Bush’s troubled presidency

WHILE we in Pakistan have had our minds and energies focused, and quite rightly so, on the catastrophic earthquake and its fearsome consequences, the Americans and most of the rest of the world have been watching, some with glee and others with trepidation, the precipitate decline in the political fortunes of President George Bush.

The decline had been in the making for some time but the developments of the last 10 days have underlined the weaknesses and flaws of the administration, brought the president’s approval rating to its lowest ebb and aroused apprehensions that in the very first year of his second term President Bush may have become a lame duck president.

Consider the developments. On the foreign policy front the week brought the news that the death count for the American armed forces in Iraq had crossed the 2,000 mark. The Iraqi constitution had been approved in the referendum but more than two thirds of the voters in two Sunni majority provinces and a majority in a third province had rejected it. There were allegations that had there been an accurate count in the third province it would have been found that more than two thirds had voted against the constitution and that, therefore, under the provisions of the constitution itself, it had been rejected. Be that as it may, the approval of the constitution under these circumstances only serves to underline the ethnic and sectarian divide in Iraq and to highlight the degree of impunity with which the insurgents continue to operate in the Sunni heartland of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein’s trial which should have served to bring home to the Iraqis how the Americans had rescued them from a cruel and ruthless dictator only provoked public displays of Sunni support for the dictator and Sunni admiration for the defiant posture he struck in court.

Reading between the lines of various Pentagon reports and the testimony officials have offered in Congress it seems that not only are Iraqi security forces ill-trained and ill-equipped but they have little chance of becoming an effective force in the near future. An independent audit by Iraqi officials found waste and possible fraud in connection with a part of the one billion dollars authorized for equipment. Helicopters acquired from Poland were too unsafe to fly, while poorly refurbished ambulances sit unused at a military depot in Taji, north of Baghdad. The defence minister of the day has fled to Jordan and chances of recovering the embezzled funds appear to be remote. Of the $10.6 billion allocated to the Pentagon for equipping the Iraqi forces, some $7 billion have been spent. But report after report indicates that not only are the vehicles used by the Iraqis deficient in armour plating but that most Iraqis do not have body armour, the absence of which makes them far more vulnerable than their better equipped American counterparts to the roadside bombs and the assaults on check-posts.

How much of this money has been misspent is difficult to say but some independent audit reports point to wastage while the general impression continues to be that in this area as in others the American defence industry has been doing well for itself. For the future, the Pentagon has now estimated that the Iraqi security forces will have to be expanded from the present level of 200,000 to 325,000 by 2007 if the insurgency is to be defeated.

On the economic front the reports suggest that the availability of potable water, electricity and fuel for cars remains almost exactly as spotty as during the last days of Saddam’s regime. This despite the fact that, according to the report of the American inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, 93 per cent of the $30 billion provided by the Americans had been committed and theoretically 1,887 of 2,784 reconstruction projects had been completed. The report highlights the fact that some 25 per cent of the funds expended have gone to provide security for workers against the insurgency.

Even so in the month of June alone some 34 Americans and 48 Iraqis died while working on these projects according to the claims filed with insurance companies. It can be presumed that among Iraqis the figure was far higher. Clearly, such difficult security conditions have had an effect not only on the costs but also on the quality of work and even on the planning of such work.

Some $13 billion were promised by other countries for Iraq’s reconstruction but only $3 billion, according to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony in Congress, have been disbursed partly because of the security situation. With funds being exhausted, there is no clear indication of how the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars needed to maintain the finished projects will be met. Non-partisan observers in Washington note wryly that one of the most richly resource endowed economies in the Middle East will remain for the near future a “basket case” and that in Iraqi eyes the blame for this falls squarely on American shoulders.

The American death count in Afghanistan had gone past 200. Even while President Karzai claims that the Taliban are a spent force the American commanders on the ground believe that the insurgency is strong and growing. Nato is now in charge of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and is expanding its participation in reconstruction activity by taking over some of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams set up by the Americans.

But in the face of determined opposition from France, Germany and Spain there seems to be little prospect that Nato forces will replace or join the Americans in fighting the insurgency. Parliamentary elections have been successfully held but there is understandable disquiet about the number of warlords who have been elected and who, it can safely be presumed, will resist the ongoing effort to disarm and demobilize private armies or the elimination of opium production that is the main source of income for the warlords and, unfortunately, the mainstay of the Afghan economy.

The story in Afghanistan is not as dismal as in Iraq but, as has been said for years and is being said with increasing force now, it would have been far better had Iraq not led to the diversion of attention from Afghanistan. More ominously, the Iraqi insurgency has now become a model for the Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan, adding a new destructive dimension to the battle there and creating apprehensions about how this may now spread to other areas.

It is of course the loss of American lives in Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan, that has been weakening the Bush presidency and has made a major contribution to its current low standing. The latest polls show that the majority of Americans now believe that the invasion of Iraq was wrong and there is a growing public clamour, duly mirrored in Congress, for setting a date for the withdrawal of American troops from that country.

Bush’s repeated speeches emphasizing that by fighting terrorists in Iraq he was defending America against further terrorist attacks now find little resonance. Instead more, and more Americans accept the incontrovertible evidence that it was the American invasion which made Iraq a haven for terrorists and made the Americans the target of Muslim wrath and that past American actions to protect the Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere had been forgotten.

On the domestic front, Bush has been hurt by his perceived mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Much of the blame could perhaps have been better laid at the door of the city and state authorities but unwise statements by the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the subsequent revelations that his appointment was owed not to competence or qualification but to cronyism and, above all, Bush’s failure to cancel his vacation and return to cope with the crisis made it certain that the Bush administration had to carry the can.

No lessons were apparently learnt from this. His nomination of his legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court created an unusual alliance between the Democrats and the religious right both of whom, for different reasons, opposed the nomination and could justify their opposition of the grounds of the nominee’s insufficient legal experience and intimate relationship with the White House.

For a president who had become used to getting his own way, the withdrawal of the nomination was not only a major humiliation but also a major indicator of how far his political stock had fallen.

On Monday last, Bush chose to nominate in her place, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. a conservative whose rulings, as a judge on the US court of appeals, on such issues as women’s right to choose and on racial discrimination have appalled liberals. The religious right and the conservatives in the Republican Party will applaud the nomination and will defend the nominee’s credentials but democrats in the Senate have already indicated their determination to oppose the nomination. While it is too early to say it does seem that given the present American climate, it is likely that many moderate Republicans will join the Democrats in handing Bush another defeat.

The most important setback, however, has been the indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice in the testimony he gave to the grand jury inquiring into the case of who had committed the criminal offence of disclosing the name of a covert CIA operative to the press. Libby was one of the most powerful men in Washington.

He was not only Cheney’s chief of staff but also assistant to the president enjoying thereby the same status as the national security adviser. He played a crucial role in all decisions relating to finding a justification for the war on Iraq and for the manner in which the post-war situation in Iraq was to be handled.

The proof of perjury is strong and it is unlikely that Libby can escape being found guilty of trying to cover up the fact that the press had got the name of the CIA operative from an administration official. This is bad for Bush and even worse for Cheney but even more important, however, is the fact that in the indictment mention is made of the fact that a White House official — coyly called official A — had been responsible for disclosing the name to the press.

The reporting on the case has made it clear that this official was Bush’s chief political adviser and “eminence grise” Karl Rove. He has been told by the special prosecutor that while he was not being indicted yet the investigation was continuing. Most American observers are convinced that Karl Rove is now off the hook, since the prosecutor is convinced that he did not knowingly disclose the name, and the only fall guy will, therefore, be Libby but this is by no means certain.

What is certain, however, is that the credibility of the White House is at an all-time low. A flash poll by the Washington Post and the ABC television network after the Libby indictment showed that 55 per cent of Americans believed that this indicated “broader ethical problems in the Bush administration” and that Americans, in a ratio of three to one, believed that ethical standards had fallen in government during the Bush administration. This is a sad blow for a president who entered office with the promise that he would restore integrity and honour to a White House tainted by the recurring scandals of the Clinton years.

Bush still has some 39 months to go in his term of office. He is not alone in suffering this loss of popularity in his second term. Reagan and Clinton both faced, for different reasons, the same problem. The issue is whether like them he can recover some momentum and achieve what he had set out as his vision for the second term. I will examine this in the next article but let me end by recalling that Saddam often boasted that he was responsible for Bush Senior not being elected for a second term. From his jail cell he can perhaps maintain that he is responsible for the failure of Bush Junior’s second term.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Miseducating the child

LAST week it was decided at a high level meeting in which both the president and the prime minister were present that the education sector would receive four per cent of the GDP in the fiscal year 2006-07. It has not been reported in the media what stirred the government to suddenly turn its attention to this very important sector of national life which has conventionally not been deemed worthy of our leaders’ attention and precious time.

This is not something new. The trend has always been there. The story from a very reliable source goes that in the good old days of yore when the late governor general of Pakistan, Mr Ghulam Mohammad, was swearing in the umpteenth cabinet he forgot to assign the education portfolio to any of the worthies present.

He was reminded of this lapse of memory by his secretary — probably a caring father — who was promptly dispatched to bring back one of the already sworn in ministers. The last to be leaving — perhaps with a chauffeur who had fallen asleep in the car — was dragged back and sworn in as the education minister as well.

In those days one minister held a number of portfolios unlike today when one portfolio is split up between a number of ministers, ministers of state and advisers.

Since Pakistan has the reputation of being measly in its education spending and has been under pressure from donors to enhance its education budget, it is likely that the government was under compulsion to do something about it.

To be fair to the present rulers, they have begun to allocate more funds for education in the last two years and the spending on this sector has gone up somewhat. It was 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2003-04.

Although this is a far cry from the five per cent recommended by Unesco for developing countries, it seems a miracle for Pakistan where the amount budgeted for education as a percentage of GDP had been on the slide for several years. From 2.5 per cent of GDP in 1996-97 it fell to 1.7 per cent in 2002-03. It was then that the government decided to reverse the trend.

But this is only one aspect — though a very important one — of education. The availability of resources makes it possible to address the various problems and resolve them, that is if the political will exists. But simply having cash in hand does not by any means ensure that all the problems will actually be addressed logically and the policies which might be perfect on paper will really be implemented.

There are two issues among many others which need to be looked into if the benefits of this big boost in the education budget are to be optimized. The first is the need to create awareness of the importance of primary education in our policymakers. The second is the urgency of curbing corruption in the education sector if the billions assigned to it are to make any difference.

The fact is that our policymakers as well as the many intellectuals attached to the universities do not really understand what the problem is and how it can be resolved. Thus a lot of fuss has been made about higher education, the academic level of the universities, the quality of PhDs being produced under the patronage of the Higher Education Commission and so on. It is strange that the root of the problem has still not been recognized, let above tackled.

The fact is that the neglect of primary education, the base on which the structures of universities and technical teaching institutions are built, has caused the very foundation to crumble. We are trying to build grandiose castles on sand.

And our high brow intellectuals and scholars find it too mundane an issue to even talk about. If your maasi’s children are dropouts or cannot even count till 100 when they leave primary school it is no one’s concern. They are not expected to do any better in life, after all.

The children of the policymakers and the so-called elites of society, who influence policy making, study in the elite private schools (as distinct from the “common man’s” private institutions, some of which are no better than government schools in quality but worse in respect of their fees).

Hence the powers that be are not worried about what is happening to primary education in the country.

Those who write so eloquently and prolifically about higher education, as they take aim at one another, never identify the decay of the primary education sector as being the fundamental cause of the failure of our universities to achieve their goals.

By splitting up the education portfolio between the higher education sector and the rest, and placing a dynamic go-getter in charge of the first and any left behind (using the Ghulam Mohammad analogy) to head the second, the government has done a major disservice to society. The focus of attention, debate and funds has shifted to higher education.

This has pushed the primary sector down even further. The elite private schools that are doing a fine job for a small segment of society cannot compensate for the failure of public sector primary education. Their products who do so well in life do not take admission in the universities the intellectuals are arguing about.

They go to the elite private universities and professional colleges that are mushrooming in the country. Those who are more affluent simply go abroad to MIT, Cambridge, Harvard and so on.

It is ironical that more than half a century later, one has to plead the case of primary education in Pakistan because its importance is still not recognized. We have failed to enroll all our children in school and provide them with a decent education.

At present, the net primary school enrolment ratio is only 59 per cent when according to the millennium development goals all of them should be enrolled by the year 2015. Can we ever reach that goal?

Even countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Togo, Tanzania and Lesotho that started much after us have 84,71, 91, 82 and 86 per cent of their five to nine old children in school respectively.

If the government is serious about boosting primary education in the country, it should also look into the issue of corruption in the education departments on an emergency footing. It is now widely known that school education has suffered because it is the most corrupt sector in Pakistan.

This may not be so visible because the rampant corruption in primary education is widely dispersed.

Small amounts are misappropriated in scattered sites all over the country where the monitoring and accountability mechanism is weak. But given the large number of people involved — education is the largest public sector employer — spread out over a vast area, the corruption does not show up as a major scandal.

Nevertheless it exists and is damaging. We have been hearing about teachers’ absenteeism, ghost schools, fictitious consultants posing as teacher trainers who gobble up funds, textbook boards handing out shoddy books for printing to their favourites who make a mess of these publications, contracts for building schools being handed out to dishonest builders who make substandard structures and teachers who don’t teach in class and ask their pupils to come to the coaching centres they have set up under a relative’s name.

But the impact of this corruption is serious, as pointed out by David Chapman, professor of comparative education at the University of Minnesota, in his essay in Fighting Corruption in Developing Countries. He writes, “The most serious consequences arise from the pervasive, petty corruption that permeates the day-to-day transactions at the classroom, school and district levels.

The real damage to a society occurs when entire generations of youth are miseducated — by example — to believe that personal success comes not through merit and hard work but through favouritism, bribery and fraud. Widespread petty corruption breaks the link between personal effort and anticipation of reward. This, in turn, limits economic and social development well beyond the immediate corruption . Such lessons have the potential to undermine civil society well into the future.”

So what should we do?

ONE marvels at the brazen audacity with which our twice-deposed prime ministers, or their representatives in the country, set afloat reports of their impending return to Pakistan. Reading such statements it seems as if their return is now a matter of days, and then Pakistan’s fate will turn a fresh new leaf.

While Mian Nawaz Sharif is himself “wordless in Gaza” and allows his associates to say what they like on the subject, Ms Benazir Bhutto loves to talk about it from wherever she is and also argues about her husband’s innocence. Both the former PMs are said to be intensely eager to get back home.

Of course the possibility is remote, and the common man does not seem to miss them. In the case of Mian Sahib even if the government of Saudi Arabia has a change of heart and does no more want to be his host, the military regime is not likely to accept him, and will probably say, “Goods once lifted will not be taken back” or words to that effect.

On the other hand, the poor BB has no Arab ruler to plead her safe return and she can only come back to stay in prison. She has already been found guilty of corruption in a few cases, and I doubt if her appeals to higher courts will yield a favourable verdict. So what is this “See you soon” addressed to?

But their partymen continue to campaign about their return in a manner similar to the advertising of home appliances. Their persistence sounds so full of confidence that even Syed Jamil Shah gets worried sometimes. He is an old friend who was once man-about-town in Karachi and is now a reclusive project consultant in Islamabad. I am mentioning about him in this context because he has made a solemn vow. He says that as soon as either BB or Nawaz Sharif lands in Pakistan he will leave this country.

His argument is that this is all that a self-respecting citizen can do when overwhelmed with the dire straits to which these two leaders reduced Pakistan, one in his obsessive lust for personal power (apart from other things) and the other in her blatantly immodest defence of her ill-reputed life partner (apart from other things). In Jamil Shah’s opinion there is no other way out, for it is not possible for decent people to fight, or even effectively protest against, all-encompassing political evil.

Jamil Shah has a dear friend in the United States, a well-known Pakistani painter. Apparently the man is terribly bored among the denizens of that country and is yearning to let Jamil Shah amuse him and entertain him in Punjabi, something that my friend does extremely well when he is in the mood. Since Jamil Shah determinedly refuses to veer from the pledge that he has made to himself, I can hardly say anything in the matter, except to hope and pray that I don’t have to give you the news of his departure for self-exile in near future.

But what a misfortune that sensitive, highly educated and enlightened people have to think in terms of leaving the country rather than wait and see what happens after the return of the political leaders. A greater misfortune is that these leaders are elected by the people, and by all canons of democracy they have the right to do to it what they like. I have never been able to understand our people. They will reject certain leaders but when election time comes, they vote them into power again.

What a great pity that both the former PMs were twice removed by extracurricular methods; military or quasi-military. One shudders to think what would have happened if they had been allowed to complete their constitutional tenure. Both have their defenders but, as it is, you can’t form a good opinion of such people.

During the last fifteen years the only prime minister who was able to earn the respect of the people of Pakistan was Muhammad Khan Junejo but he held the office in the days of General Ziaul Haq who played dirty with him because he refused to believe that the general had been ordained by the Almighty to convert Pakistan into a fortress of Islam. Had Mr Junejo been allowed to stay on he might have set good traditions for others to follow, but that was not to be. This was another misfortune.

The only clean periods that the country has seen were when the three interim (caretaker) prime ministers ruled over its destiny. They were Meraj Khalid, Moeen qureshi and Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi. You can point out many faults in their administration but you can’t accuse them of having treated Pakistan as their personal fief.

Though I must tell you (if you do not know it already) that Mr Jatoi, intimidated at first by the grim presence of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, let himself go in the end, and in the last two or three days of his rule, allotted more than a hundred prime plots in Islamabad and Karachi to his favourites, most of whom, incidentally, were ladies.

Then we had a military government in Pakistan, another comparatively clean period. We all wanted the soldiers to go back to their barracks but our bane is the basic trauma that besets us whenever we start thinking of alternatives. The regime that has followed is not too bad, though it is not properly democratic. Being democrats at heart, though still struggling to find our feet, we genuinely want democratic ways to prevail among us, but the thought of elected leaders coming in to rule gives us the creeps. So what should we do?