(22nd April 2013)
Obsessive focus Gen Kayani`s comments
PERHAPS it is a sign of the times that Gen Kayani`s comments at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul will attract little meaningful attention or comment. `Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan .
The Pakistan Army will keep on doing its best towards our common dream for a truly Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Gen Kayani said. In truth, however, both the timing and the content of Gen Kayani`s speech ought to be parsed carefully. Given the recent travails of election candidates facing new, and unwarranted, scrutiny of their Islamic credentials and a debate being triggered on the true ideology of Pakistan, the army chief ought to have considered whether weighing in on such matters at this time was the appropriate thing to do or not. The political battle lines have already been drawn, with religious elements and anti-democratic forces beating the drum of an exclusionist version of Pakistan`s ideology and trying to make it an election issue. Has Gen Kayani, wittingly or unwittingly, given those religious elements and antidemocratic forces a boost going into next month`s election? The substance tooofthe comments requires closeexamination. Who is trying to take Islam out of Pakistan; where is the threat to the public`s right to practise their Muslim faith? In fact, the threat is in the opposite direction: to those of other faiths who are also Pakistani and some of whom don`t even enjoy the theoretical right to practise their faith without fear or intimidation. If Islam is in fact the core of the Pakistani state, does that mean non-Muslim Pakistanis have no place in this state and society? Even among Muslims, from the early 1950s, the question of which of the many different interpretations of and schools of thought in Islam ought to be given precedence over the rest has been a dangerously divisive issue when the state has seen fit on occasion to tackle it.
More relevantly to Gen Kayani`s institution, the exclusive, obsessive even, focus on using Islam to galvanise the armed forces is precisely where the origins of the tragic and disastrous policy of statesponsored jihad has arisen. Gen Kayani and the army high command should stick to questions of national security and leave it to the politicians to sort out for whom and why Pakistan was created.
The ideology of Pakistan should be an issue for politics, not the armed forces.
Time to act Gas allocation
CNG STATIONS are back on the policy radar.
Following complaints from industry, the government has agreed to review its gas allocations to various sectors of industry, and look once more at the wisdom of resuming supplies for CNG stations. It would be proper for the caretaker government to return to the original gas allocation priority list that carnes the approvalofthe Economic Coordination Committee since that list has the widest possible consensus of stakeholders and industry experts. It makes no sense that gas should be supplied to captive power plants of the textile industry while it is diverted away from the large power plants of the independent power producers and Wapda. It makes equally little sense to pump precious natural gas into highly inefficient automobile engines while our fertiliser plants are gasping for their vital fuel, impacting food prices. The priority list for allocating gas among various stakeholders has been made; it only needs to be implemented.
It`s time the caretakergovernment lived up to its name. It is understood that its mandate is limited, but there is a reason why it is called a caretaker government: it is supposed to look after things until a new government is sworn in. Given a limited mandate, the petroleum minister has the perfect reason to return to the original allocations agreed upon by the ECC. It might be a tightrope act at times, but he should realise that in an appointed government with a limited mandate, he is free from any political constraint or reciprocal obligation. This freedom should be utilised and the limited mandate exercised to provide gas first and foremost to the power plants that feed the national grid, followed by the fertiliser industry. The textile sector needs to audit the efficiencies of its captive power plants before pressing its demands, and efficiencies in utilisation should become important criteria for deciding allocations.
Anything else would be exercising more than a limited mandate, and would justifiably lead to questions.
Still waiting Earthquake victims` travails
WE can only hope that the state eventually makes good on its promises because for now, good intentions alone are evident: provincial disaster management authority trucks will soon arrive with relief goods, the PDMA has completed its initial survey of the losses and these will be submitted to the government soon, a plan to build container homes as temporary shelters has been finalised and the Quetta Electric Supply Company has set up an emergency cell. The director-general of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority has said that the affected people will not be left on their own. All these words paint a rosy scenario. But on the ground, the picture is very different. Several days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake flattened much of the border town of Mashkel, the roughly 15,000 people rendered homeless are still waiting for food, tents and potablewater. They are still waiting for an indication of whether state and society are willing or able to help.
It is true that the state apparatus has generally been found to be sluggish and unable to cope whenever there are large numbers of people to be helped in emergency circumstances, be it in the aftermath of floods, large-scale displacement in the northwest or the current postearthquake scenario. Yet, unfortunately, in Mashkel`s case relief efforts are being significantly hampered by the fact that it is so remote, and that road access is at best limited.
Whatever few goods have reached the area have been flown in by Pakistan Army helicopters. Erra has promised now that the road network in the area will be improved and a water-provision scheme established. Mashkel was never the beneficiary of the sort of development it needed; now, it is doubly the victim.