Rights' violations

It is not necessary to always share or endorse the views of international rights organizations based in the West because their perceptions can be influenced by the comparatively liberal environment in which they function.

There may be a disconnect between the ideals they advocate and the reality on the ground in countries which they set out to survey. Nevertheless, what they say should be taken seriously because it gives us an idea of what the outside world thinks of us and which could shape the international community's political and economic policies towards us.

Their comments can also help those in the countries concerned who are struggling for juster, more democratic and liberal societies. The 2004 report of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, just released, should be seen in this context.

It is critical of the state of human rights in several countries, and also asks for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate US officers who might have condoned the abuse of prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

On Pakistan, it underlines aspects that have constituted a source of grave concern to civil society - the increasing intervention of the military in almost all areas of national activity.

The report notes that the military has increased its influence over the political and economic life of all Pakistanis, and mentions particularly the army's grip on the economic resources of the country, including land.

There is so much physical evidence of this that it hardly needs any elaboration: the military is now one of the major industrial and real estate players in the country.

This might have been a welcome development if it had lessened the burden on the civil budget, but this has not happened. There has also been an increase in the induction of serving and retired military men in the administration, and even in areas like education.

However, the most pervading influence of the military has been on political governance, and its effort to institutionalize the role of the army in our politics, including the dual-office device, through unorthodox legal and constitutional methods, which unfortunately many of our politicians appear only too willing to support.

Despite all the reservations about the military's political role, when the present regime had come to power, it had created the expectation that it would at least act as a liberalizing, secularizing force. But it has shied away from challenging fundamentalist and reactionary trends, and many of the laws and practices which these trends have produced remain largely unchanged.

There is no malicious pleasure to be drawn from a recollection of this depressing side of our inability to establish a functioning democratic system. The military should itself be worried about the fact that its expanding political and economic profile may be creating pockets of resentment in areas whose support it could previously bank upon.

In respect of the rest of South Asia, the Human Rights Watch report castigates India's systematic failure to protect the rights of minorities and marginalized castes, and its shielding of security personnel involved in grave and persistent violations of human rights and excesses against the people.

The behaviour of the Indian military in occupied Kashmir has been atrocious and repugnant. The refusal of the Indian authorities to recognize that their arrogant conduct in Jammu and Kashmir has alienated the people there has been a major stumbling block in any meaningful negotiations with representative Kashmiri organizations and thus in reaching a settlement over the volatile issue, and it needed to be much more roundly criticized by the report.

It should also be said that while international human rights organizations, and some perhaps of our own, are quick to pick on violations of civil liberties and political rights, they tend to ignore the constant denial of economic rights to millions.

Poverty is also a violation of the rights of individuals - and much of it is caused by the iniquitous system foisted on developing countries by the developed ones.

For fair elections

With the municipal elections likely this year, it is in the fitness of things that the country should have a new chief election commissioner. Mr Irshad Hassan Khan, who presided over the highly questionable referendum in April 2002 and later conducted the general election in October that year, is now to make way for a new CEC.

While individuals come and go, what matters is an election commission that guards its independence and impartiality jealously and does its duty without fear or favour.

From this point of view, Pakistan has a dismal record. With the possible exception of the general election of 1970, no electoral exercise in the country has been fair and credible.

Invariably, election commissions have been weak and failed to stand up to government pressures and its manipulative tactics. Without exception, governments have queered the opposition's pitch by questionable means.

These ranged from arresting opposition candidates on spurious charges, resorting to violence, rejecting nomination papers of selected candidates, harassing their polling agents, stuffing boxes with ballot papers, and forgery in the counting of votes.

Ruling parties and military-backed alliances have also had no qualms about using the government machinery unabashedly for electioneering, besides monopolizing the state-controlled media for a one-sided projection of their programmes.

One here recalls the scandalous use of state machinery for the bogus referendum held by Gen. Ziaul Haq in December 1984 to legitimize his military rule and by President Pervez Musharraf in April 2002.

The election commissions either abetted in these irregularities or looked the other way. No wonder, governments that come to power as a result of rigged elections fail to command the people's respect and seldom serve the cause of their welfare.

The Legal Framework Order, 2002, has made a break with the past by constituting "a permanent Election Commission" (Clause 218 of the Constitution), consisting of a chief election commissioner and four members, one from each province, to be appointed by the president in consultation with the provincial chief justices.

However, the test of the government's sincerity and deference to the electoral process and the election commission lies in how faithfully it abides by the Constitution's clause 220.

This clause makes it the duty of "all executive authorities in the federation and in the provinces" to assist the CEC and the election commission in the discharge of their functions.

Since there is no such precedent in Pakistan of this nature, only the future will tell whether the ruling parties consider the Constitution sacrosanct and abide by it by placing the executive authority at the commission's disposal.

It is true elections alone do not turn a country into a democratic one. But they are the only way through which the people exercise their sovereignty and express their preferences as to who their rulers for a given period will be.

Again, it is the people who decide what kind of government they want and what should be its policies. If a government fails to come up to their expectation, they reserve the right through another free and fair election to replace it with a new set of rulers.

Pakistan's present predicament highlights the damage which the absence of fair elections has done to it. One hopes the new CEC will make it his mission to make real improvement in the situation and organize elections in a manner that the Constitution calls "honestly, justly, fairly and in accordance with law..."