Post-election task

IT is difficult to hazard a guess as to the final outcome of Monday’s violence-marred polling on the basis of the partial results available, but there is no doubt the new National Assembly, whatever its composition, faces enormous challenges. The challenges become grave in case there is a hung parliament. The biggest task before the new parliamentarians will be to push the democratic process forward with restraint, wisdom and foresight. It would be a tragedy if partisan politics made the MNAs lose sight of the one immediate aim before them — to give stability to Pakistan by forming a government that would be truly representative. A coalition government is both an asset and a disadvantage: asset in the sense that such a government represents a larger number of parties and commands the confidence of a higher number of MNAs; a perilous disadvantage in the sense that the coalescing partners could fail to act as a team and create one political crisis after another.

Once a government is in place, the assembly should focus on doing away with the several amendments that have altered the 1973 Constitution’s parliamentary character. The LFO enacted by decree in 2002 is now part of the basic law, and it has served to strip the prime minister of the powers which make him the system’s prima donna. Instead, all the powers have been concentrated in the hands of the head of state, the most important of them being Article 58-2b, which gives him the power to dissolve the assembly and sack the prime minister even if he enjoys the House’s confidence. There is also the National Security Council, which is headed by the president. As the Constitution exists today after all those amendments, the prime minister representing the assembly can survive in office only on the president’s goodwill. If, therefore, the Constitution is to be restored to its original character, all the newly elected MNAs must unite irrespective of party affiliations to forge a two-thirds majority to strike those amendments down.

While the MNAs have this task, it is time we also reminded President Pervez Musharraf of what the nation expects of him. In an interview with a foreign newspaper, the president said he would like to act as a father figure. In remarks subsequently denied by his spokesman, Musharraf seriously jeopardised his neutrality by saying PML-Q and MQM would capture a majority in the election. Earlier he had said many times that he would work with any party that forms the government. We hope the president lives up to his word and understands the implications of being a constitutional head. Even though he is out of uniform he still commands levers of power and can manipulate the parliamentary process to have a government of his choice and to pre-empt a two-thirds majority. This will go against his commitments. He must allow the assembly to work without let or hindrance as a sovereign body representing the hopes and aspiration of the people of Pakistan. In a parliamentary system, the president is a titular head of state, and that is the role President Musharraf should reserve for himself. He should act as the father figure, as he himself says, and not as a godfather.

Saving the Indus

ALARMING as they are, the findings unveiled on Saturday by the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency can’t really be called a bolt from the blue. Anyone with even a fledgling interest in the state of the environment, and water quality in particular, has long been aware that the Indus river and the lakes and canals it feeds are becoming more polluted by the day. So grave is the problem, in fact, that ‘pollution’ may well be an understatement, for many of Sindh’s water bodies are now not so much polluted as poisoned almost beyond repair. What the Sepa report does do, however, is put the problem in hard, cold numbers that are truly staggering. Based on water samples collected from 21 locations, including barrages, lakes and canals, the report reveals that levels of faecal coliform bacteria were as high as 1,000 per 100 millimetres in 2004-05. International standards dictate that there should be no trace of them whatsoever in water samples. Biological oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand, two other key indicators of water quality, meanwhile exceeded acceptable levels by an astonishing 1,703 per cent and 2,320 per cent respectively in some areas. If the people working in the field are to be believed, water quality in Sindh has plummeted even further in the last three years.

The political and financial clout of polluters is cited as one of the factors behind this dire state of affairs. By law, no industrial unit in Pakistan can discharge untreated toxic waste but this rule is routinely flouted across the country. In-house waste treatment plants are mandatory but they remain an exception instead of the norm — and even where they do exist, they rarely run at optimal capacity. At the same time, there is a shortage of qualified and dedicated people at the provincial and national environmental protection agencies. Either they lack the required expertise or motivation to carry out their duties diligently, or they are simply unable to stand up and take a stance against the power and money of big business. The end result is that polluters get away scot-free, despite the existence of provincial EPAs and special environmental tribunals. It is still not too late, however, to reverse the trend. The Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997 must be enforced in letter and spirit to safeguard biodiversity and clean up our riverine, land and marine ecosystems.

Legislation is not enough

DAWN’S report on Monday about a young mother forced by her husband to sell one of her kidneys to compensate him for the Rs140,000 paid to her father as ‘bride price’ makes for sad reading. Musarrat Bibi’s plight reflects two concerns on a wider scale: the organ racket and the abusive treatment of women across the country at the hands of their husbands. True, Musarrat Bibi’s kidney was taken out before the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance 2007 — meant to check the kidney trade — was promulgated last September. But, while top doctors, who campaigned endlessly for the legislation, say that the kidney trade is not thriving as before, they concede that it has not stopped. It is, perhaps, too early to expect it to be eliminated at this point, although it is reassuring that the organ mafia is lying low. But it is also evident that unless the law is followed in letter and spirit, those involved in this heinous racket will be emboldened to revert to it with full force. Reservations — such as those over the composition of hospital inspection teams — must be sorted out, and voluntary and cadaveric donation promoted to show that both doctors and the government are serious about stopping this practice.

Also, as victims of this trade come from desperately poor backgrounds (the current inflation is bound to worsen their situation), wide-ranging poverty alleviation measures are imperative. It is in the same category of the impoverished that one finds another class of sufferers: women. For while both men and women have opted for kidney extraction for monetary reasons, a case like Musarrat Bibi’s demonstrates how vulnerable women are to exploitation and coercion, even by their own families. Constraints such as the lack of education and information — Musarrat Bibi could not even recall the name of the hospital where her kidney was taken out — aggravate their helplessness. It is, therefore, time to concentrate on their uplift.

Birth of a Muslim state in Europe

WHEN I wrote a piece entitled “Kosovo’s march to freedom” (Dawn, 26 September 2006) I received a number of emails from Kosovar and Albanian intellectuals expressing gratitude that Pakistanis understood their aspirations and also their concern that their freedom may be delayed by the competitive moves by major powers on the Balkan chess board.

One common idea that informed all the messages was that independence could be delayed but not denied.

As I write these lines it is a heady day in the capital, Pristina, as large crowds ecstatically celebrate declaration of independence by Kosovo’s parliament. A predominantly Muslim population – 90 per cent of a total two million – occupying an area of 10,877 square kms is now a free European nation.

It was in 1989 that, driven by an outright racist ideology, Slobodan Milosevic annulled Kosovo’s autonomy. Kosovo occupied a central place in the mythology he had created to mount his bloody campaign for Greater Serbia and even his failure in Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina did not stop him from contemplating a ‘final solution’— another brutal ethnic cleansing – in Kosovo. In Feb 1998, the Serbian army carried out massacres of Muslims in the Drenica valley.

The Balkan wars of 1912-13 and the First World War extracted a heavy price from the ethnic Albanians. Half of them were left outside the new Albania in neighbouring countries. Kosovars suffered discrimination when incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and subsequently even in the successor state of Yugoslavia.

It was however the disastrous transition from Tito’s communism to Milosevic’s fascism that set the region ablaze.

Behind the memorable declaration of Feb 17, 2008 lies a long period of deft political negotiations involving the United Nations, the United States, the European Union (EU), Serbia and Russia.

The UN Resolution 1244 was always precariously poised between recognition of Kosovo’s desire for freedom and the claims of the nation state of Serbia, now one of six sovereign entities to come out of former Yugoslavia.

Efforts to go beyond resolution 1244 never succeeded as Russia was not on board. The EU attached high priority to preventing another regional conflagration. The basic plan was put together by the former Finnish president Ahttsaari whose great gift of statesmanship I grew to admire as Moscow-based Pakistani ambassador to Finland. The Kosovo negotiations became an outstanding example of how the factor of time could be used in managing and resolving conflicts rooted deep in history.

Kosovo’s Muslim leader, Ibrahim Rugova, was more of a pacifist than even Bosnia’s venerable Alija Izetbegovic. As elected president of autonomous Kosovo, he clung to his faith in non-violence in the midst of the worst carnage that continental Europe had known since the end of the Second World War till his death.

Inevitably Kosovo produced its own army of liberation, the KLA, to fight the Serbian army but in the end it was a decisive Nato intervention that defeated Milosevic.

Since then the general consensus in the international community has been that the option of returning the province to Serbia did not exist. It was a protectorate of the United Nations for more than seven years. The basic question for Kosovo and EU has been replacing the UN interim administration mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) by an effective interim ‘rule of law’ EU presence in Kosovo that Serbia might accept and that enables both Serbia and Kosovo to anchor their final destiny in the European Union.

There is not enough space here to even summarise the painstaking diplomacy undertaken by the EU since it accepted Ahtisaari’s ‘Comprehensive Proposal’ for a ‘supervised independence’ for a multi-ethnic Kosovo with extensive safeguards for the small non-Albanian minorities. EU leaders expanded the proposal to suggest a loose Serbia-Kosovo association or union. Kosovo itself proposed a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual respect in September to govern post-independence bilateral relations with Serbia. These and some other initiatives were rejected by Belgrade as it remained implacably opposed to Kosovo’s independence.

Serbian nationalists have traditionally maintained that the Balkan’s crisis of the 1990s was primarily engineered by western capitalists to pursue a neo-liberal economic agenda. They, however, failed to prevent secession of even tiny Montenegro – 13,812 square kms and a population of little more than 650,000 – making it even more unlikely that Kosovo, where 13,000 people had died fighting Milosevic’s army, would remain a Serbian province.

In fairness to Belgrade, its position became more flexible in the post-Milosevic era as it offered Kosovo autonomy ‘broader than anything seen in Europe’ and even a solution on the Hong Kong model.

But it was always a case of too little too late. The latest election in Kosovo brought the Democratic party of Kosovo to power and its leader, Hashim Thaci, a former KLA fighter, unambiguously defined the national goal as independence.

It has often been said that the wars of Yugoslavia began in Kosovo and would end in Kosovo. But the curtain has still not come down on regional tensions. About 60,000 Serbs dominate five municipalities of Kosovo north of Ibar River.

Serbia will probably incite them to break away though its chances of intervening militarily are minimal. It may also punish Kosovo with denial of electricity and land-based communication links.

It will probably be able to count on Russia to delay Kosovo’s membership of the United Nations. Serbia may also increase pressure on Bosnia by propping up the so-called Republika Srpska there.

Russian reservations on independence are not new but have deepened because of worsening of relations with the West on several other counts. Hostility to Kosovo will jeopardise Serbian prospects of EU membership but Moscow which has recently decided to construct an energy link with Europe through Serbia may in fact welcome that outcome.

EU will directly assist Kosovo for the next 120 days to create institutions of a viable sovereign state and if the Kosovars can begin the process of resolving their internal problems especially unemployment the impact of external threats will be greatly reduced.

OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press

President Musharraf should avoid being partial

Ibrat

At a seminar held in Islamabad, President Pervez Musharraf asked foreign organisations conducting surveys on the polls not to ‘disturb the peace of this region’ and also told the media to refrain from creating wrong perceptions regarding the elections. He was of the opinion that pre-judging election results raised hopes and can result in violence…. He also said that some parties were claiming 80 per cent results in their favour which, he added, amounted to creating false expectations.

Whatever the president said, may be his personal point of view. But as a person holding a responsible and sensitive office…he should not come across as being partial. But regretfully, this speech appears to be a partial one. It can be concluded from this speech that whatever President Musharraf was doing, was under the law of necessity. He believes that everyone should follow him without questioning his logic.

President Musharraf should not have any objection regarding the claims and expectations of any party and his expression of reservations shows that he may be opposed to a particular political party….

He is expected to be more careful and responsible this time round. It appears that the president, barring his own role, is not satisfied with the role of any other national institution including the media, judiciary, civil society and political parties…. A good ruler is one who is people-friendly, believes and acts in accordance with the constitution, law, and the principles of democracy. — (Feb 16)

Migration… and concerns of Sindh

Kawish

Following the operation in tribal areas, there are reports that thousands of people have fled their homes…and many have settled in Sindh….Migration from war torn areas is not a new phenomenon….but we have had bitter experiences and suffered the consequences of our sympathy. Those who were given shelter on humanitarian grounds became claimants of this land. ….the situation leads to obtaining NICs, jobs, lands as well as representation in assemblies.

Original residents of Sindh…faced many hardships regarding their NICs, whereas illegal immigrants succeeded in procuring them….

The Sindh Assembly of 2002 was the only provincial assembly which, along with Sindhi and Urdu speaking, also had Pushto and Punjabi speaking members.

This, however, does not mean that the people affected by the Afghan war and now those from the tribal areas should not be accommodated. But if the government was planning an operation against militants in the tribal belt, it should have taken such fallouts into account. As those who are not involved in terrorist activities have two options: either they join the militants or migrate….

…. It is feared that once again Sindh has to bear the brunt of this situation, as displaced people will find Karachi and other areas of the province more suitable for settlement….(Feb 15)

— Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi