New faces, old script?

The late prime minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, while on tour in the Philippines, declared that democracy in Pakistan had taken deep roots under General Zia and the Constitution could no longer be violated.

When he arrived back home the next day, he found his luggage at the railway station. Zafarullah Jamali also made similar sounds and tried to please his boss, only to receive marching orders within a year and a half.

Enter Shaukat Aziz with a trumpeted landslide election victory from two widely apart constituencies, in one of which they tried to blow him up and in the other no one has seen his face. Not only this, but the handling of these elections was so lacking in expertise and finesse that he will carry the stigma of rigging wherever he goes.

How long he is going to last is not difficult to surmise, particularly when we are told that frequent sackings of prime ministers is good democratic dispensation.

But the most significant factor of the change is that Shaukat Aziz is the third prime minister to surface in less than two years while Choudhry Shujaat is the first prime minister to complete his term even though a comically short one. Apart from the fact that these matters may enter the Guinness Book of Records, no greater importance can be given to the reshuffle.

Although the usual platitudes and promises have already been made, such hackneyed utterances by the new prime minister do not impress the people who have heard them all ad nauseam.

There is also the awareness that Shaukat Aziz has already held the most important portfolio for five years which was sufficient time to have made rivers of milk and honey flow, instead of promising them for the future. Nevertheless, he seems to be a competent man who they say is also a good person which there is no cause to doubt. But on the achievement side there is very little to boast about and many feel that even that has been the consequence of 9/11 coming at a very heavy cost to the security and stability of the country.

The set-up being the same as before, the change of prime minister has to be a change of face only. He has no space to manoeuvre and show his skills. It is no use analyzing the scenario in which the last straw is the total lack of security of life even for the highest functionaries while the people are the hapless victims of the painful status quo.

The question is: can Shaukat Aziz steer the sinking ship of state through the turbulent seas and bring it safely ashore? He could if he had a rapport with the people and enjoyed their confidence and support, but unfortunately such is not the case.

The rulers have completely ignored the 140 million people of Pakistan in the fanciful belief that since all is well in Islamabad there is no cause for concern, even though the people are out in the streets today as never before.

One only has to see the pictures in the local news papers to realize that there is a virtual state of revolt in the country over a multitude of problems and bad governance.

Shaukat Aziz is faced with the task of propping up a state the supporting pillars of which have collapsed. The judiciary dispenses nothing but woe to the litigants through delays and dithering.

The legislature is nothing short of an embarrassment to the country. Majors, colonels and brigadiers who became the political masterminds for the new regime and chalked out colourful strategies on paper, fell easy prey to the practised turncoats, hypocrites and self-seekers who are all devoid of any political belief or ideology and have no time for honouring pledges.

They used the army officers to get into the assemblies where they are now only a nuisance for the government. This, however, is the only material available to the new prime minister for his cabinet.

He has to appease the Pakistan Muslim League, the Functional Muslim League, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the new Pakistan People's Party which are all demanding their pound of flesh in exchange for support.

Such an entanglement makes the executive weak, unfocused and self-contradictory, the consequences of which are visible for instance, in the desperate state of affairs in Karachi: Once the most beautiful and peaceful city in Asia, it has now become the hunting ground for murderers, kidnappers, dacoits, robbers and car thieves, not to mention the filth, squalor, water and electricity shortage, drug dens, gambling dens and gun running which is thriving clearly with the blessings of those who are charged with the responsibility to eradicate these evils.

In fact, the situation is such that another military operation is required, only this time the culprits have enjoyed full opportunity to be better prepared to face it.

When the executive is in such a state of chaos a high level of corruption and incompetence in the public institutions is inevitable. In fact, it has become a part of our culture.

This makes good governance and reform impossible and all attempts at such are doomed. It is very sad that the rulers from whom much good was expected have rather amateurishly manoeuvred themselves into a deep quagmire of intrigue and blackmail its fellow travellers.

They are encircled by people who are notorious for their misdeeds and now have the government by the throat. Each has carved out his own fiefdom where every malpractice is allowed and the situation in the districts is the same as in Karachi.

From this reality flow all the evils that have not only made good governance impossible but also made life painful for the man in the street. The administrative machinery has been rendered useless.

The politics of mere survival and personal gain, in vogue today, has made the bureaucrat an essential instrument and an accomplice for the control by the MNA and MPA over his constituency. Since the vast majority of voters keep away from the polls in disgust, the elected representative resorts to a variety of under-hand methods to secure his hold.

For this purpose he needs hand-picked bureaucrats to facilitate the task. The result is that the local administration keeps only one man happy while ignoring or even victimizing all others. Be that as it may, one thing is certain however: Shaukat Aziz cannot keep up the pretence of wellbeing any longer and if the status quo continues the whole set-up is going to explode.

This, however, does not mean that there is no hope of redemption. Of course, there is. But it means going back to the drawing board and chalking out new parameters. The three pillars of the state must be reconstructed with new and clean material. There must be strict separation of powers between the judiciary, legislature and executive.

There must be a very ruthless and speedy process of accountability. The government must first sort out the bad eggs in its own basket. Urgent and effective measures must be adopted to root out and bury the corruption culture, while nepotism and sifarish has to be banished. But most important of all, the people must be recognized as the masters and source of all power. No one should be allowed to go to them without a political ideology and a written manifesto of commitments.

All forms of manipulation and trickery for getting votes should be made a punishable offence. The curse of rigging must be effectively eliminated and measures adopted to attract voters back to the polling stations. In this respect, it seems that the light has dawned.

President Musharraf's tour of Thatta and liaison with the people is commendable. If this had started five years ago the government today would not be at the mercy of blackmailers and criminals.

Moreover, the president has also said that the new cabinet will consist of capable and worthy people. Where he is going to find them is a puzzle but at least the need has been recognized.

In its initial stages the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a government of the people, and while it successfully crushed police strikes in Punjab and Sindh, it controlled the onslaught by communists in the form of protests by labour and industrial unrest in Karachi.

It solved long-standing national issues such as the language question which even military dictators dared not face, and enforced labour, health, education and land reforms.

Two attempts at coup were frustrated and about thirtyfive generals retired. A hundred thousand prisoners of war were rescued from India and the occupied territories recovered.

The writ of the government was made supreme. All the elected representatives were bound by the ideology and manifesto approved by the people and dared not even think of blackmail. There were thus no dispute or demands for personal gain and the calibre of parliament and government was the highest ever. But sadly a suicidal change, engineered by the bureaucracy and military axis, led to a disastrous and inexplicable U-turn by the great Quaid-i-Awam, half way down the road.

He turned away from the masses and fell into the trap that the axis set for him. Thus, devoid of genuine power he became dependant on those who finally deposed and hanged him. This was a great tragedy but it will be an even greater one if nothing has been learnt from it. Shaukat Aziz has this lesson before him. Is he going to take the route to greatness or just fade into oblivion? That remains to be seen.

The writer is chairman, Sindh National Front.

Bush's honest mistake

The Republicans had a "good convention," in the sense that they were relentlessly on message. But let's replay the events of the past week and imagine what might have happened if both parties had deviated from their scripts and actually debated the issues.

The week opened with an utterly unscripted comment from President Bush. Appearing on NBC's "Today" show, Bush tried to explain why the war on terrorism isn't like other wars. "I don't think you can win it," Bush said. "But I think you can create conditions so that the - those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

In my fantasy campaign, John F. Kerry would have responded: "Bravo, George. That's the most sensible thing you've said yet about terrorism. Now let's debate how we create those conditions so that terrorism becomes an unacceptable weapon." Bush, in turn, would have responded with a thoughtful speech, and perhaps George F. Kennan, now 100, would have smiled in the retirement home for Wise Men.

But no, it didn't exactly happen that way. Bush's handlers quickly concluded that his Monday comment had been a gaffe, famously defined by columnist Michael Kinsley as "what you call it when a politician tells the truth." So they immediately sent him out to "revise and extend his remarks," as members of Congress like to say when they're fixing boo-boos. On Tuesday Bush told an American Legion convention: "Make no mistake about it: We are winning, and we will win. We will win by staying on the offensive."

Kerry's campaign, playing by the "gotcha" rules of American politics, was already on the attack. It issued a news release Tuesday crowing: "Bush Flip-Flops on Winning the War on Terror."

Kerry's running mate, the genial hatchet man John Edwards, said, "This is no time to declare defeat." Finally, Kerry weighed in with the solemn pronouncement: "In the end, the terrorists will lose and we will win. The future does not belong to fear - it belongs to freedom." But let's return to my game of fantasy politics. Assume that Bush never appeared on the "Today" show and never said anything about the winnability of the war on terrorism.

Instead, let's assume that his operative comment on the subject this week was his interview in the current issue of Time magazine. Asked whether the war on terrorism is something Americans will have to get used to for several generations, Bush responded: "Yes, I think it is a long-lasting ideological struggle.

Frankly, the war on terror is somewhat misnamed, though. It ought to be called the struggle [against] a totalitarian point of view that uses terror as a tool to intimidate the free."

So maybe Bush's reflective comment about terrorism wasn't just a one-time gaffe. Perhaps, for all the bombast of the convention, Bush is trying to learn from some of his initial mistakes. And perhaps, rather than denounce Bush as a waffler, Kerry could add some ideas of his own about how to refigure U.S. strategy against terrorism - so that it fits better with Bush's correct characterisation of a long-term ideological struggle rather than a short-term military blitz.

A good place for my fantasy candidates to start would be to reread Kennan's famous 1947 article in Foreign Affairs, which outlined the strategy of "containment" that guided U.S. foreign policy during its long struggle against Soviet communism.

Kennan saw the Russian communists as an implacable, confident enemy - a secular mujahedeen who were certain that the God of history was on their side. They "cannot be charmed or talked out of existence," he warned.

The central pillar of U.S. strategy, he wrote, "must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward 'toughness.' "

Islamic terrorism, like the Soviet communism Kennan was describing, "bears within it the seeds of its own decay." It will eventually lose - especially if the United States can avoid impulsive actions that pump oxygen into the Islamic fire.

What a crazy country this is, when George Bush tells the truth about something and the Democrats denounce him. Gotcha politics is becoming dangerous in the age of terrorism. Now that the conventions are over and the real campaign begins, America needs a probing debate about strategy - gaffes and all. -Dawn/Washington Post Service

Protecting rights of consumers

Everyday our print and electronic media is full of attractive advertisements promoting the sale of various consumer products or services, making tall claims. To further lure consumers, they offer tempting prizes and opportunities to win millions through lotteries.

Even reputed scheduled banks had also started indulging in such undesirable and unlawful practices with the sole motive of enhancing their deposits. Fortunately the then governor of the State Bank, Dr. M. Yaqoob, had restrained all banks, including HBL, UBL and MCB, from continuing with their lottery schemes or prizes. Recently, the Bank of Punjab (BoP) started massive a publicity campaign to sell lottery tickets of Rs. 25.

This writer invited the attention of the State Bank governor to the scheme through an open letter dated August 10, which has been published in a section of the press.

The governor was kind enough to respond and clarify that the 'Crorepati - PDF' scheme was not a lottery scheme of the Bank of Punjab (BoP) for mobilizing deposits, but had been launched by the Punjab government for the Punjab Development Fund. The Punjab government had only appointed BoP as their banker and collecting agent for this scheme.

This clarification is not reflected in any BoP advertisement which tells us that the bank is selling Rs 25 tickets for the "PDF Crorepati Lottery". It only claims that the lottery will be "under the supervision of the government of the Punjab".

It does not state that the Punjab government has appointed BoP as their banker and collecting agent or that the scheme has been launched by the Punjab government for the Punjab Development Fund. Hence, the BoP advertisements are misleading.

Irrespective of the factual position relating to the BoP advertisements, the legal position is clear and remains unchanged. All lottery or prize schemes of various nature, as an inducement to trade or business, are in clear violation of at least Section 294-B and in most cases of Section 294-A of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Section 294-A does allow the "drawing of a lottery" but with the permission of the provincial government. None of the advertisements of any producer or vendor disclose the grant of such permission by any provincial government.

It may be noted that grant of permission by a provincial government for "drawing any lottery", as specified in Section 294-A of the PPC, does not set aside or override the otherwise general prohibition imposed by Section-294-B, which prohibits offers of any prize, reward in cash or kind against any coupon, ticket, number or figure, as an inducement or encouragement to trade or business or to the buying of any commodity or for popularizing any commodity, etc.

Hence any scheme of prizes or lottery, as an inducement or encouragement to trade or business or to the buying of any commodity or for popularizing any commodity, is an offence punishable with imprisonment or fine or both.

Despite such clear prohibitions under our criminal law, innumerable lotteries and draws are being advertised without any check or control and with no mechanism to ensure transparency, honesty and fairness in conducting such schemes of prizes of lotteries.

These glaring violations of the law are being committed not only by manufacturers but also by reputed multinationals and government and government-owned or controlled enterprises. It is high time the laws are either enforced in letter and spirit or are repealed if the state is unable to ensure compliance.

There is no dearth of laws in Pakistan that grant some rights, protections and remedies to the consumers - but only on paper. Hardly any such law is being followed, respected or enforced by any authority.

In fact it would not be an exaggeration to state that in the ultimate analysis, for all practical purposes, it seems in Pakistan laws are only meant for those who volunteer to abide by them.

Manufacturers and vendors have a field day conducting business in whatever manner they please without fear of action or reprimand. The list of federal and provincial statutes for the protection of consumers is too long to be discussed here.

However, some of the more important and relevant laws in this regard are the Drugs Act 1976; the Contract Act 1872; Sale of Goods Act 1930; the relevant chapters of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860; the Pure Food Ordinance 1960 of West Pakistan; The Sindh Foods Act 1947; the Price Control and Prevention of Profiteering and Hoarding Act 1977; Co-operative Societies Acts 1912 & 1925; and the Pakistan Hotels & Restaurants Act 1976. In the service sector also, there are a large number of statutes regulating the respective professionals.

Despite the prohibitions imposed by laws and policies of the government, Pakistan is still a safe haven for all banned drugs, pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals, betel nuts, 'gutka,' 'paan masalas' of various brands, edible tobacco of various kinds and vanaspati ghee and cooking oils which have been proved to be poisonous and unfit for human consumption the world over.

They are being marketed freely, without any fear or hindrance. Millions of dollars of our precious foreign exchange is wasted on the import of such poisonous items.

One shudders at the thought of mega cities of Pakistan, particularly Karachi or Lahore, facing a earthquake of high magnitude. High-rise building mushrooming all over in violation of all building laws and regulations rely on inferior quality of structures without adhering to any safety regulations and are being sold freely through the most fanciful advertisements.

It's frightening thought to imagine the disaster that the inhabitants of such buildings may suffer in case of an earthquake or a fire or even otherwise by the collapse of the building due to weak structure. The greater irony and tragedy is that after selling the building projects many builders are virtually untraceable and seem to vanish.

There is also a strong need to check and control advertisements in the print and electronic media. Our newspapers particularly in Urdu or the regional languages carry innumerable advertisements everyday of quacks, so-called spiritual healers, pirs, slimming clinics, thousands of herbal or homoeopathic medicines and 'jadugars' laying claim to curing incurable diseases or uniting separated lovers.

Ordinary citizens can accept the advertisements as gospel truth and become susceptible to fraud and deceit. The law prohibits such unregistered drugs, quacks or so-called 'alims,' yet there is no authority to stop their activities.

When I had gatecrashed into the corridors of power, one of my conscientious and sensitive friends, the late P.K. Shahani, both a chartered surveyor and economist as well as a committed human rights activist, was kind enough to provide me with a draft of a bill for the protection of consumer rights.

Since I was law minister, it was not a problem to table a bill. I had worked on the draft and with some improvements, additions and deletions considered necessary, I succeeded in having it approved by the cabinet of then prime minister Benazir Bhutto, despite strong opposition from the bureaucracy which insisted that this was a provincial subject.

I found a way out to resolve the controversy by agreeing to let the proposed legislation be enforced in the federal capital, to begin with. The bill was passed by both the houses of parliament and it is called the "Islamabad Consumers Protection Act 1995."

I had circulated specimen drafts of the bill for enactment by all the four provinces. Only the Frontier followed the precedent of the federal government by adopting the statute as the NWFP Consumers Protection Act 1997". Regrettably, other provinces did not bother to legislate.

However, the greater irony is that this exercise in legislation proved to be futile even in Islamabad. It seems not a single local authority in the federal capital is even aware of the existence of such an act, not to talk of its implementation.

Here lies the intrinsic problem of the indifference of our bureaucracy to the rights and interests of the people. The primary duty of the bureaucracy seems to be the protection of the interests of the party in power rather than the interest of the people.

The writer is a former senator and federal minister.

Politics of non-issues

At what point does a new government start looking old? When the cares of office begin to etch acid lines on the face. The first lines are beginning to show on the United Progressive Alliance.

Government extracts a price. Opposition is free. That is the nature of the democratic system. You can see the difference in the body language. BJP leaders may not accept this, but you can already see that the party down the line is happier baying for blood than paying for power.

The government, conversely, is beginning to wander around with a pained look on its face, the kind of face that suits the suggestion that there is something personal about the disruption of parliament, or that such acrimony has never been seen before.

The speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, has, as usual, been more honest and candid in admitting that the roots of the mess travel back to the breakdown between the government and opposition over Bofors.

The disrupters-in-chief of the late 1980s included V.P. Singh, Ram Jethmalani and, of course, Somnath Chatterjee, with the BJP providing wholesome support from outside (it barely existed inside the Lok Sabha). Those were the days, my friends. And if you thought they would never end, you were absolutely right.

The more problem may not be in the collapse of procedure. Bofors was a genuine issue. Politics is now propelled by a tide of non-issues, as substance cedes space to sentiment.

Emotive issues have their place in public life. The voter does not live by bread alone. The problem is that emotive issues have occupied centre stage. Mani Shankar Aiyar should have let sleeping plaques lie.

It was non-political, at the very least, to take snipe at Veer Savarkar in the Andamans, where the Maharashtrian icon spent years in a British prison. But for the Shiv Sena to smack around Aiyar's effigy in Shivaji Park under the personal supervision of Balasaheb Thackeray does seem an over-reaction.

However, Balasaheb has managed to frighten the Congress on the eve of the assembly elections in Maharashtra. In Mumbai chief minister Sushil Shinde discovered great virtues in Savarkar while Ghulam Nabi Azad, from Delhi, explained that Aiyar's remarks were purely "personal" and did not reflect the views of the party.

(It would be interesting, though, to find out what precisely are the revised views of the contemporary Congress on Savarkar's role in the freedom struggle, the Hindutva movement and Gandhi's assassination.)

The power of a chance remark should never be underestimated. The DMK's venerable leader Karunanidhi might, for instance, recall a statement about men in dark glasses made by Rajiv Gandhi during an assembly election campaign in Tamil Nadu more than 15 years ago. That remark was apparently authored by Mani Shankar, and was cited as one of the reasons for a massive pro-Karunanidhi vote that year.

If sentiment about Veer Savarkar does energize the Shiv Sena-BJP vote in Maharashtra, it will not be the first time that Mani Shankar has nudged the fate of an assembly election.

Then there was a statement by Rajiv Gandhi during the Bengal assembly elections when he was prime minister describing Calcutta as a dying city. Even famished Calcuttans were upset at being told by a Prime Minister that they were dying. I have no idea who authored that sentence.

Last week the Economic Times reported in its edit page diary that Mani Shankar Aiyar told the employees of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in Chennai on August 12, "I am an atheist. If God does exist I am completely convinced that He must be Allah.

Wherever He is worshipped there is oil and gas." (Pakistan is an exception. Add one more item to Pakistan's list of complaints.) Personally, I thought the remark reasonably witty.

It is certainly the kind of line that would ensure a top prize in an Oxbridge union debate. But I doubt if Tamil Nadu's Congressmen are distributing copies of the Aiyar comment in order to improve local humour standards. Politics requires more circumspection than a college debate or a newspaper column.

As self-goals go, however, the Uma Bharti episode is in a class of its own. If the BJP had ordered a script to bail out the party, the scenario could not have been bettered.

Not only did the Congress solve a difficult BJP problem, it handed the party a populist momentum at a time when it was thrashing about for ideas. As a chief minister Uma Bharti was turning into a liability.

Her brother might be a maverick, but his campaign against her was an irritant the party did not need. The growing perception in Madhya Pradesh was of a government floating on rhetoric. All Digvijay Singh had to do was wait, and he could have walked back into Bhopal at the head of a triumph.

Uma Bharti's core competence is field politics, not secretariat management. But the BJP high command could not have removed Ms Bharti from office without wounding the party in the foot, turning it into a crutch case in MP.

Then, out of the blue, the Congress-led government in Karnataka remembered a forgotten case and revived the BJP. You can argue till the cows come home that the case against Uma Bharti is about inciting mob violence, murder and arson; you can repeat endlessly that she dodged 18 non-bailable warrants and a hundred summons; you can write editorials that her resignation is politics, not morality.

In the public perception the Congress has chased Uma Bharti out of office because she went to an Eidgah in Karnataka to hoist the national flag, and that she has sacrificed a chief minister's comforts for jail and struggle. The Eidgah angle suits BJP rhetoric perfectly. There have been strikes and bandhs; and now a group of holy men are marching to Hubli in Uma Bharti's support.

The Congress' partner in Karnataka, H.D. Deve Gowda, who has seen enough politics to understand its idiosyncrasies, asked the chief minister, Dharam Singh, why on earth he had erected a populist platform for the BJP to march on.

Gowda is, understandably, concerned about the growth of the BJP in the state, where the party narrowly missed getting a majority. Dharam Singh pointed his finger at Delhi. He was obeying instructions, he said. Heaven knows who gave these instructions. The air is heavy with denials.

The Congress lost ownership of the anthem Vande Mataram to the Hindutva movement in the turmoil of pre-independence politics. The Muslim League did its bit when it trapped the Congress by making it a touchstone of bias. The Congress was confused in its response.

The Congress tricolour was once virtually identified by the people with the national flag; they saw only a notional difference, because it was the Congress that had given India freedom. I am not suggesting that the Congress has delivered the national flag to the BJP, but one more misstep has occurred in a long process of image formation.

I recall being in Bangalore at the public felicitation of Rama Krishna Hegde on his 75th birthday. The stage was crowded with public figures of the non-BJP persuasion. The song that was sung was Vande Mataram.

No one protested that it was communal. Hegde did not consider it biased, or it would never have been sung at his birthday celebrations. And yet it played a part in the politics that divided India.

Will a decision taken in Andamans or an arrest in Hubli affect the vote in Maharashtra? Ideally, the voter should make his choice on issues of stronger substance: drought management, or the lack of it; confidence, or its absence, in the Congress-NCP alliance; security, or insecurity, of the minorities; empowerment, or helplessness, among the Dalits.

A government is elected to provide a better life to the citizen, and should be retained or removed on such considerations alone. There will always be peripheral tugs, and they need to be addressed by whoever is in power. But the rim should not become the centre.

The temptation to exploit every emotive issue only indicates that the election in Maharashtra is going to be closely fought, and if the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance can milk victory in even half a dozen Brahmin-dominated constituencies by invoking the memory of Savarkar they will do so.

Half a dozen seats after all could make the difference in an even battle. The general elections left the two sides evenly balanced. But the fact that they formed a government in Delhi has strengthened the Congress and the NCP. This election will go to the wire, and whoever has energy for the last spurt will claim victory.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.