A breakthrough in the offing?

HAS THE president agreed to get the LFO indemnified by the elected parliament? It seems as if he has. Otherwise there would be no logic or meaning to the media exercise launched by the president on Thursday and to the fresh round of dialogue between the ruling alliance and the combined opposition which began on Friday.

The government and the opposition are seemingly engaged in coming to some kind of settlement over those parts of the LFO which the president had described as contentious during his meeting with senior media people on Thursday so that when the package is tabled in the shape of a constitutional bill, it is approved, hopefully, unanimously by the entire house.

The president has divided the LFO into three blocks. The first block, he said, related to elections. Naturally no one who has reached parliament by contesting elections under this block of laws would like to overturn them because that would nullify his own election. So this block of laws would be indemnified by all without any reservations.

The second block of the LFO related to strengthening of institutions. Elaborating, the president had said that offices such as of the State Bank governor, the chief election commissioner, the NAB chairman, and the armed forces chiefs, etc., should remain above partisan politics, therefore he was the most appropriate person to appoint them in his discretion. But the way he talked about this issue, he appeared to be conceding that this block of laws was negotiable.

The opposition on its part has been insisting that in order for the elected prime minister to command respect and function as an effective chief executive, these appointments should be made in his discretion. There is a possibility that a settlement could be reached between the government and the opposition on this block of laws on the basis of give and take.

The block, which the president has described as ‘contentious’, relates specifically to his uniform and the referendum. And by not describing this block as non-negotiable, but calling it only ‘contentious’, the president seems to have allowed the ruling alliance and the combined opposition to enter into serious discussion on it.

On Thursday, the president explained to the country’s media people at great length why he needed to keep his uniform for a couple of years more. On Friday, he repeated the same arguments while talking to the ruling alliance senators, all of whom seemingly appeared to agree with him. He is likely to continue this exercise so as to lend his own voice to the discussions going on between the government and the opposition.

Media savvy lawyer Naeem Bokhari has been assigned the task of producing TV programmes designed to clinch the argument in favour of the president’s position on these issues. According to one insider, sometimes the president himself edits these programmes. And in a day or two, a grand gala dinner in honour of the president has been organized by Naeem Bokhari at his farm- house residence to celebrate the success of these programmes.

The opposition seems to be divided on the issue of a uniformed president. The MMA is ready to get the COAS elected as president if Musharraf announces in advance a firm date, falling within two years, for his retirement from the army. The PPP and the PML-N do not agree. They want him to go immediately.

The People’s Party Parliamentarians and the PML-N would perhaps reconsider their position on this issue if the president agreed to give relief to Benazir Bhutto, her spouse Asif Zardari, and Nawaz Sharif and his family. But this is not acceptable to President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

He made it clear once again on Thursday, in his talks with the media, that it was not negotiable.

The government would not need the votes of the PPP and the PML-N if it could win over to its side the MMA votes (by agreeing to its proposal) to get the LFO indemnified by the elected houses with a two-thirds majority. But then that would make the government a perpetual hostage in the hands of the MMA which could blackmail it into acceding to even those of its demands which would not go very well with our international friends.

It was perhaps this aspect of his dilemma that the president was hinting at when on Thursday he said he had needed a prime minister who would be internationally acceptable. And perhaps our international friends do not even want to see the MMA leading the opposition as well and that perhaps is the reason that the speaker of the National Assembly has so far not been able to nominate Maulana Fazlur Rahman as the leader of the opposition in the NA, though the MMA has shown that it is numerically larger than the PPP after the defection of 20 odd Patriots from the parent party.

Soon after the October elections, the president had even offered Amin Fahim the post of prime minister in return for his party’s support for the LFO. But he withdrew the offer when the PPP asked for relief for Benazir Bhutto and her spouse as well. The president was not prepared to accept this condition under any circumstances.

The circumstances have not changed, but it appears that he is again trying to woo the PPP. This time the president is openly asking Mr Fahim to rebel against his leader. On Thursday, he asked him to use his own mind and stop being guided by his leader.

On April 20, the prime minister reportedly met Mr Fahim informally at the residence of a mutual friend, Haji Qadir of Fata, and offered to make his son the chief minister of Sindh if the PPP parliamentary leader agreed to play ball with the government.

But Mr Fahim has taken the ball to Dubai on Sunday. He knows what happened to his other PPP colleagues who had in the past tried to use their mind and rebelled against the leadership at the behest of the establishment. So, whether he likes it or not, Benazir Bhutto seemingly continues to hold the key to Musharraf’s problems.—Onlooker

Renaming the NWFP

MR Naveed Tajammal Hussain is a bit of a research scholar. On the controversy on whether or not the NWFP should be renamed, he writes to say:

My subject of research is the origin of tribes in Pakistan. With reference to the above controversy, I would like to present the following historical facts:

From the northern tip to the southern —- D.I. Khan —- the languages spoken in the NWFP are:-

(A) KAFIR GROUP

(i) Bash Gali,

(ii) Mai-ala,

(iii) Wasi-veri,

(iv) Ash Kund,

(v) Kala sha-Pashai, having the following sub-groups.

(a) Kala sha

(b) Gawar-bati or Narsati,

(c) Pashai, Laghmani or Dehgani,

(d) Diri,

(e) Tirahi,

(B) KOW-WAR, CHITRALI OR ARNIYA

(C) DARD GROUP

(i) Shina,

(ii) Kashmiri,

(iii) Kohistani,

(d) Pushto (its numerous northern and southern dialects)

(e) Ormuri or Bargista

(f) Lahnda, with the following sub-groups

(i) Hindko of Kohat, Peshawar, Hazara

(ii) Mulki of Bannu

(iii) Tinauli

(iv) Awankari of Kohat

(v) Thali/Jatki/Hindki of D.I. Khan

(vi) Khetrani and Jaffari

(vii) Multani (the local name given to southern Lahnda and Northern Sindhi is “Seraiki” from ‘Siro’ or up-country Sindhi).

Lastly, the present Punjab is a misnomer for the actual language of the locals, prior to the influx of the nine canal colonies was ‘Lahnda’. The rest were the dialects. The land of Punjabi is East of Lahore or ‘the manjha’ (the middle country).

Pushttunkhawa ‘Pusht’ is the back, ‘tun’ is the abode and ‘Khawa’ the language.

The land on the west of the Suleman Range, the seven ridges/ranges are historically the home of Pushttunkhawa.

The true inhabitants of the NWFP are the speakers of the above mentioned languages.

Prof M Rashid, my wonderful teacher at the Government College, Lahore, has sent me another letter this week. He says:

WE are living in a topsy-turvy world. It is a perverse condition which must be changed. I don’t like what I see. The division of the world along racist lines is causing immense harm to the vast majority of mankind. The whites versus the non-whites divide is an unmitigated disaster. The whites as a minority rule the world. This is unacceptable because the majority comprising the black, the brown and the yellow races are being oppressed by belligerent domination; especially by the Americans since they occupied centre stage.

The non-whites are struggling against heavy odds. The blacks are beautiful people. Nelson Mandela is a living icon who was a victor in the fight against apartheid in South Africa in a non-violent way as a prisoner in a white jail for 27 years. Martin Luthers King was assassinated in America because he had a dream which has yet to become a reality in the racist US. Nina Simone, the jazz singer who died at 70 last week, was a versatile black performer who was born to a poor family of eight children in North Carolina in 1933. She was politically aware and adored Nelson Mandela and Martin Luthers King. She was disgusted with the American racists and migrated to southern France and died there. Hundreds of non-whites have been enriching life as creative artists, poets, sportsmen and writers. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple grew up as a black woman in the American South. I have been reading her stories which moved me to tears. I am sending the book to you. I am sure you will enjoy it.

DONALD Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, now says that the United States is not going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Speaking somewhere or the other in Washington, Mr Rumsfeld said: “I don’t think we will find anything. (The UN) inspectors did not discover anything, I don’t think we will.” Mr Rumsfeld said that his country hoped to find people who were involved in making such weapons and who could share their information with US officials. “We will find people who can tell us where those things were.”

Just imagine! Rumsfeld is the defence boss of the most powerful country in the world and he doesn’t know!

We are talking about Rumsfeld? Daddy Bush is even funnier. He said in New York last week that Iraqi officials and scientists had provided the US with information that Saddam Hussein might have destroyed or dispersed chemical and biological weapons before the war.

“I think there is going to be scepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction programme”. That is the corniest joke any American president ever told you. You ought to be laughing your guts out. Unless, of course, you want to cry. The choice is yours.

I have a hunch. I present it here for whatever it is worth. I think that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are with Mr Osama bin Laden. But we have a problem here. I saw a cartoon some months ago according to which Osama bin Laden was not one person but two, Osama being one and Bin Laden being the other. That makes things a bit complicated.

I also think that the deadly weapons are in the custody of these two gentlemen. Any way, its not my problem. It is yours baby, Daddy Bush.

By the way, a friend was telling me the other day that no body was ever bothered about Iraq or what happened to its people. “What happens if the Euro replaces the dollar as the world’s no 1 currency?” my friend asked. I told him that I didn’t know, but if he did, he should e-mail his answer to the White House. I also told him to address his letter to Mrs Bush because she was cleverer by far than her husband.

QAZI Hussain Ahmed wants President Pervaiz Musharraf to take off his uniform. Now this is very strange. So far as I know, the President takes off his Khakis every night at bed time. Or does the Qazi Sahib want the President to take off his uniform In public? that would be most un-Islamic.

Clearly the good Qazi needs to do some rethinking on the issue.

I HAD been giving you excerpts from an anthology, The Statesman (1875-1975). For one reason or another, the process was disrupted. Picking up from where I had left off, I begin today from August 22, 1905. On that day, the paper wrote:

A very large meeting was held last evening in college square in consequence of the news that had arrived during the day of Lord Curzon’s resignation. Patriotic speeches by certain well known Bengalis, songs by bands of students, with a display of Chirag-illuminations and bomb firing were the prominent features of the meeting.

The speeches all went to prove the fact that change in government was popular, and the crowd expressed its feelings in an unmistakably delighted fashion.

India’s sure-footed soldiers of peace

PEOPLE like filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, rights campaigner Aruna Roy, social worker Sandeep Pandey and peace activist Nirmala Deshpande have a lot in common. They are creative. They represent the voice of sanity against war, communalism and the destitution that follows. They work among ordinary people. They grapple with solid issues, pose the right questions and struggle relentlessly to find their solutions.

Yet, despite the steady admiration of the faithful followers they command, these people are a marginalized lot in a very crucial way. The media gives them tiny space, if at all. They do not constitute the “sexy story”, to quote an idiom from a western news agency.

Moreover, the recent Indian media scene has been replete with supposedly more important issues, or may be just one main issue. They telecast on their 24-hour channels images of Saddam Husseins falling statue in Baghdad, looped over and over from a footage borrowed from one or the other American network.

And like their western counterparts, the Indian networks also showed that one old man beating the Iraqi dictator’s image with a shoe, followed by an Arab urinating on it. Pictures don’t lie, so what we saw must be true. But what about what we did not see or, to be more honest, were deliberately not shown?

There were hundreds of similar images right across India of people giving Messrs Bush and Blair the same treatment, beating their pictures with shoes and burning their effigies stacked with exploding firecrackers. Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits, Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, communists, agnostics, everyone joined in. Yet hardly anyone remembers seeing these real and vivid messages of the Indian protest against the war on their TV sets. These images were never shown.

Someone used the expression crony journalism, as in crony capitalism or crony government to describe the phenomenon of mindlessly transmitting bodily lifted images from western networks, not even changing the script or the words that came along in a heap.

But even when they are not distracted by an Iraq war, the situation is hardly different. As author and journalist P. Sainath observed, there is more space in our media for the cures of gluttony, for health clubs and so on, than for people routinely killed by starvation. Starvation doesn’t bring in ads which gluttony does, says Sainath.

All this is of a piece with the scenario in which an Arundhati Roy is dispatched to prison for objecting to a court verdict that targets the helpless inhabitants of the Narmada basin, or where the renowned pacifist and civil rights worker Medha Patkar is bashed up by fanatical Hindu groups in Gujarat because she urges them to spare the lives of some uprooted and shaken Indian citizens.

It’s a grim picture but not an entirely hopeless one. Sandeep Pandey fights on, preferring to return the generous amount of money that came with the Magsaysay Award he won, after the American funding agency chided him for protesting against the WTO. Nirmala Deshpande, a bundle of energy despite her age, still often shows up alone for a peace march if she finds the enthusiasm of her comrades waning.

Aruna Roy, who left the prestigious administrative services many years ago to organize villagers in Rajasthan, was addressing a gathering in the baking heat of Mumbai last week.

Aruna’s talk was preceded by a short clip from a documentary showing public hearings conducted by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) as part of their Right to Information Campaign. The MKSS is a people’s organization which works with labourers and peasants in the villages of central Rajasthan.

The Right to Information Campaign was born out of a struggle for minimum wages. When workers asked for their wages from the panchayat, they were told they were telling lies and their wages were withheld. At the same time, some of them saw a bill from a non-existent company. That led to the demand for documents implementation.

Anand Patwardhan’s documentaries have doggedly recorded the rise of religious fascism in India. After the 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests, he embarked on a film against the bomb. He filmed in Pakistan, the United States (because it is the only country to have dropped the bomb) and Japan, the victim, apart from visiting the villages surrounding Pokharan in Rajasthan. The film, “ War and Peace”, was virtually banned, with the censors demanding impossible cuts but Patwardhan took the issue to court.

The cuts included demands to delete footage depicting the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, all mention of the Tehelka arms scandal, all statements made by Dalits who were angered by the choice of Buddhist imageries to describe the bomb, and all speeches by political leaders.

Last Thursday, after years of litigation against what he sees as an RSS-inspired insidious campaign to stall his film, Patwardhan got the good news from the Bombay High Court. He has won the case without accepting a single cut in the documentary.

War and Peace begins and ends with the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. Focusing on the danger of nuclear war in the subcontinent, the film goes on to describe the problems faced by people living near nuclear testing and mining sites, the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the culpability of the USA in using atomic bombs on a nation that was about to surrender, the globalization of the arms trade, but most of all it derives its power and emotional appeal from the growing movement for peace both in India and in Pakistan. Patwardhan’s efforts also underscore the power of the alternative media, one that is not unduly impressed by the lure of the lucre.

EVEN as the world tries to divine the hidden meanings of the war on Iraq, India’s renowned artist MF Husain has put up an exhibition of his paintings on the issue titled “ The Thief of Baghdad”.

The show which opened at a five-star hotel in Delhi on Friday is drawing his followers and critics in throngs. Themes like “ Simsim Marjeena”, taken from an Uttar Pradesh nautanki (folk play), based on the stories from the Arabian Nights, depict the story of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, replete with their barrels of oil. Hussain is trying to interpret the tragedy of Iraq with the barbs of his unique black humour.

Good manners & the SARS virus

Adoctor posted at the Quaid-i-Azam International Airport told this newspaper’s health reporter that he and his staff did not want to “offend or bother” passengers getting off at Karachi by taking their temperature. The doctor said this in response to queries asking him what his staff were doing to ensure that no one carrying the dreaded SARS virus gets past the airport undetected.

In case the good doctor was not aware of it, SARS (which so far has no known cure) has already killed hundreds of people across the world and every day brings in reports of more fatalities and infections. So it is vital that passengers getting off in Karachi, in fact at any airport or seaport in the country, are checked properly to make sure that they do not carry the virus. The best method is to take a person’s temperature because that can tell a doctor right away that the passenger might be infected with the virus. It could easily be that the person only has a cold but one cannot be sure because the SARS virus belongs to the same family as the virus that causes the flu. And when one is faced with the prospect of such a dreaded illness, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

The doctor’s remark, that he and his staff did not want to “offend or bother” passengers by taking their temperatures, seems a terrible excuse. The doctor, and his staff, seem to be more concerned about politeness and propriety and would rather be courteous even if that means allowing a lethal virus to gain a foothold in the country. Readers who think that the Notebook is being a bit harsh in this case would do well to know that SARS has been spread all over the world primarily by air travel. Because of Karachi’s location, many flights coming from destinations in Southeast Asia stop in transit here. Hence, it is important that effective measures be put in place.

The doctor also told the reporter that he and his staff were trained so that they could tell “just by looking” whether a person was infected with the virus. One can only wonder at the audacity of this claim, and offer no other comment. The airport manager on duty at the arrivals lounge told the reporter that the health staff boarded all flights “only when it is safe”. He then went on to elaborate this saying that by this he meant that the staff went on the aircraft once the crew inside gave the all clear. But how would the crew know for sure whether someone on board was or wasn’t infected with SARS? Does the airport manager think that all flight stewards are also doctors?

Clearly — and sorry to be such a pessimist — this is a disaster waiting to happen.

The bands that were scheduled to play were all excellent, probably the best in the country. There was Noori, Fuzon, Junoon, Haroon and even an Indian import, Anaida. The organizers had promised a huge crowd and the biggest stage ever put up for a show in Pakistan. The CAA Club near the city’s airport was the venue for this mega-concert, held on April 19. But for most of the people who went there, hoping to see the likes of Shafqat Ali Khan, Ali Noor and Ali Azmat perform, the concert turned out to be a mega disappointment.

To be fair to the artistes, it wasn’t there fault at all, the blame goes entirely on some of the people who came to watch the show, and probably to the organizers who probably failed to keep track of gatecrashers.

For much of the concert, segments of the crowd apparently were extremely unruly. According to several people who went to the concert, a bunch of young men became so overwhelmed by the music that they started shedding their clothes! Now, it might have been the hot weather or the hot music, and while one is of the opinion that people should be free to do whatever they want inside the privacy of their own homes, walking around semi-naked in a concert is probably not something that can be readily condoned. Clearly, some people in the audience didn’t like too much the sight of half-naked boys prancing around, ripping their vests apart, and left.

Those who went to the show, advertised to begin at 8.30, said the first band came at midnight. The crowd was supposed to be segregated but wasn’t by the organizers because after some time, many young men were found dancing in the ‘family section’. Here, one should point out that this, perhaps, is the price one has to pay for placing too many restrictions and limits on young people, especially in terms of segregation in daily life. If you put too many checks on young people then their frustrations will come out in ways that others might find offensive or unwanted.

The people who went to the concert said that fistfights broke out among parts of the crowd. Empty and filled bottles were thrown on the stage, and even the Indus Music crew filming the concert had its equipment damaged. Apparently, at least two girls were surrounded by a group of boys and things became pretty unpleasant. A young man who tried to come to the rescue of these two girls had his clothes torn off. This person had some pretty nasty words for the organizers because she said concerts are the only avenue for entertainment for many young people and badly organized ones as this can give something to the more conservative elements to say “Oh we told you so...”.

In the aftermath of the Iraq fiasco, it seemed every conversation in the city was centred on the ouster of the Saddam government. From modest barbershops to high brow social gatherings, Karachiites of all social shades chipped in their two cents’ worth about the conflict.

From newspaper columns to paan shops, there was not a forum where laments for the fallen were not being sung, and where people were pouring scorn over the failure of the ‘ummah’ to do anything to prevent America from getting its way.

Tears were not being shed for Saddam but for the people Iraq who now face another occupation. Whether this was the playing out of the so-called ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis is not clear but one thing is: that those who have power can get away with anything (sort of applies to even within Pakistan, doesn’t it?). This year’s Oscar for best acting role should have been awarded to the unholy trinity of Dubya, Powell and Rummy for acting like they really, really cared about dead Iraqis.

Conspiracy theories apart, there are frightening similarities between the way the US crushed ‘terrorism’ in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 and how they ‘liberated’ Iraq. Mineral resources seem to be the motivating force for the Americans. In Afghanistan’s case, the US action brought into power known warlords — people like Gen. Fahim and Rashid Dostum — and in Iraq, too, there is the fear that thoroughly discredited people might be installed in power. The ‘civilian’ administrator who reports to Gen. Tommy Franks, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, has very close ties to Israel’s Likud Party and counts Ariel Sharon and his defence minister and former Israeli army chief, Shaul Mofaz, as close friends.

Only time will tell the kind of harvest the Americans will reap in Iraq.

Intermediate exams are currently underway in the city. This newspaper carried a photograph last week of girl students sitting for the exam at a centre in a local college.

On the face of it, there was nothing all that unusual about the picture but on closer examination one could see that the poor girls hardly had any surface to write on.

They were all sitting on chairs which have built-in writing surfaces, usually catering to right-handers. Now, such a limited writing surface is perhaps fine if an ordinary class is going on and the objective is to take notes.

Even a multiple-choice objective exam might be all right but to expect college students to take exams lasting several hours on a writing surface probably less than a square foot in area is asking for too much.

As it is, the prospect of sitting for such a key exam can make even the best prepared of students nervous. At the very least, the board authorities should ensure that every exam-taker has a chair and a table so that he or she can write with ease and peace of mind.

— By Karachian

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com