Mubarak’s victory

UNLIKE the previous four presidential elections when he was the sole candidate, Hosni Mubarak this time had nine rivals to contend against. Official results of the electoral exercise on Thursday are not yet available, but according to an unofficial count Mr Mobarak has won 72 per cent of the votes cast. The main opposition candidate, Ayman Nour of the liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, alleged electoral abuses and demanded a re-poll — a demand that was rejected by the election commission. The voter turnout was low. In Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city, it was as low as 17 per cent, while the Egyptian Human Rights Commission put the nationwide figure at 20-25 per cent. The low turnout obviously indicates a lack of popular interest in the election because the majority was convinced Mr Mubarak would win anyway.

The foregone victory gives Mr Mubarak a fifth six-year term as president of the Arab world’s most populous and important country. Evidently, he has won with a lesser margin, for 72 per cent is far below the 98 per cent or so figure he got during the previous four elections. However, the lesser margin is a welcome sign in the sense that it shows the possibilities of Egypt moving gradually towards democracy. Mr Mubarak is already 77 years old and has ruled the country with an iron hand since Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. All along these decades, Mr Mubarak — like many other Arab leaders, especially the monarchs — has enjoyed full American backing because of his “moderate” policies. Since 9/11, however, things have been changing, with the realization growing in Washington that America could not win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim and Arab people if it placed its reliance solely on monarchs and dictators. America has also been told that the roots of terrorism lie not only in unresolved problems like Palestine but also in the Arab people’s anger at their autocratic systems of government. The Iraq war is also a factor, since one of the purported aims of the American invasion was to “spread democracy” in Iraq and other Arab countries. Since then the US has been pressuring all Arab leaders to end human rights violations, free the media and introduce political reforms. Thursday’s electoral exercise in Egypt was, thus, more a result of American pressures than that of any real desire on Mr Mubarak’s part to move Egypt towards democracy.

Egypt’s case is typical of all Arab states. There is no democracy in any Arab country. Lebanon has a long way to go before its fractious society can develop into a stable democracy. In the oil-rich sheikhdoms, representative government does not exist even in the most rudimentary form, while other Arab states are one-party dictatorships where strongmen “win” elections with 99 per cent of the vote. Despite huge oil wealth, the Arab states have failed to industrialize their countries, restructure their societies and establish democratic institutions. That is one reason why they are unable to mobilize their human and material resources to the full and present a serious challenge to Israel on the Palestinian question. In fact, most Arab rulers are afraid of their own people and spend more time on keeping themselves in power than on fighting for higher Arab causes. As events in Saudi Arabia show, things cannot go this way for long, for one day the Arab street will explode.

Illiteracy: who is to blame?

WORLD Literacy Day was observed all over the country with much fanfare on Thursday. Even if half the effort that went into organizing the seminars, workshops, walks and rallies were to go into actually addressing the problems that plague our education system, the outcome would have been more positive and constructive. It is strange that our policy planners and academics still believe that by merely exhorting the people to change social attitudes, universal literacy will be achieved. The fact is that people do not resist education. If they cannot send their children to school, the problem lies not in their mental make-up but elsewhere. Can one really blame them if the schools meant for educating their children are ramshackle buildings with no teachers?

With an official literacy rate of 51 per cent and a primary enrolment rate of 59 per cent, Pakistan figures on one of the lowest rungs of the literacy ladder in the world. Yet we have not bothered to devise a strategy to mobilize adults who can’t read to enroll for literacy classes. Nor have we managed to put all our children — 17 million by one estimate — into properly run schools. The fact is that we have failed to make education an attractive proposition. Parents fully recognize the importance of education for their children’s well-being. But they find the education provided to their children utterly useless. No attempt has been made to analyze the points of view of parents, many of whom send their children to schools only to withdraw them before they complete five years of schooling. Small wonder, all the fancy schemes that have been launched in the past — the Nai Roshni schools, Iqra, ‘each one teach one’ for intermediate students, education for all in every district and the enrolment drive on Sept. 8 every year — have not made much of an impact on improving literacy. Let the government recognize its own responsibility in the field. It must mobilize funds and manpower to improve all its schools and staff them adequately with trained teachers. Once schools become real places of learning they will attract children as has been known to happen when a marked improvement has taken place in a school.

Image and reality

IN HIS address to participants in the regional conference for violence against women on Wednesday, President Musharraf’s annoyance with certain NGOs was obvious. By citing horrific rape statistics from around the world, Gen. Musharraf wanted to convey that Pakistan was not alone in its dismal record of protecting women’s rights. However, what is not realized is that unlike in developed countries, the road to seeking justice in Pakistan is lined with many obstacles and traps. By criticizing Dr Shazia Khalid for saying that she was virtually chased out of the country, the president has omitted the fact that he himself had exonerated the army captain accused of the crime even before an investigation into the matter had come to any conclusion. To now offer her protection should she choose to return to Pakistan is like a cruel joke. Victims of violence like Mukhtaran Mai or Sonia Naz want recourse to justice, plain and simple.

Undoubtedly, steps like increasing women’s participation at the political level will contribute to change. However, women legislators have little to show in terms of accomplishment and complain of discrimination from their male colleagues. It will take years to undo the way women are treated by legislators, the police and the legal system - all of which have created barriers for women. The law against honour killings or the minor procedural change in the Hudood Ordinance have failed to serve as deterrents to crimes against women. The post of chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women has been lying vacant since Majida Rizvi retired in March. The government has not shown the courage to take on the draconian Hudood Ordinance whose complete repeal is called for. Instead of demonizing NGOs, the government would be well advised to do some introspection for it will then find that its own fumbling and failure have a lot to do with Pakistan’s failure to protect the rights and interests of women. A beginning can be made towards betterment by abolishing all discriminatory laws

Kashmir: no room for unprincipled deal

THESE days there is a good deal of talk about the changed atmospherics of the Kashmir dispute. The talk is inevitably loose, betraying a lamentable shift of focus from the human content of the dispute — the continuance of military occupation of the Vale of Kashmir and its adjacent areas with its heavy toll — to the realpolitik of India-Pakistan relations.

The only indication that the trip to wonderland has not enthralled everyone lies in the fact that international media have so far refrained from following their wont: they have not blown up the non-event of the changed tone, the less abrasive language, of the dialogue between the two countries into an event of concrete progress towards secure and stable peace.

Do these observations suggest a preference, almost a nostalgia, for the tensions and hatred that have darkened the subcontinental scene for decades? Hardly. It would be perverse to deny that a protracted situation of no-war and no-peace, sometimes verging on near-war, has utterly failed to make a dent in irrational intransigence, to shake entrenched positions and to generate a stimulus towards rethinking propositions which have been held close to the bosom as dogmas.

But while tensions and violence have been uncreative, the complacency that is being promoted now is not the healthy alternative, either. Indeed, it is chock-full of dangers. An outstanding one among these is that it dismisses what should be the paramount consideration in the quest of a settlement. This may be settled as follows:

The long, chequered history of the dispute, the way it has reverberated through the political life of the subcontinent, the baleful effect it has had on the region as a whole, the diverse phases it has gone through, the wars it has caused, the ravages it has wrought on Kashmir itself, the grim harvest of deaths, more than 60,000, which it has reaped from the fields of repression and insurgency against Indian occupation — all these make it extremely doubtful that a settlement, no matter how pleasing to the present leadership of India, Pakistan or, for that matter, even the United States, will carry a stamp of genuineness unless it has a rational framework, rests convincingly on principle and is transparently democratic.

This consideration is intrinsic to the India-Pakistan situation. But it gains force from the present global imperative of pulling out the roots of extremism, quenching the fire of the rage behind it and giving psychological strength to the forces of moderation and rationality. No better present could be handed to extremists than an unprincipled deal between India and Pakistan which mocks the suffering and sacrifices of Kashmiris and nullifies the sustained effort, historically launched under western leadership at the United Nations, to enable Kashmiris to determine their status and future by their unconstrained will.

The extremists on both sides would exult at such a phenomenon. The extremists on the Pakistan-Kashmir side would welcome it as vindicating their asserted belief that no trust can be reposed in them. The extremists on the Indian side would jubilate over the tangible proof provided to them that all the atrocities committed to maintain Indian occupation of the Vale of Kashmir have not only remained unpunished but have actually been handsomely rewarded. There will probably be no explosion but the reverberations, even if but faintly audible to some ears, will continue for eras in the future.

The consideration I am trying to stress will remain entirely unaffected even if both India and Pakistan procure the endorsement of the Kashmiri personalities whom they respectively patronize to a deal between themselves. I use the word “personalities” rather than “leaders” advisedly because no authentic Kashmiri leadership has been yet allowed to emerge. The personalities I refer to cannot be deemed to have acquired representative credentials unless they have gone through elections, which are impartially supervized, rendered credible by wide popular participation and wholly immune from the suspicion of being rigged. No such elections have yet been held.

At this time, therefore, we can not only pose the question from whom the Indian and Pakistani leaders derive the authority to decide the future of a people who have not abrogated it to them; we are also obliged to look askance at the claims or pretensions of Kashmiri political figures who are strutting about whether on India’s side or the opposed one.

Of course, it would be grossly unfair to forget that, over the years, the Hurriyat had shown remarkable maturity, cohesion and freedom from party egotisms and that the prominent men in it had borne great personal hardships in the service of the cause of liberation. Unfortunately, however, by falling prey to factionalism, they have now dissipated part of the great credit they had earned; it is most unedifying to see some of them basking in Indian or Pakistani patronage.

One of them is reported to have said that he has before him as many as 35 options to consider. Though we may charitably hope that he was speaking in youthful jest, there is an underlying syndrome, which cannot be lightly disregarded. It is caused by wrong mental direction. Both natives and foreigners tend to think that the question before them is what shape the final settlement of the Kashmir problem should take, while the prior problem to be resolved is how that settlement can be achieved.

What should be the essentials of the desired procedure? When responsible attention is paid to the question, the confusing multiplicity of options (which either perplexed or gratified the Hurriyat gentlemen) disappears. Here are some requirements of the plan involved:

— It should ensure that each region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir elects its representatives under impartial supervision.

— It should take full cognizance of the ethnic heterogeneity of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and enable the representatives of different regions to decide a settlement without pressure from either India or Pakistan and even from one dominant region or another.

— It should by itself neither promote nor rule out any conceivable settlement — accession in whole or in part to India or Pakistan, the eventual joining or separation of any two regions, independence or quasi-independence, etc., etc.

— It should allow a transitional phase, a phase of detoxification, before its decisive elements come into operation. Rather than hustle a solution and arouse passions, it should usher in a gradual process over several stages leading to a just, sustainable and definitive settlement of the dispute.

In conclusion, I would stress that the situation with regard to the Kashmir imbroglio cannot improve in reality if either (a) the flexibility being shown by President Musharraf remains unreciprocated or (b) both his flexibility and Indian rigidity pay insufficient or little regard to the rights and wishes of Kashmiris. The “setting aside” of the UN resolutions is one thing; the discarding of the principle they embodied is altogether another. The latter amounts to throwing the baby with the bath water.

The principle involved is twofold: first, the settlement of the problem must accord with the wishes of Kashmiris and second, equally important, these wishes must be impartially ascertained. Gimmickry and manoeuvres, no matter by whom encouraged and approved, cannot be a response to a demand for which thousands have shed their blood.

The writer is a former ambassador and senior adviser to the UN secretary-general.

Anchoring Ankara

EUROPEANS, or more precisely the EU member states, voted for Turkey last Christmas when they solemnly promised to start long-awaited negotiations with Turkey on its membership of the club.

The date they gave was October 3, 2005, now less than a month away, and there is a whiff of panic in the air that maybe, after all the fuss, this may not happen.

Turkey, long a trusted member of Nato, thought its European “vocation” had been finally and definitively recognized in 2003, when the then 15-member EU was finalizing its historic 10-country enlargement. But anti-Turkish feeling in several countries and last summer’s rejection of the union’s new constitution in France and the Netherlands have created grave doubts.

Thus Thursday’s warning by Jack Straw, in the hot seat of the EU presidency, that it is vital to stick to that solemn promise, even if, as expected, the actual negotiations take many years.

The biggest problem is the ever-tangled question of Cyprus, one of last May’s newcomers. It had been hoped that UN efforts to reunite the island would bear fruit before it joined. Since they did not (though more because of the Greek than the Turkish side), and Ankara is refusing to recognize the Nicosia government, the start of accession talks is in jeopardy.

— The Guardian, London