Impeachment decision

UNLESS something out of the ordinary happens, President Pervez Musharraf’s political fate has been sealed. After marathon talks that often aroused bewilderment if not contempt, the two major parties and their allies in the grand coalition announced on Thursday in Islamabad that they thought it was “imperative” to impeach the president. No Pakistani head of state has so far been impeached. The move, if successful, will take the country into new political territory. At the press conference held after a nerve-shattering wait, Asif Ali Zardari said what he was going to say was “good news for democracy”. There are now three issues of utmost importance. First, let all sides stick to the Constitution, and let not the impeachment process become a long-drawn-out affair that will eclipse all other issues and cripple the government’s ability to deal with the people’s problems. Second, the president should weigh his chances. There is no doubt he will fight back, but given the odds against him and the unity shown by his political opponents inside and outside parliament he would be well advised to decide to bow out gracefully. Third, the two major coalition partners might have often dragged their differences too far but ultimately they have shown a surprising degree of unity. This should give the right signal to a possible Bonapartist waiting in the wings.

The coalition partners ought to know that what they have accomplished is merely a political settlement that is not going to change the fortunes of the people of Pakistan. The lot of the majority remains wretched, and it will take more than the president’s impeachment to tackle the gargantuan problems the people of Pakistan face. More than five months have passed since the Feb 18 elections, but never once did the people get the feeling that their representatives were addressing the problems that afflict them — food inflation, the rising wave of Taliban terror, power outages, the situation in Balochistan, Pakistan’s growing isolation, and what appears to be an increasingly harsh tone of the criticism being levelled against Islamabad by its neighbours, not without a nod from Washington.

What the PPP and PML-N leaders should know is that President Musharraf’s removal from the scene will merely remove a perceived hindrance in the way of good governance. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the coalition partners have bothered so far to draw up a comprehensive development strategy focusing on long- and short-term goals. On the contrary, the public impression is that over the last five months the two major parties have done nothing but hold marathon talks in cities from Islamabad and Murree to Dubai and London. Who showed greater flexibility and who has gained more is a matter of opinion, but given the faux pas about the ISI and about the notification on the judges’ reinstatement on Wednesday evening, we hope Thursday’s agreement will hold and nobody will have second thoughts about it. In the aftermath of yesterday’s announcement, the nation expects the governments in Islamabad and the four provinces to start ticking.

Greatest show on earth

WITH smog in the skies and political tension in the air, the 29th edition of the Olympics, the greatest show on earth, will get under way at eight minutes past eight on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 2008 — today that is — in the Chinese capital of Beijing. For a fortnight from now, the tussle between man and his spirit to stretch physical limits will capture the fancy of billions around the world. Though the tussle itself is potent enough to override both the ecstasy of success and the agony of failure, it is always so much better to end up with a medal than without it. Unfortunately there is enough reason not to have much hope from the 37-member Pakistani contingent, of which as many as 16 happen to be officials who are accompanying two swimmers, two athletes and a shooter in addition to the 16-member hockey squad. Pakistan has never been a big force in Olympic history, having won just two individual medals — both bronze — in wrestling in 1960 and boxing in 1988. As for the hockey team that has stood on the podium eight times, three of them as the ultimate winners, it was way back in 1992 that it found itself among the medals. The last 16 years represent nothing but a dry run. Worse still, in Beijing they are not expected to do much beyond making up the numbers. The hockey team qualified only because China got an automatic place being the hosts. Otherwise its bronze-medal finish in the Asian Games was not enough to take it to Beijing. Against that backdrop, the team will surprise many — maybe itself — if it makes it to the knockout stage ahead of either Australia or Holland.

If the hockey squad made an entry through the back door, the case with the three other disciplines is even worse; all the five individuals are at the Games courtesy wild cards that are meant to promote sports across the globe. Worryingly, not a single boxer will represent Pakistan in Beijing. For a country that has always taken much pride in its achievements in the sporting arena, this is as disappointing as it could get. Prediction in sports is hazardous but it is safe not to nurture hopes. Somehow who represents Pakistan at Beijing, President Pervez Musharraf or Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, will keep the nation more engrossed and amused than the performance of its sportspersons in the days to come.

Baitul Maal blues

THE Social Policy Development Centre has assessed the efficiency of different organisations which aim to provide relief to the poor and found the Pakistan Baitul Maal to be the most effective. In its report, ‘Fiscal policy choices in budget 2008-09’, the centre says the “PBM has developed a management information system to record basic information on programme beneficiaries — which makes targeting more effective and monitoring of progress easier. Its overall administration costs are four per cent of total resources.” The PBM’s Food Support Programme, however, has suffered a setback which could have been avoided. The 13th instalment of the Food Support Programme for over 40,000 beneficiaries in Karachi has been delayed for over a month now. The authorities have engaged in a blame game that serves no one and simply aggravates the situation.

It is amazing that the Pakistan Post Office should have refused to undertake the transaction and deliver the amount to the payees unless Rs10 per transaction was provided as service charges. The federal government acceded to the demand and the issue was resolved. The problem was thus one of implementation, which fell victim to gross mismanagement. The Sindh deputy postmaster general, administration, admitted that “some delay” had been caused but attributed it to the fact that the federal government had changed the procedure of disbursement. The PBM’s Sindh director, however, maintained that the issue of service charges delayed the payment and

this affected beneficiaries throughout Pakistan and not just in Sindh or Karachi. The blame game aside, this issue is of grave concern in a country that is suffering from the repercussions of skyrocketing food prices. This compounds the misery of the poorest of the poor since the beneficiaries of the PBM are mostly widows, the handicapped and senior citizens. Programmes such as these offer relief to the most deprived segments of the population and therefore it is of the utmost importance that bureaucratic obstacles are removed and the needy get the money that is theirs.

Betraying the trust

OUR souls are indeed a trust with us. We have to guard them against all temptation. Those who commit crime or indulge in evil practices betray that trust.

The earthly life is in fact a testing ground and as such our salvation lies in the successful completion of the probationary period.

We should not, therefore, get involved in activities which are against the Quranic injunctions and the traditions of Holy Prophet (pbuh). Some of those whose acts, which entail the displeasure of Allah, are detailed below:

(a) Those who are ungrateful (39:7). Allah is independent of all wants and does not need our prayers and prostrations. However, man’s gratitude and submission earn Allah’s pleasure. Man’s ingratitude and rebellion, on the contrary, are displeasing to Allah.

(b) Those who are wrongdoers (42:40). In addition to our misdeeds, the retribution of evil is equal to the evil done. For instance, if we tolerate wrong or encourage wrong by allowing it to become rampart, when we can prevent it, we fail in our duty to Allah. Most commentators stress absolute prohibition of going beyond what is right when defending one self against tyranny and oppression.

(c) Those who are proud and boasters (57:23). Allah does not love the egoist and those who brag about themselves. The righteous does not grumble if someone else has got worldly possession, nor those who out of self-conceit act in a boastful manner. About his own assets, he neither covets nor boasts. If he has any advantage, he shares it with other people as the benefit so accrued is not due to his own efforts, but is a Divine gift.

(d) Those who are extravagant. Allah does not like those who are prodigal (6:141). The meaning of Allah’s commandment is that we should be moderate in enjoying the Divine blessings and be grateful to Allah. We should not indulge in the wastage of Allah’s gifted resources. If we do so, we take away something from other needy persons. Allah would not like our selfishness. In any case, we should not waste Allah’s bounties as He does not love the wasteful.

(e) Those who are arrogant and do not believe in Hereafter. (16:22-23). Everything points to Allah, the one True eternal God. If so, there is a Hereafter for He has declared it. Insofar as people do not believe this; the fault is in their Will. They are too arrogant to accept the idea of man’s utter dependence on and responsibility to Supreme Being. Allah does not love the arrogant. Such men deprive themselves of Allah’s grace.

(f) Those who are Transgressors (2:190). Divine commandments set out certain conditions to wage war in the way of Allah against those who fight the faithful. To be more specific, war is permissible in self-defence and under well-defined limits. When undertaken, it must be pushed vigorously, but only to restore peace and freedom for the worship of Allah. In any case, the strict limits must not be transgressed.

(g) Those who betray the trust. (22:38). Allah does not like the traitors who deny the truth. But Allah will surely defend the believers.

(h) Those who make good things unlawful. (5:87). According to Divine revelation, the faithful should not deprive themselves of the good things of life, which Allah has made lawful for them; the bonds of what is right should not, however, be transgressed as Allah does not like such people.

(i) Those who dispute the signs of Allah (40:35). Those who dispute Allah’s revelation with no authority having come to them, are greatly odious in the sight of Allah. The arrogant transgressors having closed their hearts to the message of Allah and to every appeal made to them, it followed by Allah’s law that their hearts were sealed and their senses become impervious to good. Or in other words, their hearts are hardened; they do not listen to the advice that falls on their ears. (2:7 & 7:100).

(j) Those who are proud and walk in insolence. (31:18). The English translation of the verse reads ‘And swell not thy cheek (for pride) at men. Nor walk in insolence through the earth, for Allah loveth not any ‘arrogant boaster’. According to a commentator, the word ‘cheek’ in English too means arrogance or effrontery with a slightly different shade added viz: effrontery from one in an inferior position to one in a superior position. The Arabic usage is wider and includes smug self-satisfaction and sense of lofty superiority.

(k) Those who are vainglorious. (28:76) In order to fully understand this aspect, the Holy Quran has described the behaviour of Qarun, who was one of the followers of Prophet Moses. Allah had bestowed upon him enormous treasures that a team of wrestlers could hardly lift their keys. According to the Jewish religious books, the weight of the keys was stated to be equivalent to the load of 300 mules. Under the influence of false pride and self-exaltation he acted insolently towards his own folk. Thereupon, his people told him ‘Exult not for Allah loveth not those who exult in riches’.

(l) Those who are faithless and commit crimes. For Allah loveth not those who are given to perfidy and crime. (4:107)

Besides, there are certain other persons whose acts Allah dislikes. They include (1) those who are treacherous (8:58) and (2) those who seek mischief in the land. (28:77). If we want to be among the honoured supplicants of Allah, we should lead our worldly life like a true believer. The purpose in view can be achieved, as in ordained by Allah (1:6&7), by following the path of those whom Allah has blessed and not of those who have earned His anger as well as of those who have gone astray.

A migrant’s unease

IN my second year as the bearer of a British passport, I have come to the perplexing realisation that many of my fellow citizens are departing. Just the other day, a friend of my wife’s announced her impending move to New York. My own inner circle of buddies has been decimated by defections to Dubai. The first friend I made at work when I arrived in the UK back in 2001 now calls Melbourne home.

On a radio programme last year, the host asked me where I lived before coming to London. When I said Manhattan, he seemed shocked. “And you moved here?” was his pitying response. Similarly, during my stints in various British workplaces, I have found myself the recipient of nomadic confessions from even the most outwardly unlikely British colleagues, my own mongrelised status evidently marking me out to them as a trustworthy, or at least sympathetic, confidant.

Perhaps I ought not to be so surprised at this. After all, I consider leaving the UK fairly often myself. And the very existence in their current demographic forms of nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand should have alerted me to a long-standing British fondness for emigration.

But having spent the first five years of my life in Britain navigating visa applications, residence requirements, and citizenship tests, I am only now confronting the reality that many people no longer wish to belong to a club that has accepted me as a member. My first instinct was to take this personally. But I had to concede that this trend predated my arrival, indeed the arrival of anyone who looked anything like me, and, moreover, that many of my own friends were caught up in it.

At this point another interpretative avenue presented itself. I was reading about British expatriates in India, specifically in Goa, on the BBC website. Apparently these people, who had come in pursuit of the manifest benefits of a sunnier, lower-cost lifestyle and a spicier, more coconut-infused cuisine, were confronting all sorts of problems. Their visas were not being renewed.

Their sales and purchases of properties were being interfered with. In short, they were being treated as immigrants are routinely treated all over the world.

And I sympathised with them. Knowing nothing about the politics of the situation or the legitimate concerns of the local population (who undoubtedly have good reasons to want their elected officials to make life difficult for the foreigners settling in their midst), my reaction as a brown-skinned man of South Asian origin was to feel a bond of empathy with these pink-skinned people of North Atlantic origin chasing their dreams of new lives in a place far away.

Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them. If we stay where we are it is not because the instinct for migration is entirely absent from our nature, but because friends, family, home, opportunity - or fear, laws, inertia, laziness - keep us from moving.

For me, as an immigrant, recognising that those already resident in the place to which I have immigrated often wish to emigrate suggests a giant circle of human motion and potential motion of which I am a part.

— The Guardian, London

OTHER VOICES - Pushto Press

US & coherent policies

Tolafghan, Kabul

THE US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, [Richard] Boucher, has said that if Pakistan wants to combat terrorism it has to make all state institutions cohesive. Boucher said this in the context of allegations that the Pakistani spy agency ISI helped in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. These allegations against the ISI were levelled by the governments of India and Afghanistan and the well-known American daily The New York Times. Boucher, who met Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Saturday, said that the new government in Pakistan faces several problems and needs to put its house in order. Boucher said that in his view Pakistan needs all its institutions, including the military and the ISI, to work in one direction if the country wants to genuinely fight terrorism. Boucher expressed his satisfaction with the Pakistani prime minister’s commitment to investigate the ISI’s involvement in the attack on the Indian embassy.Yousuf Raza Gilani told the Indian prime minister in Colombo that if the Afghan and Indian governments provide him with evidence, he will investigate the involvement of the ISI. Analysts are of the opinion that the Pakistani prime minister does not have the requisite power to launch an inquiry. The prime minister had issued a notification a few days earlier bringing the ISI under the interior ministry but had to rescind the order…. — (Aug 3)

Gilani-Karzai meeting

Hewad, Peshawar

THE Karzai-Gilani meeting on the sidelines of the Saarc summit in Colombo came at a time when relations between the two countries are at their lowest point. The important meeting took place the other day amidst growing suspicions between the two countries with the US media adding fuel to the fire. The Hangu and Swat operations are proof that there seems to be a shift in the policy of the Government of Pakistan after the Pakistani prime minister’s visit to the US. The use of force against militant organisations has actually earned the trust of Nato and Isaf across the western borders of Pakistan. Earlier, [they] had insisted on using force to deal with the issue of militancy in Pakistan. [Leaders at] the Saarc summit have also pledged to evolve a joint strategy to deal with the issue of terrorism in the region.

A joint strategy … is the need of the hour to deal with the menace of terrorism in South and Central Asia. The meeting between Yousuf Raza Gilani and Hamid Karzai is a step in the right direction. Both countries should take measures to save and defend each other from the menace collectively. Differences between Pakistan and Afghanistan will further destabilise the region. Cooperation between the two countries will benefit the people of both countries. Close cooperation with each other will protect the interests of both countries. — (Aug 4)

— Selected and translated by Khadim Hussain.