Shahbaz still waiting for a signal

EVER since Shahbaz Sharif arrived in New York, Pakistan Muslim League circles have been abuzz with speculation that a deal between the Sharif family and the Jamali government is in the offing for their return to Pakistan. In public gatherings and private meetings, Mr Sharif has denied any deals with the government for his return. “Why should there be any deals? It’s my homeland, my country, my people. It’s my birthright to return home,” he stresses.

But he looks and sounds like a desperate man who longs to return to Punjab, which he ran for some three years. He has been extraordinarily circumspect in critcizing the military government or Gen Pervez Musharraf, perhaps fearing repercussions for his family at home or just that he has become more prudent.

After his recovery from the operation for which Mr Shahbaz Sharif had come to the US, he has become more wistful. Although he has been much in demand at various public and private meetings of the PML-N in which most speakers lambast the military government, Mr Sharif speaks of reconciliation and to let bygone be bygone. Nevertheless, exposure to the people, which was apparently absent in Riyadh, has made Mr Sharif’s longing to get back into the thick of things back home more pronounced.

While conceding a deal between his family and the Saudi royal family, whom he continues to profusely thank for their hospitality, he claims that he agreed to such a deal under “emotional pressure”.

“If the Pakistani government does not object to my return, the Saudis would not say anything, he said in an interview with Dawn last month.

But there lies the rub, following his interview, no one from the Pakistan government has contacted him in New York or his family members living in Pakistan.

Perhaps Mr Sharif needs some sort of an affirmation whether he can return without repercussions or else he has to get ready for such repercussions when he returns. When his former friend and a party loyalist Shaikh Rashid, who jumped off the PML-N bandwagon to ride with the PML-Q came to New York as information minister, the media was rife with rumours of a meeting between the two. But it did not happen.

Although in subsequent conversations, Mr Sharif has reiterated his determination to return home — even if he is arrested — as soon as his doctors give him the green light, it still looks as if he is waiting for some sort of an agreement with the Jamali government.

It could be a long wait.

When in Pakistan last month among other more mundane topics of concern one noticed was Pakistan International Airlines inaugural flight to Chicago for which cabinet ministers and members of parliament had recommended hordes of friends and cohorts to be considered for an expense-paid junket. But the good news was that PIA’s chairman and Managing Director, Ahmed Saeed, nipped the whole inaugural tamasha in the bud, noting: “This way we’ll be having inaugural flights all year long.”

While one must applaud the PIA chief for taking a bold decision under much pressure, thereby saving the airline a packet of money, one needs to bring into the focus the case in New York of employee’s benefits wherein most of the local employees have sued the airline for going back on a 1974 agreement.

While PIA’s spokesman in new York maintained that the largely generous severance package was offered in the good old days when the airline was running in profit, the new contract offered to the employees is within the laws of the land and compares in benefits offered to employees with most American carriers.

But the lawyers representing the employees say that they have a solid case and would win the court battle which could last years. In such a case, both the airline and the employees would suffer. And if at the end of it the airline loses the court case, it could end up paying lawyers and courts fees in hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

It would be prudent for the PIA chairman to send someone over to reach a compromise over the benefits formula without losing time as it will save the airline some money which it badly needs.

Besides, there is speculation here that New York state’s labour Department is looking into the case, on intervention from employees’ lawyers and it may rule on the case, possibly in the employees’ favour, and then enjoin them in the case in the court of law.

Iraq unlikely to prove a democracy model for oil-rich states

WASHINGTON: With UN sanctions lifted, Iraq is poised to start exporting crude by mid-June and start using its oil wealth — the world’s second largest reserves — to bankroll a modern, democratic society.

Or so American policymakers say.

In reality, there’s hardly a democracy to be found among the world’s oil-rich states, where easy money offers an escape from the sometimes messy work of creating a diversified economy and self-sufficient middle class.

An exception is Norway and another is the state of Alaska, both of which successfully redistribute a substantial share of their oil bounty directly to their citizens. But both models emerged from existing democracies in already wealthy societies, and hardly offer a ready application to war-torn Iraq, where reconstruction costs could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

A third possible model is an experiment, fostered by the World Bank, in the tiny African country of Chad, where it is providing the funds for a pipeline. Under the bank’s financing agreement, 80 per cent of the oil revenue is dedicated to education, health and social services, rural development, infrastructure and environmental and water management.

The rest, in specific proportions, will go to a “future generations” trust, the oil producing area for regional development and pressing governmental needs.

Whether any of these plans can be applied to Iraq is no more than conjecture.

“We don’t have any good models of how oil-rich developing countries should manage their oil funds,” said Michael L. Ross, a political science professor at UCLA who studies the issue. “Most have squandered their oil wealth on patronage and corruption, and often used it to build up military forces.

“It’s really breaking new ground.”

The talk of Washington is Alaska’s Permanent Fund, created in the 1970s during the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to ensure that the oil windfall would be invested, the principal untouched, and a portion of the revenues distributed annually to every Alaskan. Last year, each man, woman and child received a check for $1,540.76. The fund has grown to more than $20 billion and has generated at least that amount in net income.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate panel recently that the Alaska concept is under consideration for use in Iraq, noting that officials want to make sure a portion of the Iraqi oil revenue “goes directly to the people, so that they can make a choice as to where they want the money to go.”

Terry Lynn Karl, a Stanford University political scientist and author of the book, “Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States,” said Alaska’s experience is irrelevant to the current situation in Iraq.

“Alaska,” she said, “is a state of the United States, not a country, so the notion that you could use a small unpopulated state as a model for Iraq is frankly ludicrous. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s fruit and non- fruit.”

Among national oil industries, Norway is most often held up as the world’s sole oil-rich democracy that has so far avoided corruption.

In 1990, the country set up a state fund to manage the oil revenues and ensure pensions for an aging population.

Each year, the legislature deposits the net oil revenues in the fund after the non-oil budget deficit has been covered, and the entire fund is invested abroad to keep financial decisions free of home-grown political considerations and hedge against downturns in domestic industries. The government conservatively predicts that the fund will represent more than 130 to 150 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product within 20 years.

The Washington-based Open Society Institute, which studied the various models, cautions that Norway’s fund was introduced in a wealthy, sparsely populated country with a firmly established democracy and a diverse economy — suggesting that it may not function as well in less developed countries.

“There was already someone who knew how to do audits and controls, there was already transparency, a pre-existing democracy, civil service and controls over any possible forms of corruption,” said Adams.

In Iraq, with food, water, medicine and electricity shortages still making a nightmare of everyday life, and no democratic elections on the horizon, there is little likelihood that Iraqis will design an oil-revenue management system that directly benefits the citizenry anytime soon, experts say.

They point to cautionary lessons from around the world, where almost invariably oil wealth has proved to be a curse — “the excrement of the devil,” former Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo said a quarter century ago.

Oil-rich states that have no need to tax their people are, in turn, unaccountable to them, political analysts say.

“The citizens end up depending on the state for their livelihood and well- being rather than themselves,” said James F. Dobbins, director for International Security at the Rand Corporation.

“The state uses it to bolster their own power and (that of) the privileged elite. It leads to a demoralized, unenterprising citizenry that’s passive and uninvolved in decision-making and unused to taking responsibility for their own lives.”

Consider Nigeria, the fifth largest oil exporter to the United States. The country has received several hundred billion dollars in oil revenues over the past 30 years, but per capita income in Nigeria today is lower than it was in 1970, and the country has been run by a military dictatorship for most of that time, Ross of UCLA said. A recent transition to democracy in the late 1990s has been hampered by civil strife in the oil-rich part of the country.

“The government has never been able to politically manage all the oil revenue that comes in,” he said. “It gets quickly divided up among different factions and politicians and some goes into corruption and it’s led to this kind of instability.”

Iraq could privatize its oil industry, but that could set off ethnic fighting among Shias, Kurds and Turkomen, who live in the oil-rich areas — or end up enriching a handful of corrupt Iraqis, just as a small group of “oligarchs” benefited from the break-up of the oil industry in the former Soviet Union.

“The key issue,” Karl said, “is not what model to follow. It is absolute and total transparency in the management of the oil industry itself, in the running of the industry, in raising the revenues and on the expenditure end.”

Most worrisome, she said, is that the United States, as an occupying power, has secretly awarded contracts in Iraq to Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, without offering them for competitive bidding. The contracts are for both troop support and to repair and operate oil wells.

This has already caused an outcry, not only because of the manner in which the contracts were awarded, but also because of the close ties between the US government and Halliburton, a company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“If you think about that for a minute, you have a private US-based company managing the central resource of a country that is being occupied in which the former CEO is the vice president of the occupying power,” she said. “If you are not transparent, if everything is not totally open and monitored and audited every step of the way, this is a formula for huge grievances in the future.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post/The Baltimore Sun.

Uncertainty about time-frame for rebuilding

THERE seems to be no point in commenting on a team that has already been selected. The deed is done. There is the danger, however that silence may be interpreted as approval or disapproval. I am more interested in the criteria that is being applied rather than individuals who are lucky to have been picked or unlucky to have missed the boat.

There seems to be some uncertainty about the time-frame for rebuilding. Is the World Cup 2007 the chosen objective? But that is four years away and does this mean that there will be some lesser purpose to the cricket we will be playing until then, including Test matches?

The World Cup may be cricket’s most glittering prize because it has been hyped up and become a marketing bonanza but when all is said and done, it has become a sponsored commercial carnival and even the ICC has become subservient to market-forces.

I think we should not commit all our energies to a distant future at the expense of the present. As they say, “take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.”

Rebuilding is not an endless process and the Pakistan team must begin to have a settled look because it has a busy programme ahead of it.

At the moment, the batting is a matter of utmost concern and yet Inzamam-ul-Haq is still being made to atone for his sins of poor form in the World Cup 2003. Worse, Abdul Razzaq has been dropped, one of the best utility-players in the world and in a modest sort of way was one of the players who did make useful contributions in the Sri Lanka triangular. We are told that he looked ‘fatigued’. I watched all the matches on television and he had looked sprightly enough to me.

Razzaq is still young in years though he may old in experience. Has experience become a liability along with seniority? Azhar Mahmood has been recalled, a good selection but we are told he is doing well for the county he is playing for. So too is Saqlain Mushtaq.

Imran Nazir has been brought back, apparently on public demand. I am not aware of any poll having been taken. I am not opposed to his selection but he should have been in the squad for the Sri Lanka triangular. He hasn’t blazed a trail since the team returned from Sri Lanka.

Faisal Iqbal was made to bat at number three whereas he is clearly a middle order batsman. He may be Javed Miandad’s nephew but surely that is not a disqualification? A lot of investment has been made in him. He should not have been discarded so lightly.

When the ‘seniors’ had been ‘rested’ we had been asked to be patient. How many changes have been made since the new-look team took the field in Sharjah? When you are selected to play for your country, it is assumed that you are no longer an intern getting on-the job training.

It should be made damned difficult to get a Pakistan cap but once awarded it, the player is entitled to a long run. He should not deemed to be travelling hopefully, he should deemed to have arrived. The team should settle into a combination because it is the team that is being rebuilt. That’s the blue-print we should be working with.

The PCB has decided to take up the matter of seeming double-standard or lack on consistency in the performance of match referees. While Shoaib Akhtar was banned for two matches on somewhat flimsy evidence of ball-tampering, Glenn McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan got away with blue murder for their acrimonious slanging-match in full view of the public and millions of television viewers.

I am delighted that the PCB has decided to hold the ICC to account. I think we need to send a clear message that Pakistan cannot be kicked around. And while the going is good, we might also ask the ICC to have another look at their panel of elite umpires. The umpires too need rest and most of them are not young men and all this travelling leaves them jet-lagged and they beginning to make mistakes, human error admittedly, but errors all the same.

I was not able to attend the function of Javed Miandad’s book-launch but he came to see me after the function. He and I go back many years. I am an unashamed fan.

I knew that Javed was a great batsman. I found out too that he was a caring person. I look forward to reading his book as I look forward to his turning around the Pakistan team and making it once again into a formidable unit as the coach of the team. The young players should consider themselves lucky that they have a teacher of his vast experience.

When Miandad first arrived on the cricket scene, Abdul Hafeez Kardar had described him as “the find of the decade.” He went on to become more than. When he came to see me, I asked him whether he saw a Javed Miandad in the present crop of youngsters? He did not answer me but said, instead, that even when he was at his prime, he was still learning. There’s message in this, surely.