Need for a truth commission

THE recent death of Nawab Akbar Bugti has once again thrown open the debate on Pakistan’s territorial integrity. The smaller provinces, notably, Balochistan and Sindh, are depressed over their unhappy relationship with and domination by the larger province, Punjab. They see the encroachment of their provincial rights by the federal government as yet another example of a Punjab-dominated institution trying to deprive the smaller provinces of their due.

The popularity of nationalist politicians is once again on the rise and the demand for provincial autonomy is being used as a metaphor for a whole range of dangerous ideas. The whole issue has also become a rallying cry for mainstream opposition parties who are united in their resolve to make one last push to bring down the Musharraf government.

While the role a military set-up might have played in this recent debacle cannot be easily denied, the approach adopted by the combined opposition is also not in the best interest of the country or Balochistan.

Like most real-life policy and political issues, this one, too, is neither completely black nor white and hence not amenable to a clear-cut solution. In fact, it is precisely this aspect of the issue that has allowed it to simmer without being resolved for the last nearly 60 years.

While the specifics of the circumstances of Bugti’s death are unknown to the general public, one thing is quite clear. Tehrik-e-Insaaf’s Imran Khan cannot be right when he claims that Bugti died like a lion — or even that he died for a cause.

If there is one thing that is becoming clear from the remembrances written in Bugti’s honour in the local media, it is simply that the tribal chief was an arrogant tyrant who died for nothing other than his own tribal and personal parochial interests. Claiming the contrary is tantamount to either fooling oneself or taking temporary advantage of the situation.

That Bugti died for his own interests does not mean that his killers, the current political machine and military leadership that brought about the circumstances that led to his death, should get away scot-free. The legitimate grievances of the people of Balochistan must be addressed if a re-enactment of the 1971 debacle is to be avoided.

Many Pakistanis contend that Balochistan is not Bangladesh and that the current situation is just a temporary crisis that has been created by opportunist politicians and “outside” interference in the country’s affairs. They tend to forget, however, that this is precisely what happened in 1971 as well.

Outside influence, opportunist politicians, an unsatisfied citizenry and a military dictatorship that was far removed from the pulse of the people, not accountable to them and that did not make an effort to take everybody along was precisely the combination that proved to be the recipe for disaster in 1971. Of course, then it was a civilian dictator who put the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Then too, as now, the military leadership and western politicians kept on telling us that all was well and that the disturbances were only temporary. The people made the mistake of believing this until the day Dhaka fell. We promised ourselves never to commit the same blunder again and yet here we are once again on the same path and similar events are aligning themselves with remarkable precision.

We, the people, must wake up from our complacency and confront the truth as it is not what is being told to us. It is so remarkable that almost universally we tend to doubt what other governments tell their people but never our own.

We need to go beyond fustian claims and hollow slogans on both sides of the political divide and establish the truth in an objective manner. The first step towards doing so is the creation of an objective and independent truth and provincial reconciliation commission.

No party to the conflict, if it is true to its stated position, should have any objection to the setting up of such a commission. If the Baloch are being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth, the parties should wholeheartedly support an objective and an independent entity that ascertains the facts through transparent deliberations.

Even if the federal government (and Punjab) truly believe that the current situation is the creation of opportunist politicians, they should have no problem in having this established by an independent and objective commission.

The real challenge in setting up such a commission is establishing its mandate, authority, and membership. While the specifics of this entity can be worked out, what is important is a sincere desire to know the truth and use objective facts rather than mere claims as the basis for subsequent policy actions.

A truth and reconciliation commission can be set up in one of three possible ways. It can be set up through an act of the parliament, provided a consensus on its constitution and composition can be reached within our not-so-effective parliament. In order for the commission to have some teeth and legitimacy, however, it must have the support of Pakistan’s all powerful presidency, without which it would neither have the authority nor the legitimacy to do its job.

Failing to achieve the above, the commission can be formed through a unilateral suo motu action of Pakistan ‘s Supreme Court. Should that be the case, the commission is likely to have substantial legitimacy, although considerably less authority. A fact-finding committee set up by the judiciary can have the power to call in witnesses and establish the facts of the case.

Finally, the people of Pakistan may decide, through an appropriate platform, to set up a truth and reconciliation commission of their own. As people, we often engage in political discussions, debates and strategising but we have hardly shown the will to become the masters of our fates.

For decades we have merely watched as numerous commissions have been appointed by various governments but their findings have not been made public. This is perhaps the time for the people to assert their rights by forming a commission to establish the truth for all times. While a citizen-established and empowered commission may not appear to have the requisite authority of one appointed by the parliament or the judiciary, it would probably have the most legitimacy of all three options.

Regardless of which of the three approaches is ultimately adopted, the commission must have a diverse and well-respected membership comprising prominent citizens of integrity, parliamentary leaders, ex-members of the judiciary and ordinary citizens. In addition, the commission must comprise and call upon experts on an as-and-when-needed basis.

The proceedings of the commission must be televised live on national television and may be open to public viewing. The commission must begin its work as soon as it is appointed and its constitution is agreed upon and submit its findings to the people within a period of six months.

Among the many mandates of the commission would be to provide a platform to “listen hard” to people’s grievances and validate these through on-the-ground fact-checking and analysis.

Many of the claims and charges that form the bone of contention between the provinces can be ascertained as facts or otherwise. A competent commission, aided by relevant experts, can establish whether the people of Balochistan have indeed been short-changed in terms of gas royalties or even access to gas. It may be possible to establish whether or not the federal government could have done better than it has been so far in providing natural gas to the Baloch.

Also, royalty-sharing arrangements in effect elsewhere in Pakistan — and the rest of the world — can be studied to ascertain whether or not Balochistan has truly been deprived of its rightful share, as claimed by nationalist politicians.

Similarly, Balochistan’s grievance about its disproportionately small representation in the country’s armed forces can be easily evaluated through an objective analysis of facts. Fairly extensive statistical techniques and processes have been developed in the West to determine instances of racial profiling in hiring and promotions and these can be employed to validate (or invalidate) Balochistan’s claims.

By the same token, Punjab’s claim of providing adequate returns can be objectively ascertained. It is possible to determine the economic impact on Punjab for hosting the Baloch people within that province.

By bringing all relevant claims and issues to the table and analysing them in a systematic and objective manner a truthful and holistic picture of inter-provincial interactions can be established. This may then become a starting point for subsequent discussions that may evolve into a process of reconciliation, give-and-take and healing for the peoples of Pakistan.

This process would also have the desirable benefit of bringing real issues (rather than personalities) and objective facts (rather than populist claims) to the forefront of national political dialogue in Islamabad and the provincial capitals. Such a process alone is likely to really engage and empower people and change the culture of the country’s politics.

The writer is a public policy analyst based in Santa Monica, US.

Email: athar.osama@gmail.com

Thatcher’s children

TO celebrate the millennium, the people of Norway decided not to build a dome but to ask a question. What, they demanded of a group of scholars, would Norwegian democracy be like in 100 years?

Seminars were held, social scientists summoned and polls taken. The answer was not good. Most Norwegians were comfortable and disinclined to political participation. The country was more and more run by a barely changing coalition of party officials, businessmen, lawyers and journalists. Elections meant no more than an occasional job change. Democracy was atrophying and might be a passing blip, replaced by a self-sustaining oligarchy.

Norway is, if anything, more democratic than Britain, and Britain has had the benefit, for the past quarter century, of one of Europe’s few recent revolutions: that of Thatcherism. In 1979, this revolution swept aside the postwar welfare settlement in a decade of turbulence. At next week’s Labour party conference, delegates will greet a Labour prime minister and chancellor boasting the private sector and profit as salvation of the public realm, delivering hospitals, care homes, prisons and school administration, not to mention trains, coal, gas and public utilities.

This would have been unimaginable in the 1970s. Not one cabinet member protests, no backbencher resigns the whip, trade unionists are quiescent. The impending NHS strike is astonishing only for having taken so long — and being doomed to fail. The Thatcherite settlement has survived seven general elections, three prime ministers and three economic cycles. It is politically entrenched.

Yet the revolution has not delivered public satisfaction. No poll has ever shown a majority in favour of privatisation. The 2005 election was almost entirely fought over the perceived inadequacy of public services. Nor is the government satisfied with itself, being in administrative turmoil near to nervous breakdown. Public servants are warned to prepare for what the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, calls “continuous revolution”. Private computer companies fleece it of hundreds of millions of pounds. The City pocketed 500 million pounds in fees to privatise the London Underground. Local government has been brought under central direction. The usual totems of democratic enthusiasm — party membership and election turnout — have plummeted.

Thatcherism has yielded a paradox. Ask any profession or occupation what the revolution has meant for them, and the reply is the same. It was probably more freedom for others, but for them, it was more legislation, regulation, intrusion and red tape. Nationalisation might have gone, and anyone doing business with the government grown rich. But liberation from central control has not followed. Quite the reverse. What happened to the revolution?

The answer is that Britain has experienced not one revolution but two, often fighting each other. They are reflected in the personalities of Margaret Thatcher and her “sons”, John Major and Tony Blair. This curious trio of “leaders with no hinterland” proved ideal for an era that had little time for the conventions of Britain’s constitution or the traditions of its establishment. Each in his or her own way tore them up and delivered Britain refreshed but perplexed into the new century.

Thatcher herself was a split political personality, a Hayekian liberal believing in a shrinking state and a Methodist nanny demanding always that “more must be done”. She set out to liberate the supply side of the economy and give it confidence after decades of defeatism and misery. It was initially hesitant. Thatcher was a reluctant and late convert to privatisation — at the 1979 election she banned the word — and, even after British Telecom and the rest, refused to contemplate it for health, coal mines or trains.

Not until Major and Blair was the private sector harnessed to the reform of the public one. But Thatcher had changed the climate of government. Her addiction to the TV programme Yes, Minister, was not to its humour but to its moral message: that the system would always defeat attempts to reform it unless a leader was strong. This first revolution was thus one of political will. It transformed the performance of the political economy and was rightly celebrated worldwide. It is the revolution with which the word Thatcherism is commonly associated.

The second revolution arose from the conduct of the first but led in a diametrically opposite direction, away from “less government” and towards a concentration of control. It was a revolution not of will but of power. When challenged, Thatcher did not deny that she had drawn power to her office, because extra power was needed “to smash socialism”. That accreting power to smash power would always be a conceit of authoritarianism was a nuance lost on her. She and her followers centralised Whitehall, enforced Treasury discipline and regulated both the public and private sectors to a degree unprecedented in peacetime. Where state ownership retreated, state control advanced. The chief casualty was a plural constitution. British political leadership is less subject to balancing power than in any other western democracy. The greatest triumph of the first revolution was not the conversion of the Conservative party - though the “battle against the wets” took Thatcher almost 10 years and cost much blood - but the conversion of Labour. While the Blair project was initially presented as a tactical acceptance of Thatcherism to make Labour seem electable, successive election victories saw no return to redistributive taxation, public ownership or European “social chapter” corporatism. On the contrary, Blair and Gordon Brown accepted Thatcher’s analysis, that “socialism has been tested to destruction”. Even as Brown now bids to lead his party, he is pushing the privatisation of health, probation and jobcentres, and insists that public investment be channelled through high-margin City institutions.

Nor did Blair seize only on the first Thatcher revolution. He seized the second as well. In opposition, he had deconstructed the old Labour party and won for the leader untrammelled control of patronage and policy. In office, this process became a near-parody of elective monarchy. Blair’s aide, Jonathan Powell, told the civil service in 1997 that they should expect less Magna Carta, rather “a change from a feudal system of barons to a more Napoleonic system”. The accusation by the outgoing home secretary, Charles Clarke, that Brown was a “control freak” (strange from Clarke) was greeted with amen across the public sector.

All utopias contain the seeds of their own descent into autocracy. Thus the quest for a privatised Britain ironically led to a more regulated one, in which political activity has come to seem ever more curtailed. This, in turn, invites another revolution, as if to resolve the contradictions of the first two. The public sector, as reformed over the past two decades, is greeted with unprecedented dismay by opinion polls. A restless upheaval envelopes every Whitehall department and “policy silo”, as each one seeks to follow the latest Blair initiatives or Brown target, bereft of any ideological compass.

When viewed in the round, Thatcherism’s conduct of the public sector is one of extraordinary ineptitude: the poll tax, rail privatisation, on-off hospital autonomy, school testing, computer procurement, farm subsidies, family tax credits. Private finance, said to be “the only game in town”, is startlingly expensive. Blair’s quest for service delivery through “e-government” is as elusive as his quest for democracy abroad through e-war.

Labour’s most treasured creation, the NHS, is forced to find upwards of #12bn to pay for a computer system it does not need and must cut swaths through hospital services to do so. To all this, Thatcherism seems to have no answer.

The Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, pointed out Thatcher’s vulnerability to revolutionary paradox. She and Marx both saw synthesis in economic progress, a classless society and a utopian withering-away of the state. Both quests failed.

—Dawn/Guardian Service

Depressing social indicators

OF the many hundreds of articles and letters that have appeared in this newspaper during the last 18 months, the piece that made this writer sit up and take notice was the one written by Tasneem Siddiqui, a former civil servant, which appeared on May 10, 2005.

The article certainly bears exhumation and critical appraisal, not only for its hard hitting analysis but because it introduces a novel approach to a subject that seems to have occupied the mind of every Pakistani writer who has tried his hand at political criticism.

Entitled ‘The rise of mediocrity in Pakistan,’ it traces the gradual deterioration of standards in almost all walks of life. Those readers who missed the article when it first appeared would be advised to extricate it from the internet memory bank. It is certainly worth another look.

In this objective analysis the writer has not only scratched deep below the surface of the collective consciousness, he has highlighted the real, endemic cause responsible for the malaise in which the nation finds itself — the existence of mediocrity at various levels of activity — political, administrative and social. Here are some interesting extracts.

“Political instability, even after 58 years of an independent existence... is no doubt cause for concern... but what is more worrying is the rise of mediocrity and the resultant incompetence at all levels of Pakistani society.” As the bard might have put it, No truer word hath ever been spoken.

Mediocrity has managed to insinuate its way into all the other factors that have been ticked off on the chart, like political instability, a worsening law and order situation, dismal social indicators, rampant unemployment, rising inflation and widespread corruption — which are some of the major problems facing the country today. The country started off so well. But then there was this gradual, almost subliminal, destruction of institutions which started with the fall of Ayub Khan and which have carried on to the present day.

The rise of mediocrity might, in fact, be the root cause of the current malaise, for it lowers the bar over which the athlete is expected to jump and sets lower standards of acceptability in all types of activity.

The causes of these problems can be debated endlessly, and almost everybody accepts the fact that they exist and have to be met one way or the other. But what is one to do with the characteristic trait that distinguishes the lifestyles of the people — falling standards in all departments of public and private life — resulting in gross incompetence?

One has only to look at the state of our roads, the transmission of electricity, the management of water, the mess that has been made by the Privatisation Commission in selling off national assets, the absence of the rule of law, the standard of debates in the assemblies, the capricious behaviour of public officials and the way parliament has handled the issue of women’s rights to realise what the writer is trying to say.

“Whether it is the public or the private sector, a university or a primary school, journalism or the law, the civil service or the political field, mediocrity remains the hallmark of Pakistani society. In the not too distant past we were a reasonably well-organised society run by competent people. Our university teachers, judges, newspaper editors enjoyed a good reputation, but no more.”

“Pakistan is a nuclear power, which to the outsider would indicate that Pakistan is an advanced country in science and technology and has a good base for research and its application to agriculture, industry and other fields. Is it not strange that apart from a few exceptions, we have no scientist community worth the name?”

Siddiqui continued to turn the screw. “Bureaucracy has now become a pejorative term. In spite of its arrogance, abrasiveness and inaccessibility, the civil service of Pakistan was one of the best in the region and could deliver the goods. Similarly, not very long ago our engineers could make barrages, dams and could run a very intricate canal system by themselves. Now, most of them do not know even the basics of their profession.”

A number of current functionaries were then lined up and received their share of the drubbing — chief secretaries, who can’t put up a cogent argument or act in a dignified manner and government secretaries who are incapable of composing a minute or preparing a proper summary. Magistrates, academicians, the police and a large bunch of technocrats also came in for a share of the rebuke.

Whilst other countries have tried to build on whatever little infrastructure they had, in Pakistan the movement has been in the opposite direction. How else can one explain the fact that when it comes to filling important positions the people who pull the strings that make the marionettes dance, appear to travel to extraordinary lengths to select the wrong man?

In the good old days when the civil service was strong and had the courage to stand up against oppressive and capricious rule, the right people were given the right jobs, and men and women who came up with innovative ideas were rewarded. Today the reverse is the case. “Creativity is at a discount, while mediocrity is at a high premium.”

The department in the public sector that he selected for special attention is the police “where mediocrity and incompetence have assumed legendary proportions.” The investigation and preparation of criminal cases is so inadequate that a very small proportion of cases end in convictions. Intelligence gathering is another weak area. To make matters worse, policemen invariably side with the stronger party in a dispute, and are easily manipulated by ruling politicians in whose presence they act in a most obsequious and submissive manner.

The writer then turned his attention to the men in uniform. “The army is one institution which has maintained its colonial tradition of recruitment, training and promotions. There has hardly been any political interference in top appointments and postings. Some people can say, and rightly so, that it is the army that which has interfered in almost everything and destroyed most of the national institutions. But can one say with any degree of confidence that today the officer corps is any brighter than its predecessors? Aren’t the top slots being manned by mediocre and lacklustre people?”

The writer hasn’t spared the political leaders “Civil and military bureaucrats and the middle class intelligentsia have always labelled politicians as rabble-rousers, bereft of all discipline and etiquette. This no doubt smacks of prejudice and contempt on the part of their detractors.

“But look at the people who are heading various political parties, (mainstream and the smaller), or the stature of our prime ministers, governors and chief ministers during the last 20 years, and one comes to the conclusion that mediocrity is the hallmark of our politics too. Not that the politicians of the last generation were any visionaries, but they at least commanded respect, and had above-average intelligence. It is another thing that most of them were spineless and didn’t have the courage to take a stand at critical moments in Pakistan’s history.”

The reference to politicians is particularly apt, at least in the case of Sindh. Can any of the current bunch of legislators who sit in the assembly compare to the politicians of the 1940s, to people like Allah Bux Soomro, G.M. Syed, Mohammed Ayub Khuhro and Miran Mohammed Shah?

Siddiqui wasn’t exactly enamoured with developments in education. “Three decades ago, our universities had vice chancellors and professors who were men of great learning and made contributions to their field of specialisation. They were scholarly people greatly respected by both students and their peers. What do we see today? We have vice chancellors who have never been to any university. There are others who got their PhDs through spurious means.”

Whatever Siddiqui had written in his article is, of course, patently true. He might have pulled a few punches here and there, and overdone it while sparring with the politicians, but the general thrust of his article is in the right direction.

Pakistan has been going downhill in almost every department, and what makes it so sad is the fact that there’s nothing anybody can do about it — unless, of course, we can find somebody who can clean the Augean Stables and recognise the fact that the rise of mediocrity is directly proportional to the neglect of merit.