Agreement needed
DAMAGING as the anti-terrorism military courts era will be to democracy, the PML-N and PTI have somehow contrived to inflict yet more damage on the democratic process in the midst of an extraordinary session of parliament.
In a better, more democratic world, the PML-N and PTI would have had a binding agreement to resolve their dispute by now.
The PTI would have been present in parliament to explain to the country its position on the 21st Amendment and to vote on it. The PML-N would have announced the formation of a super commission to investigate alleged electoral fraud in the May 2013 general election.
The country would have been able to move on from a long-running political crisis and focus on matters of governance and the fight against militancy.
Unhappily, none of that has happened as somehow the issue of a commission to investigate alleged electoral malfeasance in May 2013 has yet to be resolved.
From the government’s perspective, with so much happening on the legislative and anti-terrorism fronts, perhaps a speedy resolution of the elections-related dispute with the PTI was not realistic. But that overlooks a rather basic fact: negotiations have been conducted in various phases with the PTI over so many months that there is nothing new left to be explored at all.
In fact, once the PTI supremo Imran Khan backed down from his demand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resign, permanently or temporarily, there was little to stop a deal from being reached immediately — nothing other than the PML-N’s seeming determination to not cede an inch to the PTI, even where the PTI has just and legitimate demands.
Of course, where the PML-N can be stubborn, the PTI can be destructive, often even self-destructive. Had the PTI allowed its MNAs to appear in parliament and participate in the 21st Amendment process, it would have sent a signal that the party has returned to the democratic, parliamentary scheme of things and made it that much more difficult for the PML-N to continue to hold out on sealing an agreement with the PTI.
Sadly, though perhaps predictably, the PTI chose the politics of grandstanding and confrontation instead. If Peshawar has changed everything, if it has helped create a consensus that the first priority of the country should be to defeat terrorism and militancy, then surely the two biggest political parties — in terms of votes in May 2013 and relevance to the national political discourse today — need to be able to settle eminently solvable political disputes.
Barring proof of systematic rigging that changed the overall election result in May, 2013, it seems unlikely the PTI will be able to force the PML-N from power in the post-Peshawar environment. Similarly, was serious electoral fraud to be discovered, it seems unlikely the PML-N could cling to power now. The country needs this dispute settled once and for all.
Schools’ security
THE shadow of the Army Public School carnage hangs heavy, leaving students and parents, to say nothing of school and provincial administrations, unsettled.
The reopening of government-run and private schools has overwhelmingly been delayed by varying numbers of days (depending on when the winter vacations were originally set to come to a close) in different cities, and provincial administrations have asked schools to beef up security.
In Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Islamabad Capital Territory area, schools and other educational institutions have been categorised according to the threat assessment as perceived by the authorities, and the standard operating procedures issued to them include raising boundary walls, topping them with concertina razor wire, hiring security guards and installing closed-circuit camera systems. (Balochistan and Sindh have for different reasons not yet undertaken such measures.)
Private-sector schools must arrange their own funding, and while public-sector schools have been promised some financial help, few — if any at all — have seen it materialise.
After the extended winter vacation, schools are now to open on the 12th, subject to their having met the new security protocols. But the situation does not look conducive to students being able to resume their academic activities.
With few institutions — barring some schools, colleges and universities that have ample financial resources — having being able to improve security, most complain of a lack of funds, insufficient time and question even the viability of the measures proposed.
Consider the fact that there are well over a 100,000 schools in Punjab alone, many without even the most basic of facilities and some that aren’t even registered with the government. Is it plausible to expect them to hire private security? Or for schools that don’t even have boundary walls — there are some 50 such institutions just in Islamabad — to now build them to required standards?
The issue is far too complex for the one-size-fits-all approach taken by the administration. No doubt, there is urgent need for educational institutions to improve security; another APS-style horror can simply not be contemplated. But institutions are well within their rights to ask what provincial and federal authorities are doing to also protect them, and keep attacks at bay.
Surely, the problem in its most basic iteration is this: until the state comes up with an effective and long-term strategy to contain the terrorism threat, and starts implementing it immediately, there is very little individuals and institutions can do to protect themselves.
Elected dictatorship
FOR all practical purposes, Bangladesh is now an elected dictatorship. A year ago, Prime Minister Hasina Wajid stole the general election and then went on to consolidate her rule by crushing all dissent, wreaking vendetta on her foes and hanging opposition leaders through a judicial process condemned as flawed by world rights bodies.
On Sunday, the Bangladesh National Party’s head office was sealed and its leader, Khaleda Zia, confined to the party office for what the government called her own security.
The real reason was to crush the countrywide strike called by Ms Zia to demand a fresh election, because Ms Wajid had abolished the constitutional clause providing for a caretaker, neutral government to hold the polls. This was a provocation to the opposition, because since 1991 general elections in Bangladesh had been held by caretaker governments.
No wonder, the BNP and 17 other parties boycotted the polls in which Ms Wajid’s Awami League ‘won’ 153 of the National Assembly’s 300 seats because the opposition fielded no candidates. The fraudulent majority in parliament has since then enabled the ruling AL to persecute the opposition.
The most blatant form of the government’s use of courts to destroy all dissent is to be seen in the flawed trials of many opposition leaders, especially those belonging to the Jamaat-i-Islami, which has for long been waging a campaign against the AL government. Several JI leaders have been hanged for their alleged war crimes during the 1971 insurgency, and many more leaders, including those belonging to the BNP, are on trial.
The BNP-led strike may not lead to a fresh election, but the violence seen on Monday could snowball and throw Bangladesh into anarchy. Persecution of the opposition and judicial farce are not what Bangladesh needs. The rivalries between the two leaders and periodic strikes have done enormous harm to Bangladesh’s fledgling democracy and have hurt its economy.
What the country needs is national reconciliation and peace to consolidate democracy and speed up economic development.