Hope for the country by Roedad Khan
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Roedad Khan
No authoritarian or corrupt ruler can afford an independent judiciary. The two cannot coexist and are bound to collide. Without an independent judiciary, the Republic cannot be made to endure. But when government falls into perfidious hands, it becomes itself the instrument of counter-revolution. No wonder, all those who do not believe in the rule of law and all those who represent the forces of darkness and counter-revolution have joined hands once again to reverse the judicial revolution triggered by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
The proposed constitutional mechanism for selection of judges is a thinly disguised attempt to undo the gains of the judicial revolution. Counter-revolution does not give up easily. With the restoration of the deposed judges we thought we had reached the summit and our problems were over. Alas, the ascent of one ridge simply revealed the next daunting challenge. In retrospect, it seems it was naïveté to have imagined that the restoration of judges alone would defeat the corrupt system and criminals and mafiosi who have found in our democracy the perfect Trojan Horse for preserving their power.
In Pakistan, as in all federations, the Supreme Court plays a crucial role. It is the sole and unique tribunal of the nation. The peace, prosperity, and very existence of the federation rest continually in the hands of the Supreme Court judges. Without them, the Constitution would be a dead letter; It is to them that the executive appeals to resist the encroachment of parliament; parliament to defend itself against the assaults of the executive; the federal government to make the provinces obey it; the provinces to rebuff the exaggerated pretensions of the federal government, public interest against private interest, etc. They decide whether you and I shall live or die. An awesome responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Supreme Court. Their power is immense. But they are all-powerful only so long as the people and the government consent to obey the laws.
In every period of political turmoil, men must, therefore, have confidence that the superior judiciary, the guardian of the Constitution, will be fiercely independent and will resist all attempts to subvert the Constitution. It is our misfortune that from the country’s first decade, our judges tried to match their constitutional ideals and legal language to the exigencies of current politics. The superior judiciary has often functioned at the behest of authority and has been used to further the interests of the rulers against the citizens. Their judgments have often supported the government of the day. This was their chosen path through the 1950s and during the martial law period of the 1960s and 1970s. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the superior judiciary had failed the country in its hour of greatest need.
On March 20, 1996, the dark clouds on the judicial horizon lifted and the situation changed dramatically. On that fateful day, the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, delivered the landmark judgment in the Judges’ Case which made the arbitrary appointment of inexperienced, ill-trained, ill-qualified persons of doubtful integrity and party loyalists to the court almost impossible. We all thought this decision was a major divide in the constitutional jurisprudence of Pakistan and in the decisional philosophy of the Supreme Court. It was hoped that it would fundamentally alter the character of the court’s business, the nature of its decisions, and will help restore public confidence in its independence and objectivity.
Our euphoria did not last long. On Nov 28, 1997, the Supreme Court of Pakistan was attacked by thugs organised and led by the government. Gen Jahangir Karamat, the chief of the army staff, to whom an appeal had been made by the chief justice for protection, stood aside and watched the fun. The attack on the Supreme Court was launched in broad daylight. The Honourable Justices had to flee for life. The same day Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was forced to go on leave and then officially retired on Feb 16, 1998.
In the darkest hour in the history of our country, Fate had found the man who had the character, the will and determination to speak truth to the military dictator. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry appeared on the scene like a deus ex machina and changed the course of history. He broke with past tradition. The nexus between the Generals and the superior judiciary has snapped. Isn’t it ironical that today the people of Pakistan, especially the poor, the disadvantaged and the voiceless, expect justice not from the parliament, not from the presidency, but from an unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court? This has not made the court very popular with the executive.
It follows that Supreme Court judges must not only be good citizens and men of liberal education, sterling character and unimpeachable integrity; they must also understand the spirit of the age. Their appointment is dealt with by Articles 177 and 193 of the Constitution. Article 177 (1) provides: “The Chief Justice of Pakistan shall be appointed by the President, and each of the other Judges shall be appointed by the President after consultation with the Chief Justice.” The question of consultation has been dealt with extensively in the well-known Al-Jihad Trust Case, wherein the Supreme Court held that “consultation in the scheme as envisaged by the Constitution is supposed to be effective, meaningful, purposive, consensus-oriented, leaving no room for complaint of arbitrariness or unfair play. The opinion of the Chief Justice of Pakistan and Chief Justice of a High Court as to the fitness and suitability of a candidate for Judgeship is entitled to be accepted in the absence of very sound reasons to be recorded in writing by the President/Executive.” This is now the accepted method of selection of Judges. A crude attempt was made to deviate from it but it failed.
Why disturb the status quo? Why circumscribe the discretion of the chief justice? What is wrong with the present method of selection of judges? It has stood the test of time and has the full support of the people. Why involve the law minister, the attorney general and the Bar Council in the selection of judges of the Superior Courts? Why involve parliament and the political parties in the selection of judges? Why politicise the judiciary? Is the proposed method for selection of judges consistent with the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution? Why not leave the matter to the discretion and good sense of the chief justice, as is the case today? Why reopen the controversy? The reason is not far to seek. Independent judiciary suits nobody in this country. It only suits the people, especially the poor and the exploited. It does not suit the tiny minority which rules this country and is virtually above the law. They want to clip the wings of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and take the country back to the bad old days when the superior judiciary functioned at the behest of authority and was used to further the interest of the rulers against the citizens.
Today there is hope for the country.
“The President may slip, without the state suffering, for his duties are limited,” Tocqueville wrote in 1837. “Congress may slip without the Union perishing, for above the Congress there is the electoral body which can change its spirit by changing its members. But if ever the Supreme Court came to be composed of corrupt or rash persons, the Confederation would be threatened by anarchy or civil war”. This is exactly what would happen in this country if the proposed mechanism for the selection of Judges is adopted.
The judicial revolution triggered by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is irreversible. Let there be no doubt about it. Any attempt to undo it will be resisted. The people have planted an independent judiciary in the path of our turbulent democracy. No longer would the executive be a law unto itself. Today there are many now willing to spill their blood to defend their heart-earned independent judiciary. Try to destroy the independence of judiciary, and the moment is not far off when this beautiful country will be plunged into a civil war.
The writer is a former federal secretary.Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk
How Sonia Gandhi is changing India by Aakar Patel
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Aakar Patel
In her silent way, Sonia Gandhi is changing India. Her position in the government, like President Asif Zardari’s, isn’t one of primary execution. That role belongs to Manmohan Singh in India, as it does in Pakistan to Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani.
Sonia is president of Congress, and also leader of Congress’s parliamentary party. Those are the only roles she has. In the Lok Sabha, India’s equivalent of the National Assembly, the leader is finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. That role should have been Manmohan’s, but he isn’t directly elected, unlike Gilani who represents Multan. Manmohan has been brought into cabinet through the Rajya Sabha, our house of indirectly-elected legislators.
So how is Sonia changing India?
She is doing it through her social legislation. This includes laws against poverty, corruption and now against sexual inequality. The first, the law against poverty, was passed in 2005. It is called the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. US$10 billion is spent on it every year, and its details are available on the website nrega.nic.in.
The act guarantees 100 days of work to every adult Indian. The work is manual unskilled labour, and the daily wage is Rs60 (Pakistan Rs111). This might not sound like a lot of money, and it isn’t. But for the farming family which faces drought, it brings dinner for a few days.
Economists did not like this act when it was passed. One reason is that India has a corrupt bureaucracy and a lot of the money meant for the poor is taken away by a village or town middleman. Research has shown that often the money also takes weeks to be paid and that it is made difficult for the poor to collect their wages. So the argument was that the benefit might not match the cost.
The other reason for their opposition was that the transaction is not productive in conventional economic ways. The work that the person gets might well be that of digging the village pond or road. The benefit, if any, of this work is likely to show in time and not immediately. However, after five years of it, most people now agree that the scheme works and it is thought to be the reason the Congress was returned to power last year.
The second act of legislation, the one against corruption, is called the Right to Information Act. This law addresses the secrecy that citizens of poor nations are used to in their relations with the state. The officers of government departments — police, municipality, tax — usually behave like masters. The citizen, especially the one who is not rich or influential, looks to them as dispensers of favours rather than of service. They hold enormous arbitrary power because authority isn’t easily challenged in India. The RTI Act, as it is called, forces them to explain under what law they have taken the decision they did. This makes them more likely to do the right thing, or so the act’s legislators believe.
While some things, such as national security, are exempt, most departments that affect citizens are exposed to this law and the citizen, should he be persistent, is likely to get the bureaucracy to move, which is otherwise difficult in this country.
The full impact of this law hasn’t been felt yet, because people are becoming aware of it only gradually. The government advertises both this law and the NREGA heavily, and perhaps in time it will have the effect its authors intended.
The third law was passed by the Rajya Sabha earlier this week. It seeks to reserve a third of all legislature seats in the Lok Sabha and in the assemblies of India’s 28 states for women. Pakistan already has a law, passed under President Musharraf, that sets aside 60 of its 342 seats for women. Musharraf did this by expanding the assembly. India is taking the more difficult route of introducing the reservation without increasing the seats, because it’s more difficult to change the constitution here.
An interesting report published this week showed that India’s female MPs were half as likely as the male MPs to have criminal cases against them. This is something that will help supporters of the bill, which now has to pass the Lok Sabha, a more difficult task.
The problem we have in our legislatures is quality. Our assemblies are not famous for the speeches made in them and newspapers have stopped reporting speeches entirely. The way in which the Indian legislator communicates his quality is through anger. He does this either through the walkout or by making a nuisance of himself and preventing the functioning of the assembly. This is in the manner of a child who does not want the others to play.
This sort of behaviour gets neutral coverage in the newspapers. Most Indians do not seem to mind this, and the press shows such politicians as having got their way. The entry of more women might not address this problem of quality, but it will help over years in making us see women differently.
The bill was opposed violently by two small parties, run by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Yadav, because they want reservation within the reserved seats for women of backward castes and those who are Muslim.
Sonia Gandhi’s response has been that there is nothing to stop these men from giving their tickets to such sections. If the bill goes through the Lok Sabha, and we shall soon know, it will mean that many male legislators will lose their seats and that is one reason for the obstruction.
These laws reveal the scale of Sonia Gandhi’s ambition, and what she thinks her job as Congress president is. They also show she’s not cynical, which is strange because she has lived in an Indian political house since the age of 24. She is convinced that big change can come to India democratically and through parliament.
She has picked that as her cause and these three laws will be her legacy. They set her apart from our other leaders, whose great acts have come not in parliament but on the battlefield, like Advani and his Babri Masjid movement or Vajpayee and his atom bomb.
It appears that the division of power between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan is that Manmohan has been given charge of policy. This means things like finance, which is his speciality, strategic affairs and foreign policy. Being a finance man, he seeks reconciliation with Pakistan through trade, and Sonia has trusted him to execute a very complex policy on India’s nuclear status with America. Governing India is difficult and can only be done by understanding the complicated structure of the bureaucracy. Manmohan understands it because of his work as finance minister 20 years ago.
What Sonia Gandhi has focussed on is two things: reviving the Congress party and social legislation.
From urban renewal to protecting the jungle land of tribals and from digitising rural records to building village roads, what she’s urging government to take up is quite remarkable. And it is consistent. Her interests lie in social causes, in the classical manner of the Congress.
It is difficult to argue against the fact that she has been very good, both for her party and for this country.
Her husband Rajiv Gandhi led Congress in the Lok Sabha with 404 seats.
He was charismatic, but it’s difficult for us to remember the things Rajiv Gandhi actually achieved. Sonia has half that number in MPs but she is armed with the sort of clarity about her agenda that no leader since Nehru has had.
With limited space to manoeuvre in parliament, she has already delivered laws of the sort of quality and direct effectiveness that no government in India ever has. What she has done might only show in 15 years, when it is clear how successful RTI has been at rolling back corruption or how much poverty has actually been obliterated by the NREGA. But the indication is that her impact will be enormous.
This government has four years to go and it will be revealing to see what else she is able to push through.
In the last few weeks there has been a demand that after his one-day double century, Sachin be given the Bharat Ratna, which is India’s highest award. Sachin says he’s quite open to accepting it, for his skill in hitting around a cricket ball. But the really bold strokes are being played by a 64-year-old widow whose passport now says she is Indian.
The columnist is writing a book on the changing world of servants in India, to be published by Random House. Email: aakar.patel@gmail. com
Towards women’s empowerment by Farahnaz Ispahani
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
Farahnaz Ispahani
The touchstone of the morality of a nation or a society is the way it treats its women. Women are a vital segment of any society. Without their unhindered participation in all spheres of national life, no nation can march towards its cherished goals of economic, political and moral progress or aspire to earn a respectable place in the comity of nations. That perhaps is the yardstick by which the difference between the developed and the developing nations is assessed.
Viewed in the backdrop of this, the recent signing of the ‘Protection of Women from Harassment at Workplace Bill 2009′ by President Zardari has taken Pakistan one notch up on the moral plank in addition to all other accompanying benefits. The president speaking on the occasion rightly summed up the vision of the PPP government about the status of women in Pakistan in these words: “We have to create a Pakistan where the coming generations, my daughters, can be proud of the fact that they live as equals. We will make sure that those who wish to harm the ideology of the Quaid-i-Azam, which was for equality for men and women, shall not succeed.”
In a society which still continues to be haunted by the demon of obscurantism, the new legislation marks the beginning of a pragmatic and forward looking approach closer to the emerging social realities. With the growing number of women joining or aspiring to join the workforce in different spheres of national life, the problem of harassment of women in the workplace had also assumed alarming proportions. According to a survey conducted by an NGO, 80 per cent of working women in Pakistan at one time or another have faced this ordeal.
The issue was continuously being highlighted by women rights groups, NGOs working for improving the status of women, women legislators and members of the civil society. The PPP government which has an abiding commitment to the true emancipation of women could not remain oblivious to this snow-balling social phenomenon which infringed upon the dignity, self-respect and self-esteem of women and which also violated their human rights and acted as a deterrent towards their entering the workforce as men’s equals. Coming on the heels of the announcement by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for the setting up of the office of Ombudsman for Women and an amendment in Section 509 A of the Pakistan Penal Code that defines sexual harassment, the new legislation lays a solid foundation for ensuring a harassment-free working environment for women.
This new legislative measure provides an excellent mechanism to deal with the issue. It puts the onus on the management of the organisations employing women to adopt a code of conduct and also to constitute a three-member inquiry committee, duly notified, to deal with harassment complaints. Their failure to comply with the legislation entails punitive action and financial penalties. The victims of sexual harassment can also seek redress of their complaints from the Ombudsman for Women, if they are not satisfied with the internal proceedings of the concerned organisation.
The legislation is a significant initiative on many counts. Firstly, it will encourage the already working women — who have been enduring the humiliation of sexual harassment in the absence of appropriate legal support — to spurn and resist unwanted approaches by their workmates or bosses and do their jobs with unruffled confidence. Secondly, it will also help mitigate the biggest hurdle in the way of women who were reluctant to join the workforce due to this phenomenon. Thirdly, it will greatly help in changing the mindset of sexual harassers of women. The legislation could act as a catalyst in nudging the process of a social and economic change. Women constitute nearly 51 per cent of our population and their uninhibited participation in economic activities can also give impetus to the efforts to eliminate poverty
The signing of the bill by the president, in the presence of the UN representatives, women rights activists, women parliamentarians, members of the civil society, federal and state ministers and other stakeholders indicates the uniqueness of this piece of legislation and the importance that the PPP government attaches to the issues related to the emancipation of Pakistani women. It also was an appropriate occasion to show to the world how we treat our women. It is encouraging to note that most of the NGOs and human rights organisations whose representatives attended the ceremony did acknowledge the commitment of the government in this regard and hailed the legislation as a historic move by the PPP government in regard to the protection of the rights of women. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that in the history of Pakistan, no other piece of legislation has provided protection to the workingwomen from sexual harassment.
The PPP government has also been working on another very important and sensitive issue, that of domestic violence. For years the issue of domestic violence has been a source of public concern, but no previous governments dared to touch it. The adoption of The Prevention of Domestic Violence Act 2008 in line with the National Policy of Empowerment of Women is yet another significant achievement of the present PPP government which supports a zero tolerance policy for violence against women. The courage shown by the government in bringing this nagging problem out of the private domain provides irrefutable testimony to an unswerving commitment of the government to deal with issues related to women. It also reinforces its credentials as an emancipator of the women.
Other steps that the PPP government has taken for the empowerment and redemption of equal status for women in society, in line with the vision of Shaheed Muhtarma Benazir Bhutto, include granting of complete administrative and financial autonomy to the National Commission on Status of Women and fixation of a 10 per cent quota for women in government jobs in addition to the initiation of the process to review all the discriminatory laws against women, declaring women as beneficiaries of the Benazir Income Support Scheme as well as of free distribution of state lands to female heads of households in the command areas of the dams to be built in the country.
The PPP endeavours for the emancipation of women in fact represent the continuation of the struggle launched by the stalwarts like Muhtarma Fatima Jinnah and Begum Rana Liaquat Ali Khan with which my late grandmother Begum Qamar Ispahani also had the privilege to be associated. Unfortunately, that process was severely disrupted due to the extremist ideology of Zia that resulted in promulgation of a number of discriminatory laws against women. The world however is witness to the fact that Shaheed Muhtarma Benazir Bhutto stood strong and unbowed and kept the flame of liberal thought alive. By doing so she helped protect Pakistan from the designs of the dictator, which were to change this nation into a theocratic state. Muhtarma’s struggle kept the torch of democracy, enlightenment and human rights aloft against all odds. Through her shahadat (martyrdom) she has imparted eternity to her vision about democracy and human rights in Pakistan. Inspired by Muhtarma’s vision, we continue to struggle for the empowerment of women.
Farahnaz Ispahani is a member of the National Assembly (MNA) and media advisor to the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)
The writer is an MNA and member of the PPP media team.
Email: fispahani@gmail. com
Water: a pre-eminent political issue by Ahmad Rafay Alam
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Urban/urbane
Friday, March 12, 2010
Ahmad Rafay Alam
The word “riparian” has been appearing in the media far too frequently for my liking. It’s usually preceded by the adjective “lower” and usually followed by an irrational rant about how the “upper riparian” is taking advantage. This is unsettling because, as one knows, when the word “riparian” becomes part of one’s day-to-day vocabulary, it means water has become a major issue. And it should be. As has been foretold, water is becoming, if not already is, the mother of all political issues.
At Partition, we are told that Pakistan had water resources in the region of 5,000 cubic meters per person. Now, we are told this resource has fallen to close to 1,200 cubic meters per person, a figure the UN warns is close to when a country is said to be “water scarce”. That may sound alarming but, as someone once said, there are lies, damn, lies and then there are statistics
Nevertheless, the fact is that Pakistan’s water resources are fast dwindling. But before someone panics, they need to understand that, more than other things, we are becoming water scarce because of the remarkable job we’ve done at breeding: it’s the increasing population that’s one of the reasons our per capita water resource statistics are falling.
There are other reasons why Pakistan’s water resources are falling. There is, for example, the remarkably outdated and inefficient irrigation system we currently have in operation. Over 90 per cent of Pakistan’s water resources are used in irrigation (with somewhere near 3 to 5 per cent servicing drinking water requirements and the remainders servicing specific industrial purposes), and over 40 per cent of irrigation water is said to be “lost” because of evaporation and theft. Then there’s the world famous Pakistani work ethic: in today’s day and age, farming is a science and economical yields simply can’t be achieved if sowing and harvest dates are left subservient to the whims of lazy farmers (with due apologies to the many hard-working members of the agricultural sector).
Pakistan’s water resources aren’t just threatened by inefficient irrigation and farming techniques. There is also the spectre of climate change. Almost all of Pakistan’s water resources originate from glacial melt off of Himalayan glaciers. Increases in global temperatures resulting from climate change are expected to affect the rate of glacial melt: At first there will be widespread flooding and then, as the glaciers melt away, there will be no water resource. This is expected to happen within the next century.
The 2003 Government of Pakistan Initial Communication on Climate Change indicates that global warming will affect every one of Pakistan’s cash crops. This will affect our agriculture — the current backbone of the national economy — and rural livelihood. As things stand, poverty in Pakistan — and nearly 30 per cent of the population hovers near the poverty line — is a rural phenomenon. The economic effects of a shortage of water will affect rural livelihood and only exacerbate the conditions of poverty that increasing numbers of children will be forced to experience.
Water shortages have affected inter-provincial relations. The waters of the Indus Basin are regulated within Pakistan by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), which itself was created by the inter-provincial Water Accord of 1991. Sindh regularly accuses Punjab of not providing it with its share of water. Punjab, on the other hand, claims nothing more than its rightful share of water under the Water Accord. With crop productivity affected in both provinces due to water shortages, IRSA hasn’t been much successful in resolving the increasingly antagonistic positions being taken by these opposing provinces. This has the potential to affect inter-provincial harmony and, by extension, the balance of power in government.
If these factors don’t qualify water to be a pre-eminent political issue in this country, then surely the international repercussions of water will.
Just as the lower riparian Sindhi is a vicious critic of the upper riparian Punjabi, the lower riparian Pakistani holds a deep amount of scepticism of his upper riparian Indian. The flow of water in the Indus Basin is regulated by an agreement between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan: the Indus Basin Treaty, 1960. Under the treaty, the rights over the water of the three Eastern rivers (Sutlej, Bias and Ravi) are given to India and the use of the waters of the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab) is given to Pakistan. Recently, and there has been further proof that water is an pre-eminent political issue of our time–India has been accused of “stealing” Pakistan’s share of water. Even if Pakistan had the latest means to accurately measure the flows of water–and thereby substantiate its claims–this accusation cleverly hides the fact that, on account of climate change, there are circumstances of drought along the Indian side of the western rivers under Pakistan’s control.
Pakistan and India need to sit down to examine the issue of the management of their shared resource of the Indus Basin. Pakistan can only do this if it has a strong opening bargaining position vis-à-vis India, else it stands to lose even the precarious ground it holds under the Indus Water Treaty. This is a point that the proponents of “revisiting” the treaty on the grounds that it does not envision the impact of climate change must keep in mind.
Water also has security repercussions. It is my understanding (and I stand to be corrected here) that one of the reasons the Pakistan Army maintains the troop levels it does on the eastern border (when the fighting is so obviously along the western border) is because water is considered a security issue. If India gains control of the western rivers of the Indus Basin, it will have the advantage to literally shut off Pakistan’s water resources. In addition, since the canal irrigation system also provides security against a ground attack, Pakistan’s ability to charge these canals will determine some of its defence capabilities. Unlike other political issues in Pakistan, water is not just one- or two-dimensional. Water is multi-dimensional. No other political issue affects the Pakistani economy and society, creates internal migration, is directly linked to climate change, places stress on inter-provincial relations, has security repercussions and involves negotiations with India all at the same time.
At the moment, the types of voices that are filling the debate are unsettling. Over and above the clichéd upper and lower riparian antagonism, the debate is often fuelled by anti-Indian sentiment. One senior journalist has gone as far as offering himself as a human bomb against Indian dams. For once, I wish he would carry out his threat to prove to others who share his worldview: This is not how things are resolved.
In water, the mother of all political issues, Pakistani politics faces a great challenge. For better or worse, the full attention of the Pakistani people is soon going to focus on water-related issues. This is the time for forward and out-of-the box thinking on never-before- encountered problems. Solutions to water-related issues are hot topics globally and all eyes are fixed on how a democratic Pakistan is dealing with the issues water is throwing at it. We must not let the debate and our actions on water be hijacked by unproductive jingoism. In today’s world, Pakistan must constructively deal with its problems. If this can be done, water can be an issue on which Pakistan can be an example to the world.
The writer is an advocate of the high court and a member of the adjunct faculty at LUMS. He has an interest in urban planning.
Email: ralam@nexlinx.net.pk
New solutions for Afghanistan? by Zeenia Satti
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Zeenia Satti
The Pentagon’s seemingly wise new solutions for Afghanistan are divorced from reality and likely to suffer the fate of Obama’s pre-election slogan of change. It is being said about Marjah that “we cannot win this war, but we can help the Afghans win it.” The question is: which Afghans and what kind of help? The footage of troops interacting with the locals showed a mere five to six dust-covered old men carrying blankets given by US Marines. The town-hall-style meeting with Afghan civilians showed forty to fifty elderly Afghans whose spokesmen sang praise of corruption-free Taliban rule. In a blockaded combat zone, there were no mobile camps run by the Marines for wounded civilians or captured Taliban. With three Marines to every Afghan soldier, only 2 per cent of army and police recruits from the south, and Dari as the language of training, the political conciliation of Marjah is ill-conceived. At the national level, the Karzai government is born of massive electoral rigging and violates the core principle of democracy: respect for individual vote. It carries no legitimacy whatsoever with the Afghans, though he is acceptable as the “lesser evil” to America and India.
There is thus a tension between the local control of democracy and the American control of democracy in Afghanistan. This tension is hardwired into America’s Afghan venture. Any government in a box that the US generals are ready to roll out after “clearing” an area will be a government that is not born of legitimate political practices–i.e., is not a democratic government. Going by the Afghan tradition of dealing with illegitimate governments, there is every reason to expect the Taliban will return once the Nato troops move out of Marjah and other areas of operation throughout the country.
The ideal solution would be for the US troops to leave Afghanistan, followed by fresh and fair elections under UN auspices. With foreign troops gone, combat fatigue will make the Afghans turn to nation-building. Just a fraction of US war capital could help a truly elected government build schools, hospitals and infrastructure with the same sincerity which galvanises the amazing Afghan resistance. There has been no Stinger missile display in Afghan resistance that would point to foreign hand equipping it. That is why the American media has started talking about the Afghan resistance with respect. The media’s focus on Afghans’ commitment to their independence has now replaced the focus on latter’s stupid involvement with Osama bin Laden ten years ago.
The departure of US troops can only be facilitated through a dialogue. Unfortunately, the Afghan resistance lacks a sophisticated leadership capable of handling the complexities of dealing with the US to Afghanistan’s benefit. Already, a very auspicious moment has been missed. The first six months of Barack Obama’s ascent to office, followed by Washington’s acknowledgment that 70 percent of Afghan Taliban were not US enemies, was a propitious time for the Afghan resistance to start negotiating, with the caveat of resuming combat in case of unacceptable terms. This would have strengthened Obama’s position vis-à-vis the Pentagon-CIA-Corporate nexus, raising his domestic stock, versus the neocons who got America stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan, with no exit strategy. The nexus has now prevailed over Obama’s promise of change.
Afghanistan stands a historic opportunity to prosper due to being a potential hub of energy supply from Central Asia to Pakistani, Indian and Euro-American markets. The emergent and advanced economies have an ever escalating demand for the ever diminishing fossil fuels. Central Asia is rich in its deposits but is landlocked, except through transit via Russia, China, Iran, or Afghanistan-Pakistan. Given regional and international political realities, Indian and Euro-US markets are vying for the Afghan-Pakistan route.
In the offing is lucrative pipeline links to Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours to the west, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (through which all of the rest of Central Asian energy supply can flow through Afghanistan) and in the east to Pakistan and through it to India.
If the US had not invaded Afghanistan and thereby destabilised the whole region, Afghanistan stood an unprecedented chance of economic cooperation and integrated infrastructure development, leading to prosperity for all its inhabitants. India and Pakistan would have had incentive to resolve their outstanding issues through dialogue. Afghanistan would have integrated into regional and world markets, which in time would bring progress functionally related to such integration. Pakistan could have risen as the new regional hegemon, offering military protection through defence pacts to Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and dealing with India on equal terms.
The fallout of American intervention weakened Pakistan and turned India into a bully. The religious radicalisation of the region now augurs ill for India’s long-term security. Afghanistan, instead of enjoying cultural exchanges and integrated infrastructure development with Central and South Asia, is engulfed in war, terrorism and misery. The American economy crashed, which made its military ventures far more destructive to its population’s welfare then ever before. No good has come of the neocons’ venture into Afghanistan.
If such a situation is not reversed through a meaningful dialogue in Afghanistan, the logical progression of events points to local genocide. Washington has decided to sustain its otherwise unsustainable suburban lifestyle through military means, deployed for securing competition-free access to fossil fuels. By the time the US has taken its Afghan surge to a logical conclusion, the Pakhtuns will most likely be wiped off the region, and what is left of them will be a diaspora of biblical tragic proportions. Their women could be faced with starvation or prostitution (as did Iraqi women), their children sold into slavery. The US will try to change the ratio of ethnic composition of Afghanistan to produce a state with a majority Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik and Hazara mix, which can be integrated into Central Asian region in a politico- economic framework. One of the most heroic people on earth, and one of the most honorable cultures in human history are faced with extinction at the hands of Western forces in Afghanistan because the former lack wise leadership and the latter thinks it can kill without accountability. The precise number of dead in the region has never been released by the Pentagon.
This is all the more tragic because for once in history, the Afghans stand a chance at rapid economic development. They can enjoy border-free trade with Central Asia in the northwest to Pakistan in the east. Afghanistan can establish a free trade zone at the very centre of its land, between Mazar-e-Sharif in the north to Qal’eh Now in the south, and between Kabul and Kandahar in the east. The Afghan free trade-zone could be the hub of international economic activity on the one hand and a source of national integration on the other. It could provide the Afghans livelihood and service the emerging Asian economies with their largest pool of the world’s rapidly enriching population. Every major energy corporation in the world is waiting to put up shop in the region once peace is established. The Pakhtun habit of hard work could make them the most coveted local work force for corporate ventures. Jobs with lucrative salaries to tremendous business opportunities could make the Pakhtuns of the area thrive instead of dying in dust for the honour of their land and the love of their religion.
The US is not telling that it wants control of an energy corridor through Afghanistan. It is presenting. instead, fake goals such as dismantling of Al Qaeda, because it has pitched its oil seeking wars of aggression as “defensive.” If Washington spoke the truth, instead of being funny and offering money to the fighters to capitulate, maybe the Afghan resistance would acquiesce to an arrangement of mutual benefit.
If violence continues, genocide is the only logical conclusion of Obama’s Afghan surge. If resistance starts to prevail, B52s will roll in. Any other goal setting by Pentagon is a delusional venture into imaginary successes denied by reality.
The tragedy can be averted but for lack of local leadership.
The writer is a Washington-based consultant on geopolitics.
Email: zeenia.satti@yahoo.com
The ides of March again by Ikram Sehgal
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Ikram Sehgal
Democracy of sorts came back into being in Pakistan on Feb 18, 2008. The 1973 Constitution, hamstrung by its principal author himself within hours of its enactment, had been systematically disfigured over 25 years of manipulation by those who excel at circumventing the laws of the land and adapting it for that of the jungle. Conspiracy theories abound about the 17th Amendment’s promised repeal (the March 23 date pledged by the prime minister has now been moved to the end of the month).
Will the proposed amendments suit the ground realities in this country? History has shown that there is good reason for Pakistanis to hold their breath in and around the Ides of March, or shortly thereafter. This season seems to be no different!
Feb 18, 2008, was also a good day for the armed forces of Pakistan. Within 90 days of taking over as chief of the army staff, Kayani took the army (and the intelligence services thereof) away from the electoral process, thus ensuring a fairly free and transparent elections. The army spent 2008 reorganising and training for counter-insurgency, sometimes on-the-job, but, above all, instilling and inculcating the motivation to take on militants running riot in vast areas along our north-western borders. When in May 2009 the “clear and present danger” threatened by Sufi Mohammad provided the “casus belli,” the army was ready for action. Swat became a defining moment, South Waziristan followed within months.
During a recent trip abroad there were moments one came close to tears listening to praise (at times given grudgingly) for the Pakistani army’s magnificent performance in battle, for someone used to constant disparagement of the uniform, this turnaround in perception was overwhelming. That the success was possible because of the shedding of precious blood by our officers and jawans was not lost on the intelligentsia, in contrast, a motivated Western media has been niggardly in recognising this. Alarmed detractors, both inside and outside the country, initiated an obnoxious campaign to tar and feather the army’s success. A Newsweek cover story blatantly touted the Indian canard of an ISI-supported Lashkar-e-Taiba “looking west.”
Three years ago Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry stood his ground in the face of a uniformed “show of force.” Hopefully, the affect of the superior judiciary coming into its own will permeate downwards to the lower courts, with greater pressure than the present trickledown effect. The justice the common man requires is the purview of lower courts, which are presently wallowing in corruption. Similar to the cleansing of the superior courts, action must be taken to get rid of corrupt and/or ill-motivated judicial officers down the line. The chief justice and his fellow justices in the Supreme Court and the provincial High Courts should bone up on Clausewitz’s first “Principle of War,” the “selection and maintenance of Aim.”
What the Supreme Court faced down in February was only one of many “dirty tricks,” of which there will be plenty in future. What are the Honourable Justices doing about those who function as upholders of the rule of law? What has been exposed recently on TV was abhorrent. When criminals function in the name of justice, justice becomes a crime.
The 1973 Constitution is weighted heavily in favour of the prime minister’s authority. There must also be sufficient balance between the president and the prime minister. Mian Nawaz Sharif’s many accomplishments, such as the nuclear explosion, energising Pakistan’s economy and making it business-friendly, came to naught when he tried to take on the armed forces and the judiciary.
If the president’s special powers are clipped under the 17th Amendment, will things change? Separation of the powers defined in the 1973 Constitution notwithstanding, the personality of the individual and the perception of his authority also matter. Technically, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee is the superior officer. However, who carries greater clout, he or the chief of the army staff?
Gilani must be commended for not allowing things to get out of hand on one issue after another with the opposition, the superior judiciary and the army. He often plays the good cop to Zardari’s bad cop, and both manage the charade well. In matters of critical importance the man from Multan has virtually no say. If one day he should discover his self-respect and self-esteem, politically he is non-consequential, too weak to attempt even a “Leghari.” Loss of 17th Amendment powers notwithstanding, Asif Ali Zardari can consign Gilani to the political dustbin whenever he wants. If his own party revolts against him, could Gilani depend on the opposition to stand by him in a vote of confidence? So why should Zardari care about his powers being taken away by the 18th Amendment?
Zardari’s dominating input as president will continue to remain. Take the example of Nasim Beg, a superb technocrat who would make an excellent finance minister. Unfortunately, he carries the Zardari tag. Can Gilani even dream of appointing his own man instead of Beg in this critical slot? Indeed, can he take a stand or critical issues and tackle some influential advisors? Undercutting the reputation of the government, these dubious characters only pay lip-service to the prime minister’s authority because they well know Asif Ali Zardari will never play second fiddle to Yusuf Raza Gilani.
The real (indeed, only) reason for the present apprehension about the 17th Amendment is about the selection of the next COAS. Because of the special circumstances prevailing and the success achieved by the army under his watch, Kayani commands tremendous respect, both within the armed forces and with the US and Coalition partners, and we cannot afford to lose this potential. Moreover, he has still some miles to go to rid the army of all the undeserving individuals who were promoted by Musharraf, as well as correcting other anomalies that have been tarnishing the army’s image.
However, giving Kayani an extension will upset the schedule of career planning carefully crafted to ensure a smooth and equitable process. The many extensions Musharraf gave to himself destroyed this system. While an extension must remain a possibility in the present situation, Kayani could be elevated to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, with priority being given to his choice as successor as COAS. A father figure is needed not only as a calming influence but to maintain the continuity of military non-intervention. Let’s face it: democracy is being sustained despite provocations today because of Kayani’s single-minded commitment to the process. Remember Murphy’s Law, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Hopefully this month of March will be unlike others, and we will have a smooth transition from what presently is a presidential system in all but name to, theoretically at least, parliamentary democracy. The ultimate question is, does this parliamentary system, where legislators do everything under the sun but legislate, really suit Pakistan?
The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@pathfinder9.com
The radio talk by Mir Jamilur Rahman
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Mir Jamilur Rahman
A few days ago, Prime Minister Gilani addressed the nation through the medium of radio. In his speech he told the people what his government had done in the last two years and what it intended to do in the remaining three years of its tenure.
Addressing the nation through radio on a regular basis could be a very useful means of building rapport with the people. It can reduce the distance that exists between the government and the people and can also help in narrowing the perennially existing trust deficit.
The practice of talking directly to the people was first introduced in 1933, during the Great Depression, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt came on the radio – there was no TV yet – and spoke directly to the people to explain the causes of the economic depression and what steps his government had proposed to overcome it. The people believed what he said because they could see the practical manifestation of his economic programmes on the ground. He gave details of the New Deal, which was a series of economic programmes. The programmes focused on what historians call the three Rs: relief, recovery and reform; relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent more such disasters from happening. It has been 76 years, but the key elements of the New Deal, especially social security, still exist today.
In his speech, the prime minister promised to address the nation every first Friday of the month. However, one fact should be kept in view that the monthly talk will bear fruit only if the subject which is discussed in it is chosen carefully. There are hundreds of subjects or rather issues which the nation wants to understand and all the issues can’t be encompassed in one talk. The duration of the talk should be of 10-15 minutes and it should focus on discussing one issue at a time. The prime minister’s research staff should provide all the necessary information regarding the issue being discussed in order to enable him to discuss it honestly and with full confidence that what he is saying is the truth. If the prime minister wants to keep his listeners’ attention, he should talk about what interests them and not what interests the lawyers or the politicians or the bureaucracy.
Mr Gilani’s statement that the government has taken measures to bring down the prices is not correct. It has not happened. The very same day that the prime minister talked on the radio, the nation heard that the price of electricity had gone up by one rupee a unit. The fact of the matter is that the prices that go up, never come down, with the only exception being the telecom sector that has reduced its charges so far. The prime minister talked about many other things but I wish he had mentioned the sprinter Nasim who brought honour to Pakistan early this month.
To sum it up, the idea of radio talk can be a splendid one, especially in a country like ours where interaction between the rulers and the masses is almost none. So, the announcement by the prime minister to talk to the people through a medium which can be truly termed as a medium for the masses is a welcoming news and the people are anxious to hear their prime minister. A word coming from him will be more important for them than the unending rhetoric of the opposition leaders.
Email: mirjrahman@hotmail.com
The star that failed to shine by Javed Jabbar
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Javed Jabbar
On February 8, Zia Mohyeddin and Amitabh Bachchan participated in a poetry recitation at the open-air Bandra Fort theatre in Mumbai, under the laudable initiative called Aman ki Asha launched by the Jang group of Pakistan in cooperation with The Times of India group to promote peace and friendship between the two countries.
By coincidence, this writer was in Mumbai at that time and was cordially invited to the event by the organisers through the courtesy of the Jang group.
With admission on the basis of invitation cards taken in advance from The Times of India office, about 500 people waited in long queues to gain admission and to get seats on a first-come-first-served basis. They represented a cross-section of the citizens of Mumbai and to some extent a cross-section of India itself, though the dominant majority appeared to be from western and northern parts of India.
In his inimitable manner, Zia Mohyeddin recited poetry from the pen of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Zia Mohyeddin’s resonant voice, his clear and lucid diction, his careful selection of poems and his calm and assured presentation did full justice to the subtlety, the sensitivity, the sub-texts and the sheer beauty of Faiz Sahib’s poetry. Both the poet and the presenter made one proud to be a Pakistani.
From the polite and periodic applause it was clear that only about 30 per cent of the audience grasped the nuances and the shades in Faiz’s rich Urdu. Even this semi-literate writer did not always comprehend the meanings of certain words and phrases.
What followed thereafter was virtually a passage from the sublime to the shameful.
At the conclusion of his recitation, Zia Mohyeddin thanked the audience and the hosts and promptly left the stage.
The lady making the announcements took the stage, thanked Zia Mohyeddin briefly and then went on to say that she was getting goose-pimples just thinking about who was coming on next. There was no prize offered for making the correct guess. After all, it was reasonably easy to guess a major film actor who has dominated the screens in India and elsewhere for over 30 years, particularly if his name was mentioned on the evening’s programme.
Instead of showing due courtesy to a visitor from Pakistan who had specially flown in to Mumbai for the recital, Mr Amitabh Bachchan deliberately waited for a few minutes for Zia Mohyeddin’s exit. He then made his appearance to the expected applause, mumbled a few innocuous words and sentences about the Aman ki Asha initiative and then devoted the remaining 60 minutes plus to a fine recitation of his distinguished father’s poetry which received frequent applause. It was immediately obvious that from fear of criticism from racist and religious fascists like Mr Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena, Mr Amitabh Bachchan had made sure that he would not be seen simultaneously on stage with the distinguished visitor from Pakistan.
This one facet alone struck a sharp, discordant note that jarred with the central theme of Aman ki Asha, which is to bring people and public figures from both the countries together and to demonstrate a mutual capacity to transcend real or imagined schisms and conflicts of the past and the present.
It was disappointing to note that The Times of India had agreed to this arrangement by which the two personalities making their respective presentations of poetry were deliberately prevented from being seen together.
Granted that the tragic deaths of over 150 people in the atrocious Mumbai attacks in November 2008 have left pain and bitterness in India in general and in Mumbai in particular due to the real or alleged involvement of elements belonging to Pakistan. But all those … strangers and acquaintances alike … that this writer met in Mumbai during the brief stay expressed no discord or ill-will or bad manners. In fact, every person – be it the immigration or customs personnel at Mumbai Airport or the taxi drivers who ferried me from place-to-place in the city for four days – clearly showed a largeness of heart and friendliness on coming to know that I was a Pakistani.
In vivid contrast, a person who should have risen above the grooves of paranoia and prejudice and fulfilled his duty as a public figure abysmally failed to show courtesy, grace and courage. About the same time, an Indian friend in New Delhi informed me by e-mail that singers and musicians from Pakistan were warmly and heartily welcomed at concerts on stage, by prominent Indian hosts who practised the gentleman’s code of conduct expected in any host country.
Fortunately, the spirit of Aman ki Asha is far greater than the physical reach of some of those who participate in this process.
May the Jang group and The Times of India group continue to make their respective valuable contributions for peace and friendship between Pakistan and India.
The writer is a former federal minister of information and senator of Pakistan and also the writer-producer of the international award-winning film Ramchand Pakistani which featured Indian actor Nandita Das with a Pakistani cast.
The next finance minister by Mosharraf Zaidi
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Mosharraf Zaidi
Like the achingly beautiful brunette bombshell that every man wants but no man has the courage to approach, it seems the finance minister’s job has become a victim of its own grandness. There are many ways to interpret the desperate difficulty that the present government is experiencing in finding someone that is willing to be finance minister for this country. Perhaps people worry that if Shaukat Tarin (not a man to shirk a good challenge) couldn’t handle the job, nobody really can. Perhaps a bad economy is scaring good people away from the job. Perhaps the allegations of unparalleled corruption within this PPP government are causing smart people to want to stay away from the job.
Of course, it’s important to remember that not everything that is broken today was handed to this government in any kind of usable condition. The intense opposition that President Asif Ali Zardari inspires may or may not always be fair, but a deeply problematic economic management paradigm goes far beyond this government. After all, we are less than three years removed from an era in which Pakistan’s economic managers were claiming the status of the new Asian Tiger for the country.
Experience must have made an entire generation of greying economic and financial savants truly wise men. From Ishrat Husain to Hafeez Pasha, not one of them wants to be finance minister. Indeed, anyone with professional pride seems to not want to touch the most powerful job that an apolitical shehri babu could ever aspire to in Pakistan. Begging the question, why do men for whom the apex of professional achievement is the finance minister’s job suddenly have cold feet?
The real answer has very little to do with the incompetence of the PPP government that is sometimes being lead by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, sometimes by President Zardari, and most times by nobody at all. Smart economists know that one could replace this government with a PML-N government today, but the fate of the finance minister in such a government would not be much better than Shaukat Tarin’s. The problems inherent in the job of managing the Pakistani economy are not restricted to one kind of political party or another. Nor are those problems linked only to the performance of the global economy, or the prices of commodities like oil. The fundamental problem is much deeper, and worrying, and it is simple.
The traditional model of economic management is unsustainable in Pakistan.
This young and tortured country has only a very slim cadre of economic managers for as long as anyone that is old enough to be finance minister can remember. Since July of 1977 Pakistan has had 13 different men and women serve the country as ministers of finance. Of these 13, four had the chance to serve more than once–Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto herself, Sartaj Aziz, Naveed Qamar and Ishaq Dar.
Of the 13 different folks that have been finance ministers, only three can legitimately be called serious politicians, capable of winning an election in Pakistan without the need to depend on the endorsement of any single family, group, or entity–the late Mian Yasin Khan Wattoo, Shaheed Mohtarma and the always classy Naveed Qamar. Many would argue that Ishaq Dar (a decent and competent man) qualifies as the fourth, but Mr Dar cannot win an election without the endorsement and strong support of the Sharif family.
More importantly, Mr Dar, rather than being a part of the thin group of politicians who have been finance minister, is clearly a member of the dominant club of Pakistani finance ministers that have limited autonomous political clout, but oodles of professional chops.
Since the summer of 1977, ten of the 13 ministers have either been career bureaucrats or finance and/or economics professionals. Often they have been both within the same career, including Sartaj Aziz, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Shahid Javed Burki, and Mahbubul Haq.
The quintessential Pakistani finance ministers are the two that have enjoyed the longest tenures. Ghulam Ishaq Khan was finance minister from July 1977 to March 1985, and Shaukat Aziz was finance minister from November 1999 to November 2007. Both men served for approximately eight years. The most important common strain across these two was that neither would, even in their most courageous and brazen moments, have considered taxing the hands that fed them. The left hand being that of the feudal landowners that help sustain a skewed narrative of economics in Pakistan, and the right hand being that of the Pakistani military, whose appetite for fiscal expansion has never been institutionally challenged, or checked, in Pakistani history.
Simplistic derivations of why Aziz and Ghulam Ishaq Khan enjoyed sustained tenures as finance ministers will always produce a causal link between pure GDP growth and economic success. But the real measure of success in managing the economy has to be the citizen’s bottom line. Stock market and real-estate brokers may have enjoyed inflated profits during the Zia and Musharraf eras, but the dramatic falloff in economic performance upon the demise of each military strongman (and their trusted munshis) is the greatest proof of the myth of the GIK and Aziz economic success stories. The only real institutional success these finance ministers had was that they kept Pakistan from imposing the two most important kinds of taxes that this country now desperately needs to impose: a major tax on the wealth of large landowners, and a major “tax” on the unsustainable growth of the defence budget.
The reason that so many of Pakistan’s finance ministers have been ex-World Bank or IMF and ex-Citibank professionals has very little to do with the institutional success of the World Bank, the IMF or Citibank. It has to do with the raison d’etre of the finance ministry–whether it is being run by a military dictator or a legitimate government of the political elite. The finance ministry is the articulator of Pakistani financial need. Its primary function is to promote a narrative of Pakistan’s economy that will increase the flow of foreign funds into Pakistan. What better spokespersons than those that are straight from the belly of the beasts themselves?
During the GDP growth heyday of the Musharraf era, the fictional narrative was that Pakistan was an emerging market superpower. This was then marketed to investors so that they would pump money into the various Eurobonds and sukuks that helped ramp up Pakistan’s debt liabilities. During the GDP growth dog days of this PPP government, the fictional narrative has been that the Taliban are “60 miles from Islamabad,” and that Pakistan will be taken over by those Taliban. Unless, of course, wealthier countries begin to throw bigger bones Pakistan’s way.
By any means necessary, the bedrock of the management of the Pakistani economy has been to attract foreign money into Pakistan. This is ironic and stupefying, because those very managers, whether times are a-boomin’ or a-bustin’, stash their own wealth in banks outside Pakistan with alarming consistency.
The traditional model of economic management is unsustainable in Pakistan for two reasons. The first is that there are no more cons left to try. Serious security risks weaken the prospects for major FDI or portfolio investments into Pakistan in the near future. Concurrently, donor fatigue, and the exposure of the potential Taliban/Al-Qaeda domination of this country as a myth, means that the chapter of begging-bowl economics has come to a close. In short, Pakistan will actually have to begin looking at domestic economic supply-and-demand as the starting point for Pakistani macroeconomic analysis.
The second is that since there are no more cons left to try, there are no more decent, educated and serious babus left to take the finance minister’s job. Whatever poor soul does take this job will be saddled with an emotional (and most probably legal) toll that far outweighs the glamour of a black Corrolla and World Bank Spring Meetings. Shaukat Tarin is not alone in raising his hands to the sky, in prayer for the poor soul that is the next finance minister, whoever it is.
The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.
Women through the governance lens by Sania Nishtar
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Governance
Monday, March 08, 2010
Sania Nishtar
Although effective governance—or the lack thereof—has an impact on every aspect of our societal, social and economic lives, nowhere is its imprint more vivid than in determining the status of women in a society. This comment uses the International Women’s Day, which is being globally observed today as a peg to briefly outline the linkages. This year’s theme of the International Women’s day, “Equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all”, is particularly relevant to governance, since upholding women’s political, economic and social rights and striving towards achieving equity and equality of opportunities in a national political context cannot be ensured without effective governance.
Before we examine the relationship, let us be reminded that the status of women in Pakistan is fraught with an ironic and highly polarised paradox, implicit within which are many inequities and inequalities. These are evident in many areas. On the one hand, women are well-represented in parliament, but on the other, exceptions notwithstanding, this largely represents an extension of elite and feudal capture. The professional institutions of higher learning have 50 per cent or higher enrollment of women, but at the same time, there is a literacy gap of 45 per cent between men and women and educational opportunities for rural women remain elusive. Similarly, we see a growing number of women in the traditional, male-dominated professions such as engineering, law, medicine, business, the police and the military. But alongside this trend, the nationally representative labour market statistics speak of gender discrepancies, under-remuneration, systemic impediments to mainstreaming women into the country’s workforce and restricted employment options outside of the informal sectors for socially marginalised and disadvantaged women. Furthermore, it can be argued — and correctly so with reference to a segment belonging to the higher social stratum — that women appear freer than ever to express themselves in the choice of appearance, speech, clothing, arts and entertainment and that they are becoming increasingly progressive, empowered and globalised. However, many others in their close geographic midst are relegated to the strictest confines of purdah, isolation and disempowerment. Moreover, many Pakistani women of today enjoy a better status than most of the Middle Eastern women. But at the same time, these trends, which are true for a minority, haven’t changed some of the deep-seated social behaviours and fundamental prejudices against women, which translate both into discrimination as well as some of the severest forms of violence.
Some may argue that violence against women is globally pervasive. Indeed, it may come as no surprise that 70-90 per cent of women in Pakistan encounter domestic violence and that there are an estimated eight cases of rape every 24 hours. However, what is unfortunately unique to Pakistan is the prevalence of some horrific crimes.
We generally tend to attribute all these abhorrent practices to our tribal and feudal traditions and norms and to the systemic subordination of women vis-à-vis men. That may well be the case to some extent. However, what is not fully appreciated is the role that many other systemic factors play in perpetuating these traditions. Poverty, illiteracy, and social exclusion have a chicken and egg relationship with organised vested interests, of which feudalism is a part, and which promote state capture. A democratic dispensation should be able to break through the strongholds of vested interests, but unfortunately, it sometimes helps to strengthen them.
If the state was governed effectively over the years and Pakistan had sped on the road to development with its economic and social benefits accruing to its population, as has been the case with many Asian countries; if the state had delivered education universally to its population and if an honest government had weakened the organised vested interests that form the bedrock of undesirable tribal and feudal traditions, perhaps heinous crimes such as honour killings and burying alive, would not be condoned as social customs and tribal traditions today. In the absence of these fundamental attributes, which determine the status of women in a society, the impact of legal reforms to improve the status of women introduced by successive governments has been, at best, marginal. Similarly, standalone gender empowerment programmes, measures to enhance the access of women to financial services, and others for skill enhancement have had limited impact whilst the adverse fundamentals remain unchanged. This is the first, and perhaps the most illustrative of the pathways through which failure of governance can be shown to impact the lives of women. Here, it must be appreciated that the term governance is the subject of many interpretations, but in the current sense it is being scoped to the policy making and implementation realms and use of public resources and regulatory power.
The status of women and issues implicit within it, also underscore the importance of another governance impediment — one that relates to ensuring compliance with stated policy norms and standards and enforcement of the laws. In theory, Pakistan ensures respect for women’s rights and fundamental freedoms, as is evidenced by the ratification of many global conventions and declarations. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence. Pakistan’s constitution has many provisions, which stipulate that “All citizens are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of the law” and that “There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone” – Article 25(1) and 25 (2) respectively. Also, Article 35 specifically states that “steps shall be taken to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of national life”.
Several laws are additionally in place, including the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act 2006. The experts are of the opinion that although all the discriminatory provisions embodied within earlier statutes were not addressed through this statute, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction. Recently, the Women at Workplace Act 2009 has been enacted which aims to “protect women from harassment and (is intended to) make them feel more secure”. In addition, laws are in place to ensure women’s right to inheritance — an important element in the socio economic and political empowerment of women.
However, there are two issues with the implementation of these laws. One set of issues is generic to the implementation of laws in Pakistan. Secondly, the fact that regardless of what the statutes may stipulate, these are conditional on social norms and traditions, which the vast majority of women in the society have to bear with. These issues are further compounded by the biases against women in the criminal justice system — but more important than that, poor performance of the justice system and the relative intransigence with which it dispenses justice to women.
In sum, the status of women is deeply linked with many elements of the society — legal, political, religious, economic, and cultural. Governance can play a key role in shaping most if not all of the societal characteristics through ensuring respect for women’s political, economic and social rights.
So, whilst the enlightened women’s groups draw attention to horrific crimes and discriminatory practices against women — honour killings, live burials, disfigurement by acid, stove deaths, and other undesirable practices, such as childhood marriages, watta satta, vini, marriage to the Quran — to mark the International Women’s Day, we should be reminded that quantum leaps in addressing these challenges can only be made with slow and steady structural solutions.
The writer is the founding- president of the NGO think-tank, Heartfile.
sania@heartfile.org
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