Stifling of dissent

MR JAVED HASHMI, who had been in jail for four years, was released on bail upon the Supreme Court’s direction on August 3, 2007. I saw him on a television talk show a few days later. He looked none the worse for the experience. He said that in some ways his forced solitude had been a welcome opportunity for reflection and introspection. He appeared to be in good spirits and glowing health. He was moderate, balanced, and optimistic in his comments.

Mr Hashmi was an activist in the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba (IJT) and a notable student leader during the mid-1960s. He rose to be an important figure in national politics. At the time of his arrest (October 29, 2003), he was acting president of PML-N and president of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD).

Mr Hashmi is regarded as having been a political prisoner, the kind whom the state takes out of circulation either because they oppose the state itself or because they embarrass the government of the day by exposing its improbity and incompetence. In many cases, they are denied protections of the due process of law.

Detention of political opponents became common in our region during British rule. The British jailed many of those who opposed their rule and waged the struggle for India’s independence. Interestingly enough, the post-independence native rulers in all states of the subcontinent chose to retain the British practice.

Turning specifically to Pakistan, one might expect that military rulers had been more apt to jail political opponents than democratic governments. Not true. In the post-Tashkent years during Ayub Khan’s rule, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and his associates in the Awami League in East Pakistan were detained in connection with the Agartala conspiracy case. Hundreds of protesters were sent to jail in both East and West Pakistan after the anti-Ayub movement picked up momentum, starting in October 1968.

Many PPP leaders and workers were detained, tortured and some of them killed during Ziaul Haq’s rule. Leaders and workers of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) were also hunted down. Political opponents have not done quite as badly during General Musharraf’s rule, but some of them have indeed been incarcerated. On March 25, 2001 PML-N leaders claimed that some 2,000 ARD supporters were arrested on Pakistan Day (March 23) when they tried to organise a meeting to call for an end to military rule.

“Democratic” regimes have not been significantly more civil. Laws were made that authorised the central and provincial governments to put away politically undesirable persons. (There were the Defence of Pakistan Rules, public safety laws, preventive detention laws, and more recently the anti-terrorist laws and courts).

During the first parliamentary regime (1947-58) PML governments in Sindh, Punjab and the NWFP (and later the government of West Pakistan) jailed their opponents and challengers, some of them from within the party organisation itself. Leaders and activists of the National Awami Party (NAP), more notably Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Abdul Wali Khan, were kept in jail almost perpetually. The same was done to G.M. Syed and his associates in Sindh and several of the more influential politicians in Balochistan.

The second parliamentary regime, headed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, became notorious for the harshness with which it treated political opponents. There was hardly an opposition leader who did not end up in jail. Especially noteworthy should be those belonging to the Jamaat-i-Islami, pro-JI groups of journalists and student leaders (including Javed Hashmi), National Awami party in the NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh, Tehrik-i-Istaqlal, plus labour leaders from Punjab and Karachi and dissidents within the PPP (for instance, Mukhtar Rana and Abdul Hamid Jatoi).

A word now about the third parliamentary regime (1988-1999). Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif filed allegedly bogus criminal cases against each other when in power. An Amnesty International report noted that between January 1 and December 31 of 1997 (when Mr Nawaz Sharif was prime minister) hundreds of political prisoners, including “prisoners of conscience,” were in prison without charges or trial.

There were 35 torture- related deaths in custody and 50 extra-judicial executions. Parliament passed an Anti-Terrorist Act in August that gave the police virtually unlimited and arbitrary authority to arrest and even kill persons of whom they, or the powers that be, did not approve.

Since I began this presentation with a reference to Mr Javed Hashmi

(b. 1948), I imagine I should now say something about him. He is an eloquent public speaker, and his friends regard him as a man of great courage and one who lives by his principles.

In a book he wrote while in prison, published in 2005, he calls himself a “born rebel”.

Contrary to one’s expectation, he was well received in Ziaul Haq’s councils. But after the general decided to cede some of his power to a civilian government, Mr Hashmi was ready to denounce military rule. In a speech in the National Assembly on June 6, 1985 he asked “Mr Martial Law” to return to his barracks, stay there, and “never come back.”

Mr Hashmi served as a central minister for a time. He would seem to have worked well with Mr Nawaz Sharif, well enough to have been named acting president of PML-N after the prime minister’s dismissal on October 12, 1999, and his exile to Saudi Arabia a year later.

At his trial, to which we will come shortly, he said if it was mutiny to love the land of Pakistan, he pleaded guilty to being a rebel. On another occasion, he claimed that during his 40 years in politics successive governments had filed several hundred cases against him. That may be exaggeration, but it is a fact that his arrest on October 29, 2003, was not his first adverse encounter with the authorities. Let us see what led to this event.

On October 20, he read out to newsmen (and handed out copies) an unsigned, possibly forged, letter purportedly written by a group of army officers, and addressed to the country’s political leaders, in which its authors criticised General Musharraf’s stewardship of the nation’s affairs and his subservience to President George W. Bush. They asked for a commission to investigate corruption in the armed force and an inquiry into the army’s misadventure in Kargil.

Nine days later, as he drove out of the parliament’s compound, a large contingent of policemen stopped him, hauled him out of his car, and took him away. The government accused him of sedition, incitement to mutiny, forging of a treasonous document, and a few other offences, and took him to court a few weeks later.

His trial began in an open court but, according to some reports, his supporters disrupted the proceedings, ransacked the court, and the judge had to run for his life. The trial was then shifted to the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where the rest of it was conducted. His counsel, reportedly, could not meet with him often enough to prepare a proper defence.

On April 12, 2004, the court found him guilty on all counts, sentenced him to several terms of imprisonment aggregating to 23 years, but fortunately they were to run concurrently so that he was in effect imprisoned for seven years.

The day after his arrest several dozen member of parliament staged a protest demonstration during which they said Mr Hashmi had been arrested to silence the government’s critics, and described his detention as a “murder” of democracy. There was the widespread impression both within the country and abroad that the charges against him were bogus, and that his trial had been crooked. Governments in the European Union voiced this concern.

Speaking for the United States on April 13, 2004, Richard Boucher said American officials had repeatedly suggested to the government of Pakistan that Hashmi’s case should be handled in a fair and transparent manner with due regard for his rights, but regretfully that had not been done.

It is hard to say whether Mr Hashmi had anything to do with the forging of the letter in question. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan (PML-N) claimed at the time that the same letter had been delivered to other members of parliament as well. In any case, his counsel and supporters pointed out that, regardless of the source of this document, he could not be charged with inciting mutiny because it was not he who had commended a certain course of action to the military officers. It was instead a case of the officers making a plea to the politicians.

Likewise, the suggestion that a commission investigate the Kargil affair could not be treated as seditious because the event in question, having taken place several years earlier, had become a part of history.

The federal government’s counsel at the Supreme Court hearing on August 3 did not oppose Mr Hashmi’s release on bail. It may not have wanted to give the opposition an excuse for launching still another agitation. But one may wonder why it took him away in the first place. The following possibilities come to mind.

The government had plenty of other critics, but Mr Hashmi was not only vociferous but also more eloquent, and possibly more effective, in his denunciations of General Musharraf’s regime. Thus, the “nuisance” he created was greater and more menacing than that of many other critics.

Second, he was acting president of PML-N and a trusted lieutenant of Mr Nawaz Sharif whom the general despised. Third, his arrest took place at a time when General Musharraf did not have to contend with as many frustrating challenges to his authority as he does now.

Other troublesome opposition politicians had also been arrested: for instance Yousaf Raza Gilani, a former speaker of the National Assembly.

Harassment of opponents is an established part of our political culture. Will it continue unabated, the “charter of democracy” notwithstanding? Perhaps, but note that cultures do change. The current year (2007) is being hailed as a year of irreversible change. The lawyers’ struggle for the rule of law may make our future governments less prone to arbitrariness.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.
Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Trifling with nation’s destiny

IT needs no intellectual or prognosticator to make a sense out of our existential confusion. It is plainly caused by a struggle for power — those who possess it do not risk losing it and those deprived of it for eight years are desperate to regain it. It is not a new but recurring feature of Pakistan’s politics.

The country’s political scene has always been dominated by individuals who exercised absolute power. If a civilian, he stood behind the façade of a parliament; the soldiers leaned on the might of the armed forces. Alternating at regular intervals, both promoted their own versions of democracy but were consistent in destroying the institutions of governance — some more than others.

Whether religious or secular in their own dispositions, the civilians and soldiers alike played into the hands of the religious extremists — again, some more than others — and then, ironically, were held in thrall by them. Musharraf’s added misfortune is that the indigenous extremists now form part of an international network who believe that God’s work must be done no matter what it costs in terms of human life or material progress.

The country is neither on the threshold of a new democratic era, as some hope, nor is it headed for a civil war, as many fear. More predictably, the old cycle will repeat itself and the turn of the wheel this time round too will throw up a regime which will surely settle in the old grooves with the standards of private and public conduct further lowered. Starting after Jinnah and Liaquat, the downward spiral has not come to an end with Musharraf and Shujaat.In the months ahead, Benazir Bhutto may agree to share power with Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif may try to dislodge him by force and the lawyers, with the blessings of the courts, may frustrate Musharraf’s plan to get elected once again through the present electoral college. Whatever the case, the confusion will keep worsening while our leaders, soldiers and clerics keep trifling with the nation’s destiny.

The plans and efforts of all parties and vested interests should aim at free and fair elections to the national and provincial assemblies rather than focus on intrigues, threats or even petitioning the courts or rioting on the streets. Revolutions are wrought not by the bourgeoisie or bombers but by the peasants and workers, and they are indifferent to the on-going political drama. Nor do they expect their lot to change as extravagance and incompetence are the common characteristics of every regime — civil or military.

President Bush, who has a vital stake in the power structure of Pakistan, too, says time and again that free and fair elections are more important than Musharraf remaining in power by proclaiming emergency or rigging the elections. Here, for once, the strategic interests of America and the democratic aspirations of the people of Pakistan coincide.

The politicians who wish to see Musharraf go should also consider elections as a better alternative to agitation. Their apprehension that the polls cannot be free while Musharraf is the president as well as the chief of the army is understandable. But if that cannot be helped, the changing environment holds a two-fold assurance for them.

One, if Musharraf’s action against the Chief Justice could not stand upto judicial scrutiny, a rigged election assuredly will not. Second, Musharraf’s choice of allies, when he took power, was not made deliberately to suit his personal preferences or political ambitions. His sole concern then was instantly to seek out a rival of Nawaz Sharif. No one could have fitted that bill better than the senior minister of his government.

The Musharraf of today is prepared to make political adjustments. With the MQM and Pir Pagara’s Muslim League remaining committed to him and the PPP inclined to cooperate with him, the Q League could become a millstone around his neck.

For the elections to be free and fair, there are certain prerequisites on which all political parties must insist, and if necessary, seek a court order to put them in place. First and foremost, the present party governments at the centre and in the provinces, large and lethargic as they have been, must quit now to make way for an interim set-up which is demonstrably neutral and competent.

Second, the caretaker governments at the centre and in the provinces should appoint the Chief Election Commissioner and the provincial election commissioners. Third, the nazims (admittedly all of them belong to one or the other party) should be replaced by professional administrators. Fourth, the electoral rolls should be prepared afresh. The third and fourth point, perhaps, represent the unanimous stand of all political parties with the exception of the Q League.

The polls, based on incomplete or doctored lists of voters, even if free, cannot be called fair. To vote is the right of every adult citizen which must not be denied to him by the neglect or mischief of officials. The time required for the preparation of rolls afresh may necessitate putting off the polls from the winter to spring which would surely make voter participation larger than the dismal national average that has hovered around 35 per cent in the five elections held since 1988 and which is declining.

Squealing for help

FINANCIERS constantly tell the rest of us to leave them alone. The best regulation, we are told, is the lightest regulation; any more and they will take their ball and will play elsewhere. Apart from when they are in trouble, that is, and then the chaps in the City and on Wall Street sound so interventionist they might as well be speaking French.

Judging by the way the bankers are talking at the moment, they appear to think the time has come for dirigisme. The reason for their panic was obvious on Friday, as stock markets around the world slid further on fears of a worldwide drought of financial credit. "Armageddon" faces markets, according to hedge-fund manager turned Wall Street pundit, Jim Cramer.

He has been lobbying the US central bank to cut interest rates, and he is not alone. Some officials are already acting: over the past couple of days the European Central Bank has weighed in with loans of over £100bn, its biggest cash injection to financial markets since the terror attacks of September 11; on Friday central banks from the US to Australia took turns to prop up markets.

A bit of calm is certainly in order, but it is doubtful whether big gestures from central banks really achieve that. It is more likely that they get investors worrying about how bad things have got. They did nothing to stem losses on markets on Friday. Are these cash injections indeed warranted? Financial institutions may be having a tougher time at the moment, but so are individual borrowers: that is what happens when interest rates go up.

If an obscure German institution or a well-established French bank finds itself caught out by both tighter credit conditions and owning assets that turn out to be less kosher than first thought, it is surely their business and their business alone –– just as it was all their own business when times were good. If they were happy buying complicated IOUs, financiers should not be given excessive official help now they cannot even value those IOUs, let alone sell them on. Otherwise, the message goes out that bankers and fund managers can behave as recklessly as they like because –– when the waters get really rough –– the grown-ups will not only take over the boat, they will mop up the mess too.

––The Guardian, London