Words to heed

Sunday, July 15, 2012

If any proof were needed that the PPP is on a collision course with the superior judiciary, much was furnished in the last few weeks in the shape of the new contempt law and the move to do away with the bar on dual-nationality holders contesting elections in Pakistan. The Supreme Court, on its part, gave the government some breathing room by granting Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf two weeks to inform the court if he would write the Swiss letter or not. Two weeks later, July 25 hangs on the prime minister’s – and the country’s – head like D-day, and it is more and more likely that another chief executive will have to be unceremoniously shown the door for failing to follow court orders and obey the law. Whether democracy can withstand the ousting of another PM is a question the PPP doesn’t seem to have factored into its calculations. Meanwhile, speculations abound about the ‘dark forces’ of extra-constitutionalism waiting in the wings to seize the day and of democracy itself being under threat. Fortunately, though, the one force that is willing to put its weight behind the democratic order, the constitution and the rule of law is the judiciary. On Thursday last week, Chief Justice Iftikhar sent a much-needed message and warned that were parliament to come under attack, the judges would be the first to rise to its defence, and no judge would take oath under an unconstitutional setup. He reminded that the ideas and aspirations behind the lawyer’s movement had not died and every person would have to fulfil his or her responsibility to protect the constitution if circumstances so demanded.

The chief justice’s message that the court will never accept any extra-constitutional measure in the country could not have been more opportune. However, as we have said time and again, it is not for the courts to constantly defend against such challenges; the political forces must not create circumstances that unleash panic, fear and instability and leave the door open for interventions. As things stand, what many call judicial activism or interventionism is the actions of a frustrated court trying to fill in the vacuum created by a government that doesn’t seem to care about doing the right thing, at the right time. The fact of the matter is that in a democracy, no single institution can dictate the contract between state and society. As the CJ reminded us, Pakistan’s constitutional arrangement also imagines all organs of the state working in tandem, in a spirit of complementarity. All must set their own houses in order and do what the law demands of them. For the executive, this is governance. For the judiciary, it is securing the fundamental rights of the people and fixing Pakistan’s damaged judicial system. For the army, it is protecting the country’s frontiers and leaving politics well alone. So far, it seems that the government has all but reneged on its duty to the social and political contract.

RIP CNG

Sunday, July 15, 2012

There has been a curiously muted response to the announcement of the imminent death of the CNG industry. The government’s Adviser on Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain informed the Senate on Friday that the policy of developing a CNG market was wrong from the outset and would be phased out over the next two years. It will be recalled that the ban on the import of CNG kits was lifted in March this year after protests by Japan, Italy and Argentina, but it would seem that the entire CNG industry is ultimately doomed to extinction. This is going to hurt a lot of people. The countries that lodged a protest are home to companies that have all made huge capital and infrastructure investments. They stand to lose everything and the message this decision is going to give to potential future investors is entirely negative.

There were bright hopes for CNG. The government encouraged the growth of the industry on the basis that CNG was an environment-friendly fuel. Currently, there are about 3.1 million vehicles powered by CNG on our roads, and they consume about 7.7 percent of the entire natural gas produced in-country. Most vehicles are not using factory-fitted CNG kits and many are fitted with substandard kits that are smuggled in and, as was seen earlier this year in several cases causing fatality, are prone to explode. With about 50 percent of legal CNG kits manufactured locally this is going to see thousands of jobs disappear over the next two years. Those who invested in CNG filling stations will see their investments wither. Poorer people who use CNG because it is cheaper will find that they are not able to afford expensive petrol. It is possible that there can be a switchover to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) but again there are cost and infrastructure implications. All in all, the entire CNG ‘experiment’ has been something of an unmitigated disaster. Given the relatively low consumption of CNG by vehicles one might wonder if killing off an entire sector is worth the trouble. The bigger question lies around the flawed planning that allowed this accident to happen in the first place – but we doubt there will ever be an answer.

Saving Syria

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Hot on the heels of a gruesome massacre in which more than 200 villagers were slain in Tremseh on Thursday, while dozens more were killed across the country, Syrians suffered yet another bloodstained day on Saturday as the regime forces fired from low-flying helicopters and a bombing at a state security headquarters killed at least six people. As these successive episodes of ever-escalating violence are reported daily, a let-up seems like a faraway dream. Reports of the Tremseh massacre came after the UN Security Council ambassadors held their first round of talks on resolutions on Syria, with Moscow repulsing calls for sanctions against the Assad regime. If confirmed, the massacre at Tremseh would rival the killing at Houla on May 25, when pro-Assad militia and government forces were accused of killing at least 108 people. In another worrying development reported in the western press, Syria has started moving some parts of its huge stockpile of chemical weapons out of storage, raising questions about whether the transfer is a precautionary measure given deteriorating security conditions across the country or something more ominous. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has lambasted the Syrian regime and asked the UN Security Council to immediately act to stop the violence. Even the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said on Twitter that the killings “dramatically illustrate the need for binding measures on Syria” by the council. Indeed, one can only hope that the Tremseh killings add urgency to the deadlocked Security Council negotiations on a Syria resolution. The use of artillery, tanks and helicopters in Thursday’s massacre is already a violation of the Syrian government’s obligations and commitment to cease the use of heavy arms.

The US, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal have propositioned a resolution that would give Assad 10 days to stop the use of heavy weapons, as per the Annan plan, or face sanctions. Russia, on the other hand, has rejected any sanctions and instead put out its own resolution that renews the mandate of UNSMIS, which ends on July 20, for 90 days. China too opposes sanctions. The problem with Russia’s resolution, in fact its entire stance, is that it wants to refocus the UN mission on the search for a political solution. But the question is: between who and whom? Large-scale sectarian and tribal fissuring is taking place in Syria and if the Sunnis completely peel away from the regime, as they already are, Assad’s claim to stand for anyone other than his family and the Alawite elite minority will stand majorly diminished. The only way out of the crisis at this point is to put pressure on Russia and China to enforce the Annan six-point ceasefire plan which does not demand regime change but only a commitment to an “inclusive Syria-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.” The other options – a military intervention with or without UN support or simply doing nothing – may lead to fatal outcomes: an endless war with inconclusive results, and possibly even the division of Syria itself.

Obama’s Kashmir comments

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

This weekend US President Barack Obama presented a curious twin thought: the best way forward for the resolution of outstanding issues between India and Pakistan, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, would be for Islamabad and New Delhi to address them bilaterally because “it is not the place of any nation, including the United States, to try to impose solutions from the outside.” In the same breath, however, the America president also emphasised the need for other nations to play a role in stabilising Pakistan. The message was clear: while Pakistan’s internal ‘problems’ were too big for the world to ignore or allow Pakistan to deal with alone, Pakistan’s India-related problems were best left alone by the world. Ruling out altogether that Pak-India disputes could be resolved outside the bilateral framework, but highlighting the need to mount international pressure on Pakistan to fix the problems that threatened its stability as well as that of the region – where have we heard this before? Yes, it seems that the US has accepted India’s position on Pakistan hook, line and sinker, to the utter neglect of Pakistani concerns.

Indeed, one of the basic tenets of India’s foreign policy has long been to discourage any third-party involvement in its affairs. As the most powerful country in the region, and the status quo power in Kashmir, it has favoured dealing with the neighbourhood bilaterally. But the fine point that many forget is that the Kashmir dispute is not only a territorial one – it is first and foremost an issue of the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people – as committed to by Pakistan, India as well as the international community. Pakistan and India have 65 years to prove that ultimately the bilateral framework has always come down to a zero-sum game, leaving little room for flexibility. Fossilised positions have been regurgitated time and again while the dispute has lingered on, hindering the very creation of a stable South Asia. The need to look beyond the bilateral framework is thus critical – and the US would be doing a great disservice to the region if it tried to sell to the international community the idea that this is not the case. But let’s be clear: Pakistan won’t accept direct US intervention on Kashmir either because even from the Pakistani perspective, the US has its own strategic interests in this region and India is becoming critical to these interests. However, that does not rule out the UN as a third party mediator – with support from the major powers, including the US. The UN has a commitment to intervene on Kashmir – a commitment it acquired in 1948 when India took the dispute to it and it proposed that a plebiscite be held under UN supervision. Over six decades later, the international community, including the US, has to put its weight behind doing the right thing on Kashmir. Isolating Pakistan just to serve the interests of another ‘strategic’ partner would not serve the US well in the future.

Chairlift tragedy

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Few who live outside mountainous areas of the country will be aware of the importance of chairlifts that span rivers and gorges, connecting isolated communities to the road network. Many of these communities are accessible only by chairlift, and for them it is literally a lifeline. The accident on Sunday that killed eight people riding a chairlift when the cable broke on Sunday was probably preventable. Chairlifts can range from the extremely primitive rope-pull type that carries a single person, two at most; to the ‘heavy-lift’ versions that have a motor powered pulley system and are made of the suspended carrier compartment of a small truck. By their very nature these contraptions span rivers which are often in spate when snow melts upstream; and often replace or supplement suspension bridges. They may be a very significant source of revenue for the families that own and operate them.

The key to safe usage of chairlifts is regular and efficient maintenance, and there are not infrequent disputes as to who is responsible for this. Some lifts operate on a partnership agreement with the local administration, and this may have been the case at Gas Pain. An existing bridge had been swept away a year ago by flash floods and the administration had built a suspension footbridge which for whatever reason the villagers were unwilling to use. The villagers had reported that the cable carrying the lift was in poor condition a week previously, but nothing had been done by the Public Works Department (PWD) to repair it. A tragedy ensued. It is easy to lose sight of micro-infrastructure facilities such as chairlifts in remote areas, but they are no less vital to the communities they serve than are dual carriageways and motorways to those who live in flatter parts of the country. Chairlifts do not have potholes that a wheelbarrow load of stones can fill, and the safety margins for their operation are much narrower. Perhaps now is the time for PWDs in mountain areas to check all of these lifts and in doing so perhaps prevent another accident.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

July 18, 2012

ISI political cell

There should no longer be any ambiguity about the role of intelligence agencies in Pakistani politics. This Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) could not legally operate a political cell, and that the cell, whether or not it existed at present, was unlawful ‘void ab initio’ — from the very start. With this ruling, the SC has not only proved wrong all those who said the proceedings of the Asghar Khan case would be mere window-dressing but also made a definitive statement that the non-uniformed aren’t the only ones accountable for their transgressions. Indeed, there could be no bigger check on the extra-judicial prerogatives of Pakistan’s secret agencies than a Supreme Court ruling that explicitly outlaws their political forays and makes it abundantly clear that the affairs of the state have to be run strictly in accordance with the Constitution and that no functionary can interfere in this process in ways other than those outlined in the Constitution. The symbolic importance of the ruling is thus clear: the commonsensical idea that the intelligence agencies should only engage in the tasks they are mandated with and leave politicians and the political process well alone has now received judicial validity in the form of a ruling. This is a monumental development in a country that has been ruled for more than half of its life by the security establishment.

However, the proceedings of the Asghar Khan case thus far also make clear that the court understands that the process of bringing intelligence agencies into the fold of the law will be a gradual, incremental one.


Thus, what it is striving to do with rulings is establish a principle, gently reform an institutional mindset and slowly shepherd the security agencies into the realm of the legal. That the CJ also took the opportunity to make pro-democracy comments and rule out the possibility of a Bangladesh model — an extended interim government consisting of technocrats with the backing of the judiciary and the army — is also proof that the court will not put its weight behind any configuration, or institution, that overreaches its domain and resists constitutional control. On the other hand, on July 11, Senator Farhatullah Babar withdrew his proposed draft bill pertaining to the accountability of the ISI, after submitting the bill in his personal capacity on July 5. While one can only speculate about the pressures he may or may not have had to face after floating the bill, the fact is that the SC has itself said on several occasions and in numerous orders — including in the curious case of journalist Saleem Shahzad’s death — that accountability of security, especially intelligence, forces will not be possible until legislation is introduced for this purpose. Thus, parliament also needs to put its weight behind attempts to increase accountability of the ISI and assert rightful civilian control.

In the ultimate analysis, the SC’s ruling about the political cell will be truly meaningful only if those who violate the constitution and the oath to their office in the name of intelligence gathering and national security are brought to justice. For this, legislation is key. So, while the court has done what it could do, parliament too must rise to the occasion and play its role.




UK immigration



This time, the call to rethink globalisation isn’t coming from the global south. As the UK puts into effect the crackdown on immigration Conservative premier David Cameron has been talking about for over a year, its government has predictably met with charges of xenophobia and racism. On a deeper level, however, the changed policy merely reflects the increasing realisation that the neoliberals don’t always know best.

The move towards tighter borders has, like everywhere else, been criticised by businesses. They point out that given its aging population, Britain needs more workers (read taxpayers); that the welfare state has created dole addicts who don’t want the jobs the poor migrants get and that the move will compromise investment and the hiring of the ‘best and brightest’ the UK has always wanted to draw. The clincher, they argue, is the fact that universities in Britain make a staggering eight billion pounds in fees from international students. However, as the UK government has discovered — like many economies in the global south before them — good business doesn’t make good politics.

According to the EU statistical office, the UK has 4.5 million foreign immigrants, of whom 2.4 million are from non-EU countries. This total comprises just over seven percent of the total population (read voters). There’s a reason former premier Gordon Brown’s war cry of “British jobs for British workers” found resonance within the country; a reason the Labour Party internally blames Brown and Tony Blair’s relaxed policies on immigration for their 2010 defeat in the general elections and a reason Labour’s Ed Miliband is now advocating tighter immigration controls. The greatest good for the greatest number of people is essentially a question of perception, not hard numbers or inherent ‘fairness’. And so politics, not economics.

It is in this context that Cameron’s tirades against ‘forced marriages’, the ‘unwillingness’ of migrants to ‘integrate’ that causes ‘discomfort’ in neighbourhoods and the supposed pressures on schools, housing and healthcare need to be analysed.

The increasing marginalisation of the Emiratis in Dubai over three decades was rendered possible by an unaccountable system of governance, which has still not been able to fully contain dissent. The UK doesn’t have that advantage. And so, even Miliband is now pushing for an early warning system that will help the government identify sectors potentially vulnerable to domestic shortfalls in labour supply. In times of recession particularly, it’s local jobs for local people, for local votes.

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There Is Only One Thing That Makes a Dream Impossible To Achieve - The Fear Of Failure

The good, the bad, the ugly

July 19th, 2012

The Pak-US relationship is, as always, all about the good and the bad. Later this month, ISI chief Zaheerul Islam will meet CIA Director David Petraeus at CIA headquarters in Virginia. Counterterrorism talks are back on in full public view and it is expected that the Pakistani spy chief will ask his counterpart for an end to unilateral drone strikes and to instead feed intelligence gathered by drones to Pakistani jets and ground forces so they can target militants themselves. But given the hardening of positions on both sides in the last 18 months or so, few expect the talks to throw up any breakthroughs. However, that talks are occurring is itself positive and an indication of the readiness to improve some limited cooperation. One can thus only hope that after the parliamentary resolutions in Pakistan and Hillary Clinton’s disputed “apology”, which explicitly mentioned shared intelligence on drones, Pakistan will not back out of what is both a promise and a principled position. According to news reports, Pakistan may allow the return of some US military personnel expelled last year as part of the diplomatic tit-for-tat after the Bin Laden raid. On the other end, the US is also working to meet Pakistan’s new requests for logistical and equipment support to improve its F-16 fleet. In the meantime, Pakistan and the US are also close to signing an agreement regulating the flow of Nato troop supplies, finally codifying an informal arrangement and prohibiting the US and other Nato countries from shipping weapons by land into Afghanistan while allowing them to withdraw lethal items from the country.

However, while these are all positive signals, they certainly don’t amount to the end of all existing tensions. In fact, according to a lead editorial in a prominent US paper, “the deeper alliance” that the Obama administration once said it would forge with Pakistan “is out of reach for the foreseeable future.” Meanwhile, US pressure tactics also continue. Currently, Congress is stepping up efforts to slap the terrorist label on the Haqqani network. Throughout the uneasy relationship between the United States and Pakistan, American officials have pressed Islamabad to crack down on the network. That US lawmakers are now pushing to designate them as terrorists may be a signal from the US that it could take things into its own hands if Pakistan doesn’t ‘act.’ This cannot be the harbinger of anything positive. Obama has also just appointed a new ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Olsen, who is known to be a hawk. After the more sedate Munter, always considered to be a “friend of Pakistan,” one can only hope that a more hardnosed Olsen, whose most recent assignment was a senior economic-development post at the US embassy in Kabul, will handle the relationship with the necessary care and precaution that it requires. And indeed, while the Pak-US relationship is always about the good and the bad — the hallmark of transitional ties — the point is to keep it from getting ugly.

Polio violence?

July 19th, 2012

Is the attack in Karachi on a World Health Organisation team engaged in delivering anti-polio drops to children linked to a ban on polio vaccinations placed in North and South Waziristan by Taliban commanders? It is as yet hard to say for sure. While the WHO has emphasised in a statement that no conclusions can be reached before a full investigation is carried out, the incident does have implications across the spectrum of community health service delivery. There is already concern among health agencies that restrictions imposed by the Taliban in the tribal areas could be fanning out to other parts of the country. This would amount to disaster. Pakistan had appeared to be doing better than the previous year in its effort to ensure that every child in the country is reached and provided protection against polio through vaccination by teams of health workers across the country as part of the latest anti-polio campaign. But the fact that these teams will be unable to reach almost 300,000 children in the tribal belt as a result of the Taliban ban is a severe setback.

The militant threats to health workers mean that the campaign has been called off in most parts of North and South Waziristan. Already there were problems in gaining access to children and families in the Khyber Agency because of the conflict raging there. Pakistan is regarded by WHO experts as standing at the epicentre of the polio problem, recording the largest number of cases to occur in any one country last year when 198 children were affected by the virus. If the matter becomes mired in politics and war, as is happening at the moment with the Taliban commanders demanding that drone attacks be stopped before they allow vaccination teams into the Waziristan area, the situation will become dangerous in the extreme. Much of our primary and paediatric grassroots healthcare is carried out by small teams of unguarded men and women, often in extremely difficult locations. Why can’t the critical job of administering the vaccine be given to people who are, if not trusted, at least acceptable to the Taliban so that a whole generation is not deprived of a polio-free life. The incident in Karachi shows how volatile things can become. There should be an urgent review of the security of these dedicated men and women and some middle ground must be found to continue with the job before it is too late.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Haj case returns

July 20, 2012

The Haj mega-corruption scandal has reared its ugly head yet again, and it seems like nothing has changed since last year when the head of the FIA investigation team, Hussain Asghar, was transferred to Gilgit-Baltistan as inspector general and a wide goose chase began to try and bring him back. In July last year, the Supreme Court had ordered reinstating Asghar and his team to the investigation but the Secretary Establishment was made officer on special duty (OSD) just hours after he issued a notification in compliance with the court’s directive. The message was abundantly clear: the government would go to any length to keep Asghar away from the probe. A year later, Asghar has still not been reinstated. In fact, on several occasions in the last year, the court has asked for his return to his parent department but has been informed each time that Asghar was still ‘busy’ looking after law and order problems in Gilgit-Baltistan. This Wednesday, an exasperated court finally ordered Asghar’s termination of service for his perceived defiance of its directives to report back to the FIA. And guess what – the very government that has been resisting the court’s orders in the Haj case since 2010 has suddenly jumped to comply and the attorney general promptly produced the notification of his termination before the court on Friday. In the days ahead, we can expect a fresh round of a frustrating back and forth on Asghar’s status, keeping the focus away from the real issue at hand: millions stolen from hapless pilgrims during Haj arrangements in 2010.

From the very beginning when the Supreme Court first took suo motu notice of the Haj case in December 2010, the government’s justification for not listening to court directives is that the court is encroaching upon the executive’s domain. The facts, however, tell a different story. As we have pointed out numerous times, it was the government, and not the SC, that initially appointed Asghar to head the investigation and it was the government that transferred him after it came to light that the PM’s son may be involved in the scam. Even at that point, the SC only took issue with the fact that Asghar was transferred at an important stage of the investigation and therefore advised that the investigation officer be allowed to complete his work before being re-transferred. Even in the latest move of Asghar’s termination, the court has waited for the prime minister to terminate him and not done the needful itself. This despite the fact that in exercise of the power of judicial review, the apex court is well within its constitutional right to scrutinise executive and administrative actions of the state and its public bodies, especially when such actions run contrary to the law and are violative of fundamental rights as guaranteed by the constitution. But even so, as the Haj case has progressed, we have seen that the court has always passed advice onto the prime minister first instead of passing direct, unilateral orders. In any case, how can attempts to get to the bottom of a mega-corruption scandal and ensure a smooth investigation be called an overstepping of boundaries? Quite apart from the complex world of rule of law, the basic question remains: if the government hasn’t broken any laws, and has nothing to hide, why does it need to play this never-ending game of cat and mouse?

Multan poll

July 20, 2012

The unofficial results of NA-151 bye-elections, where ousted prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had staked all his political capital to prove the Supreme Court of Pakistan wrong through the “verdict of the people’s court”, have confirmed one basic fact: If the opposition challenges the PPP, no matter officially or through a proxy as in this specific constituency, there will be no walkovers or runaway victories for the PPP as we saw in the earlier election of Mr Gilani’s younger son, Musa Gilani, who had secured 93,000 votes. The contest on NA-151 between Qadir Gilani and a brother of a PTI leader of the influential Bosan family was neck to neck. The claims of the former PM, who plunged into his son’s campaign with full force, evaporated into thin air as the obvious situation was that while the loyalists of the Gilani clan and Gilani’s disciples voted for his son, other political forces, though fighting an indirect and a proxy battle, made their presence felt quite strongly.

What now appears a telling fact of our electoral politics is that if and when the opposition parties, PML-N, PTI and others, come to fight with all their guns blazing and with their top leaders in the field, the PPP will have only family and disciples to count on. The PPP may have won a close-fought victory but the Multan poll did not turn out to be an overwhelming verdict by the people against the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It was not an impressive victory and did not, by any means, exonerate Yousuf Raza Gilani, as he had claimed would be the case.What the high-profile contest revealed is that the people are now ready to use the power of the ballot to punish those who made them suffer in the name of democracy in the last about five years. This is a highly encouraging sign for those seeking a more stable, less corrupt and truer democracy.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Ghost schools

July 21, 2012

If Pakistan had as many schools in reality as it does on paper there would be no crisis in the education sector, and we might be able to fulfill our constitutional commitment to free education for all. From the point of the 1947 Partition education has never been prioritised and it still is not, with education budgets actually shrinking rather than expanding to match the growth in population. And now we see the return of ‘ghost schools’ in the context of a federal government education project – the Basic Education Community Schools (BECS). Ghost schools exist on paper and never operate, but they have ‘staff’ and sometimes buildings. The fictitious ‘staff’ are paper creatures and only live on a balance sheet, their wages disappearing into an assortment of corrupt pockets. Some ‘staff’ have fake CNIC numbers. Vehicles have been misused and large sums of money illegally taken from bank accounts associated with the programme. The Planning Commission and the National Education Foundation (NEF) have alleged that there are more than 8,000 ghost schools in the BECS project and they are spread right across the country, including in the federal capital. The project is large, over 8 billion rupees, but funding has now been stopped in the current fiscal year as the irregularities and corruption has come to light.

There is some dispute about the actual number of ghosts in our midst, but no dispute that the BECS programme has serious problems. There are 13,094 schools under the BECS umbrella and more than half may be bogus. The NEF has to outsource administrative checking of schools under BECS to local NGOs, who are themselves a part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as they generated their own administrative costs and were as prone to corruption as any government agency. The thinking behind the BECS scheme was good – small community schools that are home-based serving a minimum of thirty students and with teachers who were matriculate, intermediate or graduate. Some schools have been successful and have students up to class 3, and in general terms the model is satisfactory. But the devil is in the detail, and for the scheme to have achieved its full potential rigorous monitoring was necessary from the outset. It appears that the capacity to monitor adequately was either missing or below par, and the BECS schools are yet another good idea that foundered on the reefs of corruption and ineptitude. Yet again many of the allegations of corruption centre on a political appointee, and the reticence of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to pursue the case may well be because of its ‘sensitivity’ in that powerful members of the ruling PPP would come under scrutiny. There is a genuine and continuing emergency in our education system. Some opine that it is ‘too broke to fix’ and there is no disagreement that education at every level is in need of a major overhaul. Getting the BECS project back on track would be a significant step in the right direction.

As polls near

July 21, 2012

As the time for the next general election draws nearer, games of various kinds are afoot, with plans being laid by all those concerned. At a party meeting in Karachi, also attended by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto, Co-Chairman President Asif Ali Zardari stressed that the ruling party remained the dominant political force in the country, was committed to serving the people and had the backing of all the big political forces in the country. As he has done before, he spoke once more of pressure being put on him, and maintained that as president he had the right to meet his constituents: the parliamentarians of the country. Zardari’s optimism was shared by other party leaders who spoke on the occasion. But is such confidence truly based on reality? The PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif, who also happened to be in Karachi the same day is also moving in Sindh, devising his own strategies to take control of the PPP stronghold. His words, while addressing a media conference, suggest things have been worked out meticulously by the party. Nawaz, lashing out against the PPP, said no one believed in the PPP’s promises any more and that its “Sindh card had run out of credit.” This is a sentiment many will agree with – even in a province where the PPP had once been certain of success, claiming constituency after constituency in the interior. Nawaz has also warned against any move to imprison or exile him, suggesting that behind-the-scenes conspiracies may well be taking place.

Perhaps what is most significant of all in the overall scheme of things is the electoral alliance the PML-N has been able to strike with the Sindh United Party. The leaders of the two parties have met and reached an agreement on this. The link-up with a Sindhi nationalist party could help change the perception that the PML-N is a purely Punjabi party. Given the inroads the PML-N has also been making in KP, developments in Sindh should certainly help the PML-N establish itself as a party which operates across the national platform. Meanwhile, especially as the PML-N moves into top gear, the PPP has a great deal to be concerned about. Abdul Qadir Gilani, the son of the former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, has expectedly won the NA-151 seat that had fallen vacant after his father’s disqualification and ouster. But the margin of the PPP victory in the Gilani hometown of Multan is not very convincing. Qadir Gilani collected 64,628 votes, winning by a margin of only 4,096 votes over his rival Shaukat Hayat Bosan. This should be a warning for the PPP, and can be seen as an omen of what may lie ahead.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Kabul meetings

July 22, 2012

All of last year, both US and Afghan officials repeatedly acknowledged the indispensability of Pakistan in the process of engaging the Taliban and openly sought Pakistan’s help in urging the Afghan Taliban to start talks with the Kabul government. However, the Salala attack changed the narrative and brought the process to an abrupt halt, creating unprecedented tensions between the three countries. As relations turned almost entirely pear-shaped between the US and Pakistan just as things were shaping up rapidly in Afghanistan, it looked as if Pakistan might get sidelined in the talks’ process. This seemed like an even greater possibility once spring arrived and the Afghan Taliban launched a fierce offensive, shifting the narrative once again to the permanent thorn in the American side: the alleged sanctuaries along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

However, during Prime Minister Ashraf’s daylong visit to Kabul last Thursday, a genuine attempt seems to have been made to shift the narrative back to where it rightly belongs: the Afghan peace process and stalled negotiations with the Taliban. Following the three-way talks in Kabul, the leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Britain were all agreed that Afghan efforts to negotiate with the Taliban could not be successful without Islamabad’s help. Karzai has long sought to negotiate with the Taliban, who have refused to deal with his administration, branding it an American puppet. Prime Minister Ashraf reiterated that Pakistan wanted a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan for a deeper bilateral military and security dialogue, repeating an offer that Pakistan has for long been pushing: the provision of equipment and training by Pakistan to the Afghan National Security Forces. Pakistan believes this would help in closer cooperation between the two countries in effectively combating terrorism and dealing with cross-border challenges. Currently, under a strategic partnership agreement, India is training the Afghan security forces and providing some equipment, a move that has significantly raised Pakistani fears of the cultivation of anti-Pakistan sentiment in the Afghan army. As things stand, Pakistan has legitimate stakes in a peaceful and friendly Afghanistan. It is thus important for the international community to take steps to placate Pakistani fears vis-à-vis Indian efforts to step up exposure to the security scenario in Afghanistan, and also to re-launch efforts to revive the stalled negotiations with the Taliban. The meetings in Kabul were certainly a step in the right direction. The days ahead also hold promise. The two countries will soon resume regular meetings of the ‘two-tier’ joint commission to seek peace with the Taliban, an initiative that was suspended last year following the assassination of former Afghan president and peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani. Now, after months of deadlock, the Afghan High Peace Council, led by Rabbani’s son, will soon arrive in Islamabad to revive the crucial process and evolve a joint strategy to seek a peaceful end to the Afghan conflict. We hope that all these initiatives will not be mere window-dressing but will bear tangible results to facilitate the peace process.

Syria unravels

July 22, 2012

President Assad, though still nominally in power, is living on borrowed time. He leads a powerful family that has a multitude of interests across the whole country and will do all it can to protect and preserve its assets. A number of bloody events in the last six months were flagged as ‘turning points’ but proved to be little more than waymarkers in a continuum of violence and savagery. But the death of four senior figures in the regime in a bomb explosion inside the tightly guarded room where they were meeting is still not adequately explained – and may be a genuine turning point. At first the incident was attributed to a suicide bomber, but that story faded and a ‘pre-planned’ device was claimed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA). A day after the bombing there was fierce fighting in several parts of Damascus, with the Syrian army battling a highly mobile and increasingly well-organised and disciplined, rebel force. On the same day the rebels seized control of border crossings at Jerablus and Bab-al-Hawa, but surrendered them to government forces within hours. There are now 30,000 refugees that have fled to Lebanon in the last 48 hours alone. Generals are on the run too – 22 of them are now in Turkey. The banks are running out of cash and the bakeries are out of flour just as Ramazan begins. The Syrian conflict is now in danger of infecting all around it, and the world stands largely paralysed.

For all his gravitas and undoubted sincerity Kofi Annan was handed a poisoned chalice when he was given the job of trying to broker peace in Syria by the UN. Diplomacy in the widest sense has failed comprehensively. For diplomacy to work in a conflict zone there has to be meaningful dialogue which can be conducted while the fighting may go on, but in Syria it is absent. The UN itself is hamstrung by the dogged persistence of Russia and China which refuse to shift their position and continue to support the Assad regime. There has been agreement in the UN Security Council to extend for 30 days the mandate of the monitoring mission in Syria but this is just as pointless as Kofi Annan shuttling back and forth. The opposing forces in Syria – and there are a multitude of tribes and sects and factions all with a set of vested interests – appear determined to fight it out to the bitterest of ends. Assad still holds the cities, mostly, but he has lost the rural hinterlands everywhere. One might wish him a more dignified end than Saddam Hussein or Colonel Qaddafi, but the omens are poor.

The darkest night

July 22, 2012

It took James Holmes about two minutes to kill 12 people and wound 59 more. A young PhD student with no previous criminal record, he gave himself up without a struggle and the US justice system is now going to have to decide if he is mad or bad or both, and what to do with him. Thus far there is no indication as to motive, why an otherwise unremarkable man achieved instant notoriety by committing mass murder at a cinema showing the last of the Batman trilogy – The Dark Knight Rises. He used four guns in the attack – an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle possibly fitted with a high capacity magazine, two Glock pistols and a 12-gauge Remington shotgun. All the guns were legally held and had been purchased by Holmes, as had 6,000 rounds of ammunition that he bought on the internet.

The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined as the Second Amendment to the American constitution, and there are few issues more socially and politically divisive in modern America than gun ownership and gun control – or the lack of it. American citizenry and the media will go into paroxysms of analysis and trenchant defences of long-held positions and, as happens after every mass-slaying involving firearm – nothing will change and America will continue its love affair with guns. It has always been a violent country and leads the world when it comes to individuals going mad with a gun. It happens in other countries as well but it happens in America more than anywhere else. Both sides of the gun debate are committed to absolutist positions that have taken on an almost religious hue. In 2010 there were 12,996 murders in the USA, 8,775 of which were committed with a firearm. Guns are woven into the American psyche, an embedded part of the American paradigm, and even those who might be considered relatively liberal would not support a repeal of the Second Amendment. It is also a nation that prizes individual liberty and adulates violence in popular culture. Ideological rigidity has paralysed the gun debate for decades in America and it will do so again, and it may not be long before we see Americans bleeding and dying from yet another self-inflicted wound.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Taxes again

July 23, 2012

Rarely do we lead the world in anything, but the latest report by the World Bank (WB) on our ramshackle tax system reveals that at current levels the tax ratio is the lowest in 35 years – and one of the lowest in the world. Successive governments since the early 1990s have tried and largely failed to reform the tax system. With an election possibly later this year or early next year the WB opines, rightly, that the government is not going to do anything by way of introducing any tax reforms in the foreseeable future. There is tension between the centre and the provinces about the framework of the General Sales Tax (GST). Weak governance with the PPP heavily dependent on the support of its coalition partners and ‘instability’ at the top of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) are factors in the picture of failure. There is a lack of continuity at the senior and middle management levels of the FBR, as officers are moved to make way for political appointments, sometimes of people from outside the tax milieu without any specialist knowledge or relevant experience. Such is the regularity with which seats are shuffled that it is difficult not to conclude that the government is ensuring that reform is staved off by maintaining a significant level of insecurity within the FBR. It is also of note that this government has but rarely of its own volition introduced tax reforms; it has been at the behest of an external agency such as the World Bank. Left to their own devices our legislators would have taxation eternally on the back burner.

Our taxation structure is narrow and skewed, the legislation excessively complex and lacking transparency. Tax evasion has been elevated to the status of a national duty, and only those with income tax deducted at source – which includes salaried government employees – pay up willingly. To be scrupulously fair, the government of the day in 2004 approached the WB and asked it to devise a tax administration reform programme (TARP) – which it did. The programme ran until December 2011 but largely failed because the government refused to take the medicine it had asked be prescribed for its ills. Things started well with the granting of greater autonomy for the FBR, we had the FBR Act 2007 and a commitment to confirming the FBR chairman for three years; but they started to slide badly in 2008. Over the seven years of the TARP project there have been four chairmen of the FBR which has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. Ultimately the government has been unable to forge the political consensus that would create an environment in which the reform of taxation could go ahead. Given the nature of our politics at federal and provincial levels it is unlikely that such a consensus is going to emerge in the near term. And we will continue to be close to the front of the race to be the world’s least-taxed nation.

The right to know

July 23, 2012

While scoring very high on corruption and poverty indices, when it comes to the promotion and protection of rights taken for granted in other countries, such as every citizen’s fundamental right to know how the government is functioning, Pakistan fares very low in almost all rankings. According to a recent study jointly carried out by Canada-based Centre for Law and Democracy and Spain-based Access Info Europe, Pakistan is among the last 20 countries in the Global Right to Information (RTI) rating, ranking 72 out of a total of 90 countries surveyed, with neighbouring India coming in at third place and other countries in the region, such as Nepal and Bangladesh, also doing exponentially better than Pakistan. Even Mexico, otherwise considered very hostile to journalists, has been ranked seventh while Ethiopia, another country described unsafe for journalists, has earned the tenth position. Yemen too boasts of more liberal access to information than Pakistan, ranking 20th on the index. This despite the fact that the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 was promulgated here as far back as October 2002, allowing citizens access to public records held by any public body of the federal government including ministries, departments, boards, councils, courts and tribunals, and stipulating a time frame of 21 days for the bodies to furnish information. Especially after the passage of the 18th Amendment in 2010, the crucial Article 19-A was inserted in the Constitution, making the right of access to information a fundamental constitutional right and leaving no more room, whatsoever, for prevarication and hindrances in the process of providing citizens with the information they deserve.

Citizens’ right to information is also a fundamental human right affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, here in Pakistan, Sherry Rehman’s Right to Information Act has been floating around from one standing committee to the next for the last few years, with no logical end in sight. This is unfortunate, given that a working right to information law could enable people to ask important questions about the government and rightly unearth fraud, corruption and poor governance. Legislation on the right to information is part of the fundamental task of redistributing power in any democratic framework. While other countries in the region are redefining and reinventing vibrant forms of democratic participation, Pakistan keeps moving further back in time, incrementally isolating its citizens from the processes and practices of governance. This must change. Because citizens pay for expenditures incurred by governments through taxes, they have a right to know what is being done with their money. Most importantly, officials do not just create information for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the public they serve, as part of the legitimate and routine discharge of any government’s duties; hence they cannot keep information from citizens. Our guardians of democracy – if they really are who and what they claim to be – must strive to give people the fundamental right to freedom of information, which is the cheapest, most efficient way to hold politicians and public services to account. Unlike the millions wasted by the government due to corruption, inefficiency and bad decision-making, right to information is a democratic and powerful tool that could give every citizen a right to hold officials to account at virtually no cost, and with the potential for massive savings.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Munter’s exit

July 24, 2012

Outgoing US Ambassador Cameron Munter’s stint in Pakistan began in 2010 and was expected to last until 2013. But on May 7 this year, only 18 months into the job, he announced that he would be going back home this summer. So, as the envoy departs, what are the lessons to be learnt from his ambassadorship and its untimely end? There is a great deal of speculation about the reasons for Munter’s hastier than expected departure. The first is that the ambassador appeared to take a soft, diplomatic line over the Hafiz Saeed bounty issue and was even reported as telling the Pakistani media that the US government had not announced any head money on Saeed and the matter had been misreported. According to some media reports, the administration’s apparent dissatisfaction with the ambassador’s handling of the matter in Pakistan became an important factor in his resignation. Next, the US refusal to immediately apologise for the Nov 26, 2011 Salala attacks, combined with dismay at the use of drones as the weapon of default in the tribal areas, are cited as the two other main reasons for the unusual decision of the US ambassador to step down after less than two years. “I didn’t realise my main job was to kill people,” Munter was quoted by The New York Times as telling colleagues. In the final analysis, Munter was increasingly marginalised in an administration dominated by the partnership between Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus. And in the end, it seems that Munter lost the battle altogether.

But the issues surrounding Munter’s departure can act as lightning rods to illuminate the real state of Pak-US ties. Indeed, it would not be a stretch to say that things have turned truly pear-shaped between the two countries given the sheer inability of the Obama administration to understand that its focus on drone strikes has made it impossible to forge the new relationship with the Muslim world that Obama had promised in his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Munter understood that a focus on counter-terrorism alone, or on having an ‘assistance relationship’ as opposed to the pursuit of a long-term partnership, was not the right way to get past a relationship so fraught with anger and misunderstanding. And that Munter was unable to communicate this elemental fact of diplomacy to his boss in DC says less about his own failings and more about Washington’s failure to accept that Pakistan is arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States now than when Obama became president. During his 18 plus months in Islamabad, Munter navigated some treacherous diplomatic terrain, including the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, punitive drone attacks, and a stand-off over Nato supply routes. But at the end of it all, it seems that in this battle of ‘drones vs diplomacy,’ drones have prevailed over the diplomats and the Obama White House’s tactics will take precedence over strategy in times to come. Unfortunately for friends of Pakistan such as Cameron Munter, and for Pakistan itself, this means that the US could end up dissipating its long-term interests in Pakistan for short-term counter-terrorism gains.

Beyond the border

July 24, 2012

We could do worse than to look across the border to learn some lessons in politics and governance. The Indian presidential election has proceeded as smoothly as most such events in that country, with its advantages of a well-entrenched democratic system which follows the dictates of the Constitution clearly and visibly. This stability is something we badly need in our own country where so much anarchy prevails over many political matters, including the precise interpretation of the Constitution. Without much controversy, Pranab Mukherjee, the former finance minister of the country, has become the thirteenth President of India. The manner in which the transition has taken place, with none of the innuendo and suspicions which surround similar events at home, is testimony to the way in which systems have been institutionalised in India, making it virtually impossible for anyone to tamper with them or create a gap in the running of democracy. Sadly, we have over the past six decades faced just the opposite fate. This is one reason why our democracy has been unable to remain stable or durable. With our perpetual political upheavals and military interventions, democracy in Pakistan has failed to establish itself as a force that cannot be disturbed by any outside element. While the military cannot be spared of the blame, politicians, unfortunately, have not done any good for their own cause as well.

There is also something else to consider when comparing our divergent political fates. Mukherjee is a highly respected and experienced figure, and as a candidate of the United Progressive Alliance led by his own Congress Party and backed by several smaller groups, he drew widespread respect as a man who had served his country well and steered largely clear of major controversy. This may be one reason why he collected such a large number of votes, pushing him well ahead of his rival. The ability to command the loyalty of people is of course vital for anyone holding the post of president – a figurehead position but one that carries with it considerable power as symbolising the state and contributing to the unity within it. It is important then that the person who occupies the presidency is an individual unmarked by scandal, and able to rise above petty political matters. This too is something we need to learn. Many of our own problems stem from the acts of the president himself and his dual role as head of the ruling party. We can be sure that Mukherjee will be able, with his vast experience, to do a good job in his new post simply because he enjoys status as a leader who has risen through a stable democratic system and is looked up to by his people as a man they can trust. We can only wish we could follow suit.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Olympic visa scam

July 25, 2012

British tabloid newspapers have something of a track record when it comes to exposing the failings and frailties of the people of Pakistan. The ‘News of the World’ broke the story of match-fixing and spot betting scams that led to three of our cricketers serving jail sentences in the UK. Today there is an expose by another tabloid, ‘The Sun’ which is alleged to expose a group of corrupt officials and a very corrupt Lahori politician who was the subject of a classic sting operation. ‘The Sun’ in its usual holier-than-thou mode tipped off MI6, the British High Commission in Islamabad, the UK Border Agency and the UK Home Office. The British government thanked The Sun and said it would be handing over the evidence obtained to ‘the Pakistan authorities’ – which probably means that whatever comes our way will be buried underneath a filing cabinet in the empty offices of a long-defunct ministry.

The scam appears to have been centred on a travel agency based in Lahore – Dream Land Travel – which was prosecuted nine years ago for human trafficking. It is said that false passports were available, visas and access to the 2012 Olympics as a member of the support team for our Olympic squad – a possibility hotly denied by the chef de mission of the Pakistan contingent for London Olympics, Syed Aqil Shah who termed the allegations ‘a conspiracy against Pakistan’ which is the standard response when a Pakistani is caught with his or her fingers in the petty-cash tin. From the British perspective, the security operation around the Olympics is of paramount importance, and this is a potential loophole in that operation and therefore a matter of concern. On the plus side it does not appear that the scam has been successfully deployed either singly or in any numbers and was traced before anybody was able to get themselves into the UK illegally. Between 8 and 10 Nadra officers have been suspended and The Sun is today reporting that Abid Chaudhury, the politician caught on camera assuring its undercover reporter that he can assist – for £7,000 – in obtaining a two-month visa as well as smuggle a person into London as part of the Pakistan Olympic backup team; has been placed on the Exit Control List. What is evident from the video posted on The Sun website is that this is not a single corrupt person working the system, but a system of corrupt people that spans government agencies and offices, private business in the form of a travel agency and corrupt politicians – and all operating within ‘the system’. This did not spring into being spontaneously but would have grown over a period of time, months or years perhaps. It seems unlikely that there are going to be any prosecutions at the UK end of this miserable affair, but since strong circumstantial evidence in Pakistan of considerable wrongdoing by many people is available, quick and smooth action has already been launched, with several arrests and suspension of officials. It remains to be seen whether this matter will indeed get to its logical end with appropriate prosecutions and restoration of the confidence in the Pakistani systems that The Sun story may have shaken.

Broken promises

July 25, 2012

The holy month of Ramazan which is supposed to bring spiritual peace to people seems to be lost in the anger against the ever increasing loadshedding that is severely hitting many areas across Punjab. The residents of these areas are in a state of fury once again. The continuous long bouts of loadshedding mean not only that much of the day is spent without power but even during sehr and iftar there is no reprieve from this ordeal. It should be noted that Prime Minister Raja Pervez (Check spelling normally used) Ashraf had made an ardent promise only weeks ago that there would be no loadshedding during sehr and iftar. But by now we should have been used to broken promises from government members, particularly Ashraf, who as minister for water and power had told us, some four years ago, that loadshedding would end permanently within months. As history reveals, loadshedding didn’t end, but the credibility of the present premier took a battering then as now, so it would be advisable that he should not promise anything until he was absolutely sure he could deliver.

The situation in Punjab where loadshedding extends to 14 hours or more notably in smaller towns has driven people out onto the streets demanding that they get power at least during dawn and sunset. The lack of electricity leaves people literally struggling in the dark to manage the rituals of fasting. They direct their rage on property and staff of electricity companies like the attack on the Wapda office in Lahore recently. Power protests and riots appear to be continually spreading in Lahore, Kasur, Nankana Sahib and the virus spreading in parts of Islamabad as well. There is also a feeling of resentment as some argue that Punjab in being discriminated against as far as power goes. The sad part is the apathy of those concerned, which is only adding fuel to the rage of these frustrated and angry people who demand an explanation from the prime minister, asking why promises are constantly made that cannot be kept and whether there is any possibility of an improvement. The sadder part is that these protests are brushed aside as part of opposition politicking.

Threat to schools

July 25, 2012

Despite the so-called victories against the Taliban, their activities remain much the same as before. Schools continue to be bombed, depriving children across the tribal belt and KP of education that could protect them from falling prey to poverty and eventually extremism. Last week alone there were three bombings in which schools were destroyed or damaged. Two schools were targeted in the Safi tehsil of Mohmand Agency where a boys’ primary school was completely destroyed, while the under-construction new wing of another was badly damaged.

In some ways, still more frightening is the fact that militants are able to strike even in the heart of large cities like Peshawar. The last school to be bombed stood in the Mattani area of KP’s capital and was being rebuilt after being destroyed two years ago. It is quite obvious some lasting solution to this serious problem needs to be found quickly, given that we have too few schools and cannot afford to keep reconstructing those that have been deliberately damaged by those who see education as an enemy. In all 100 schools have been destroyed in Mohmand by militants so far. We can only imagine the damage this is inflicting in an area where literacy is already low. It is clear that militancy is not under control and that something needs to be done and fast.

__________________
Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga