Senate’s welcome move
JUST days before some 50-odd senators are to bow out at the completion of their terms the upper house on Monday passed a bill seeking to change laws about ‘honour’ killings and another about improvement in the legal clauses on custodial torture and custodial rape. The bills were moved by members belonging to the PPP, which is striving to stay relevant in the fast-changing political landscape by occasionally, even if sporadically, striking a forward-looking chord. The Senate unanimously passed the proposed changes, which have to be debated in the National Assembly before being sent for a presidential nod. If the bills are a sign of a common cause pursued above partisanship, it could have been even more uplifting if the initiative had come from the treasury. Clear commitment shown by the government members at this stage could have inspired greater hope about a smooth passage through the lower house where the PML-N has a majority. Even more importantly, it could have provided a bigger assurance that the new laws will be smoothly implemented.
Nevertheless, this is some kind of an achievement, given how divided the legislators have remained over these clauses, especially the most controversial Qanoon-i-Shahadat or the law of evidence introduced by the martial law regime of Gen Ziaul Haq in 1984. This can be taken as a sign that the country’s process towards political maturity continues despite the routine maligning of Pakistani politicians. Only these politicians have to frequently intervene and assert themselves in other areas in favour of progress and a just society. The Senate, with its continued multiparty composition, needs to build upon this momentum. Rather than these bills being remembered as the upper house’s farewell gift to some of its parting members this must mark the beginning of a new era of rigorous, dispassionate and fair review of laws. There is, there will always be, much that needs to be corrected. The case of Pakistan requires even greater urgency given that revisions have been delayed and denied here for so long under one pretext or another.
PSO results
ALMOST two months after it happened, we are finally beginning to get a credible picture of what really led to the petrol crisis in early January. The financial results just announced by PSO include data from the crucial second quarter ending Dec 31, 2014, when the crisis germinated before emerging in its full-blown form early this year. The data paints a startling picture. Profit after tax plunged by 73pc in the six months from June to December, compared to the 150pc growth that was recorded in the same period last year. The company says inventory losses of Rs2.7bn, compared to a gain of Rs6.4bn in the same period last year, explain some of this drop. The rest of the drop is explained by lower receipts of late payment surcharges from the power sector — Rs3bn in the first half compared to Rs11bn last year. The results appear to vindicate the line taken widely by the media and financial analysts during the crisis that the liquidity problems of PSO lay behind the problem.
The line taken by the government, and at least two inquiry commissions constituted by it, was that mismanagement led to the crisis. It is true that the oil supply chain suffered from crucial weaknesses, such as a weak stock position, but those issues are as structural as the circular debt. It is hard to discount the impact of the sharp deterioration in the financial position of the company as revealed in financial results, which hampered its ability to arrange fuel shipments. Further, many of the deteriorating financials are connected with the power sector, from margins on furnace oil to late payment surcharges from the power sector, and strengthen the argument that ultimately it was the circular debt and its impact on the company’s finances that led to the petrol crisis. It is sad that this picture is emerging after two separate inquiry reports produced by government-appointed commissions, neither of which gave sufficient prominence to the financial issues of the company and the circular debt, a few words to the effect notwithstanding.
The full results are to be released later, and they will help build a more detailed picture of what went wrong in early January. There might be a temptation for the new management of PSO to use the interval to package their results in a way to not contradict the government’s story, but this temptation should be resisted.
Polio narrative
THE challenges Pakistan is facing in its struggle to ensure that all children in the country are vaccinated against polio are well known, as is its lack of success in the endeavour. The single fact that Pakistan stands poised to compromise the herd immunity of the world population ought to have sparked a frenzy of effort. And yet, the number of cases continues to rise, with last year’s figures being the highest in nearly a decade and a half, and the violence against polio workers and the security teams with which they must travel showing no signs of abating. Meanwhile, mischief that ought to have been nipped in the bud has been allowed to grow so that now it has attained formidable proportions, ie the extremist right-wing propaganda initiated by Mullah Fazlullah in the north-eastern parts of the country, and then adopted by the Taliban, that the drops are harmful. With the passage of so many years, this narrative has taken hold among communities, in particular in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and some parts of Karachi, and spun out of the control of the centre and the provincial governments.
Parents or guardians of children refusing to let the OPV drops be administered has become a seemingly intractable problem. It is against this backdrop that the KP administration’s decision to arrest people who refuse to allow the drops to be administered must be seen. As the first day of the second round of the KP government’s Sehat Ka Insaaf programme got under way on Monday, some 470 people were arrested for this reason in Peshawar. Though the threat seems to be having some effect — people similarly arrested in Nowshera and Kohat last week were freed after they gave in — it is appalling that matters have been allowed to reach such a pass. The need for the state to retake control of the polio narrative could not be more urgent, and other avenues of inducement, such as linking the issuance or renewal of essential documents including national identity cards to proof of vaccination, need to be explored.
However, the most obvious avenue of all is for political and religious leaders across the country, but particularly KP, to become involved beyond what they have so far done — using the polio vaccination campaign as a cynical photo-op and making empty promises of continued involvement. Consider the case of Imran Khan, who leads the party in power in KP, and Maulana Samiul Haq, head of the Darul Uloom Haqqania. Both promised personal involvement in the campaign but then faded away to attend to matters that they considered had higher priority. The participation of leaders such as these, though, could make a pivotal difference. What needs to be recognised is that polio is no longer solely a health issue; it has been, unfortunately, politicised and as such, needs a sustained political campaign for its resolution.
Published in Dawn March 4th , 2015