field is wrong. It is used because there is frequently no alternative.

At a time when British forces are stretched more severely than at any time since the Second World War, the impact on morale of such an inane remark can only be imagined.

Des Feely, the father of Corporal Sarah Bryant — who died in the same blast that claimed the three SAS men — said the comments were an insult to the memory of the four dead soldiers and to all others lost in this conflict. He is right. — (Nov 3)

Embarrassing show

Kyiv Post, Ukraine

Ukrainian politicians seem clueless about how national leaders should behave. Considering the selfish and childish behaviour of Ukraine’s political leaders, it is a constant wonder why anyone would take this nation seriously — let alone lend it $16.5 bn, as the International Monetary Fund is prepared to do.

The latest juvenile antics took place in the Verkhovna Rada. That’s where members of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc seem to have acted as not-so-petty vandals on Oct. 24 by stuffing rubbish into the slots of the electronic voting system to break it...

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have long forgotten that the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution was not about them. People took to the streets to stand up for Ukraine — and the principles of justice and democratic elections. Instead, the two heroes of the revolution have been degrading themselves in their pathetic attempts to cling to power at all costs. Turning to ex-Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych, whose rigged election triggered the 2004 revolt, is not the solution.

Even with an IMF bailout, the nation faces a rough road ahead. ….Passing a no-deficit budget will mean lean times for millions of people dependent on state benefits. Likely borrowers will face higher interest rates in a further drag to the economy. The nation may be forced to sell its remaining prized assets, such as telecoms giant Ukretelecom, at unattractive prices. But the most complicated task is building an economy that will reverse the huge imbalance between the nation’s increasing imports and dwindling exports, particularly of steel and other commodities.

The current leadership has proved itself too inept — and too subservient to the interests of the nation’s oligarchs — to inspire much hope.

But out of crises, new leaders sometimes emerge to take charge with courage, imagination and determination. Let’s hope that happens in Ukraine. — (Oct 29)

Debate on war on terror

IN the past several months public discourse has centred on the question of whether the so-called ‘war on terror’ is Pakistan’s war or not, and whether or not we should own and commit ourselves to it.

The debate has been framed in a manner that confuses issues by setting up a dichotomous choice which seems to echo George Bush’s famous ‘with us or against us’ choice. This kind of framing seems to have obliterated the possibility of imagining alternatives that might allow us to see the world from a fresh perspective.

One side of this binary discourse maintains that this is not our war as the US initiated it with the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Proponents of this theory argue that since it was the CIA during the Reagan administration that funnelled money to create jihadists to counter the Soviet invasion of 1979, terrorism is a direct consequence of US policies in West, South and Central Asia. It is therefore America’s war that is being thrust upon us against our will.

The other side of the divide argues that since we are the victims of terrorism and our territory is the hotbed of militant outfits, we must own this war and fight it for our own survival. Furthermore, this side of the debate maintains that the writ of the state must be enforced, and nobody should be allowed to take the law into their own hands and establish a state within a state.

It is not hard to discern that both sides of the divide provide a true picture; however, each side presents only the partial truth. What is missing from the analysis of either side is a nuanced understanding of terrorism — what is terrorism, who commits it, who is its victim, why is it committed, how is it different from legitimate freedom struggles and so on. Without defining terrorism and tracing its genesis and development historically and contextually, the debate remains a sterile one.

It is easy to perceive from the current global and national discourse on terrorism that the term is used to refer only to non-state actors while the vital category of state terrorism seems to be missing. Ironically, both sides of the divide assume that terror attacks are committed by militant religious zealots against innocent civilians. Massive and undeniable evidence of state terrorism across the globe is ignored which becomes misleading.

History, however, belies this categorisation by providing ample evidence of state-inspired, state-sponsored, state-led and state-backed terrorism. However, states typically tend to redefine their actions as self-defence, protecting sovereignty, maintaining state integrity, defending state borders, suppressing an insurgency or defending ideological frontiers.

Examples abound: the Pakistani state’s military operations in Balochistan, former East Pakistan, Sindh and now Fata are reformulated as defending the national interest rather than suppressing dissent against the uneven distribution of resources; the Indian state’s repression of freedom struggles in Kashmir and the north-east is also defined as defending the state against ‘terrorists’; Israel’s repeated raids on the Gaza Strip, and the massacre of Palestinians is couched in the rhetoric of self-defence; US unilateral aggression against Iraq has also been couched in the vocabulary of self-defence. In fact, the US tends to characterise every action by itself or its allies as self-defence and every action against itself as terrorism. What was the shock and awe operation in Baghdad in March 2003 if not blatant terrorism?

The definition of the term terrorism has been kept intentionally vague so that it is amenable to manipulation through inconsistent application. Consequently, any freedom struggle, any response to US terrorism, any sub-national ethnic uprising or any struggle for national liberation can be defined as terrorism and serve as a justification for aggression and conquest. The term has been widened to the extent of describing struggles for land or water rights as terrorism — the members of the fisher-folk community in Karachi and the Anjuman-i-Mazareen in Punjab were arrested under the Anti-Terrorist Act. Globally, the discourse on terrorism has been deployed as a weapon against civil and political as well as economic and social rights. It seems that the term is applied to anyone who disagrees with the US — against us or with us.

It seems that terrorism is not an inherent or essential quality of any particular state, ethnic or religious group, or transnational movement. Given certain historical contingencies any state, ethnic or religious group or transnational movement can use terrorism as a method of resistance or creating fear to achieve its goals, which it may find difficult to attain by other means. Terrorism is a method by which conflict is addressed; it is not the conflict itself. This method may be resorted to in the case of prolonged occupation by external forces, state suppression, class inequality, religious oppression, ethnic injustice or simply to capture the resources of other regions.

It is more important to understand the conflict underlying any act of terrorism rather than focusing merely on its mechanics, frequency and consequences. Giving up life is not easy; how desperate must a people be for the human body itself to become the last weapon of resistance. Those who do not have cruise missiles, drones, bunker busters, cluster bombs, daisy cutters and advanced killers at their disposal, blow up their own bodies — their only weapon in the battle.

As odious as it sounds, we are forced to choose a war as ours or not ours. A war can never be ours or theirs for in each case it kills, injures, destroys and displaces. Nonetheless, one has to conclude that this is our war against all forms of terrorism, unprovoked aggression, occupation and colonisation. We cannot afford to choose between good terrorism and bad terrorism, good fundamentalism and bad fundamentalism, good imperialism and bad imperialism.

Our war is against imperialism by anyone whether of the US variety or the Taliban version; our war is against all forms of terrorism whether US drone attacks or militants’ suicide attacks; our war is against all forms of fundamentalism whether reflected in Bush-style born-again Christianity or Taliban and Al Qaeda-style virulent versions of Islam. As human rights, women’s rights and peace activists our war equally rejects fundamentalisms, imperialisms, terrorisms and militarisms.

Recession to hit UK

BRITAIN will suffer the deepest recession among the Europe’s mature economies, with a contraction of one per cent next year and growth of only 0.4 per cent in 2010, according to the European commission.

Its half-yearly forecast shows UK unemployment rising from 5.3 per cent in 2007 to 7.1 per cent, or about 2.25 million, in 2009 with the budget deficit and government debt also surging.

The deficit is seen jumping to 5.6 per cent next year and 6.5 per cent, or GBP94bn, in 2010 while debt is forecast to rise some 15 percentage points to about 60 per cent in 2010-11 — both above so-called Maastricht treaty limits. The bleak forecasts blow a hole in the government’s much-vaunted assertion it has been running the European Union’s model economy for the past decade.

The UK forecast was part of an overall bleak outlook for Europe, which is in or close to recession. The EC is forecasting EU growth of 0.2 per cent in 2009 and eurozone growth of 0.1 per cent.

EU economic experts warned that, if the financial crisis continues or deteriorates and credit conditions tighten, the 15-strong eurozone could experience a 1 per cent contraction in 2009.

Germany, France and Italy, the eurozone’s three biggest economies, will stagnate next year while Ireland will contract 0.9 per cent before recovering to 2.4 per cent growth in 2010. Ireland’s budget deficit is scheduled to be higher than Britain’s, at 6.8 per cent in 2009 and 7.2 per cent in 2010.

Only Estonia and Latvia will suffer deeper recessions than Britain in 2009, falling 1.2 per cent and 2.7 per cent respectively.

Joaquin Almunia, economic and monetary affairs commissioner indicated an easing of tensions in inter-bank lending after the coordinated stabilisation plans adopted in recent weeks by key governments.

But he insisted the EC would stick to its revised stability and growth pact, with the UK expected to receive a sharp warning note early in the new year. Britain is in the so-called excessive deficit procedure but cannot be sanctioned as it is outside the eurozone.

The EC’s senior economists said: “The central outlook [for Britain] envisages a marked fall in private consumption in 2009 and 2010, driven by more restrictive borrowing conditions and lower household wealth.” Treasury officials refused to comment before this month’s pre-budget report from chancellor Alistair Darling.

The commission sees a gradual recovery in the eurozone and most of the rest of the EU-27 in the second half of next year but this is unlikely in Britain until 2010, with business investment shrinking until the end of 2009. Inflation, however, is likely to fall to 1.2 per cent in 2010.

Its forecast comes ahead of this week’s expected moves by the Bank of England and European Central Bank to cut interest rates by up to half a percentage point as governments adopt new fiscal stimulus packages help lead the way out of recession across Europe.

— The Guardian, London