Delay no more

NOW that all the leading political parties have called for convening the newly elected federal and provincial assemblies into session without further delay, it is important for the government and the Election Commission to sort things out at their end and announce the dates for the assembly meetings. Twenty-one days have passed since the general election, but the five assemblies have not met yet. Final results in some constituencies have not been announced yet and certain legal hitches are said to be delaying the process. But these technicalities should not be allowed to stand in the way of assembly sessions. In Islamabad on Tuesday, the PPPP, PML(Q), the National Alliance and the MMA came together to unanimously demand the holding of the session “immediately.” They also pledged that they would not create any deadlock in parliament. This being so, there is no reason why the assemblies should not be convened.

On Tuesday, President Musharraf said his administration was not responsible for the delay in calling assembly sessions. If this is so, who or what then is causing all this delay? That the Election Commission or the government cannot call the sessions for some technical reasons people will find hard to believe. As it is, the government has shown no inhibitions about issuing a plethora of ordinances to safeguard its political or other perceived or expedient interests. It has been ruling with ordinances now for the last three years and with a frequency that is simply stupefying. In fact, hardly a day passes without a new one being promulgated to amend some law that the government finds inconvenient, and the ordinance factory has been working particularly overtime since the October 10 elections. Some of the ordinances have disfigured the Constitution, some were person-specific, and some were designed to tighten the army’s hold on the civilian government. There were a couple of good ordinances also — like those abolishing the separate electorates, introducing reserved seats for women and minorities and raising the number of seats in all the assemblies. But, on the whole, the government has amply demonstrated its proclivity not to let any legal lacunae stand in the way of whatever it wants. If in the present case some legal ambiguities or constraints are in the way of assembly sessions, surely the government can promulgate one more ordinance to amend a particular law or remove a technical hitch — to get the process of the transfer of power moving. In this case at least, the motive would not be questioned, for that would hasten the process of government formation at the centre and in the provinces as well as for the newly elected regimes to take charge and get down to the business of governance.

The delay is causing a lot of confusion and giving rise to misgivings. Large sections of the people believe that the delay is due to one obvious reason — to give time to the PML(Q) to garner support for a parliamentary majority. Independents must be wooed, cajoled or otherwise won over to fall in line with the government-favoured party. However, now that the PML(Q) is among those signing the six-point statement on Tuesday, little ground remains to prolong a situation fraught with political and legal complications.

There is need now for the government to grasp the issue in its totality. The assemblies must meet to carry the constitutional process forward. If there are any legal or technical constraints, and if the EC feels handicapped by some bottlenecks, the government should remove them. The people’s representatives have with one voice called for the assemblies to meet. It is time the government listened to them.

The ‘fixing-up’ syndrome

A LAHORE surgeon was whisked away by security personnel earlier this month, allegedly for questioning about possible links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Dr Amir Aziz’s whereabouts and the precise reasons why he is being held without being produced in court still remain a mystery, despite widespread demands for his release. Now we have reports of a leading member of the PML(N), Mr Siddiqul Farooq, being taken away, belaboured and left in a Havelian suburb. He has charged that he was hijacked by men belonging to Inter-Services Intelligence. The government has denied the allegation and says it had no hand in the matter. A day before this happened, Mr Farooq had accused Federal Railways Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired general and former ISI chief, of wrongdoing in leasing out railway land. The minister has refuted the allegation, and said he would sue Mr Farooq for defamation. Was, in the meantime, a little “fixing-up” by hounds of his old set-up considered appropriate?

The truth will be known only if Mr Farooq lodges a formal complaint about his ordeal or the government orders a judicial inquiry into the incident. Mr Farooq’s charges become believable because we have a long history of the use of illegal and strong-arm tactics by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Many journalists who have criticized government functionaries have run into unexplained visitations and been threatened and accosted by plainclothesmen. Such intimidatory practices have been resorted to by both political and military governments and have become so commonplace that when a new incident takes place, it gets publicity for a day or two, and then fades away from newspaper columns and public memory. But such brazen violations of fundamental rights take place in a society that does not respect the rule of law, and the more they are ignored or brushed under the carpet, the greater the danger of sliding further away from civilized norms of conduct.

“Lula’s” victory

FORMER trade union leader Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s victory in presidential elections marks a new chapter in Brazilian politics. He becomes the first president identified with a left-wing platform since Joao Goulart, who was overthrown in a 1964 military coup widely believed to have been backed by the United States. In his election campaign, Mr Inacio da Silva promised that his Workers Party would double the minimum wage, create 10 million jobs and provide more aid to the poor. With over 50 million Brazilians said to be living in poverty, Mr da Silva’s platform inevitably attracted wide support. At stake is the so-called Washington Consensus developed by two-term president Fedinanco Enrique Cardoso, a set of policies based on removing trade and capital flow barriers, privatizing state enterprises and enforcing fiscal austerity.

Mr da Silva has moved rightwards to strike a compromise with business interests, as reflected in his choice for vice-president, Jose Alencar, described as Brazil’s wealthiest textile magnate and leader of both a right-wing party and an evangelical church. Many Brazilian industrialists and landowners oppose Washington’s free market policies, saying that these open up Brazil to US capital but provide no market for Brazilian goods. Left-right collaboration has been possible because of hard-headed agreements on points such as this. But after Cuba and Venezuela, the US now has another country in what it considers its backyard with a left-leaning government in power. Some discomfiture in Washington is inevitable.