Liberty or democracy?

THE ‘Constitutional Avenue’ and ‘Shahrah-i-Jamhooriat’ in Islamabad are huge contradictions to their names. Most government buildings on these roads have given a false sense of power and absolutism to the tenants of these public offices.

The heady feeling of being above the law, especially for those who reside in the palatial buildings of the Parliament House, Prime Minister and President House has always proved to be an unsustainable illusion.

These buildings have a completely unreal feel to them. They represent everything which Pakistan is not. They are rich, lavish, highly protected, secure and organised. It is perhaps this total disconnection with reality which makes us repeatedly witness politicians going in there with a supposedly elaborate agenda of reforming the ills of the country in their belief that, despite their continuous failure, they remain the only messiahs who can save this country, even if the public is clamouring for a change in their policies, or, for that matter, their removal.

This is the feeling millions of people sitting out at the Parliament House must have experienced as they clamoured for the restoration of the judges with no response whatsoever from the men in authority. Justice delayed is justice denied. Never has this quote seemed truer. As time slides by, the public disbelief of government claims increases. The buoyant mood of the people on Feb18 has given way to despondency and distress.

With clear indications that the PPP has no intention of letting go of the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) judiciary, people have become cynical and doubtful about all political statements and stances. Thus even people like Aitzaz Ahsan have come under fire for not making the long march conclusive. The people of Pakistan are undergoing political fatigue and emotional exhaustion and are totally fed up with the constant about-turns that the government does on all its promises.

The government, on the other hand, feels that procrastination will make its case stronger. This delay will prove taxing on people’s nerves, making them drift into a comfortably numb zone where they will be so embroiled in fighting for their basic livelihood and other socio-economic pressures, that they will stop caring about who rules the Supreme Court. The other hope that the establishment has is that by giving time to parties that support the lawyers, it is engineering a situation whereby contrasting party philosophies will eventually lead to rifts in decision-making and principles, which will create enough conflict to dilute their strength; thus, their focus from the restoration issue will shift to issues of peaceful coexistence within anti-government groups. This guessing game played by the government, according to its own interpretation, is all in the name of democracy.

The government has been praising itself on the democratic manner with which it dealt with the long march participants and did not take them on. It has claimed that this is the true spirit of democracy. The government needs to take a basic course in ‘fundamentals of democracy’.

As Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek, in his book The Future of Freedom writes, “For people in the West democracy means ‘liberal democracy’; a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the basic protection of speech, assembly, religion, and property. But this bundle of freedoms — what might be termed “constitutional liberalism” — has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy”.

In the case of our government, the interpretation of democracy is “free and fair elections, and once in rule, all rules to be mended and amended to suit the rule makers, ensuring protection of the ruler’s rights to crime, deceit, corruption and the unrestrained power to destroy all systems or individuals that threaten their sustainable political supremacy”.

This interpretation reeks of ‘pretended democracy’ with barely disguised, hard core autocracy. By not taking on the long marchers, the government has claimed democratic victory, but by not paying heed to the basic demand of millions of people who had gathered there, it has exposed its true intention of doing exactly what suits the powers that be with complete disregard for the wishes of the very forces that gave the establishment the right to sit in palatial political castles and ‘serve’ those who continue to weather injustice.

Many governments in the developing world have resorted to democracy without the restraints that they need to exercise through laws that ensure equality of freedom and liberty, regardless of rank and file. Without such a level playing field, might will always be right.

The long march was symbolic in many ways. It reinforced our belief that the people of this country are now a force to be reckoned with; that they are united in their intention of giving this country its right to be respected and honoured. They are motivated to do whatever they can to strengthen its systems and institutions; and that they will not waiver in their determination to make the government accountable for its promises.

Many cynics have written off the long march as a fruitless anti-climax. This may be because the objectives of the march were not clarified in the beginning. The long march was not the end, but a means to an end; the end being repeated public pressure on the government to make the rulers answerable for their actions, which contradict their claims in various written and verbal agreements.

As we have seen recently in Nepal, it was prolonged public pressure which finally made even the almost invulnerable King give up his palace and power. The true spirit of democracy is thus constitutional liberalism which seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source — state, religion or society.

The true spirit of a free, alive and passionate nation is an unbending resolve to continue with the struggle to take on forces which not only endanger democracy but the liberal right of people to live with fearless freedom and endless confidence in the rule of law — the long march was a turn in this direction.

The writer is a consultant and chief executive of FranklinCovey

andleeb@franklincoveysouthasia.com

A war of succession

A WAR of succession is being waged in Pakistan today, not unlike the ones that would follow the death of a Mughal. But there is one notable difference. The emperor is still in residence.

In a sign of his declining fortunes, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated recently that Musharraf made a mistake by declaring an emergency on the Nov 3. This was the first time that a senior member of the Bush administration has questioned Musharraf’s decisions.

A few weeks back, Islamabad was awash with rumours that a wide-body aircraft had been flown in to whisk away ‘an important family’ to a foreign destination, possibly the dome-and-minaret-lined Istanbul. A few days later, Musharraf held a press conference and said he had no intention of resigning and would ‘live and die’ in Pakistan.

But, he added, if new laws stripped him of the (dictatorial) powers that he had assumed during the past eight years, he might leave office rather than be reduced to a ‘useless vegetable’. That was a clear broadside directed at the parliamentary system of checks and balances envisaged in the Constitution of 1973 under which the president is a titular head of state. Musharraf had made a similar comment early in his rule.

As cited by Ahmed Rashid in his remarkable new book, Descent into Chaos, he had said, “I am not power hungry. But I don’t believe in power sharing. I believe in unity of command. That is the army’s way of doing business.” The fact that no democracy in the world was governed through unity of command did not bother him in the least because Pakistan was unique and different.

True to form, a few days later the ex-army chief contradicted his statement about leaving office if parliament reduced his political powers. He threw the gauntlet and said he would only quit if it was clear to him that parliament would impeach him.

Such brash talk reveals that Musharraf has not changed an iota from the man who launched the foolhardy incursion into Kargil in the winter of 1999 and then, when things went awry and he was about to be held accountable for his actions in the fall, he overthrew the prime minister and had him arrested.

Ahmed Rashid cites a former army chief’s assessment of Musharraf: ‘a good tactician and a poor strategist’. Ironically, this fits the commando image that Musharraf has cultivated since day one.

Of course, Musharraf flatters himself into thinking that his decision making is on a par with that of Napoleon Bonaparte. He frequently draws inspiration from Napoleon’s maxim that two-thirds of every decision is based on analysis and one-third is a leap in the dark.

Musharraf has done his analysis and concluded that he won’t be impeached since the coalition government does not have the necessary two-thirds majority in the combined houses. But he also knows that the current political order is fraught with uncertainty and that is where he has leapt into the dark.

Yes, he has made a deal with Asif Zardari that drops all legal charges against him and, in return, presumably obtained a commitment to (a) delay indefinitely the restoration of the judges and (b) not pursue impeachment. But he also knows that Zardari is not the final arbiter of what happens on the political stage.

There is first of all the army that Musharraf no longer commands. His at-risk status is analogous to that of President Iskandar Mirza in October 1958 when he made Ayub, his army chief, the chief martial law administrator. Ayub himself became at risk in March 1969 when he asked Gen Yahya to declare martial law.

And then there is the pesky lawyers’ movement. Even though the long march did not culminate in a parliamentary sit-in that could have decided the fate of the judges, it sent a very strong and visible statement that reverberated throughout the globe, that the people of Pakistan wanted the parliamentarians to fulfil their electoral promise.

Until the core issues of judicial independence is addressed, one should expect to see more protests and long marches and possibly parliamentary sit-ins and wheel jam strikes.

Asif Zardari knows that without the lawyers’ movement, he would simply have been Mr Ten Per Cent and Musharraf would still have been occupying the office of the army chief, not just his residence.

It is unfortunate that some leaders of the PPP have taken to black-balling the lawyers’ movement. They are questioning the motives of the deposed judges and of the attorneys calling for their restoration. Some are seeking to discredit the movement by saying it includes people with a questionable pedigree.

Others are saying; don’t resort to agitation on the streets unless you wish to invite another coup. Still others are saying, stop raising the issue of restoring the judges because the restored judges will immediately go about invalidating Musharraf’s presidency, triggering political mayhem, annoying the White House, stopping American aid and cause an economic meltdown.

But the new Economic Survey tells us that the meltdown has already begun. Ties with the US are frayed and not just because of the confusion over Musharraf’s future role but because of the ham-fisted way in which the war on terror is being waged.

And as for the lawyers’ movement, it is not about the lawyers but about the restoration of the rule of law. So what if there are a few bad apples in the movement.

Every mass movement in history attracts its share of unsavoury characters. The mob that stormed the Bastille on July 14 and set off the French Revolution was no exception. But when the noble movements succeed, yesterday’s villains become tomorrow’s heroes.

Because of Musharraf’s refusal to step down voluntarily, the country is engaged in a costly power struggle. This could have been avoided if Musharraf had made the building of civilian political institutions a priority instead of dissembling about restoring genuine democracy. But hubris blinded him and he focused on extending his rule, using the war on terror as a convenient excuse.

The world has tired of his double dealing. Little wonder that a global poll of the world’s unpopular leaders puts Musharraf at the top of the heap, ahead of George W. Bush. Now that is no minor accomplishment.

The writer is an associate with the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford.

faruqui@pacbell.net

How Pakistan and India lost it

WHICH system is better for economic progress: democracy or dictatorship? In India, except for a brief period of Indira Gandhi’s ‘Emergency’ rule, there has been democracy throughout, a flawed democracy, to be sure, but democracy nevertheless.

Many Indians feel that this democracy has often come in the way of economic growth and that if we had more of the kind of discipline — and the use of the ‘danda’ — that comes with dictatorship, we would have done better.

I don’t agree. Look at countries that, after years of dictatorship and the danda, have turned to democracy: almost all the nations of South America, along with Spain and Portugal, not to forget the Soviet Union. They have all done far better economically under democracy.

More relevant to our region, however, are the ‘Asian Tigers’ — South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, even Malaysia. Except for brief periods of authoritarian rule, they prospered under democracy, though in Singapore’s case, one man, Lee Kuan Yew, brooked no opposition (yet his people were happy to let him run the city-state as he wanted, and he did a fantastic job, giving them a standard of living that matches the West).

But Pakistan and India interest me more. What provoked this piece is a book the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, USA — one of the world’s premier think-tanks — has just released.

Edited by Michael Kugelman and Robert Hathaway, and rather clumsily titled Hard Sell: Attaining Pakistani Competitiveness in Global Trade, it contains illuminating papers by some of Pakistan’s leading economists and policy-makers, such as Mirza Qamar Beg, Shahid Javed Burki, Parvez Hasan, Manzoor Ahmad, Shaghil Ahmed and Shahrukh Rafi Khan, as well as senior US officials who interacted with Pakistan, like Douglas Hartwick, Esperanza Gomez Jelalian and Edward Gresser.

Since its independence, Pakistan has had both democratic and military rule, though more of the latter. Yet, both types of regimes made the same blunders, with the Pakistan economy barely moving forward, while its population exploded. Over a quarter of the population remained below the poverty line.

The Bhuttos, father and daughter, as well as Nawaz Sharif, were just as big economic disasters as were dictators like Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. None of them had a clue on how to make their country progress faster. They were mainly busy holding on to power and fighting rivals, or confronting India; the standard of living of their people be damned.

Indira Gandhi was much the same, obsessed by power and innocent of economics. Both countries followed a policy of nationalising virtually every form of major economic activity except, mercifully, the agricultural sector, while foolishly trying to be ‘self-reliant’ by imposing heavy import duties on every consumer item to protect domestic industry, which as a result became inefficient, producing shoddy goods. The public sector, instead of looking after the public good, became inefficient and corrupt.

International trade, the main vehicle for the remarkable success of the ‘Asian Tigers’, was ignored by India and Pakistan, being considered by them for merely their balance of payments position. A regional trading association like Asean became a powerhouse while Saarc was a non-starter.

The book contains an illuminating table showing that the combined world market share of China and Hong Kong’s manufactured exports in 2005 was over 13 per cent, while that of South Korea was also an impressive 3.5 per cent. And Pakistan’s market share? Only 0.18 per cent! Even India’s was an abysmal 0.95 per cent.

Almost a third of Pakistan’s exports still go to the US and 80 per cent of these exports consist of textiles of one kind or another. Manufactured goods hardly figure at all. This is crazy, lopsided economics.

Shahid Javed Burki shows how in the late 1940s, both India and Pakistan were linked by close economic ties, with half of Pakistan’s exports being bought by India and two-thirds of Pakistan’s imports coming from India. Pakistan supplied food grains to India, since the British had made what is now Pakistan the granary of the subcontinent, by digging canals and bringing virgin lands in Punjab and Sindh under cultivation. Cotton was also successfully grown in this region, feeding the textile mills of Gujarat (India) and Bombay.

It was a symbiotic two-way trade that benefited both nations. Then, in 1949, a colossal mistake was made: trade relations between the two countries were virtually terminated. Both countries were equally to blame, and both suffered, but Pakistan more so.

The Cold War, and the politics that came with it, took over. Economics occupied the back seat. Pakistan veered towards the USA, India moved in the direction of the Soviet Union. A hostile confrontation began, culminating in two wars, 1965 and 1971. Pakistan became obsessed by Kashmir and India, later, by “cross-border terrorism”.

India woke up in 1991, when faced by a foreign exchange crisis and was forced to liberalise its economy. It was fortunate to have a technocrat like Dr Manmohan Singh (now the prime minister) at its economic helm. Since then, India’s GDP has grown by a healthy eight to nine per cent annually. Pakistan’s wake-up call came ten years later and its economy, it was claimed by the government, was growing by around seven per cent a year.

Both nations can do better, provided they give priority to economics over politics. In all fairness it must be admitted that they are finally beginning to do this. Kashmir is no longer such an obsession in Pakistan and there is a realisation in India that the terrorist challenge it faces — Pakistan faces it, too — does not entirely originate from Islamabad. The enemy is also within.

But above all, mutually beneficial trade between the two countries must be opened up and enlarged. As the ‘Asian Tigers’ showed so convincingly, that is the key to economic success.

There is a lesson that India offers. Take just one area: India’s success in information technology (IT) and outsourcing. There is no reason why Pakistan cannot replicate this, as it has, like India, the huge asset of an English-speaking core of educated youngsters.

India’s success was based on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) that it set up all over the country. When the IT boom took place graduates from these institutes were up and ready to exploit it. India could help Pakistan set up similar institutes.

For too long have Indian and Pakistani leaders looked upon each other with suspicion and hostility, concerned only with maintaining their power. It is time they started looking at the welfare of their people.

The writer is a former editor of The Reader’s Digest and Indian Express.

singh.84@hotmail.com

New energy order

BY bringing together the world’s major oil producers and consumers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia marked a turning point in the negotiations for a new global energy order that is emerging under the weight of soaring oil prices, which are driven by factors other than supply and demand.

“It could be asked whether the 140 dollars per barrel price can be negotiated between Opec (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), the new actor, which is global capital, and the governments of the Group of Eight (industrial powers),” Víctor Poleo, a Venezuelan professor of graduate studies in the oil economy, commented to IPS.

On Thursday, crude oil prices broke through the 140-dollar a barrel barrier for the first time. The price of oil “can no longer be dictated by Opec, because a significant portion of the price would seem to obey market laws that are not its own,” said Poleo.

Saudi Arabia perceives “the beginning of a transition stage to a new power order in the world energy system,” he added. In Poleo’s view, “the global energy system is witnessing the emergence of a new order. In the old one, under Opec, the level of prices hovered around 70 dollars a barrel; in the new system, the increase is of the same magnitude,” and the decisions taken by Saudi Arabia “form part of the new talks.”

The informal June 22 meeting of representatives of governments and the major oil companies in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah called for more investment in crude production, as well as greater transparency in oil markets, where futures trading is helping to drive prices up. Producer and consumer nations and companies will meet again in Madrid next week, at the 19th World Petroleum Congress, and in late 2008 in London.

Spain’s Minister of Trade and Industry Miguel Sebastián said that “after enjoying 15 years of low prices, our economies have become addicted to oil, and the world is not prepared for the challenge of a steady rise in prices.” Opec is made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, which account for over 75 per cent of global proven oil reserves.

Referring to the Jeddah meet, the Caracas newspaper El Nacional pointed out that the “father of Opec”, Venezuelan lawyer Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, proposed half a century ago the creation of an organisation of producers and consumers that would regulate the world oil market.

The corporations that controlled the oil business, known back then as the “seven sisters”, scorned the proposal, and Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela went on to found Opec in 1960 in Baghdad.

At the time, Venezuela was the world’s leading oil exporter, a position that was taken over and has been held for decades by Saudi Arabia, which sent from Jeddah a message to its fellow Opec members that it will not favour a rise in prices, as indicated by its unilateral decision to boost output from 9.5 to 9.7 million barrels a day as of July.

Meanwhile, Shokri Ghanem, the head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation, said his country was studying the possibility of cutting output to protest a bill under debate in the US Congress that would empower the Justice Department to sue Opec members for limiting oil supplies.

Libya is also fighting a US law that allows the families of victims of state-sponsored terrorism to go to court and seek the seizure, as punitive damages and compensation, of any asset owned by the terrorist-sponsoring country, or of money from those governments that is held by US companies doing business with them. These remarks pushed prices up to a record high above 142 dollars a barrel by Friday.

Opec Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri said the organisation planned to invest 160 billion dollars over the next five years to raise production by five million barrels a day. The members presently pump 32 million barrels a day, while global demand amounts to 86 million barrels.

US economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics, wrote earlier this month that “Only new patterns of consumption and production — a new economic model — can address that most fundamental resource problem. “Two factors set off today’s crisis: the Iraq war contributed to the run up in oil prices, while biofuels have meant that food and energy markets are increasingly integrated,” he added.

The big oil companies, in the meantime, are raking in tens of billions of dollars each. With these profits, said Poleo, global capital is financing its positioning with regard to the shifts occurring in the global energy scenario. The price bubble continues to swell, to the benefit of these interests, although analysts say oil prices will inevitably come down.

—IPS News