A sensible demand

[Maroof Hussain Chishty]

A sensible demand

By Dr Farzana Bari
Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

AN article titled A Senseless Demand by S. Akbar Zaidi carried on these pages last Friday is a typical example of the views of drawing-room intellectuals disconnected with the social movement.

First, the author erroneously assumes that the campaign for the cancellation of foreign debt is spearheaded by NGOs. The campaign is launched by progressive, anti-imperialist political parties (the Pakistan Workers Party, the Labour Party and the Awami Party), social and political movements (the Awami Jamhoori Forum and the Labour Qaumi Movement), trade unions and traders’ associations, human rights activists, student bodies (NSF) and a few NGOs (Pattan and Sungi). It is not a donor-driven/funded campaign of the NGO sector.

Second, the author unfairly accuses civil society of being unable to take up an initiative without funding support. He puts civil society in the category of NGOs that seem to dominate his thinking. While I agree with Mr Zaidi’s critique of the NGO sector that is increasingly becoming depoliticised and crippled because of its dependency on funding by donor agencies, the same does not hold true for Pakistan’s civil society.

The lawyers’ movement, the Labour Qaumi Movement, and the Anjuman-i-Mazareen movement for land rights are only some examples linked to civil society where there has been no donor funding.

Third, the author blamed campaigners for not taking the political economy of the foreign debt into account. Obviously he did not contact the campaigners or read the position paper produced by the ‘Campaign for the Cancellation of Foreign Debts’.

The campaign hinges on the political economy argument while building a case for Pakistan’s eligibility for economic relief through the write-off of foreign debts.

The majority of political parties, groups and individuals associated with the campaign are known for their credibility and political maturity. The campaign has carefully crafted the case of Pakistan on political, technical and moral grounds.

The arguments of corruption of our civil and military ruling classes that misappropriated a big chunk of foreign loans, flawed development projects funded through foreign loans, the non-representative nature of those who took loans in the name of ordinary Pakistanis and the moral corruption of international financial institutions that lent without being concerned about the utilisation of the funds are used to declare all foreign debt odious. Therefore, we argue that the nation has no binding obligation to pay back these illegitimate loans.

Lastly, I would like to inform the author that it was the shared concern and understanding of the campaigners vis-à-vis the poor state of the national economy that brought us together. We all believe that no government, given the present state of the economy, can effectively respond to the relief and reconstruction needs of a population displaced by devastating floods. Therefore, there are two parallel campaigns.

One campaign has an external focus on building a movement nationally and internationally to put pressure on the international community for the cancellation of foreign debts on technical and moral grounds. The other campaign envisages an internal focus to put pressure on the government to mobilise domestic resources for relief and reconstruction through reviewing budget priorities and reforming the system of revenue generation.

The campaign demands a reduction in the defence budget, retrieval of money from those who have had their debts written off, revenue generation through taxing the rich and levying new taxes on wealth and property, redistribution of productive assets to the flood-affected through land reform, the provision of sustainable livelihood and the adoption of austerity measures at the government level. One should not forget the larger political context of the country where non-democratic forces systematically weakened civil society through torture and repression.

Despite social, economic and political repression, people continue to make their claim on the state by demanding their legitimate rights through a collective voice articulated by civil society organisations. It is not very responsible on the part of our intellectuals to write off civil society’s initiatives with a stroke of the pen.

The writer is director, Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, and member of the Awami Jamhoori Forum.

farzana@comsats.net.pk

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Promoting intolerance

By Kunwar Idris
Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

SOON after the bombing of the Shia procession in Lahore that took more than 30 lives, Allama Abbas Kumaili, a senior Shia divine, made a tearful appeal on television to people of all religious persuasions to condemn the attack.

It is a measure of the heartless sectarian divide that the Allama felt compelled to make such an appeal. The murder of every man irrespective of his belief must be condemned. To live is a human right. Religion and sect are irrelevant. It is, however, sad to contemplate that neither Allama Kumaili nor any other religious leader would have felt so aggrieved if the victims were not Muslims or those considered heretics by the majority. Religious differences have relegated common humanity to a lower place in our Islamic republic.

In the anguish of the moment, Allama Kumaili also recalled the recent killings going back to the suicide bombing at Data Darbar. It couldn’t be just an omission that he failed to mention the death of 86 Ahmadis in a gun-and-bomb attack lasting for four hours during their Friday prayer gathering in which, perhaps, more people were killed and injured than in all the incidents that he recounted.

Some ulema and leaders of religio-political parties who condemned the massacre also had a warning to administer. Syed Munawar Hasan of the Jamaat-i-Islami, for instance, threatened, during a Friday sermon, to launch a movement if Ahmadis did not stop “their blasphemous and unconstitutional activities”.

There are laws to punish offences and courts to take cognisance. Mr Hasan surely knows that religious movements invariably end up in violence and even the traditional Shia procession ended that way.

Many factors account for Pakistan’s slide — of late headlong plunge — into violence but at its root lies intolerance which with the passage of time is hardening into extremism. With guns and money provided to the extremists alternately by the government and opposing forces, Pakistan is now being viewed as a nursery of terror. The emerging lesson is that the fight against terrorism has to begin by punishing violence arising out of intolerance no matter who the perpetrator is and on whom it is perpetrated.

The Islamic provisions of the constitution should have persuaded all parties, more emphatically the religious parties, to work to raise the moral standards of the people and integrity of the state institutions. Instead they have been promoting schism fostering violence. That, in turn, brings the official machinery under stress and opens the door to corruption. It is left to charitable individuals and humanitarian organisations who can rise above prejudices and that loath corruption to serve people in distress as is being witnessed in the current floods.

Like Pakistan, Bangladesh too is an Islamic society. Learning from the experience when it was a part of Pakistan, Bangladesh has outlawed religious parties and made secularism a pillar of state policy. It is now more peaceful and its economy is growing faster than ours.

India has its share of Hindu militants and Maoist insurgents but the ethos of its society is overwhelmingly secular. In less than 10 years India has overtaken Pakistan to rival China in economic growth and political influence. Secularism that in popular imagination here is equated with atheism signifies nothing more than temporal power vesting in the state rather than in the church hierarchy.

A state inhabited by Muslims cannot be but secular for Islam recognises no church as rival to the state authority. The idea of Pakistan is rooted in secularism and so was the struggle for its creation.

In Europe secularism was viewed differently as it represented the gradual separation of all aspects of life from ecclesiastical directions. The Islamic society admits of no priestly hierarchy. Since all powers vest in the state institutions, no reformation was necessary, nor did one take place, to wrest power from the clergy.

Factually viewed, all parties carrying the label of Islam are in reality parochial for each has its own view of an Islamic state. Nor has any among them been able to win public endorsement at the polls. Imagine, just one secular party — the MQM — outweighs all of them put together three times in the National Assembly. It is our misfortune that while religious parties arouse only sectarian sentiments, the politics of the avowedly secular MQM is now centred on a violent revolution. Both the religious and secular parties are thus running away from the real issues of corruption and lawlessness that plague society.

In the balance of representation in the assemblies and support among the masses, Syed Munawar Hasan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman cannot herald an Islamic order just as MQM cannot inspire a French-type revolution. The religious parties are thinly spread across the country while MQM is confined to an urban corner.

The religious parties can do no more than harangue or, at best, educate their audiences on rituals but not in civic responsibility. The MQM has no Bastille to attack nor has starving followers who would risk their lives. Neither of the two, nor any other party, offers an alternative to the democratic process of voting.

What they need to do to wean the voters away from the feudals and other sinners is to throw open their incomes and assets to public scrutiny at all times; hold elections every three years; promise a much smaller political retinue; adhere to the rule of law and outlaw discretion; give only policy guidelines, and let professionals run the administration.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

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Cricketers’ suspension

Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

SUSPENDING the principal accused was the right decision. It is a move that benefits not just Pakistan cricket but the game at large. Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir have now been officially charged by the International Cricket Council of conduct unbecoming and their inclusion in the T20 and one-day matches would have cast a shadow over the whole team and rendered the rest of the series entirely meaningless. Headed by the hopelessly inept Ijaz Butt, the Pakistan Cricket Board resisted for as long as it could — insisting that no player accused of wrongdoing would be dropped — but was compelled to change tack when the

ICC pressed charges. The England and Wales Cricket Board had also been requesting its Pakistani counterparts, and rightly so, that players currently under a cloud of suspicion should be excluded from the rest of the tour. Only then could cricket be played for cricket’s sake, if that is at all possible even now. In the end it was largely the PCB’s intransigence that forced the ICC’s hand.

The intent here is not to pass judgment. Messrs Salman Butt, Asif and Aamir have only been charged with spot-fixing and remain innocent until they are proven guilty, even if the evidence at hand seems damning. At the same time, however, it should be remembered that they are accused of serious crimes and their innocence cannot be taken for granted. There is a lot of misguided patriotism in the air on this count. Many in this country are being made to believe that our cricketers were set up in a conspiracy designed to malign the nation. Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK personally gave the trio a clean slate on remarkably dodgy grounds: he had spoken to them and they said they were innocent. They might well be but let’s reserve our verdict for the time being.

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Show of unity

Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

OUR lawmakers sometimes do manage to surprise the nation for the better. Friday was one such day when the National Assembly in its afternoon session rose above partisan considerations to show a rare degree of unanimity and reaffirm its pledge to “nurture the tree of democracy”. The house passed two resolutions, one each by the PML-N and the MQM, but neither contained the barbs which Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Farooq Abdul Sattar had earlier exchanged. While the leader of the opposition had lambasted the MQM for Altaf Hussain’s Aug 22 speech, the MQM legislator had spoken of “the throne of Lahore” which was “conspiring to destabilise Pakistan”. Nisar was lauded by all in the house when he said that though the system needed change, it should not come through the generals. He also criticised the army for raising funds for flood victims without government approval. Realising perhaps that, as the largest party it owed something to the house, the PPP did some troubleshooting as its lawmakers moved among different parliamentary groups to finally develop consensus on the two resolutions, which the Assembly later passed unanimously. While the PML-N resolution’s focus was on consolidating the constitutional process, the MQM’s motion called for breaking up large landholdings and demanded “all legal and constitutional steps” to do away with feudalism.

This welcome show of unanimity came at a time when large sections of the public and media had felt disappointed over what appeared to be the two mainstream parties’ arrant failure to stop bickering at a time when floods of biblical proportions were ravaging the country. There was also an unseemly quarrel over the quantum of provincial shares in the flood relief money. The nation was aghast when at such an hour the PML-N and MQM moved privilege motions with aims no nobler than that of political mudslinging. Mercifully, the PML-N resolution called upon all political forces, civil society and the media to unite to fight the floods. Let’s hope this spirit persists, and the lawmakers realise they are there in the Assembly to solve their electors’ problems, not to worsen them.

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Quetta attack

Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

IT is near impossible to comprehend the level of hatred that rules the minds of people who are terrorising Pakistan today. They will kill Shias, be they children, women or men, simply because they hate minorities and consider them worthy of death. Ahmadis too are being attacked with increasing frequency by extremists who claim to hold the moral high ground but are seen as terrorists by all right-thinking people. Take Friday’s carnage in Quetta where nearly 60 were killed by a suicide bomber. A procession was taken out to condemn Israeli atrocities and mark Al Quds day, a cause that ought to be common to Muslims of all schools of thought. But it was still fair game for sectarian terrorists because the Shia community has, in the Iranian tradition, always been in the forefront of commemorating this particular occasion. Two days earlier, the streets of Lahore were awash with blood when suicide bombers attacked a Youm-i-Ali congregation. Responsibility in both cases was claimed by groups that like to portray themselves as champions of Islam but have no qualms about massacring practising Muslims in Lahore, Quetta, Karachi and elsewhere.

The Balochistan government’s decision to ban religious processions provides no answers to this growing security threat. One, members of every religious denomination have every right to organise rallies and express their core values. The same principle applies to activists of a political or secular bent. That is a fundamental right and it cannot be suppressed under any circumstances. Two, such measures send a message that the terrorists who are holding Pakistan hostage in these testing times are winning the battle. What we need is the complete opposite. Do your worst. We will still be resilient and ultimately crush you and your bar-baric code of conduct.

Still, it must be remembered that these are not normal times. Mutual cooperation is of the essence if lives are to be protected and the aims thwarted of terrorists who wish to ignite sectarian strife in the country. In Quetta it had been agreed upon that the Al Quds day rally would terminate at a designated spot to ensure security. Yet the protesters chose to advance to Meezan Chowk which was not part of the original route. And that is precisely where the suicide bomber attacked the procession, killing and maiming so many people. Tempers may be running high but it must be acknowledged that more bloodshed can be prevented only through increased cooperation between the administration and community leaders. Communal strife is what the militants want and they cannot be allowed to achieve their goal.

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Kashmir an urgent issue: Ayub

Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

RAWALPINDI: The President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, said here tonight that with the solution of the Indo-Pakistan canal waters dispute and the signing of a treaty between the two countries, the solution of the Kashmir issue has acquired a new urgency.

Addressing the nation from Radio Pakistan on the proposed canal waters treaty, the president said that “the very fact that we will have to be content with the waters of three western rivers will underline the importance for us of having physical control on the upper reaches of these rivers to secure their maximum utilisation for the ever growing needs of West Pakistan.”

The president expressed the hope that “our outstanding problems like Kashmir” will also be resolved amicably. “The experience of the spirit that prevailed during the closing periods of the negotiations of this treaty gives one cause for hope that our outstanding problems like Kashmir will also get resolved in an amicable manner,” he said.

“I am firmly of the hope that this settlement of the canal waters will lead to a sympathetic and realistic appreciation of our stand on Kashmir,” he added.

He said that the basis of the agreement was realism and pragmatism and emotions could not be allowed to have place when the future and safety of millions of people were involved. It was this realisation of imminent danger to the peace of the subcontinent over the Indus basin water dispute that the World Bank stepped in and made it a mater of engineering skill and human needs instead of bitter political controversy.

The President eulogised the services of the World Bank, of the Pakistani team and thanked the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, for helping to remove certain hitches that had arisen over the transition period arrangements towards the later stages of the negotiations.

Referring to the proposed treaty, the President said that its implementation would be entrusted to a commission consisting of a nominee of each country. The points of dispute, if any, would be referred to a neutral expert or court of arbitration.

The president said the treaty embodies a compromise, reflecting a spirit of give-and-take on both sides….

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Promises to keep

By Anwar Syed
Sunday, 05 Sep, 2010

SAGES and preachers of various moral codes have been telling their disciples since time immemorial that promises made must be kept. Needless to say, the conduct being promised must not only be lawful but also morally correct.

The maxim applied in the domain of commerce in the old days, and in some places it is adhered to even now. Merchandise was bought and sold, money transmitted, borrowed and returned on the basis of oral understandings. Bankers and merchants separated by long distances and frontiers trusted one another, and that is how much of the trade between nations was conducted.

The obligation to deliver on one’s promises does not work the same way in politics. Candidates for elective office make promises in their campaign speeches some of which they know will not be possible for them to fulfil. Their constituents will likely overlook their failing in this regard if they have made a serious effort to deliver the promised goods and services. The promises made may refer to the voters’ local and immediate interests or to issues of larger national concern.

The late Mr Jawaharlal Nehru promised Pakistan and the international community to hold a plebiscite that would enable the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide their future status. Soon after giving this assurance he began to change his mind and he adopted the position that the disputed territory was an irrevocable part of India and therefore no plebiscite was needed. This breaking of a solemn pledge on his part ruined his country’s relations with Pakistan, and the prospect of peace and amity in the region, for decades to come.

There are, however, refreshing examples of politicians who take their promises a lot more seriously. Such for instance is the case of the current president of the United States, Barack Obama. In a beautiful speech in New Orleans a few days ago he referred to the promises that he had made and fulfilled since taking office. He went on to assure his profusely applauding audience that he would likewise meet the commitments that he made henceforth.

Then there are promises that politicians make with one another. The sense of obligation to fulfil them may vary from one politician to the next. There was a time when Mr Asif Ali Zardari felt free to go back on the assurances he had given Mr Nawaz Sharif at Bhurban. He justified his reversal saying that promises made in politics were not sacred. Mr Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, claims that he abides by the commitments he makes with other politicians and the people generally. Needless to say, his opponents will dispute his claim to rectitude.

Going on to another context, we find that members of assemblies, either individually or as small groups offer their support to a larger party for the purpose of forming a government either unconditionally or in return for certain rewards. These offers are often withdrawn if a better deal with another party can be made. Such fickleness usually makes for political instability and governmental ineffectiveness.

Covenants between independent states are even less firm. If one of them breaks its agreement its conduct may not be considered blameworthy. For in this case the state has acted to protect the interests of many millions of citizens, which may have changed with the passage of time. The idea that states are sovereign, meaning that they may do at home and abroad whatever they wish and can get away with, entitles them to terminate their covenants and treaties with one another.

In his celebrated work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) presents an intriguing justification for rulers to break the agreements that have become inconvenient. It merits extended quotation:

“Everyone admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance.”

Machiavelli wrote these lines nearly 500 years ago, when there was no such thing as a world order. International law was still in the womb of time, waiting to be articulated. Superior force operated as the arbiter of disputes between rulers. Things have changed to some extent since then. While international agreements may still be broken no one can openly take the position that they need not be honoured. Acting through agencies such as the UN, the international community has forbidden the use of armed force except in self-defence. International morality may still be in a state of making but it has come a long way since the end of the Second World War.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwarsyed@cox.net