Thinking of the Quaid

“YOU are free, you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan.” This is the assurance the founder of our country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, our Quaid-i-Azam, gave all of us —Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others — in his address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.

Can there be doubt that he would have been deeply embarrassed, anguished, even incensed had he been present to see what some of his people did in Sangla Hill on November 12, 2005? A Muslim lost money to a Christian in a game of cards, went to the local prayer leader, and accused his “playmate” of blasphemy. The following morning a mob of professedly outraged Muslims attacked and broke up three churches, a convent for nuns, a missionary school, a hostel, and homes belonging to local Christians. They burned down or otherwise destroyed books, pictures, relics, and furniture.

Christian leaders have called upon General Pervez Musharraf to order a judicial inquiry and award “exemplary” punishment to the perpetrators. What could the punishments be for vandalism committed by a frenzied mob incited by the so-called “defenders” of the faith? Looking for the culprits would be like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Yet the fact remains that the emotional hurt and physical damage done to a small and helpless minority is enormous and a way to right this despicable wrong must be found. Someone has to make restitution. It won’t be the culprits.

Who then? I submit that Muslims as a community must accept responsibility and comfort and compensate our grieving Christian fellow-citizens. I do not mean that the government of Pakistan, or the Punjab government, should make good the loss. Muslims, as individuals and as a community, must do it, for only then will their minds and souls be cleansed; only then will they realize that the wrong done in Sangla Hill must never be allowed again.

I should like to report that two leading women among Muslims of Pakistani origin in northern Virginia (US) have launched a vigorous, and apparently successful, campaign to raise funds for rebuilding or repairing the Christian places of worship in Sangla Hill. Their effort is commendable, but it cannot move the hearts and minds of Muslims living in Pakistan. The latter must also do something of the same order, and on a much larger scale. Let the call go out from Qazi Husain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, other MMA leaders, Mr Altaf Hussain, Mr Nawaz Sharif, and Ms Benazir Bhutto that Pakistani Muslims are honour bound to give funds and personal service in aid of the Christians in Sangla Hill. They owe decent respect and affection, and equal rights, to all minority groups. This is what the Quaid-i-Azam would have expected of them.

I should now like to turn, on this 129th anniversary of the Quaid-i-Azam’s birth, first to an overview of his personality, and then to certain aspects of his political ethic. Based upon several dozen recollections and analyses of his person and politics, presented at an international congress of scholars in December 1976, I am able to offer the following summation.

He was: handsome, elegant, eloquent, wealthy, shrewd, prudent, and frugal; proud, assertive, wilful; grave, disciplined, orderly, and persevering; competent organizer, skilful negotiator, able tactician, master of detail; unselfish, honest, incorruptible; rational, logical; given to the rule of law; covenant keeper; dedicated to his people’s welfare.

Most of these characterizations are self-explanatory, and not all of them are equally relevant to the making of a great leader. The people of Pakistan hold him in the highest esteem not because he was, among other things, eloquent, handsome, or elegant. He remains their ideal because of his unwavering commitment to probity in personal and public transactions, a balancing of the mutual obligations of the individual and the community, and primacy of the common good, the public interest, over the personal interests of policy-makers and influencers.

Let us begin with his view of the ends of public power. The function of the state, he believed, is not merely to maintain order that enables individuals freely to make and pursue their choices. It is also to build a good society, which is held together not only by relationships of interdependence based on contracts, but also by bonds of mutual affection and brotherhood.

All members of the Pakistani national community are brothers unto one another regardless of the religion to which they belong. This community is a historic, corporate entity that connects the present generations with those who are now gone and those who are still to come. It is an organic community whose parts are linked together in their health and well-being, and whose togetherness is enlivened by the warmth of solidarity.

As the Quaid-i-Azam saw it, brotherhood requires implementing the values of equality and social justice. In addition to equality before law and that of opportunity, it includes society’s obligation to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, and to ensure that none would go without access to the basic necessities of life. Since brotherhood necessarily implies caring, the rich cannot say that they owe the poor nothing. Brotherhood must mean then that as one member of the community advances to a higher level of competence or prosperity, he takes others along with him on the same road. They may not all advance to the same extent, but sharing of a lifting experience has taken place, bringing all participants closer together.

In his post-independence speeches he urged his listeners in Quetta, Sibi, Peshawar, and elsewhere to subordinate their sectional interests to the larger national interest. Local attachments need not be abandoned, but what is the value of a part, he asked, except within the whole? This was a call for harmonizing local and national identities, but it did not imply that the locality would do all the giving. The national community owed obligations to regions and sections. The parts might not have value except within the whole, but the whole could not flourish if the parts languished. They must have their due and feel that justice reigned if they were to honour the whole.

The Quaid-i-Azam undertook to implement these requisites of national integrity. He told the people in Balochistan (for whose welfare he, as governor general, carried a special responsibility) that he wanted their area to have the status of a province as quickly as possible, and that in the meantime he would associate their representatives or notables with plans for their social and economic development. In the same vein he assured an audience in Peshawar that his government would want the “sons of the soil” to occupy higher-ranking posts in the provincial and central governments for which they were qualified. The people of all provinces of Pakistan must have their share of the advantages generated by public policy.

A good society must strive to be just, which meant living according to law and doing away with exploitation. Graft and “jobbery” were wicked because they involved taking something to which one was not entitled and, by the same token, depriving someone of that to which he had a right. He admonished that public officials in Pakistan were to serve the people towards whom they should be warm, kind, and befriending, not arrogant.

Civil servants, he said, must resist the pressure that politicians might bring to bear upon them to promote their personal and partisan ends. They owed loyalty to the state, not to any individual politician or party. Governments were made and unmade, ministers came and went away, but civil servants remained, which meant that they carried a heavy responsibility for safeguarding the public interest. Resistance to pressure might involve hazards to their careers, but they must do their duty fearlessly, and if sacrifices had to be made in the process, they should be willing to make them in order to make Pakistan the state of “our dreams.”

The people were entitled to a say in their governance. They could put a party in power and they could dismiss it. Their government must be responsive to their needs and aspirations. But once again he asked for a balancing of rights and obligations. The people had rights but so did the government. Both were entitled to be dealt with according to law. The “sovereign” people must learn that they had no right to act as a violent mob. Having put a government in place, they must let it govern. They should not try to impose their will on it, from one day to the next, by unlawful means.

No government worthy of the name could tolerate mob rule. He asked his people to introduce elements of moderation and balance in their lives and in their politics. Honest criticism of the government was appropriate when deserved, but the people must also understand the government’s limitations. And there would be nothing wrong with a word of appreciation and praise when their government and public officials did well.

The people of Pakistan celebrate the birthday of the Quaid-i-Azam to the point where a great many of them do not want to hear that, notwithstanding his many virtues, he was also capable of error. But they have, at the same time, chosen to ignore his advice in each one of the above-mentioned particulars. Are we then to say that his coming among us had all been in vain? I don’t think so. Gandhi in India, Thomas Jefferson in America, and the founding fathers of numerous modern states have likewise been ignored by many among their succeeding generations.

This is a fate that has befallen even some of the prophets. The optimists among us, especially those who speak in the hope of improving minds, must be grateful to God that they have someone like the Quaid-i-Azam to whose words and actions they can point as a torch that shows the right path to those who would seek it. And who is to say that such seekers will never increase?

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US. E-Mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

Power we didn’t grant

IN the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a programme to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda.

On Tuesday, Vice-President Cheney said the president “was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that’s what we’ve done.”

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel’s office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favour of authorization of force against Al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbour. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration’s request for an unprecedented grant of authority.

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress — but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren’t or it wouldn’t have tried to insert the additional language. All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics.

This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans’ freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.

If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11.

For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president’s justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress.

Judiciary and fair elections

THE judiciary and the legal fraternity of the country have come into focus once again for a variety of unrelated reasons like the new-found judicial activism and bar elections. A touch of anxiety has been caused by a lingering apprehension that our courts might once again be called upon to adjudicate on the kind of fateful questions they faced in the decade of the nineties.

The primary and universally acknowledged function of the court system of a nation is to punish criminal acts and settle civil disputes through an impartial and authoritative determination. In Pakistan, more than in other countries, the judiciary has also come to act

as an arbiter of state structures subscribing to the doctrine that “which is otherwise not lawful is made lawful by necessity” and, going a step further, “a successful coup d’etat is a basic law-creating factor” and the “national legal order must for its validity depend upon the new law-creating organ”.

Such were the findings of the Supreme Court on the dissolution of the national legislatures by the heads of state in the 1950s. A similar pragmatic approach to constitutional questions marked the verdicts of the Supreme Court on the coups d’etat staged by General Ziaul Haq in 1977 and by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Some commitment for return to the constitutional order were made by the two generals and duly decreed by the court but their compliance was not subjected to later judicial scrutiny.

General Ziaul Haq had committed himself to holding elections within 90 days. He held them after seven years and that too on his own terms. President Musharraf held elections, as he had promised, at the end of three years but after that remains de facto head of the government.

But the court has not got down to determining whether his remaining the president and chief of army staff has impaired the parliamentary character of the government which the court had directed must not happen.

The powers of judicial review that the court retained while legitimizing the coups of Ziaul Haq and Musharraf have hardly ever been exercised.

Writing in this paper earlier this month, retired chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah recalled that he and other judges of the Sindh High Court had decided to take oath under Ziaul Haq’s provisional constitutional order to “protect the interest of the judiciary” from inside rather than resign. That he or the judges of the other superior courts, obviously, couldn’t do. By refusing to take the oath and instead opting to resign Dorab Patel and Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim sacrificed their many years ahead in the Supreme Court but their departure did not help the institution of judiciary either.

Neither did the resignations of a few nor the staying on of a majority strengthen the judiciary. The situation under Pervez Musharraf is hardly any different from what it was under Ziaul Haq.

It remains to be seen whether Pervez Musharraf’s national security council and other “checks and balances” he has introduced would block military incursions into civil affairs in the months to come and whether the system he has introduced will outlast him. But the time available till the next election, or upheaval, provides an opportunity to the judiciary, as also to the political parties and the civil services to recover their lost place in public life.

Of late, there have been some stirrings in the judiciary encouraging hope that it can regain public esteem for civil administration but the priorities set are wrong. It is crime and violence in the community and inefficiency and corruption in official organizations which have made life painful and insecure for the rich and poor alike.

However, the courts have concentrated more on wedding feasts and kite-flying. One can argue against the extravagance of one and hazards of the other but, surely, they figure very low among our social problems.

A wedding dinner for ordinary people is a once-in-a-while get-together for a free meal. The well-to-do have such occasions without weddings as often as they like. Even their marriage feasts are now concealed as receptions in which the police dare not intrude. The victims are only the poor and unwary. That the wedding parties help the catering business grow and provide jobs is a separate argument which may not be belaboured here.

Flying kites is an old sport and recreation popular in poor countries because it is inexpensive and exhilarating. Unfit and speedy vehicles plying on roads and the smoke they emit, for instance, cause many more deaths round the year than seasonal kite-flying. The Supreme Court of India has effectively intervened to reduce pollution in Delhi by decreeing that every bus, taxi and rickshaw in the Indian capital should run on CNG.

Our courts should use their enormous powers and reach to stem the tide of mayhem and murder that sweeps through the country, no matter whether the government is elected or military-led or a blend of both as is at the moment. A man eating a hearty meal at a wedding party or an urchin flying a kite hardly constitutes a threat to peace or social order.

Then, it lies in the power of the judiciary to organize orderly and fair elections. The election commission and tribunals, as also the returning, presiding and polling officers are all drawn from the judicial ranks.

It should be a source of worry to the superior courts that no election since 1970 has been free of the charge of rigging. And that should surprise no one when the recent elections of the Karachi bar association itself were marred not by rigging alone but by hooliganism as well.

If the judges are unable to organize general elections fairly and the lawyers cannot hold fair elections even of their own association, any optimism about a stable, democratic order in the country should fade away. The coups will be prevented not by the National Security Council but by free and fair elections and in that the heaviest responsibility rests on the judiciary.