The president’s speech

GOVERNORS, chief ministers, parliamentarians, advisors, services chiefs, diplomats and unelected politicians — all converged on parliament yesterday to watch President Asif Ali Zardari deliver his inaugural speech to a joint session of parliament. The full pageantry of democracy was on display and it was reassuring to see, for once, politicians, opposition and treasury members alike, adhere to more elevated norms of civility. The main show, however, was the president’s speech — which left one feeling short-changed. While the nation looked towards the president for policy, the president provided rhetoric instead. Only a few hours later, the bombing in Islamabad was a macabre reminder — if one was needed — of the high stakes involved.

The bombing also provided a gory backdrop to President Zardari’s remarks on the war against terrorism. The president’s voice rose when — in a clear allusion to recent US strikes inside Fata — he said that Pakistan will “not tolerate any violation” of its sovereignty. However, no explanation was given of how the government will go about fulfilling its vow. The president rightly pointed out that Pakistan must understand the “limits of confrontation” — an armed confrontation between Pakistan and the US or Afghanistan would be disastrous and must be avoided at all costs. However, Pakistanis are confused by the do-nothing policy of its leaders. One clear, positive measure announced by the president was the holding of an in-camera joint session of parliament to brief MPs on the militancy threat. Yet the president did not take the nation into confidence on the situation in Bajaur, Swat, Khyber, Kurram, Mohmand, Waziristan, Dir — which inevitably will be linked to yesterday’s bombing.

About the constitution and the much-maligned, anti-parliament Seventeenth Amendment and Article 58-2(b), the president boasted: “Never before has a president stood here and given away his powers.” But the president only invited an “all-party committee” to “revisit” the constitutional amendments. No timeline and no specifics of what will be changed were given. The PPP’s law minister, Farooq H. Naek, has already mooted an 80-point constitutional amendment package that covers the anti-parliament amendments and much more. Pakistanis are rightly suspicious of open-ended committees charged with vague responsibilities.

Similarly, the president’s comments on Balochistan were disappointing. It clearly goes to the credit of the government that violence in Balochistan has come to a virtual halt in recent weeks. However, the president gave no next-steps or roadmap on how his government hopes to achieve permanent peace in the restive province. The only sign of acknowledgment of issues in the smaller provinces was his call to the government to “restore” provincial autonomy and rename the NWFP Pakhtunkhwa.

The economy too got the glib treatment. President Zardari promised to take Pakistan out of the artificial darkness caused by the electricity shortage; to position the country as a hub of regional commerce and trade; and to revive sustainable growth. How all this will be achieved was left unsaid.


FORMER mayor of Bogotá Enrique Penalosa had a point when he said at a seminar in Karachi the other day that high-speed signal-free highways would not necessarily rid the city of its mounting traffic woes. The number of vehicles, he warned, would rise in time to fill — in fact clog — the expanded roads, leaving the environment even more polluted and causing the government to run up a more massive fuel import bill. Clearly, a long-term solution is needed. Times without number this newspaper has made an impassioned plea for the revival of the city’s circular railway, which in the mid-1980s operated over 100 trains and was used by around six million passengers every year. Neglected by successive governments pursuing skewed urban transport priorities, the rail-based mass transit system collapsed in the late 1990s when the number of trains dropped to a disappointing two.

However, the hope that the Karachi circular railway might be up and running were rekindled recently when the Central Development Working Party, which has the authority of approving projects submitted by various ministries, decided that the Rs52.3bn KCR project would be executed within three years. The government is expecting the foreign component of the investment — raised by a key Japanese government agency — to be Rs39.2bn. The circular railway would have the capacity for carrying 700,000 passengers daily using over 240 eight-coach electric trains. The 50-kilometre dual-track railway project would have 23 underpasses and overhead bridges — bypassing the current 18 level crossings — and 23 stations in the city. The Karachi Urban Transport Corporation, which is the executing agency of the KCR, is said to be currently in the process of undertaking an environment impact assessment of the project.

It has been argued that one of the reasons why the circular railway fell by the wayside in the past was that it gradually became inaccessible to commuters who took up residence in newly established localities not linked by the rail loop. This problem is being overcome by laying a six-kilometre-long track to the existing circular railway infrastructure connecting the Jinnah Terminal with the Drigh Road station and running buses to the rail stations. Like most mega-cities, Karachi needs and deserves a rail-based mass transit system. It is about time the city took a first step in this direction.


IT is tragic that incidents of parents selling their children are increasingly in the news these days. One such case is that of Aisha Malik who offered her two children for sale in Hyderabad’s main bazaar some time back. What was the government’s response? The prime minister sought a report on the incident and sent some compensation money to the woman who was given shelter by a charity organisation. This may have been a heartwarming deed, but one ought to be looking at the entire picture of internal trafficking in the country. It is no secret that thousands of vulnerable women and children are trafficked to settle debts and disputes or forced into sexual exploitation or involuntary servitude.

Internal trafficking is a manifestation of extreme poverty and it is mainly poverty alleviation programmes that will help mitigate the problem. In these perilous times of high inflation, subsidies for health and education are essential for low-income and destitute families to ease the burden of supporting children. However, other aspects of the problem also need to be dealt with, one of which is bringing down the population rate. Regular family planning campaigns in all parts of the country will go a long way in dispelling impracticable notions and ensure that there are smaller families with fewer needs. Unfortunately, little progress has been made on this score and much remains to be done to bring down the fertility rate.

Deterrence is of equal importance. Selling children should be treated as a crime. As advised by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, those parents selling their children in the name of ‘unemployment and poverty’ should be arrested, and it is the government’s responsibility to take action against those who are involved in selling minors. Undoubtedly, along with the other measures proposed, this will discourage such actions in the future.


THE constitution of a National Finance Commission (NFC) has been among the early decisions taken by the democratic regime. The only two consensual awards emerged during democratic regimes in the past, one under Mr Bhutto and the other during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif. That might happen yet again. So, at least, all well-meaning souls wish. But will it, with positions and even postures set in stone?

Each province now has its well-known position, with a Kalabagh-like regime-neutral provincial consensus. Territorially the largest province, Balochistan wants territory to be the basis of distribution. The NWFP is the poorest; it insists on poverty and backwardness as the criteria for horizontal distribution. Sindh believes it collects the most taxes and would like it to be the basis. Punjab is the most populated and has had the muscle to keep population as the sole criterion in the apportionment of resources. If the presidential election is any guide, this time round the power has tilted in the other direction.

One shudders to think how this new matrix will play up in the deliberations of the recently constituted NFC, the conciliatory gestures of Mian Shahbaz Sharif towards the smaller provinces notwithstanding.

Resource distribution had haunted the unitary federation inherited in 1947 from its very inception and was finally its undoing in the smog of 1971. Reading the proceedings of the Pakistan Economic Association in the 1950s and the 1960s, one comes across a recurrent view of the Bengali economists about the unfair centre-province resource distribution. At play had been the logic of power.

East Pakistan was the condemned, over-breeding province; so population could not be the criterion of resource distribution. ‘National interest’ demanded parity. Once that unfortunate province was seen off by the forces that be, population was unashamedly enforced as the sole criterion of federal-provincial apportionment.

The Panel of Economists set up by the Planning Commission in 1969-70 on the Fourth Plan came out with two separate reports, a Bengali report and another by Punjab- and Karachi-based economists representing West Pakistan. The plan never took off. The Panel of Economists recently set up by the Planning Commission to prepare the next five-year plan is drawn almost entirely from what President Zardari described in his recent Washington Post article as “an elite oligarchy, located exclusively in a region stretching between Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad” and Karachi, with an IFI nexus as the most common denominator.

Nominal representation of economists from Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan and none from rural Sindh, the Seraiki belt of our amiable prime minister, Fata, AJK, and Northern Areas gives little hope for inclusive development or the ‘Pakistan Khappey’ project.

Arrogance like this has sown the seeds of a deep mistrust in the federating units. Resources are generated in provinces, not Islamabad Capital Territory. Should the provinces trust the federal government with the major chunk of their resources? The last NFC was subverted by the Musharraf government by shifting the focus from the vertical distribution on which there was a consensus to horizontal distribution between the provinces.

All provinces were agreed that the federal share be reduced to 50 per cent from the hefty 62.5 per cent fixed by the NFC 1997 on the advice of the current chairman of the Panel of Economists. Instead of acting on this united stand, the Musharraf-Aziz government challenged the provinces to come out with a new formula for distribution among them. The inevitable result was a deadlock, giving Musharraf the chance to impose an interim award to protect the federal share.

The success of the new NFC hinges on two actions by the federal government and an act of entente by the Punjab. The former has to implement this year, not over the years, the provincial consensus that already exists on a 50:50 vertical distribution with no deduction of collection charges, and the latter has to accept population as just one of the criteria. If the unlikely happens, and the NFC moves on rather than witnesses walkouts and boycotts in the very first session, then a possible consensus formula may be à la the Senate elections: equal weightage to population, territory, poverty and revenue collection.

Roughly, the resulting weighted average will give Punjab 36.42 per cent compared to 57.36 per cent at present, Sindh will improve to 29.34 per cent against the existing 23.71 per cent, the NWFP’s gain will be 15.19 per cent compared to 13.82 per cent at present and Balochistan will claim 19.05 per cent against the existing share of 5.11 per cent. The fact of Balochistan being the only significant gainer, and the estimates of tax collection and poverty, will raise the temperature of the discussion at the NFC. What is acceptable for the Senate may not be acceptable for resource distribution.

If inter-provincial disharmony is what NFCs promote, who needs them? My reading of the positions taken by the smaller provinces is that the issue is not more resources but control over their resources. That understood the response has to be to allow each tier of government a major elastic tax of its own. The federal government can live perfectly well within its constitutional limits on taxes on incomes including agricultural incomes, and customs. Sales tax should return to the provinces. Local government qualifies for the third tier; it must be allowed all property-related taxation. Further, provinces should have full control over their natural resources.In case of need, any tier should be able to approach the Council of Common Interests (CCI) and negotiate assistance from other tiers. In the interest of efficiency, the Federal Board of Revenue may continue to collect all taxes but it should be placed under the CCI and be funded by fixed collection charges.

The writer teaches at the GC University, Lahore.


PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki’s political future hung in the balance on Friday as South Africa’s ruling party debated whether to force him from office and a leading former judge said he should be put on trial for allegedly misusing his power to try to imprison the man likely to succeed him, Jacob Zuma.

The African National Congress national executive began a three-day meeting at which Mbeki’s future will be decided after a high court judge accused the president and senior justice officials of being part of an illegal conspiracy to charge Zuma, the ANC’s president, with corruption for political ends.

Mbeki’s critics were lobbying hard for his removal, although earlier in the week Zuma was more cautious. South Africa’s influential council of churches warned that ousting Mbeki could create chaos.

Before the meeting, Mbeki launched a robust defence of his actions saying in a statement that the “insults” hurled at him were not based on facts. He denied any involvement in the decision to prosecute Zuma and said “no evidence has been provided by those making the claim”.

But the president received another blow before the meeting began when one of the country’s most respected former judges, Willem Heath, called for the president, his former justice minister, Penuell Maduna, and the former chief prosecutor, Bulelani Ngcuka, to be charged with crimes for pursuing a political prosecution. His call followed a ruling last week by a high court judge, Chris Nicholson, against the prosecution of Zuma, which he said was the result of “baleful political influence”.

Heath told a Johannesburg newspaper, the Mail and Guardian, that South Africans needed protection from the “systematic abuse, detailed in the judgment, of organs of state by the president and his purported henchmen.

“If the behaviour found by Nicholson is not addressed, the application of the principle of the separation of powers will remain at the whim of those who have seemingly been using it most effectively for personal gain.”

Some senior party officials said they would not support ousting Mbeki because of the damage it would do to the party.

Mbhazima Shilowa, the premier of Gauteng province, with Johannesburg and Pretoria at its heart, said that a no-confidence vote would divide the ANC. “I think members of the executive will not vote for that motion,” he said. “I personally don’t think the judgment provides any basis to say the president must go.” But some ANC factions, including the party’s youth league, Communists and trade unionists have lobbied hard to oust Mbeki.

The council of churches said that removing Mbeki could plunge the country into a crisis. “In our view, the recalling or impeachment of the president will lead to the collapse of the current executive and would plunge the country into an unnecessary crisis.”

— The Guardian, London


THE warning given to the Orissa and Karnataka governments under Article 355 of the constitution is the minimum the centre could have done in the given situation. By their failure to protect the life and property of the minorities, the two governments have invited the wrath of the central government.

The article empowers the centre to issue a warning if the constitutional obligations are not met by the state concerned. If the warning is not heeded, it can dismiss the state governments and impose president’s rule. The centre has taken this step only after agencies like the National Minorities Commission and the National Human Rights Commission have sent their representatives to these states to study the situation. They have come across mounting evidence of the complicity of the states concerned in the perpetration of atrocities on the Christian community.

In Orissa, the dastardly murder of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader — Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati — by the Naxalites has been used as a ruse to attack the Christians in Kandhamal district. The state clearly failed in protecting the life of the swami, who faced a threat to his life, and, later, the life and property of the Christians. A large number of them have been pauperised by the orgy of violence let loose by the Sangh Parivar cadres. The state police could do precious little to save them from persecution. The hoodlums could not have dared to behave in this manner except in the blissful knowledge that the government led by the BJP and the Biju Janata Dal would not challenge them.

Perhaps, taking a cue from their compatriots in Orissa, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal unleashed violence against the Christians in several districts in southern Karnataka. Many old churches in Mangalore and other places were vandalised, ostensibly in protest against a booklet alleged to have been published by a neo-Christian. Instead of taking action against the author and the publisher for the sacrilegious book, the state allowed the Hindutva goons to take the law into their own hands. Television clippings showed the police attacking convents and manhandling nuns and other inmates in the name of controlling the situation. We hope the two state governments will heed the warning and protect the minorities which is their constitutional obligation. Failure to do so can expose them to more drastic remedies under the constitutional scheme of things. — (Sept 20)

__________________
Regards,
P.R.