Indecisive German polls
GERMANY’S confused election result and the current acrimonious battle between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his conservative challenger Angela Merkel to become the country’s next leader is an unprecedented development in a country traditionally known for stable coalition governments and sober politicians. That reputation for reliability has now taken a severe beating. Worse still, Germany’s election without victors will be followed by weeks of tough political horse-trading as Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) and Mr Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) struggle to forge a governing coalition to run Europe’s richest — albeit stagnating — economy. The two long-standing adversaries, who hurled insults at each other during an unusually fierce election campaign, appear in no mood to compromise. The election results, giving Ms Merkel only a three-seat majority in the national parliament, are certainly unexpected. The CDU leader, preaching a radical reform agenda and demanding that Turkey be offered a “privileged partnership” instead of full EU membership, was widely predicted to secure at least 45 per cent of the popular vote, making it virtually certain she would make history by becoming Germany’s first woman chancellor. In contrast, despite his role as an incumbent, Mr Schroeder, campaigning for softer economic change and Turkish entry into the EU, was generally depicted as a spent force unlikely to lead his party to success.
Germany’s 62 million voters decided otherwise, however. Preliminary official results show Ms Merkel’s conservative alliance capturing only 35.2 per cent of the votes, giving her party 225 seats in the Bundestag or German parliament. Mr Schroeder’s social democrats, doing better than expected, won 34.3 per cent of the votes and 222 parliamentary seats. Merkel’s lead could become even narrower depending on the results from 220,000 voters in Dresden who will be electing three members of the parliament in two weeks. Elections in the city were delayed until October 2 following the sudden death last week of a far-right candidate and the need to reprint ballot papers. The revolution in Germany’s political landscape could produce an array of different constellations, with the smaller parties — traditionally the kingmakers in Germany where coalitions are the rule — the focus of attention. Most analysts expect the country’s future to be in the hands of a “grand coalition”, including members of Ms Merkel’s CDU/CSU and Mr Schroeder’s SPD.
The unresolved question, however, is just who would be chancellor of such an alliance. Some in Berlin are betting instead on a so-called “traffic light coalition” which would include the current SPD (with red as the trademark colour) and Greens alliance, joined by the Free Democrats (with yellow as their colour). A so-called “Jamaica coalition,” including the CDU/CSU with the FDP and the Greens —named because the black-green-yellow official party colours match the Jamaican flag — is another possibility. While some days of uncertainty over the next governing coalition are to be expected, prolonged political strife in Germany will not only have damaging domestic repercussions, it will also deal a blow to European Union hopes for economic recovery and political revival. Europe, struggling to overcome economic stagnation and the political embarrassment caused by this summer’s French and Dutch rejection of a new draft EU constitution, needs strong German leadership in undertaking bolder and more rapid economic reform. Extended gridlock in Berlin will translate into domestic chaos at home and more paralysis in the wider Europe.
An agreement at last
AFTER three years of anxiety and four rounds of intensive six-party talks focusing on the effective denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, an agreement has finally been reached that will see North Korea abandon its nuclear programme and return to the NPT fold. The negotiations involved Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, besides the two key parties to the deal — North Korea and the United States — the latter having undertaken not to attack North Korea. Pyongyang has also declared that it has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and the other parties have agreed to discuss its request for a light-water reactor at a later date. Moreover, the agreement provides for economic cooperation in energy, trade and investment, and the normalization of ties between Pyongyang and Tokyo and Pyongyang and Washington.
The agreement provides an excellent opportunity for the maverick regime of Kim Jong-il to correct its priorities and take advantage of the promises of assistance made by the wealthier parties for improvement the lives of the impoverished North Koreans. Although there are hurdles to be crossed — Pyongyang has already created one by demanding a civilian reactor before it dismantles its nuclear programme — it is worth remembering that the benefits of adhering to a regional and international peace agenda far outweigh those of possessing a national nuclear programme that is regarded as a threat. Pyongyang can only earn the trust of its neighbours and of the US if it abides by its international obligations. It is equally important for the others to pave the way for this trust and cooperation by extending aid to North Korea and helping it to change its present pariah-like status in the international community. While keeping a watchful eye on the North Korean regime that has frequently backtracked on its promises, the US and its allies must refrain from adopting a rigid posture on issues that do not compromise the security of the peninsula. A liberal attitude will go far in inducting North Korea into the international mainstream.
Plight of workers in the Gulf
MINISTER for Labour, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, said on Monday that he hoped to export 200,000 workers this year. But he would do him well to take note of the squalid quasi-slave-like conditions existing workers are forced to live in, particularly in the Gulf countries where labour laws guarantee little protection for their limited rights. On Sunday, over 1,000 workers, mainly from the subcontinent, blocked traffic in Dubai to protest against the non-payment of their salaries for four months. Although authorities in Dubai moved quickly against the offending company by ordering it to pay the salaries within 24 hours and blacklisting them for six months, actions like these are rare. Similar strikes have taken place in Kuwait and Qatar recently which only highlight the miserable conditions construction workers have perforce to contend with. Since trade unions are banned in most Gulf states, workers have to rely on their embassies to address their concerns. But then access to them is difficult and overseas Pakistani diplomatic representatives are reluctant to take up their cases. That a South Asian worker committed suicide in December in Dubai because his company had refused to lend him a small sum to see a doctor, after five months of not paying his wages, highlights the magnitude of the problem.
Elaborating on an agreement signed with Malaysia, under which 100,000 Pakistanis would be employed in various fields in that country, Mr Khan said Malaysia had assured the government that it would protect Pakistan workers rights. It is the duty of the government to ensure that our workers in the Gulf are equally well treated and their interests well protected. Where needed, it must take up their cases with respective governments to ensure that workers are treated according to international labour laws. Utmost priority should be given to protecting the rights of workers who make a major contribution to the country’s economic well-being.
Words and no actions
It wasn’t a particularly prescient warning, given that the scenario is more or less repeated year after year. However, the summit did defy expectations in one respect: not only was there precious little action on the menu, but the declarations weren’t terribly high-sounding either.
The latter isn’t necessarily regrettable: it’s best to be spared the lofty words if they are effectively meaningless. The document that was eventually endorsed is riddled with caveats, with sentences in parentheses signifying a lack of agreement. And it contains no reference to disarmament or non-proliferation, chiefly because the UN’s most powerful member simply isn’t prepared to abide by the rules that it wishes to impose on others. Iran must be denied the right to enrich nuclear fuel, but the United States isn’t willing to contemplate meaningful reductions in its own arsenals, or any restrictions on its plans to pursue the next generation of warheads, including mini-nukes intended for use on the battlefield.
In his address to the UN General Assembly, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad spoke of “nuclear apartheid”, a term that India once employed in defence of its own nuclear programme. Notwithstanding the fact that nuclear weapons of any description are detestable, the deployment of this phrase serves as a reminder that moral pressure on any nation to desist from going down that path cannot reasonably be expected to have the desired effect in the absence of broader moves towards global disarmament.
Efforts to involve the UN in the fight against terrorism — an abstract noun that continues to defy a universally acceptable definition — are likely to be stymied by similar considerations. A high-level panel tried to come up with an adequate description of this evil: “Any action ... that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” That may be nebulous enough to cover anything attributed to Al Qaeda, but don’t the actions by the US and its allies in Iraq equally fall under its purview?
It was interesting to note, meanwhile, that in his UN speech last week, the US president adopted a tone remarkably different to the one he used three years ago, when he threatened the organization with irrelevance if it failed to endorse his plans for unprovoked aggression. The real tragedy, of course, was not that the UN refused to lend its imprimatur to the invasion of Iraq, but that it could neither prevent that war from going ahead, nor impose sanctions against the aggressors. And its post hoc endorsement of the occupation brought it little credit.
Anyhow, this time around George W. Bush made a connection between defeating terrorism and changing “the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish”. Does he recognize that foremost among these conditions is US foreign policy, or that it’s hard to imagine a more effective impetus to terrorist recruitment than the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Let’s not get carried away. The slightly diminished arrogance is welcome, but the summit’s most disarming Dubya moment came not during Bush’s speech but when he was seated among a sparse audience and, in his childish scrawl, scribbled a note to Condoleezza Rice, asking whether it would be appropriate for him to slip off to the loo. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, even the president of the United States must sometimes empty his bladder — in addition to venting his spleen. In the event, the world’s most powerful man kept his legs squeezed together and, possibly, stamped his feet as he politely waited for Tony Blair to have his say, perhaps having been reassured by Condi that he wouldn’t have to extend the same courtesy to the president of Benin, the speaker next in line.
Had Blair been aware of his best friend’s discomfiture, he may well have been prepared to curtail his peroration. For his loyalty to the White House knows no bounds. That impression was strongly reinforced by his private remarks to extreme rightwing media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who recently revealed that the British prime minister considered the BBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina to be “full of hatred for America”. But then, perhaps one shouldn’t be too surprised: given that Blair is demonstrably allergic to the truth about Iraq, there is no reason why he should be expected to be more objective about the ugly truths stripped bare by Katrina.
As an unrelenting apologist for the Bush regime, Blair could make common cause with fellow-Briton Christopher Hitchens, who found himself engaged in a public discussion in New York with anti-war British MP George Galloway on the day that the UN summit opened. Billed as the Grapple in the Big Apple, the debate was dominated by personal invective, although Hitchens lived up to his more-loyal-than-the-emperor credentials not only in the context of Iraq, but when he defended the Bush administration’s tardy response to Katrina — a strategy that even the White House has abandoned — and then berated the audience for booing him.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the less than edifying encounter was the fact that it takes two Britons to openly debate the demerits of the war in what is supposed to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, even at a time when opinion polls suggest that the majority of Americans would like to see US troops withdrawn from Iraq. That clearly says something about the quality of American democracy, and that something isn’t particularly complimentary.
Back at the UN, meanwhile, much is being made of the fact that although the world body could not bring itself to propose anything meaningful about human rights, terrorism, peace-keeping or trade barriers, at least everyone signed on to a clause that obliges nations to desist from, and to resist, genocidal tendencies. Well, excuse me for being less than ecstatic, but genocide was never considered an acceptable form of behaviour in the first place, and it’s hard to see how the renewed stricture would have protected Rwandan Tutsis or Bosnian Muslims.
Despite US ambassador John Bolton’s best efforts, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) eventually made it into the UN document — not because Dr Rice is exceptionally nice, but because, unlike Bolton, she is sufficiently savvy to recognize that relegation of the MDG would have further undermined her nation’s already sharply diminished credibility. Besides, as Venezuela’s irrepressible Hugo Chavez pointed out, there is little danger of the goals being met. At the present rate, he said, the goal of halving global poverty by 2015 wouldn’t be achieved until 2215 and “the aspiration for universal primary education ... will only be reached after the year 2100.”
The Human Development Report tells us that more than one billion people “survive in abject poverty on less than $1 a day” and “2.5 billion people, or 40 per cent of the world’s population, are living on less than $2 a day”. This persistent degradation of humanity could be eradicated within a year if the world’s richest nations put their minds to it. All they need to do is to divert a fraction of their military spending. But it’s not going to happen, is it? Nor is Chavez’s call for the reinvention and relocation of the UN going to be heeded.
The Venezuelan president’s didn’t fall on deaf ears: the three rounds of applause he received were two more than Bush was able to elicit. His trip to New York, besides, is likely to be remembered with far greater enthusiasm than that of Pervez Musharraf, whose speech to the UN received little international coverage, but whose gratuitous slur against rape victims in an interview with The Washington Post prompted a well-deserved furore. And Pakistan’s president only compounded his folly when, instead of offering an unreserved apology, he opted to go down the path of implausible deniability.
He didn’t claim to have been quoted out of context (perhaps in the knowledge that no conceivable context could have softened the blow); he simply blurted out that he didn’t say it. Didn’t say, “You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.”
Unfortunately for him, The Washington Post has it on tape — as do his presidential aides. “I am not so silly and stupid to make comments of this sort,” quoth Musharraf. Shouldn’t that be construed as a self-indictment?
If the initial comment was directed against Mukhtar Mai (and I sincerely hope she wins the Sakharov Prize next month, because she deserves it), Musharraf went on to make clear his opinion that Dr Shazia Khalid too may be “a case of money”. His erratic behaviour and false bravado thereafter at a meeting where he was confronted by human rights activists also brings him no credit. “We have introduced new leaders who don’t tell lies” is a tall claim, equally unsupported by evidence as his Washington Post insinuations.
How many countries are there where village councils condemn women to rape? How many countries are there where army officers and police officials can get away with such a crime? How many countries are there where women who file rape complaints can be arrested for adultery? If the general cannot offer plausible answers to these questions, maybe he should resign from both his posts. That’ll allow everyone, home and abroad, to get a clearer picture of what hath been wrought over the past six years.
Email: mahirali1@gmail.com