Shoguns of Pakistan versus parties

THE Legal Framework Order, 2002, has put political parties in a new situation, with a direct bearing on their election strategy. Before the Order came into being, the parties had generally thought, as evident from their statements etc, that the bread and butter issue would dominate their poll campaign, though they had also viewed foreign policy and constitutional matters as of great significance.

Now the parties are rethinking their strategies and manifestos. Many would like to focus on constitutional amendments because, according to them, the regime had no authority to introduce them, while the bread and butter issue will remain as alive as ever.

The reincarnation of the draconian and infamous Article 58- 2(b) plus the making National Security Council part of the Constitution, on the pretext of maintaining the so-called checks and balances in total disregard of the will of the people, has put the parties in a quandary.

The way Gen Pervez Musharraf has tried to make the changes part of the Constitution speaks of the long-term objectives of the shoguns of Pakistan, and the helplessness of the parties which have mostly served as a Trojan horse for the men in uniform.

Unfortunately, the parties or their leaders are not courageous enough to admit that during their short and unstable stints they had no free hand in managing all the affairs of the country. That rules of the game for them were settled by the so-called establishment.

For the parties the message is loud and clear — might is right. At least one must give the devil his due by appreciating his openness in admitting the fact that military must have a role to govern the country from the front. Perhaps the GHQ is not sure of the future proxies yet.

Gen Musharraf was right when he stressed the need for checks and balances between the various organs of the state. But what he announced was tantamount to checkmating the parties before they even entered the arena. In the amendments one clearly sees how he would react when the underdog prime minister would even think of removing any of the services chiefs. One knows the fate of the late Mohammad Khan Junejo. Mainstream parties say it would be naive to expect the representatives of the three services to accept any decision of a civilian prime minister which went against them. So, it would be wrong to assume that the latest changes to the Constitution would create a balance of power. In fact, what Gen Musharraf communicated at his latest press conference is: take it or leave it, the military is here to stay for a long time. If anybody tries to change that paradigm, he would be taken to task and would be condemned as corrupt, a traitor, etc., and would be forced to leave the country, they say.

The 8th Amendment was a time-bomb ticking in the body politic of Pakistan. It was placed in the Constitution by a dictator who was supported by fanaticism and, on having failed to impose his pseudo-Islamic agenda on the people, needed an instrument to repress the representative political forces whenever democracy started to flourish. Gen Zia died having had a chance to use the 8th Amendment only once and although his legacy was defeated in the elections of 1988, the forces that he nurtured and represented went underground, infiltrating all sections of society and all institutions, including political parties. Their agenda is clear. They believe that only fanatics like them have the right to rule the country.

Politicians believe that the 8th Amendment, which was done away with, had opened the floodgate for political opportunists. With the revival of 58(2) (b) the president has become the de facto prime minister, amending election laws at will, openly organizing and encouraging the king’s party, and laying the groundwork for a hung parliament.

They say a hung parliament will cause economic disruption only and bring the political system to the point of collapse. This is exactly what the extremists want.

Perhaps the shoguns will coast home safely this time also because, unfortunately, parties do not have the capacity to put a formidable challenge, despite their claim to represent the teeming millions, who are denied of basic amenities to keep the men in uniform in comfort.

It is to be seen whether the emerging political forces and the old guard work together for permanently removing the threat of military interventions and in assuming real power for the people or they would be arrayed against each other and spoil the broth, to the advantage of the Bonapartists.

It has become vital not only to radically transform the relationship between the state and society but also to find a sustainable basis for national security.

Perhaps the policy of heavy reliance on foreign resource mobilization by successive governments has marginalized the elected representatives from the task of shaping their own destiny, which is evident from the fact that the IMF conditionalities, imposed upon elected governments by successive care-taker governments, have virtually acted as the national budgets for successive years, which left little room for manoeuvring by elected governments to implement the agenda on which they received the mandate of the people.

The parties believe that a well-calculated, malicious and defamatory campaign was launched by the establishment through the electronic and the print media against politics, political parties and politicians. Politics was declared anathema for our people, political parties as unsuitable for our civil society, and politicians the cause of all evils. Parliamentary democracy was called “sham democracy” and criticized as inconsonant to our culture and heritage.

In the name of “checks and balances” the proposed package entrusts the president with immense powers over the elected the prime minister, and places parliament in a subservient position which, according to the Constitution, is a sovereign body. In other words, the proposed amendment seeks to institutionalize dictatorship and change the status of parliament from a sovereign to an irrelevant institution, the politicians maintain.

Such presidential powers will ultimately lead to a tussle with parliament even if the elections are rigged and a pliant parliament is formed. It would lead to both domestic and regional instability.

According to them, the NSC is against the spirit of parliamentary democracy and aims at legitimizing the army’s interference in the politics. All major parties say the proposed package is a prescription to ‘shame democracy.’

Former Zeal Pak workers left high & dry

THE former employees of the Zeal Pak Cement Factory have been on hunger strike for over a month at the press club here but it is distressing that no government or civil society representative has so far felt any need to come to their rescue.

According to the record, 587 employees were retrenched or retired under an agreement signed between the then CBA union and the factory management on Dec 10, 1999. The employees were offered a golden handshake and living quarters spread over 60 acres as quid pro quo for all the outstanding dues. The resignation letters which the employees signed or were made to sign clearly envisaged that these would become effective after full and final payment of all the legal dues, including gratuity and provident fund. The set-off date was fixed as Jan 31, 2000.

Of the total employees affected by the deal, about 250 have still not been paid their dues. It is now 32 months that they have been trying unsuccessfully to get back their hard-earned money. Some of them are now even dead. These employees feel cheated because the cheques issued to them under the deal were dishonoured. This correspondent has obtained copies of 242 such cheques.

To say the least, the management and the CBA union appear to have let down these employees but there is no one to question them, why this breach of trust?

The management has claimed that it is not responsible for making any payment to the retrenched workers because it paid all the amount to the CBA union which was responsible for making the payment to the workers. It is true that moral responsibility lies with the union but the legal position is quite different. Under the payment of Wages Act 1936, the management, and not the CBA, is responsible for making payment of legal dues through coin / currency and not through land etc and no agreement can supersede the law of the land.

The additional director of labour, Hyderabad region, in his written report to the Sindh labour director, vide letter No. ADL/Con/Hyd/2002 /217 dated March 13, 2002, states: “The attorneys (representatives of the management and the CBA union) arranged to make payment to about 50 per cent of the total employees whereas about 200-250 employees are still running from pillar to post for payment of their legal dues under golden handshake, and facing starvation”.

The additional director also makes the legal position abundantly clear in his report. He states: “This office is of the view that it is the management which is responsible for paying the legal dues to the workers, and an agreement cannot diminish the rights of the employee and absolve the management from payment of dues under the golden handshake”. He then advised the affected employees to file before the authority their claims under Wages Act 1936.

The question that arises here is, what is the responsibility of the labour department? Should it not pursue the case to its logical end instead of giving a piece of advice here and a piece of advice there? One is reminded of Marie Antoinette’s innocent utterance to the hungry protesting French public asking for bread. “Why don’t they eat cake if there is no bread”. But then she was a queen and knew nothing as to what was happening in her country, but the labour department knows that the poor workers of Zeal Pak Cement Factory have been starving for the last 32 months.

Where they will get money from to enter into litigation with the powerful owner of the factory who is in a position to hire the services of the best lawyer in the field. The government alone can and must come to the rescue of these starving workers by announcing in unequivocal terms that their outstanding legal dues should be paid by such and such date.

The issue is not only that of Rs60 million outstanding dues of 250-odd workers (golden handshake amount), there is also the question of Rs130 million of provident fund for which the workers have been agitating for the last over one month. They claim this money has been misappropriated by the trustee. The minimum the authorities should do is to investigate into these written allegations.

Pakistan have to raise game in Nairobi

THE ICC was meant to be a regulatory body, the game’s supremo. It was never intended that it should itself go into marketing. It is, as if, a civil aviation authority decides to float its own commercial airline. It was bad enough that the ICC should have set up a private detective agency by way of an Anti-Corruption Unit to combat match-fixing, a vote of no-confidence in the police of the respective cricket playing nations, will it be long before the ICC goes into the business of manufacturing cricket equipment?

I recall, with some horror, ICC’s plans to take cricket to Disneyland. Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya was then at the helm of the ICC and there was much talk of the globalization of the game. Globalization was not then the ‘dirty’ word it has now become. The world may have become a global-village but the heads of the village are the same, old multinationals and the villagers themselves the cheap-labour work-force.

It is necessary to provide this background so that the contract row can be put into perspective. However, it is resolved, one fact has emerged that the cricket world is a shadowy one and the cricket boards have been less than open with the players. The contracts that they have been asked to sign and which affect their livelihood were sprung on the players and there was an innuendo of coercion.

When the cricket boards signed on board the merchant-ship of the ICC, were they unaware that many of the players would be affected by the ‘ambush’ marketing clause? It is no secret that the players have sponsors of their own and, of all persons, Mr Dalmiya who now heads the BCCI, should have known this and being a businessman, should have seen that there would have been a conflict of interest in the ICC contracts. Good management is about preventing fires and not about putting them out when they have started.

Sunil Gavaskar said on ESPN that the main problem was that the Indian players did not have an Association and in his loud-thinking recommended that the subcontinent players should get together and form a collective-bargaining association. This is all very well but in the impasse created by the Indian government in not allowing the Indian team to play against Pakistan, the Indian players have remained silent.

Not a word of support for the Pakistan players who have been financially affected because there is no cricket between the two countries. On the contrary, people like Kapil Dev have been at the forefront of backing the Indian government’s boycott of cricket with Pakistan nor have they said a word about the refusal of countries like Australia to tour Pakistan.

All this has seriously hurt the finances of the PCB and is bound to affect the earnings of the Pakistan players. Some show of solidarity with Pakistan cricket would have been welcome. But this is a different matter but it does create road-blocks in finding a common cause.

But it is a matter of principle and I have backed the players in the present row. There is one aspect that I find intriguing. There seems to be some resentment in our psyche that cricket stars should be making so much money, as if, by doing so they are defiling the game and are being unpatriotic in the bargain. We don’t seem to resent lawyers and doctors and accountants making money. Somehow, we feel that because cricketers represent the country that should be honour enough. In our heart of hearts, we have not accepted that cricket is a profession.

When the question of paying Test cricketers match fees first came up in Pakistan, this was many many years ago, the then Pakistan cricket board was headed by a civil servant and in a column I had asked him whether as a civil servant he drew a salary? If Sachin Tendulkar has become a very rich man, it is because he has cashed in on his talent, he hasn’t robbed a bank or received back-handers for awarding government contracts.

While making money, Tendulkar gives the cricket public a great deal of joy. I know of many who make fortunes but give no joy at all to anybody except themselves. The cricket boards should back their players against the ICC’s bid to go into business for itself. The ICC contract is bad in law and is a violation of the right of players to earn a living. The ICC is not a business concern.

The Australians have named a full strength team for the Test series against Pakistan to be played at, not one, but two neutral venues, Colombo and Sharjah. The Waugh brothers are included and Steve Waugh retains the captaincy. On paper, it is a terrific side and it should be a very good series.

Obviously, we are disappointed that the home series will be played away from home and we will have to watch it on television. One way of compensating the cricket public in Pakistan is for Pakistan to win the series. But in order to do so, Pakistan will have to match Australia in mental toughness.

The Australians play their cricket hard and they play to win. But before Pakistan takes on Australia in a Test series, there is the triangular in Nairobi and Pakistan will be up against Australia. All one can say is that Pakistan will have to raise their game several notches.

The way that Pakistan played at Morocco will not do. Pakistan will be strengthened by the return of Shoaib Akhtar but it was not Pakistan’s bowling that was wanting in Morocco. It was the batting and the key, one feels, will be Inzamam-ul-Haq. It is important that big man runs into form. And one hopes that this time Saeed Anwar will not be dropped to make way for Shoaib Malik.

The Australians will not allow Imran Nazir the freedom he needs and he will have to devise means to break free. It will be a supreme Test for him, a choice between abandon and a more circumspect shot selection. No one questions his talent.