Editorials

The polythene menace

4 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

Thursday, 04 Mar, 2010

Polythene bags continuing to blot Pakistan’s landscape demonstrates how the resolution of such issues requires not just political will and efficient law-enforcement but also the cooperation of citizens.

These non-biodegradable ‘conveniences’ constitute a serious environmental and health hazard. Apart from being an eyesore, they choke drains and sewerage systems; upon entering rivers or the sea, they have an adverse impact on aquatic life; buried underground, they never decompose; and when burnt, they produce organic, toxic pollutants. It is not that the harm caused by polythene bags has not been recognised; their sale and use has been banned in Balochistan since 2001, while both Punjab and Sindh have also promulgated ordinances prohibiting the manufacture, sale and use of polythene bags below a certain thicknesses. Nevertheless, the problem of shutting down units that manufacture the material and ensuring that people refuse to use them has proved too great for the authorities, and the bags continue to be widely available.

What is needed is political will: there is no dearth of laws to control the unauthorised manufacture and use of polythene bags but they are not being enforced with sufficient strictness. The issue has even come up for discussion a number of times in the National Assembly but has failed to garner the lawmakers’ attention.

It is time to formulate a policy at the federal level to control this menace, and to look into the environment ministry’s proposal to encourage oxo-biodegradable bags by reducing the duty on the import of the oxo-biodegradable additive used in their manufacture. Yet such efforts on the governmental level will have minimal impact unless citizens do their part by refusing to use polythene bags. Society needs to make an effort towards eradicating this menace, for in doing so it shall be investing in an environmentally clean future.

Appointment process

4 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

Thursday, 04 Mar, 2010

The Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms, in a departure from its own rules, has made public its recommendations for the process of judicial appointments.

The recommendations are largely in keeping with what were reported last week and for the most part they make much sense. Perhaps most importantly, the PCCR has decided to minimise the role of individuals and instead place the onus on committees to nominate and approve judges for the superior judiciary. Given the recent crisis over judicial appointments between Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and President Zardari, this is very sensible.

In at least two ways, though, the PCCR’s recommendations deviate from the Charter of Democracy. First, the demand enshrined in 3(a)(i) of the CoD (that the chairman of the nomination commission “shall be a chief justice, who has never previously taken oath under the PCO”) has been amended to make it possible for Chief Justice Chaudhry to head it. This is a welcome move. Given the fragility of relations between the judiciary and the executive at the moment, an attempt by the PPP to block the chairmanship of Chief Justice Chaudhry would have been interpreted as a bid to undermine his power and would have sent alarm bells ringing again. More generally, the ‘no PCO judge’ stipulation was intended to erase Gen Musharraf’s imprint on the judiciary as quickly as possible, something that has arguably already been achieved. The second change is the elimination of the prime minister’s discretion. Under the CoD, the judicial commission was to forward three recommendations against every judicial vacancy to the prime minister and the prime minister would forward one of those names for approval by the joint parliamentary committee. Now only a single name will be recommended by the judicial commission directly to the parliamentary committee against every vacancy. This too is welcome move. After all, what, other than politics, could have been the likely reasons for the prime minister to pick one out of three?

Yet, the new process is far from perfect. In the judicial commission, the membership will be such that the representative of the bar council will become the swing vote. Should practising advocates nominated by their peers have such power? And power it is because rejecting the judicial commission’s recommendation has been made very difficult. More generally, the people’s say, through their elected representatives, has been minimised in the selection of those who will ultimately interpret the law of the land. From a democratic standpoint, this is not good — then again, had the politicians not tried to stuff the judiciary with their favourites so routinely in the past, there would be less of a need to curtail their role.

CSF reimbursements

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Thursday, 04 Mar, 2010

Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism are running into financial troubles on account of a trust deficit between Islamabad and Washington. The US has refused to reimburse fully the claim made by Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund for 2008.

Under an agreement between the two governments the US is required to repay Pakistan “legitimate expenditure” incurred in support of its military operations. But over the years this process has not only slowed down, it has also become complex leading to delays and shortfalls.

For 2008, Pakistan has received only $897m for its claim of $1.4bn. What one can make out from the report of the General Accountability Office is that the US Defence Department has tightened its guidelines to validate the reimbursement claims emanating from Islamabad. Comments such as “inadequate substantiation” and “compensation for collateral damage not reimbursable” pepper the report.

The question is: why? It seems that on several occasions Pakistan has failed to provide proper documentation and receipts while in other cases it has pressed for claims that are, at best, only very distantly related to the programme in question. And yet the fact of the matter is that the sums involved are a mere rounding error for the US: what after all is half a billion for a country that spends hundreds of billions of dollars yearly on its defence?

It is telling that the rate of rejection of claims has risen to 35 per cent for 2008 compared to a mere two per cent for January 2004 to August 2006. What appears to be behind the get-tough approach, then, is more than good accounting standards. The CSF appears to have become another lever for the Americans to press the Pakistanis in a difficult relationship fraught with mutual suspicion. The impact, though, should not be exaggerated: cooperation between the two countries is continuing on many other fronts and fiscally the IMF is still taking a benign view of Pakistan’s escalating budget deficit. And yet it is totally unnecessary: Pakistanis using delay tactics over visas; Americans choking CSF flows — both sides need to stop needling the other on peripheral issues.

Victory in Bajaur

4 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The security forces say that final victory has been attained in Bajaur. Many of the Taliban have fled. A search is on for them and for those– including a former MNA affiliated to the Jamaat-e-Islami – who supported them. Afghanistan, it appears, is once more a favourite destination for militants on the run. More than ever, it is vital to work in close coordination with the Afghans to try and capture key Taliban figures. The news from Bajaur is of course good. It demonstrates the continued success of committed military strategy in a territory where the militants had been well-entrenched for years. The intense fighting we have seen has brought for the military high command greater knowledge of the militants and their methods, and important experience in combating them. This is important given that, like any conventional force, the Pakistan Army is not trained to wage a guerrilla-type struggle. It has done well to continue its efforts for so long against an outfit highly skilled in using the rugged terrain of the north to its advantage. We need to applaud our soldiers, the officers who planned the campaign and the COAS for showing the willingness to stage a long, hard and often thankless effort to vanquish the Taliban.

In Bajaur – and other places – the baton now passes to the civilian authorities. They must do all that is possible to rehabilitate the population of the agency. Thousands from Bajaur have been displaced, in some cases for a period approaching two years. Many are based at the Jalozai Camp in Nowshera, others live with host families. The plight of these people is pitiful, the facilities at the camp are inadequate, schooling has not been consistently available and the agony of being away from home for so long is obviously acute. But apart from those displaced, a thought must also be spared for the people who have stayed behind. They have, in most cases, received no help at all; Bajaur has been out of bounds to the humanitarian community for a very long time. The people of Bajaur have faced bombing raids and fierce fighting, some have died, others may even now be injured. On an urgent basis help must be offered to them. This is of course the basic duty of the government. People who have suffered due to a conflict not of their own making must be assisted. But beyond this there is also the fact that we must do all that we possibly can to avert a return to conflict. The militants who have been driven out must never return. This will be possible only if development and change are introduced to Bajaur and people given some sense that they indeed live in a state that cares about them and their future.

Still missing

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Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Supreme Court has issued a final notice to the government, ordering that details of persons still missing be submitted within two weeks. Previous orders seeking that the whereabouts of these people be revealed have been ignored. The bench hearing petitions from several persons and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has indicated that it is now running out of patience. The lack of government action is rather bizarre, given that the prime minister himself, on the floor of the National Assembly, had said that all those who had gone missing would be freed. Like many other promises, this one too has not been lived up to.

It would appear that the government has difficulty in retrieving these persons. The limited evidence that exists suggests that they were ‘picked up’ by agencies at various points in time after 2001 and put in illegal detention centres. The agencies, it seems, are still unwilling to divulge what became of them. The government, however, cannot continue to sit back and twiddle its thumbs. It must either inform the court that it is unable to extract the requisite information, or else assert its authority and find a means to locate the scores who have ‘disappeared.’ The matter has lingered on far too long. It is time to resolve it. The government must make a more earnest effort in this regard and work with the courts to ensure that the missing return home or that, at the very least, it becomes possible to tell their families whether they are still alive.

Downhill, uphill

4 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games closed on February 28 with the host nation, Canada, topping the gold medal table. Apart from the tragedy of the luger who died in an accident the day before the games opened, they have gone well – and for the first time a Pakistani participated in the winter disciplines. Mohammad Abbas was our one-man team in the downhill slalom – he finished 42 seconds behind the eventual winner but he was not downhearted and got a warm reception from the Canadian-Pakistani community. Even more upbeat of late has been Naseem Hameed who is currently the fastest woman runner in South Asia having won the 100-metre sprint gold medal at the South Asian Games. Neither downhill skiing nor women’s athletics are sports that feature large in the national consciousness, for that you have to look to hockey and cricket, or squash if you have a very long memory.

Hockey and cricket – our cricketers have performed appallingly against what the pundits rate as the weakest Australian side for a decade, and our hockey players have just been beaten 4-1 by India. Hockey and cricket have considerable investment at government and provincial level to support them, whilst downhill skiers and fast-on-their-feet women have to scratch and scrape and rely on the kindness and generosity of friends and well-wishers to fund their sporting equipment and travel. In the topsy-turvy world of sport in Pakistan we spend millions funding our losers and then berate them when they return empty-handed; and next to nothing on the tiny minority of sportspersons whose individual efforts really do bring us credit. We have a budding woman squash player currently rising through the rankings and with a little more encouragement our women swimmers might get themselves to a competitive standard regionally. There is more to sport than cricket and hockey – and time we woke up to our potential in non-traditional disciplines.

Final deadline

4 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

THE Supreme Court has given the government a final two-week deadline to recover the individuals arbitrarily picked up by the intelligence agencies. The case has dragged on for years without any outcome owing to the defiance, first by the Musharraf regime and now the present dispensation. Besides, the general indifference of the government to the court decisions ranging from the missing persons to the NRO amounts to taking on the authority of the courts in a brazen manner. However, in the face of this authoritarianism, the determination of the court gives hope to the missing persons friends and families, who have been running virtually from pillar to post to get their loved ones released and is highly commendable. Most important, this augurs well for the rule of law in the country.

The point is what has the government been doing all along and why has it not been able to recover the missing persons so far? Its disregard of the court’s philosophy would also raise the question whether it has been able to gain ascendancy effectively over the military that controls the powerful intelligence network in Pakistan.

Given the fact that it was a democratic set-up and had come to power with popular support, it was compulsory that it should have lived up to the people’s expectations and stood by those who were the victims of the belligerence of the former regime. However, it is unfortunate that the civilian government is not just following in the footsteps of the previous regime, it intends to go a step further. Justice Javed’s statement that the number of the missing persons has been rising indicates that the authoritarian trend of picking up persons continues to be the norm. This is a sad reflection on the democratic credentials of the PPP-led government.

Meanwhile, there are a number of Pakistanis, for instance those sold to the US for bounty money and others who have simply vanished into thin air. Their relatives do not even know whether they are alive or not. Our diplomatic missions abroad that are supposed to be looking after such matters, must immediately find out where their cases stand and how they can be repatriated.

The agencies need to be reined in and stopped from violating the fundamental rights of the citizens straightaway. The missing persons, many of whom belong to Balochistan, must either be freed or if there is some charge against them, they should be produced before the court and tried under the law. According to the law, every arrested person has to be brought before a magistrate or a court of law within 24 hours, something the Intelligence agencies hardly bother about because they are a law unto themselves. They should be held accountable and forced to follow the due process of law.

Sufferings of S. Punjab

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THE people of southern Punjab have always felt at best neglected and ignored by the provincial government of the Punjab as well as by the Centre. Over the years, this neglect has been costly for the people living in this mainly Seraiki belt. Agriculture has tended to suffer every time there is a water issue since the share of southern Punjab gets donated to Sindh, due to political sensitivities. Even now the canals are empty and no water was available for either the wheat or sugar cane sowing since last summer. One could be forgiven for thinking the government was deliberately trying to destroy agriculture!

At an even more basic level, the people in these parts still await fresh drinking water. Now it has been discovered that there is high level arsenic contamination in the drinking water that is available and this is causing all manner of grave health problems. Generations in southern Punjab are now growing up with serious, often life-threatening ailments including cancer, still births, infant mortality. To add to this, the poverty which compels families to live in exceptionally cramped conditions creates heart ailments in young children, which are curable with better food and health provisions. Then there is the lack of education and the proliferation of Madrassahs with hardly any supervision. Doctors meant for the rural areas open their own clinics while the teachers posted to outlying areas never arrive there but collect their salaries.

Despite the fact that the present Prime Minister is from the heart of southern Punjab, the area continues to suffer from neglect. In fact, the areas that have developed have done so primarily as a result of either private sector presence or, more effectively, as a result of the presence of the UAE Royals, especially the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. However, this has its own costs in terms of the destruction of the wild life and gradual disappearance of the camel. There is also the child jockey issue that has traditionally been linked to the Gulf states.

If the current state of affairs continues, the rich potential of southern Punjab will die away. It will also be pushed towards political and social instability. The government in Lahore needs to claim southern Punjab on an equal footing with the rest of the province. And it needs to tackle the malaise afflicting that area, beginning with the provision of fresh, untainted drinking water and a free milk programme for primary school children, with the support of the private sector. The potential of the region cannot simply be allowed to whittle away because of the feudal mindset of the elected representatives who simply turn away from their people once the votes have been delivered. The Chief Minister has to move his vision beyond Lahore and its immediate environment.

Reform body proposals

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EVEN though only mandated to examine the Constitution with a view to repealing the dictatorial provisions of the 18th Amendment, the Constitutional Reforms Committee of Parliament has not only considered, but made public, proposals for a new mechanism for judicial appointments. It proposes a judicial commission with the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the two seniormost judges of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Law Minister and an advocate named by the Pakistan Bar Council, to make recommendations for the Supreme Court to a parliamentary committee. Also, the same commission, though expanded to include the chief justice of the concerned high court, its senior most judge, and the provincial law minister as well as a representative of the provincial bar council, to make recommendations for the high courts to the committee.

The parliamentary committee of eight would consist of representatives of both Senate and the National Assembly, and of both Treasury and Opposition, and would only disapprove a commission recommendation by a three-fourths majority (or at least 6-2), in which case it would give a substitute name. The committee would make its decision in 14 days, failing which the commissions recommendations would be considered as final. The appointment would still be made by the President.

The Committees recommendation does not deserve to be considered on merit, because the Supreme Court Bar Association has already warned that it will support the Court if any attempt is made to take the power of appointment from the judiciary and place it in the hands of politicians. The recommendations also represent the governments reply to the Supreme Court, which forced its retreat on judicial appointments recently. The government is not paying attention to the fact that the Supreme Court has adopted the Basic Structures Doctrine, and can strike down even amendments to the Constitution.

Though the Committee has a PPP majority, it should stick to its real task, of erasing the Amendment which Musharraf had made to entrench himself.

Tensions in Turkey

3 March, 2010 (0) Comment   |   Print This Post   |   Email This Post   |    Share on Facebook

Wednesday, 03 Mar, 2010

Besides testifying to the continuation of tensions between secular and religious elements in Turkey, recent events in the country also show unmistakable signs of the gradual ascendancy of democratic forces.

A self-proclaimed guardian of Kemal Ataturk’s secular legacy, the Turkish army overthrew democratic governments four times in 50 years and hanged an elected prime minister, Adnan Menderes. Yet every election brought to power, under a new name, the same party which was outlawed. The turning point came with the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) landslide victory in the 2002 general election. Led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP scored a second triumph in the 2007 election and then went on to make constitutional changes that limited the army’s role and turned the all-powerful National Security Council into an advisory body.

A great deal of the credit for Turkey’s political stability goes to Mr Erdogan. He was highly critical of his mentor, Necmettin Erbekan, who he thought was reckless and who had failed to realise that the Islamist parties he founded one after another were operating in an atmosphere in which secular elements were well-entrenched in state institutions, the judiciary and the media. Mr Erdogan followed a cautious policy, avoided a confrontation with the secular forces, and put the army and the judiciary at ease by declaring that his Islamist AKP accepted secularism as Turkey’s creed and would work to strengthen Turkey’s existing system. More astonishingly, in spite of his religious credentials — he had been jailed for writing an anti-secular poem — it was Mr Erdogan who successfully led the entry negotiations for his country’s full membership of the EU.

The recent arrest of two retired generals and the crackdown on supporters of the extremist Ergenekon group in 2008 show his resolve both to consolidate Turkey’s democracy and to uphold its secular constitution. The army, too, seems to be aware of the fact that the EU is watching Turkey’s internal developments closely and that another military intervention at this stage will rule out the possibility of EU membership for the country and make it even more difficult to resolve the Cyprus crisis.