|
A mean streak
Irfan Husain
July 13, 2019
ALWAYS a blood sport in Pakistan, politics is not for the faint of heart: you need sharp elbows, a thick skin and a flexible conscience.
For most people, a stint [short time] in jail is a blemish [داغ] on their professional and social standing, but for politicians, it is a badge of honour. Many treat it as a useful addition to their credentials, signifying that they were a thorn in the side of the ruling party.
In the past, jail authorities permitted a certain number of amenities like food from home, reading material and family visits. Of course, those who represented a genuine threat to rulers had a very different experience: witness the fate of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was convicted after a farcical trial, and shamefully treated in jail before being hanged in the dead of night.
As vindictiveness has become a permanent feature of Pakistani politics, jail time has become harsher. Now, Imran Khan’s government has banned another elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from receiving cooked meals from home. We know he is partial to his nihari, but to deprive an ailing 70-year-old of decent food is a nasty, petty act that speaks volumes for our leadership.
This kind of mean-spirited desire to humiliate [تذلیل کرنا] the opposition is also reflected in the treatment of the media. TV channels and newspapers have felt the deep bite of the government’s lash. As Zohra Yusuf wrote here recently, the media had more freedom under Gen Zia than it does now. It is ironic that we now regard that vicious stint of martial law as being less suffocating than the manipulated civilian rule we are living under.
Our judiciary has traditionally played handmaiden to the executive, especially when the military has called the shots. With brief exceptions when the higher judiciary has gone over the top, and made governance virtually impossible by its non-stop suo motu notices, our judges have usually given succour [امداد، سپورٹ] to the powerful.
Selective accountability has tarred their image, and the ongoing attack on the reputation of an upright judge has further dented the judiciary’s role as a neutral arbiter. The recent emergence of a tape purportedly showing Arshad Malik, a judge of the Islamabad High Court, confessing to being pressured to give a verdict against Nawaz Sharif, shows how easily our judiciary rolls over when facing the power of the state.
In his defence, the judge claims that the tape was somehow doctored, and he had been offered bribes to let Sharif off the hook. The information adviser to the prime minister has declared that Nasir Butt, the person with whom the judge had the conversation, is a murderer and a PML-N supporter. If this is indeed so, it was highly improper for a senior judge to have had a long association with him. Also, he ought to have reported the offer of a bribe long ago when it was made.
The question to ask is what has caused this government to lash out at anyone seen to be opposing it. A few years ago, when Pakistan was dependent on the US for military and economic support, Washington had considerable leverage with Islamabad. Not for nothing was the US ambassador to Pakistan constantly petitioned and courted by politicians and generals alike.
But alliances are never permanent: shrinking aid flows have seen a decline in Washington’s influence. Earlier concerns about human rights have been overtaken by Trump’s callousness [سرد مہری] and indifference. Also, India has replaced Pakistan as America’s principal partner in the region.
Now that we have largely burned our boats to the West and curry favour with Beijing and Riyadh, our rulers are no longer restrained in committing human rights violations. Reports in Western media about electoral fraud are dismissed as ‘fake news’. And China and Saudi Arabia are hardly torchbearers for civil liberties.
As the ruling combine is emboldened, and a culture of impunity spreads, democratic values — never firmly entrenched — are threatened. The space for civil society shrinks correspondingly, and all forms of opposition face persecution.
In this chilling scenario, it is the duty of the major parties to join hands and oppose this wanton destruction of democratic institutions so painfully built up in the face of the establishment’s opposition. Sadly, this does not seem to be on the cards. Nawaz Sharif’s treatment of Asif Zardari in the 1990s, when the former president was in jail over corruption charges, was pretty nasty. More recently, he oversaw a crackdown on Zardari’s henchmen[کارندے].
Zardari is too small-minded to put personal grievances aside for the greater good. As a feudal, he neither forgets, nor forgives real and imaginary slights which have to be avenged, even if democracy is destroyed. But Zardari also knows that if he steps out of line, the establishment can put the squeeze on him. As it is, he is facing multiple corruption charges. And so it goes as we veer [اچانک سمت تبدیل کرلینا] from democratic aspirations to authoritarian reality.
irfan.husain@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2019
Opposition strikes back
Abbas Nasir
July 13, 2019
THE speed with which the opposition initiated the process to replace Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani and united behind Mir Hasil Bizenjo as its unanimous choice has confounded many observers who doubted its ability to walk the talk.
The credit for unifying the opposition and making it act with such alacrity[پھرتی] largely goes to the government and the establishment. Their relentless pursuit of politicians in the opposing camp and their decapitation[سر کاٹ دینے کی حکمت عملی] strategy of the two main parties left the opposition with few other options.
Although the PPP and PTI fronted the effort to facilitate Mr Sanjrani’s election as Senate chairman last year, when the PML-N government was being destabilised, it was always clear that the little-known Baloch politician — never before elected to parliament — had more powerful sponsors.
Mr Sanjrani is one among some half-a-dozen senators elected from Balochistan who represent a new breed of politicians in the province that has come of age under the shadow of security forces amidst an insurgency which started after the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006.
Through this no-confidence move, the opposition is not just expressing its resolve to stand up to the government, but also to state institutions that, it believes, have lost their neutrality. This means that the appeasement policy some opposition leaders were pursuing has now been abandoned.
If Hasil Bizenjo is indeed elected Senate chairman, it would be a very significant development.
Of course, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Winning a numbers’ game on the floor of the Senate — even with the clear numerical superiority that the combined opposition possesses — may not be easy because a secret ballot brings with it considerable uncertainty.
This uncertainty owes itself to horse-trading, with piles of cash and other factors coming into play. “God knows what role in the process will be played by incriminating [کسی جرم میں ملوث سمجھنا] video evidence, for example, whether it is of criminal wrongdoing or merely ‘partying’,” as one Islamabad scene watcher told me.
If Hasil Bizenjo is indeed elected chairman, his election will be significant. In his person, the Senate would have chosen a politician with a long track record of progressive politics and — even more important in the Balochistan context — a committed nationalist. And a nationalist who never indulged in separatist politics and always preferred to raise his voice for Baloch rights within the ambit of the federation and the Constitution. His National Party was a coalition partner with the PML-N at the centre, as well as in the province till last year.
Both Hasil Bizenjo and his party’s chief minister, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, tried their utmost to resolve the burning issue of the disappeared, but their efforts bore little fruit. The installation of the Balochistan Awami Party government in Quetta has seen some headway in the return of the missing.
Commentators attribute this to the improved security situation and also the need of the BAP patrons to boost the party’s credibility. This can only be said to be the beauty of democracy no matter in howsoever diluted form it exists.
One can also attribute the return of some of the missing to the efforts of BNP-M leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal, who pressed the government to help when it wanted his support in the National Assembly to pass the budget recently.
It is another matter that Akhtar Mengal has been reported saying that the number of the missing who have returned and the relief of their loved ones is a matter of joy, but at the same time, new cases of forced disappearances are outnumbering those of returning individuals.
One hopes that the need to continue with this policy is not felt anymore and that many Baloch families, who have suffered the pain of not knowing whether their missing loved ones are dead or alive, are assured their nightmare is over.
This week was the 52nd death anniversary of Madar-i-Millat Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah and someone tweeted clips of her 1965 presidential campaign in the then eastern wing of the country which she toured by train.
A familiar figure is seen right behind her right shoulder during her campaign stops as she alighted from the train and took up position on a higher vantage point, a makeshift stage, to address the vast milling crowds that had gathered to hear her speak.
It was Shaikh Mujibur Rehman. Till a mere five years before the 1970 elections, his Awami League ran on a near-independence Six Points plank, it appears that the man who was known as ‘Bangabundhu’ had been happily campaigning for meaningful democracy in the country.
One wonders if the conduct of that election, which many believed was rigged to deny Ms Jinnah her victory, made him change his mind about the future of the power of the vote in a military-led dispensation in Pakistan.
I am not sure we are cut out to learn lessons from history. Even then, common sense ought to prevail as we approach the provincial assembly election in the ‘merged districts’ of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is of paramount importance to ensure that the electoral exercise is above reproach.
There are parties in the fray we can name and one we cannot. It is inevitable there are misgivings about a level playing field. But please let us make sure we do not score an own goal. Our soldiers and civilians alike have sacrificed so many lives to make that day possible. Let us not make a hash of it.
As for the no-confidence move in the Senate chairman, and if that passes, the election of the new chairman will be of huge personal interest to me. I remember well the day in Karachi University Arts Faculty when Hasil Bizenjo was shot by members of the pro-Zia Islami Jamiat Tulaba. We were in our classroom barely a dozen paces away as a bleeding Hasil Bizenjo was carried away to the hospital. His crime: to condemn military rule and call for restoration of democracy. It would be amazing to see him occupy one of Pakistan’s top elected offices.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2019
Population trumps all
Zeba Sathar
July 13, 2019
AS the government wades through its multiple challenges, it has one option to make a huge difference in a reasonably short time. The option of investing in population could be the game changer for most of its priority areas, including improving our abysmal [extremely bad] stunting [shocking] figures, reducing the unpardonable thousands of maternal deaths that take place each year, reducing poverty, and providing a way out of destitution. The prime minister and his newly appointed health adviser must be congratulated for taking a couple of big steps in the right direction.
A major national task force meeting to be chaired by the prime minister and attended by all chief ministers and important federal members is in the offing. The event follows an important meeting of the Council of Common Interests on the topic of population in November 2018. Major decisions are expected soon.
It does not take rocket science to figure out why the population bomb must be tackled to save our country from the exponential spiral of population numbers, and the problems and challenges including of human development, along with gender and poverty, that are strongly linked to it. Why is it then that our alarming population growth trends have generally been neglected in bureaucratic discussions, and do not make it to the IMF framework discussions or parliamentary debates? Why have we been such laggards[کاہل اور پیچھے رہنے والے لوگ] in action on population compared to other Muslim and regional countries? In short, why have we shrugged off the bet that trumps all development bets, in terms of low-cost interventions with huge impact on the poorest segments and the gender situation?
Population is always considered a red-hot button, to be tackled later.
A key reason is that we continue to harbour — against all the evidence — a huge ambivalence [تذبذب] about whether family planning is ‘the right thing’ for Pakistanis. Let us be clear of what this ambivalence implies: a practice that is perfectly fine for the elites, which enables them to leapfrog to better standards of living, is not right for the poor; they cannot practise family planning because they must have children to bring food to the table. So we invest instead in poverty alleviation, safety nets, even pass laws on child labour — but population is always considered a red-hot button, to be tackled later.
If today’s leaders truly commit to prioritising population, they will be joining the ranks of leaders in other countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran and Bangladesh, who saw clearly that their country’s economic development, social progress and even survival were linked to providing family-planning services to couples in need. No surprise that these major countries in the region have growth rates of 1.5 per cent or less while ours is 2.4pc — twice as fast as theirs.
While almost everyone discusses the economy extensively, hardly anyone (including economists) make the obvious association between poverty levels and population trends, through reduced household sizes, lower consumption, higher savings and reduced economic shocks to the family. While some economists may disagree on the finer points of the causality, it is abundantly apparent that we would have had about 40 million less people in poverty today if our population trends resembled Bangladesh or Indonesia in the last three decades Therefore, one hopes that the high-profile Ehsaas programme does not overlook the potentially pivotal role of population interventions and that it will factor in reproductive health interventions to provide services to the poorest women who have the largest family size, the highest dependency ratio, and who suffer from ill health due to frequent and closely spaced births. Clearly, ensuring that beneficiaries have access to family-planning services is imperative for achieving the objectives of Ehsaas and the Benazir Income Support Programme to alleviate[کسی چیز یعنی تکلیف وغیرہ میں کمی لانا], if not graduate, women out of poverty.
Currently, the almost complete fissure [دراڑ] between family planning and health services have crippled women and men from access to seeking information, and adopting contraception [بچوں کی پیدائش میں وقفے کے طریقے] . No surprise that contraceptive prevalence is a stagnant 35pc for the last five years, only half the level seen in the rest of the region, where combined services are widely available. Our services are sparse and mainly restricted to population welfare outlets tucked away in special locations.
It is time to launch, once and for all, a new consensus-based narrative about population and family planning to enable us to move out of this crippling impasse [جمود کی صورتحال] and take action in all relevant sectors. Based on extensive deliberations, the federal and provincial governments along with UNFPA, and the Population Council, have crafted a population narrative. Its crux is that parents have complete freedom in deciding how many children to have and when to have them, but while making these decisions, they must also ensure the basic rights of everyone in the family — especially children. And the state is responsible for enabling parents to act responsibly by ensuring access to information and services to enable that choice for parents.
Let us stop talking about the one-child policy of China. It is neither acceptable nor practical for Pakistanis. But building the case for responsible action should not be difficult. Let us call instead on parents to plan families that they can look after well within their means. And the state has to fulfil its mandate of providing necessary information and services to enable parents to be fully responsible for their children’s lives .
The coupling of freedom to choose with responsibility, to strike a balance (or tawazun) between resources and numbers at the level of both individuals and the state, will be acceptable from both a human rights and religious perspective. It will certainly dispel any religious arguments against inaction.
Once again, whether it is in the top three of the Smartest Targets for the post-2015 development agenda, or a common-sense assertion acceptable even in the MMA manifesto, birth spacing between children is the best bet for achieving tawazun between resources and numbers that is being missed at huge costs. Population concerns must trump other concerns of the government, political leadership across parties, media, educationists, and health leaders.
The writer is country director of the Population Council in Pakistan.
Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2019
|
