The unprecedented surge created by the lawyers’ protest seems to have all but petered out with Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry going back to his court and Shahbaz Sharif to the chief minister’s office.

It should have gone much further than that. Perhaps it is for the first time in Pakistan that a newly installed government backed by a parliamentary majority has been forced to retreat in the face of an advancing mob.
In the normal course of events Aitzaz Ahsan should have taken his grievance to court and Nawaz Sharif, whose party later joined the lawyers to impart greater vigour to the movement, should have taken his to parliament. By taking to the streets, the bar and the PML-N quite unexpectedly released the forces of popular discontent in a way that resembled a revolution.

Having achieved their immediate aims, the lawyers and politicians are back to their homilies and bargains while wider, more serious issues of concern must wait another day for a larger and more intimidating display of people’s power.

While the achievement of March 16 cannot be downplayed it must be said that the direct beneficiaries of that day’s cavalcade have only included the privileged class (judges and lawyers) and people hailing from a part (central Punjab) of the country. In this case, there doesn’t appear to be any fundamental objection to the country’s constitutional scheme nor to the manner in which political power and economic resources are shared by the federation and the provinces. The demand for radical changes is from other classes and regions.

Most persistent is the demand for the transfer of functions from the federation to the provinces. The main theatre of agitation is believed to be indifferent or even averse to it because it hosts the federal government, and the political and bureaucratic elite of the region dominates it. Resultantly, even the constitutional commitment to transfer the subjects on the concurrent list to the provinces within a specified period remains unfulfilled.

It is ironical that while the consistent provincial demand has been for greater powers it is the centre that has been growing stronger — not just at the cost of the provinces but of local councils as well. The denial of power is felt more acutely in Balochistan than in the other provinces. The rebellious youth and tribal chiefs of Balochistan spurned a recent presidential offer of a substantial development grant as their struggle, they contend, is for control over their own resources and not for largesse from the very people who usurped these resources.

The nationalists of Sindh and Balochistan (as the champions of provincial rights have come to be known) are in the political vanguard that has long been asking for a new compact in which the constituent units decide what powers they should surrender to the federation, because in terms of the Lahore Resolution of 1940, it is they who were to be ‘sovereign and autonomous’. The Baloch sardars go a step further and insist that they must be governed by the treaty of accession.

Mumtaz Bhutto and other nationalists of Sindh are prepared to part with no more than defence, foreign affairs, communications and currency. An assembly of constitutional lawyers, political scientists, economists and human rights activists recently brought together by Dr Mubashir Hasan (a founding ideologue of Bhutto’s PPP) is inclined to expand the list of subjects to include foreign trade, income tax, citizenship and immigration.
Surely, that much the present generation of politicians must do instantly and without reservation to make Pakistan, as the authors of the 120-page monograph have put it, a tenable state. Its present constitutional structure, they hold, has made it untenable as it is being ‘run wholly by Islamabad’.

Dr Mubashir’s monograph contains many other suggestions for the country’s tenability in a historical background but its crux — more power to the provinces — can be implemented without delay. The ‘nationalists’ still wouldn’t be satisfied but surely it would assuage their anger, and even the Baloch rebels might feel persuaded to come down from the hills if the control of oil and gas fields is given to the provinces.

Next to the doctrine of jihad which political leaders and the army generals propounded in the 1980s and then backed by training and arming tribal militias, it is the concentration of all power at the centre that has fostered extremism and insurgency in the country. The Baloch insurgents are certainly not religious extremists. As an ethnic group they are secular in outlook and behaviour. It would be a pity if government policies and foreign intervention drive them to make common cause with the Taliban.

The central idea of President Obama’s new ‘comprehensive strategy’ is to make the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan a single theatre of US-Nato military operations. The American commanders have left no doubt that the theatre includes Balochistan. The real threat to the US that congressmen and commanders repeat so often comes from Pakistan. When it is all one theatre the battle will recognise no boundary up in the air or on the ground. Centcom chief Gen Petraeus has already said that he would take the fight to the insurgents wherever they may be.

In a broadening campaign, our government wouldn’t be able, even if it were willing, to stop American troops from crossing the border. And for them to cross into Balochistan would be much easier. That would radicalise that province and make it as lawless as Baitullah Mehsud’s Waziristan. Imagine, not long ago a traveller, by day or by night, had to worry about his safety elsewhere in the country but not in the wilds of Balochistan.

While the monograph talks of Pakistan’s tenability, the American strategists have already declared it a state that is ‘hovering close to the brink of collapse’. By giving $7.5bn over seven years for development and another $2.5bn for armed combat, it is the Americans who will decide whether or not it should fall over the brink. No neighbour or distant well-wisher or Islamic bloc would then speak for us. The federation will survive only if contented provinces stand behind it. Presently they do not. It is up to Islamabad and the military to fight or give up.

The preamble to the Constitution of Pakistan binds the state ‘to exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives’ who, in turn, are bound to fully observe ‘the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam’.

The constitution is, thus, violated whenever martial law is imposed, which indeed it was for 20 years out of 36, or even when an unelected governor replaces an elected chief minister in a province as in the case of Punjab. But it is the violation of the second part of the constitutional injunction relating to the principles of governance which is serious and perpetual.

Does democracy in Pakistan conform to Islamic principles? In Maulana Sufi Mohammad’s view it doesn’t, for an elected legislature itself is alien to Islam. He can, therefore, assert whenever it suits him or his clients — the Taliban of Swat — that neither the provincial assembly nor Pakistan’s national parliament has the authority to revoke or alter the judicial system that has been introduced in Malakand Agency and neighbouring Kohistan under his auspices to end the insurgency there.

Sufi Mohammad can also ignore or resist a legal challenge to the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation in the courts on the ground that it conforms to the principles enunciated by Islam and is therefore protected by the constitution. Thus a measure that was intended to tide over a crisis might set a precedent for any person, community or region to challenge the authority of the state on the same ground. That could include many preposterous inferences that are drawn by the Taliban such as a woman leaving her home unveiled should be whipped in public or that keeping pigeons is un-Islamic.

The essential point to be made here is that the contradictions in governance and evils that afflict our society ranging from hypocrisy to insurgency all originate from the obligation of the state to establish an order based on the principles of Islam which it must under the constitution but cannot because of total lack of agreement on what these principles are.

This dilemma was summed up thus by the Munir-Kayani court of enquiry in 1954 after recording the views of the exponents of all schools of thought:

‘Hifiz Kifayat Husain, the Shia divine, held out as his ideal the form of government during the Holy Prophet’s [PBUH] time, Maulana Daud Ghaznavi also included in his precedent the days of the Islamic Republic of Umar bin Abdul Aziz, Salahuddin Ayubi of Damascus, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Tughlaq and Aurangzeb and the present regime in Saudi Arabia. Most of them, however, relied on the form of government during the Islamic Republic from 632 to 661 AD, a period of less than 30 years, though some of them also added the very short period of Umar bin Abdul Aziz. Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni stated that the details of the ideal state would be worked out by the ulema.’

That, of course, the ulema have not ever been able to do. Also expressed before the court was a view (by Maulana Abul Hasanat) conforming to the contention of today’s Sufi Mohammad that elections and legislatures are unnecessary ‘since Islam is a perfect religion containing laws, express or derivable by ijma (consensus) or ijtihad (exertion) governing the whole field of human activity, there is in it no sanction for what may, in the modern sense, be called legislation — our law is complete and merely requires interpretation by those who are experts in it’.

Fifty-five years later, divergent views on the Islamic principles applicable to statecraft have only hardened. Pakistan has now to contend not just with its internal schisms and strife but is hard put to deny the world’s charge of being the hotbed of Islamic terrorism.

Having laid down the principles in the preamble, the constitution goes on to make the state responsible for providing facilities that enable the Muslims to ‘understand the meaning of life according to the Holy Quran and Sunnah’ (Article 31). This responsibility, in fact, has been taken over by parochial organisations, leaving the state to face the brunt of the violence that the sermons at their mosques and lessons at their madressahs lead to. The mayhem at Islamabad’s Red Mosque and the attached women’s seminary is a prime example of this development.

The commitment to religious principles in no manner has promoted equity or justice in society but has caused radicalism to grow at its fringes. Unfortunately, the world recognises Pakistan’s religious character by its persecution of dissidents at home and terrorist strikes across the world. The constitutional provisions have also given parochial groups a say in the affairs of the state disproportionate to their popular vote of less than 10 ten per cent.

If the war in Afghanistan cannot be won, President Barack Obama has been quoted as saying, ‘what are we doing there?’ At the same time, he says, America cannot turn its back on Pakistan. Outwardly encouraging, it has an ominous ring to it — the theatre of war may soon shift from Afghanistan to Pakistan. A confirmation of it has, in fact, already come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Afghanistan, she says, has its internal problems, but more serious external problems come from

Pakistan. One day American troops may walk into Pakistan to deal with the Afghan problem at its very source.

The time seems to have arrived for the state to give up all pretensions to the implementation of Islamic principles and leave this task instead to the people. Surely, Pakistan’s society was far more just, tolerant and ethical before the likes of Ziaul Haq intervened to destroy these values. The government and the armed forces should just take care of the safety and economic well-being of the citizens and defend its borders.

The time has also arrived for Pakistan to extricate itself from the unending conflicts in the region and turn to South and Southeast Asia where the jihad being waged is for economic prosperity, and not for ideological hegemony. In any case, we have closer cultural and ethnic ties with the region to the east which, incidentally, contains two-thirds of the Muslim population of the world. In this alignment lies the solution of Kashmir dispute and also of Pakistan’s extremism.

A day after President Zardari conceded in an interview with an American television channel that the Taliban had established their presence across large swathes of Pakistan, the government of the NWFP, with his approval, recognised the presence of the militia in Swat — one which could not be eradicated even by military action.

Only time can tell whether this recognition will work to advance or check the aim of the Taliban which, in Zardari’s words, is ‘to take over the state of Pakistan and our way of life’. The instant merit of the agreement between the provincial government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad, however, lies in bringing to an end the sufferings to which the people of that once idyllic valley have long been subjected.

The jubilant crowds on the streets of Swat were celebrating not the advent of Sharia law but the return of normality — let there be no mistake about it. The ovation given to Sufi Mohammad was not because of recognition of him as a harbinger of a new order but as a messenger of peace.

Even if he is unable to persuade his Taliban son-in-law Fazlullah to lay down his arms and abide by the agreement, Swat’s worst nightmare, it seems, is over. If the political administration now acts sensibly and promptly, Fazlullah’s marauding men will no longer be able to raid music shops, harass women or burn down schools.

The reaction of Pakistan’s allies — the US and Nato — quite predictably has been sceptical. Both would have preferred Pakistan to press on with its military campaign. They suspect that the ceasefire would only provide a respite, giving the terrorists time to regroup and mount their assault again.

The allies, however, have conveniently overlooked the ground reality that the army operation was alienating the population without exterminating the fanatical fighters.

Thus even if the agreement fails to take hold, the ceasefire provides an opportunity to the government to muster popular support more than it does to the terrorists to refurbish their armoury. The loss of life and earnings that people of all vocations have undergone seems to suggest that they would rather put up with the present system howsoever corrupt or unjust than suffer all the more while waiting for an elusive Islamic order.

In any case the agreement between Maulana Sufi Mohammad and the NWFP government stipulates no more than a judicial system based on the Sharia laws to be introduced in the former princely states of Swat, Dir, Chitral, the protected area of Malakand and Hazara Kohistan.

The executive authority and all other regulatory and developmental functions will continue to vest in the provincial and federal governments under the same laws as are applicable to the rest of the country.

The judicial system envisaged in the agreement is hardly any different from what was in vogue in the former princely states before they were made districts. It was informal, inexpensive and expeditious even if harsh and not always just. Such was the experience of this writer as resident political agent and adviser of Chitral state as also of his colleagues in Dir and Swat.

The formal introduction of Sharia courts now that the states have become districts must not be viewed as Talibanisation of their society or institutions. For all purposes other than the trial of criminal cases and adjudication of civil disputes they will continue to administer justice as is done in other districts of the country.

It needs to be clearly understood that the three states and other parts of Malakand and Hazara divisions are not tribal societies nor wild territories in the sense that next-door Bajaur and Mohmand or further Khyber, Kurram, Orakzai and North and South Waziristan are.

It was wrong to have grouped them as Pata, i.e. provincially administered tribal areas, for they are not tribal as are the federally administered agencies collectively called Fata. Between Pata and Fata there is little affinity or communication. Even the language and social norms differ. Swat has cultural and lingual links with settled Mardan but none with the Mohmands, for instance.

Likewise, Sufi Mohammad’s Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi predates the Taliban phenomenon and had no connection with it — until recently. It was the agony caused by the expense, delay and corruption inherent in the operation of the unfamiliar and complex laws of Pakistan that persuaded him to launch a mass campaign for the enforcement of Sharia law in Dir much before 9/11. As the campaign dragged on, Sufi Mohammad’s son-in-law Fazlullah from his base in Swat established contacts with the Taliban and the movement took a violent turn.

Despite this connection which surely brought the TNSM arms and money, it remains essentially an independent movement confined to Dir and Swat. The occupation of Pakistan and the destruction of America do not appear to be its goal.

It would not have gathered the momentum it has if our local councils instead of indulging in politics had attended to the needs of the common people and had spared them the torture of prolonged litigations. The provisions of the local government law relating to the care of the poor and settlement of disputes at the village level had all along remained a dead letter.

Pakistan stands much to gain and its allies in the ‘war on terror’ have little to lose if the Sharia courts bring tranquillity and tourists back to the Swat valley and the mountains beyond that are among the highest in the world. Sharia law is not new to the area but violence is. As political agent in the 1960s, this writer presided over both Chitral’s Sharia system and its secular judicial council only to wonder now whether the people living under Pakistan’s elaborate judicial system could ever be as law-abiding, tolerant of dissent and content in poverty as were the Chitralis then. Swatis were not much different.

Given a just and non-intrusive but firm administration they can be the same again. Advice from Ijlal Hyder Zaidi who had long served in the region and was later Benazir Bhutto’s adviser should help. Talking to the mullahs and militants undoubtedly has its risk but it is one worth taking for the survival of Pakistan and peace of the region. The liberals and militarists will surely live to fight another day.

DAWN.com

IT is a paradox of a peculiar kind. A battle royal is going on in the courts and in the streets for the integrity and independence of the judiciary but justice has never been so hard to come by for the people in whose name, and interest, supposedly, the battle is being fought. It is both delayed and denied.

One keeps wondering what difference it would make to the lives of ordinary people — meaning the vast majority — whether it is one set of judges at the top or another or whether the chief justice is a Chaudhry or a Dogar, when the police and court officials who are supposed to be accessible to the common man have all passed under complete political control. The officials responsible for administering laws and the presiding officers of the courts have hardly ever been free from the influence of politicians. But it was informal, even hush-hush. Now it is getting institutionalised.

The sifarish may still be described as a recommendation but the person or the department to whom it is directed can question or ignore it only at their peril. Even that pretence was shed when an employment task force was formally constituted. The charter of this outfit was never publicly notified. The intention of the party bosses to control through it all jobs in government and its allied organisations was, however, never in doubt.

The ‘task’ given to the ‘force’ came to light only after the differences that arose between its chairman, a roving ambassador of minister’s rank, and its director general with a political background were reported in the press. A specific instance quoted was where the latter sent across to the public works department a list of 240 engineers for appointment before the 7,000 odd waiting applicants were even given the test. Similar lists, newspaper reports alleged, were sent to some other departments for appointment superseding the selection process.

The task force has since been disbanded, to quote from the official handout, “to counter corruption and nepotism, ensure merit, transparency and good governance across the board”. But any hope that recruitment henceforth would be in accordance with the rules and based on competitive merit will prove short-lived. Suspicions abound that job quotas will be assigned to the ministers, members of the assemblies and party bosses.

The common belief is that it was their pressure, and not the prime minister’s newfound urge to do justice to the unemployed, that led to the abolition of the task force. Such is the cynicism of the people and their deep-rooted mistrust of the government.

When it comes to injustice and inefficiency in public service, it is customary to blame the shortage of resources. Truly to be blamed are the public servants who in ever growing numbers and in large measure owe their selection, posting and promotion to personal or political connections rather than their own competence. The method of recruitment, criteria for promotion and tenure of jobs are all laid down in the rules. Politicians, however, go to any lengths to take it all into their own hands.

Take the example of the Sindh public service commission. A chief minister made it dysfunctional for almost two years until the chairman who wouldn’t listen to him retired. In the interregnum, ad hoc or contract appointments were made only to be regularised later. Yet another chief minister had enacted a legislation that was valid for just 30 days — time enough to remove the incumbent chairman of the commission, who had been chief secretary of the province, and appoint in his place a more amenable but less eligible official. Gen Musharraf was also politicised enough to use a somewhat similar device to get rid of a federal public service commission chairman who, though a fellow general, would, perhaps, not do his bidding.

In terms of cutting short the tenure of postings for political reasons, the best example to quote would be that of the post of federal finance secretary. Four secretaries have come and gone in the last one year. Meanwhile, Sindh has seen three IGs of police in one year while the tenure set in the law (and not just in the rules) is three years. The tenure of the officer in charge of a police station (SHO) in the province, the lynchpin of crime control, is measured in months. The orders invariably emanate from the politicians.

Now that the general ban on recruitment in government has been formally lifted (although appointments were being made through the backdoor under various pretexts), the commitment of the prime minister to go by merit and transparency will be put to the test. The Sindh chief minister has promised to provide 50,000 jobs and the home minister another 18,000 in the police. The long, waiting lines of the unemployed, going by past experience, hardly expect selections to be fair or done through impartial commissions or committees. They can’t be faulted. The commitment of our politicians to kin and party men is known to outweigh their duty to the public.

Hope for justice however must not be allowed to fade away. The Punjab chief minister claims that appointments numbering 50,000 made in the province’s police were all on merit and conformed to the rules. He appeared ready to probe and punish any departure pointed out. That indeed he did and his offer remains open. One should expect the Sindh chief minister and all others so placed to make similar claims in their turn.

The thrust of this argument in short is that the independence and integrity of the judiciary alone will not help the common man in his daily grind unless the constable of his beat also, at least to some measure, shares that virtue with the judges of the Supreme Court. The struggle of the lawyers, therefore, has a long way to go.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

Source: DAWN.com

IN the sixty-second year of independence the political dilemma facing the people of Pakistan is the same as it was in the first year — in whom the executive authority of the state vests and who actually exercises it?

It became an issue serious enough in the lifetime of Mr Jinnah to have persuaded him to remind the army officers at the Staff College, Quetta on June 14, 1948 that “under the Government of India Act as adapted for use in Pakistan which is our present constitution the executive authority flows from the head of the Government of Pakistan who is the Governor General”.

Since then the problem has persisted through every regime — parliamentary, presidential, dictatorial or hybrid of all three — but was never more troublesome than it is now.

The president as head of the state represents the unity of the republic. The executive authority of the federation also vests in him but the constitution binds him to act only “in accordance with the advice of the cabinet or the prime minister”. The current practice is the other way round; it is the prime minister who acts on the advice of the president. Such, at least, is the impression widely held both at home and abroad.

A doubt also hangs over the credentials of the president to represent the unity of the republic for Asif Zardari is also the head of his own party which is just one of the many parties represented in parliament and in the provincial legislatures, some of whom fiercely disagree with the policies being pursued by him.

The executive powers exercised by the authoritarian or charismatic individuals in our political system have seldom conformed to the intent or letter of the constitution. One of the more deplorable expressions of this tradition was seen in the dismissal of the Supreme Court by Gen Musharraf when the chief justice refused to resign under his pressure. Mr Zardari may now feel more restrained but he has visibly assumed a role in statecraft which is not envisaged for the head of state in the constitution.

It can be reasonably argued that Mr Zardari because of his inherited charisma, which has made him the undisputed leader of the PPP, is better suited to be the executive head of the country at this critical juncture than Yusuf Raza Gilani. But then he should have chosen, and the choice was all his, to be the prime minister rather than turn the constitution on its head.

Mr Zardari being the head of state but acting as executive head of the government gives rise to a question more fundamental than just exceeding the constitutional role of the president. And that question is whether the country’s government in its outlook and essential features is going to be parliamentary or presidential.

Ironically, though the executive power in Pakistan all along has tended to centre around individuals starting from Jinnah onward to Ghulam Mohammad, Ayub Khan, Z.A. Bhutto, Ziaul Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf, most political parties have always shown strong commitment to the parliamentary form of government. So pervasive has been this Westminster sentiment that even the Supreme Court while validating Musharraf’s coup and permitting him to amend the constitution, or keep it in abeyance in parts, expressly prohibited him from tempering with its parliamentary character (sadly, the court neither censured nor arraigned him when he didn’t abide by its direction).

The people at large, on the other hand, have always been more concerned about the performance and integrity of a government rather than with its form. Their elected representatives nevertheless have remained steadfast in their loyalty to the parliamentary system. So also was the PPP till the time Mr Zardari became the president and began to raise doubts.

The recent inter-party pacts were also for the instant and total repeal of the changes wrought by Mr Musharraf through the 17th amendment. Mr Zardari has however left the consideration of this issue to a parliamentary committee without a deadline. There seems no hurry. The committee when formed, obviously with the majority of its members drawn from the PPP and its allies, may propose the repeal of Article 58-2(b) but, in the present situation, is unlikely to recommend the abolition of the National Security Council.

Parliament is also unlikely to disturb the powers of the president to appoint the chiefs of the armed forces, governors, judges and chief election commissioner at his sole discretion or in consultation with the prime minister but not on his advice.

Mr Zardari’s government in its essential characteristics is thus shaping up to be more presidential than parliamentary. In practice it would be altogether presidential if he were to use his party office and personal clout also to take over the functions of the prime minister and the cabinet which he is visibly doing already on an extensive scale.

The supremacy of parliament which was the unifying war cry in the campaign against Musharraf thus would remain a myth notwithstanding Mr Zardari’s own avowal that he is a president subservient to parliament. As president he would not be even directly answerable to it. The prime minister and the ministers would be there to defend his actions as their own which they will surely do faithfully.

In the seven months of its existence the performance of parliament even as a debating forum has been perfunctory. The burning issues relating to terrorism, economic decline, financial bankruptcy, development planning, lawlessness and crime are all placed under the charge of advisers who are not members of parliament nor accountable to it.

The briefings by army officers and the information minister, the parliamentarians allege, have not added to what they knew already about the war on terror through media reports and bazaar rumours. It is they and not the generals and the advisers who should have been making the policy to combat terrorism.

In these fateful times the parliamentarians should not be seen sitting on the sidelines or just sulking. Cutting across party lines, they must support the government or oppose it unless they have made a conscious decision to leave the fate of the country in the hands of the generals and advisers only to blame them when it is too late.

Source l DAWN

PAKISTAN’S sovereign economic rating has fallen to a junk triple-C. Similarly rated, it would be lower for security and lower still for the institutions that handle the economy, security and every other matter of the state.

So high are the stakes in Pakistan that the world somehow may find even the $100bn that President Asif Zardari is seeking only if the donors were to trust the intentions of the people who are to spend the money — and are held accountable if they squander or embezzle it.

Foreign donors aside, such an assurance is not forthcoming even to our own people. The first burden that therefore falls on our political leaders is to establish the propriety of their own conduct and integrity of the state institutions in the eyes of the people and dispel many doubts that our allies and the world at large entertain on both counts.

The leaders now in the government or in the opposition have been alternating in that role for the past 20 years — some sticking to their parties, others switching loyalties and still others breaking away to form parties of their own. They have been bringing up charges of misconduct and corruption against each other till Gen Musharraf came on the scene to charge both.

The cases lingered for years before the Ehtesab Bureau established by Nawaz Sharif, and later before Musharraf’s NAB, but hardly any one was disqualified or otherwise punished. All that the bureaus had to show in the way of performance was the recovery of a fraction of the misappropriated amount through plea bargains till Musharraf brought a sweeping law to close all proceedings. It was an act of political expediency cloaked in national reconciliation. Who among those charged was guilty of corruption and who was being persecuted on personal or partisan grounds will never be known.

But that law should not put a premium on corruption nor instil a sense of immunity or give a licence to plunder with impunity. If the present lot of leaders wish to pull the country out of the morass of violence and despondency in which it is stuck, they must first establish their own moral credentials by opening their books and assets for scrutiny by an impartial tribunal with full opportunity provided to the people to question the veracity of the disclosures made.

The process of accountability has to be continuous, open and guided by public perception and not the rules of evidence applicable to criminal trials in which one is taken to be innocent unless proven guilty. The public leaders must be demonstrably above board.

The point to stress is that it is too much to expect of the masses to suffer privation or make sacrifices when their leaders live in luxury at home when in power, and in greater luxury abroad when they have to flee the country — who among them doesn’t have villas in Dubai or flats in London’s Park Lane? The destinies of the masses and the leaders are thus not intertwined in times good or bad.

In the current crisis centred in the tribal area but with trouble spilling all over, the normal institutions of the state — the presidency and parliament, the cabinet, bureaucracy and judiciary — have lost all relevance. Relevant only are the intelligence agencies. But the countries conducting the war on terror (who are also now being called upon to rescue our economy) consider these agencies to be “historically and institutionally complicit” in the Taliban insurgency that they are trying to quell.

Noteworthy for sarcasm in this backdrop is the comment of The Economist in last week’s issue: “Pakistan’s notorious military spooks deserve credit for the audacity of their covert support for the Taliban, the enemy of Pakistan’s greatest ally. But America’s patience with the ISI’s double-dealing is running thin”. The paper then goes on to cast doubts on the assurances of a “civilian with a dodgy past” (meaning our president) to tame the “Invisible Soldiers Inc”.

America, though our ally and best friend, is giving nuclear technology to India but denies it to Pakistan. This discrimination points towards yet another area where our allies and international community alike refuse to trust us. To most of us here, Dr. A.Q. Khan is the country’s ‘greatest benefactor’. The custodians of Pakistan’s ideology assembled in Lahore would rather see him as head of the Islamic state than a pathetic, ailing figure confined to the prison of his home.

To the world at large, however, he is the “single worst nuclear proliferator” who ran a “Wal-Mart to sell the country’s prized secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea making the world a more dangerous place”. These conflicting perceptions apart, an undeniable fact is that though Pakistan now has nuclear weapons and the people are close to eating grass, as Bhutto had then put it, yet we cannot buy nuclear technology for producing desperately needed power for our homes and factories.

Whether it was Dr Khan on his own or the government of the day that was involved in running the nuclear mart is for us to ponder. But we must make peace with the rest of the world by clearing doubts that hang over our conduct as a nation. The nuclear assets that Dr Khan helped create for warfare must not become a liability now that we need nuclear technology for a peaceful purpose.

Lastly, the world has reservations even about our legal system which not long ago was our strength. It is nothing short of bizarre that a struggle launched for greater independence and dignity of the judiciary should be ending in less of both. The accusations made against the chief justice were never investigated nor was the accusing lawyer tried for perjury nor was the president impeached. A constitutional issue carried to the streets forced Musharraf to resign but has sown seeds of division in the ranks of lawyers and judges alike. An unsafe Pakistan without impartial courts must rank low in the preference of investors. Lack of investment, in turn, adds to unemployment and unrest.

The answer to violence at home and doubts abroad lies in letting the institutions work. Individuals should owe allegiance to institutions, not the other way round. That sadly has been the trend long in evidence now reaching a climax in the person of Mr Asif Zardari. As promised, he should better shed his 17th Amendment powers without delay. The cult of his late lamented wife is enough to sustain him in office.

AS far back in time as a senior citizen can recall, say 40 years ago, the federal and provincial governments and the municipality of Karachi (also a government now) have been talking of a mass transport system for the city.

At various stages projects have been contemplated or sanctioned for rapid transit corridors, for elevated roads and rails and for CNG buses.None of these promises or projects materialised nor will they do so as far as surviving senior citizens can see. What actually has been happening may be quickly recounted here for the sake of nostalgia. The trams which were Karachi’s pride stopped running 35 years ago and their track from Keamari to Soldier Bazaar to Cantt Station lies buried under layers of asphalt; the circular railway (it was not even semi-circular) closed down 20 years ago, its remnants lie in ruin; the bus fleet has been aging and dwindling.

Today, the newest bus on the road is 20 years old and the oldest 60 years with the exception of the few hundred buses that came under the Nawaz Sharif government’s loan and subsidy scheme in the 1990s. Huge sums that have gone into the construction of the city’s flyovers and underpasses are meant to benefit only the motorists. Public buses are not permitted to use them — not even the horrendously expensive and delayed Lyari freeway.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from what was promised and what actually happened is that successive governments were either being irresponsible or were knowingly making fun of the citizens or fooling them. Whatever it was the habit hasn’t died. The three urban transport schemes recently announced, or sanctioned, are likely to meet a fate no different from that of the grand plans of the past.

The first, and most authentic, of the three is the revival of Karachi’s circular railway — with the circle completed and spurs added — costing $872m over three years. This capital cost which is based on the prices of 2006 will surely double given the present rate of inflation and almost certainly delay the completion of the project. Resultantly, the stipulated single trip fair of Rs50 will also double.

Though the Japanese government is said to have agreed to meet the foreign exchange component — $654m — and the federal government will provide the local cost of $218m in rupees, the final approval, crucially, hinges on a commitment by the Sindh and city governments that neither of the two will demand any subsidy from the federal government for operating losses.

Unmindful of this condition, a row has already erupted between the province and the city over who would head the board — the transport minister or the nazim — which is to oversee the operations by a private company. Seemingly, the row is not about who can do a better job but the patronage it involves. It invokes a fear similar to that among country peasants for whom the robbers arrived on the scene before their village came up.

Leaving the capital cost, operational subsidy and management issues aside, the project will benefit only a small segment of the population if buses do not connect each railway station with localities in the vicinity. Even if that can be organised, which is unlikely, the commuters would rather take a bus all the way from home to work than wait in transit and pay the amount twice over. That was the chief reason for the huge loss and ultimate closure of the semi-circular railway.

The circular railway project, both for reasons of huge cost and limited benefit, is wholly unfeasible. So also is the rapid-corridor project for which the city district government claims to have secured aid to the tune of $800m from the Asian Development Bank. It can be straightaway dismissed as no more than boastful deception. So should be the claim of the nazim that he had already received Rs2.5bn for CNG — from where, the city government’s propaganda brochure doesn’t say.

The federal government, indeed, has approved a project envisaging subsidy to private investors who elect to operate CNG buses in major cities with Karachi getting the first priority. But no operator has come forth in a year.

The CNG bus scheme has lost whatever little attraction it had for investors with a recent government announcement proposing to equalise the price of all types of fuel. The private sector now can be persuaded to buy and operate CNG buses only if one or the other government was to pick up the difference between the price of the diesel and CNG which is around 30 per cent.

Fifty years is a period long enough to deceive commuters and keep their hopes alive. The schemes now being bandied about hold no promise of improvement for city transport for another decade. In fact, the situation will aggravate if we do not resort to the only practical and affordable remedy which is to modernise and expand the bus fleet.

This is the solution always put across by those who know the transport business or, like this writer, have unsuccessfully tried to regulate it. Mr Enrique Penalosa, who turned Bogota’s chaotic transport system into the envy of the developing world, was godsend at this moment of critical choice. He too has broadly supported this very pragmatic approach with his experience and demonstrable success as mayor of Bogota.

As advised by Mr Penalosa, wherever the road width permits tram lines should be laid alongside the bus lanes. That would revive a part of Karachi’s folklore besides providing its citizens an economical means of transportation. The planning commission chief Salman Faruqi who is more of a doer than a dreamer should lose no time in putting his money on Mr Penalosa than the international financiers and big-ticket players at home. Both have an axe to grind.

But Mr Faruqi’s first and almost insurmountable task should be to make the government reconcile itself to the principle of subsidising the urban transport operations as it is done the world over — even in the freest of market economies. Punjab under Shahbaz Sharif has started doing it in a modest way with visible improvement in the quality of city bus services. Sindh is there only to dither or dream and squabble.

Source: DAWN

LAST week three funerals took place on three successive days. The dead came from different backgrounds, belonged to different places and professions. Common to the three was their faith.

They were Ahmadis — and that was good enough reason for the unknown gunmen to kill them.

The first to be shot dead — on Sept 8 — was Dr Abdul Mannan Siddiqui at Mirpurkhas during a midday round of his hospital wards. Seth Yusuf, a Nawabshah trader, was shot dead the next day as he headed home after saying his prayers. The third funeral was Sheikh Saeed’s who was shot, like the other two during the day while at his pharmacy in a lower middle-class colony of Karachi.

Ahmadis as a community are not new to murder. It is only that more of them are now being murdered than ever before and more brazenly as the murderers enjoy a kind of impunity. None of them has ever been caught and convicted. The tragic irony of it all is that the 1974 amendment to the constitution declaring Ahmadis “not Muslims”, which was intended to settle the ‘problem’ for all times to come, (as the PPP leadership then claimed and still boasts of) had in fact exacerbated it. According to the Ahmadiyya central office since 1974, 105 Ahmadis have been murdered. Among them have been scientists, doctors and educationists. In the 26 years, before the amendment (1947 to 1973) their number was only 18. The destruction of their properties and places of worship increased in even larger proportion.

This month’s gunning spree (three wounded are still struggling for their life) followed soon after a prime-hour discussion on one of the more popular television channels commemorating the 1974 amendment. That programme ended with a verdict by a participating mufti of an extremist school that for deviating from the conventional view of the finality of the prophethood of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) the Ahmadis deserved to be murdered. A condescending compere followed it up with a lyrical oration heaping insults on the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement.

If festering prejudice needed an impetus to murder, the compere of the Sept 7 programme and his chosen scholars provided it. A measure of understanding, perhaps, can be shown to politicians and priests when they are persuaded to whip up religious emotions to the point of violence only to divert the attention of the people from other woes. But the mass media that stands for full freedom of expression with matching social responsibility should not be seen as joining them.

The union of international journalists must have studied the contents and tenor of the broadcast in question before advising its counterpart here to abide by its code of honour and isolate the odd offenders rather than invite intervention by the government. Sensibly, the freedom to project one’s own religious views does not imply the freedom to instigate violence against others. This stipulation must stand at the core of both the ethics of the media and the law of the land.

The three men murdered were peaceable, law-abiding citizens. Those who knew Seth Yusuf, as the people of Nawabshah indeed had for 50 or more years, would not have ever thought of doing him the slightest harm. He was a God-fearing man in his seventies. His murderers were obviously strangers who were either indoctrinated or paid to kill him only because he was the chief of the district’s Ahmadiyya community.

Young Sheikh Saeed’s elder brother and his uncle, a professor of medical sciences at the Jinnah Postgraduate Centre, were gunned down at the same place and for the same reason in the last two years. This is a situation in which even an indifferent investigating agency could get a clue as to the identity of the killers only if it felt concerned, if not about the dead, then about its own credibility.

Most poignant has been the death of Dr Abdul Mannan Siddiqui. Tributes to him flowed freely and generously. To the lawyers of the district he was a benefactor of mankind. The hospital staff looked up to him more as a father than as an employer. The head of the district police thought he was a great man the like of whom are not born everyday. The association of the doctors summed it all up: Mannan’s murder is the murder of humanity.

The treatment of the humblest of mankind often took the deceased doctor to the far end of the desert. Holding frequent and free medical camps at Nagarparkar, the farthest outpost on the border with India, was his wont. The ranas and waderas would swear by his professional integrity and humanitarian concerns.

It is a pity, but should cause no surprise, that no leader of the government had spoken on Mannan’s death — to condemn the killers or to commiserate with the bereaved. The lone and powerful voice has been of Altaf Hussain, the MQM chief. His instant condemnation of the killers and tribute to Dr Mannan for his selfless service to humanity came like a gust of fragrant breeze blowing through a stillness laden with the stench of prejudice.

After specialised studies in America, Mannan was planning to settle down there when his father Abdur Rehman Siddiqui (also a doctor) reminded him that his first duty was to his own people. Mannan hurried back and went on, as if in vengeance, to raise his father’s humble clinic to the standard of a modern hospital that was free for the poor. He was the only son of his late father. It hurts deep inside when the life of a man, who is the age of your son, is cut short. Mannan was just 44 as is my son. It is now up to his admirers and the patients he healed to keep alive the legend of his and his father’s service of 60 years.

As for the devout anchorman and his ponderous scholars, they may have to go to Mirpurkhas and the desert beyond to learn that the worth of a man lies not in schism but in service. After all it is a Dutch and Christian woman who takes care of the lepers here whom the faithful shun.

To kill a man for his belief is inhuman and cannot be Islamic for Islam is a religion of humanity. And it is for our leaders to realise that by employing religion in the service of politics they have made this Islamic Republic into a world metaphor for dictatorship, brutality and terror where the youth are trained to kill and women, by many accounts, are buried alive.

Source : DAWN.com

HAVING installed a loyalist prime minister and filed his own papers for the presidency (barring a political tsunami he should be the president when these lines appear in print), Asif Zardari still wants to “take all political forces along — to save Pakistan from disintegration”.

What is left to be given to the ‘political forces’ for them to go along, more particularly to Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League, Mr Zardari doesn’t say. The speaker is handpicked by Mr Zardari; the chairman of the Senate belongs to Nawaz’s rival league; Nawaz loathes the sitting chief justice; and, most important, in Governor Taseer he sees a sword of Damocles hanging not just over the Punjab government but his own political dynasty too. Taseer, too, leaves no doubt about it.

Now all that is left for Nawaz Sharif to take is a few ministerial jobs. For him it is Hobson’s choice — to take what is available or nothing at all. For his electoral strength, the fight he put up for the judiciary and his personal popularity, by all accounts on the rise, he deserved better than that.

Leaving aside the individual principles that were lyrically touted in the argument over the reinstatement of judges, a fair and workable basis for the PPP–PML-N cooperation would have been to divide the two top jobs between them. Now that Mr Zardari has chosen to be the president, Nawaz Sharif, or his nominee till he becomes eligible, should justifiably be the prime minister.

In the February elections, no party won an absolute majority either at the centre or in three of the four provinces. Only the PPP in the Sindh Assembly has got more seats than all the other parties put together i.e. 69 out of 130 contested. In this situation, the president should have called upon the leader of the party with the largest number of members to form the government. This is the practice in most parliamentary democracies and Pakistan’s constitutional scheme is also similar. Deviating from that course our leaders embarked on a long search for ‘consensus’ which has only ended in making divisions sharper and reviving old feuds.

The aborted consensus and Mr Zardari’s unexpected bid for the presidency combined to create a political ferment which is tending to defeat the will of the people as it was expressed at the polls. The PPP indeed emerged as the largest single political force across the country but its share of 30.6 per cent of the votes polled is certainly not large enough to lay claim to both the office of the president and the prime minister.

That would be tantamount to giving monopoly of power to a party which did not command support of even one-third of the electorate. By contrast, the 42.6 per cent voters who voted for the two factions of the Muslim League would be deprived of any say at all in national policies and, what matters more, share in political patronage as well.

The power structure, no doubt, is determined by the number of seats won. But the number of votes polled nationally also reflects a sentiment which must not be ignored. It should be of interest to note that the party of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who today is an important powerbroker, had polled just two per cent of the popular vote. And the PML-Q though it polled 3.4 per cent more votes than the PML-N got only 54 seats against PML-N’s 92.

It may be easy to occupy all the positions of power by outwitting rivals and voters. But under the current circumstances before enjoying the fruits of power the government has to see that the country stays together and moves forward.

Truly speaking, Pakistan has all but lost the war on terror. Despite the deployment of the armed forces large swathes of our territory, even highways, one after the other have passed under the control of the militants and secessionists while the politicians jostled for power.

Sensibly, Mr Zardari now talks of a national government and not a consensus of his own making. But no government can be called a national one if both the Leagues — N and Q — and Nawaz Sharif are kept out of it.

The big hurdle one foresees in the formation of an all-embracing national government is Nawaz Sharif’s unwillingness to join it until the Seventeenth Amendment is repealed. For that the voluble information minister, Sherry Rehman, speaking obviously both for the PPP and the government, is prepared to give no timeframe.

A protracted argument over the powers of the president, as in the case of the reinstatement of the judges, is likely to drive the PPP and PML-N further apart rather than unite them under one national government. One cannot imagine Mr Zardari being just a constitutional president. Nevertheless, caught in a war-like situation an effort has to be made to evolve a compromise formula in which the president and prime minister equitably share executive authority. The power of the president to dissolve the National Assembly without so being advised by the prime minister, however, must go.

This or any other solution may be explored to pave the way for a national government but the present situation in which all the control over the party apparatus and state institutions vests in one individual is not conducive to national unity nor will the country be able to regain the control of its lost territory.

Who will have his finger on the nuclear trigger after the all-powerful Musharraf is another worrying question raised by many and stressed by Gen Ali Quli Khan on behalf of a score of retired generals. In a parliamentary government it should be the prime minister, and Mr Gilani too thinks he is the chief executive but everybody else thinks he is not.

The argument being advanced that the president and the prime minister belonging to the same party would ensure stability may hold true if, as in India, we had a ceremonial president like Pratibha Patil and Asif Zardari were to be just a party boss as Sonia Gandhi is. A general party agreement on the distribution of powers between the president and the prime minister, thus, is a prerequisite to the formation of a national government.

THE people and the press have often spoken of ‘milestones’ and ‘turning points’ — which never were — in Pakistan’s 61-year march downhill. If one event can be so described, and that too at a moment of steep descent, it is Nawaz Sharif turning his back on power.

That is a milestone. If his party, the PML-N, stands by his commitment to be a constructive, not an obstructive, opposition it would be a turning point. Thus a sea change is in the offing — kudos to Nawaz Sharif. Asif Zardari could also ride the crest if the PPP were not to, as he says it will not, conspire to bring down Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab, howsoever vulnerable.

The PPP, PML-N and some other competing parties joining forces to oust Musharraf, a common opponent, from power was wholly understandable and democratic. The same parties then joining hands to share the spoils of power, forgetting their manifestos and electoral mandate is contemptible and wholly undemocratic.

In victory, ‘carrying everybody along’ and ‘consensus’ have now become Asif Zardari’s plaintive rhetoric superseding principles, past rivalries and the public interest. It arouses the spectre of a large, unwieldy government which, in the absence of an effective opposition, would tend to become complacent as well as tyrannical. Where would aggrieved citizens go if all those who could help are in the government?

The central and essential feature of a democratic order is dissent and not consensus. A subtle device employed by all regimes — political and military alike — is to introduce a brand of democracy that suits, as they put it, “the genius of the people”. In fact it is only to legitimise their personal power and then prolong it. The people acquiesce in it until insecurity, economic hardship and the denial of fundamental rights drive them to revolt.

Such has been the course of our politics. Iskander Mirza’s ‘controlled’ democracy was cut short by Ayub Khan who gave the same idea the more plausible description of ‘basic’ democracy. Z.A. Bhutto tempered his democracy with socialism — ‘all power to the people’. A dictator more cunning and responsive to the sentiment of the time, Ziaul Haq subordinated his democracy to Islam. His pupil in politics, Nawaz Sharif, made a failed attempt to make Sharia the supreme law. For Musharraf, ‘real’ democracy lay at the grassroots (the village) and not at the top (parliament).

The ultimate outcome of these glib variants of democracy was the transfer of power from the institutions to an individual or a junta. Councils, cabinets and assemblies existed but to endorse their policies and laws. The people did not look up to the institutions as their minders — nominated or indirectly elected — were not answerable to them. Ziaul Haq was blunt but correct in describing the parliament (which the current crop of leaders insists is both supreme and sovereign) as a mere consultative council or Majlis-i-Shura. And so it is still described in the constitution.

In the current context just imagine how else a democracy could be described if Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Altaf Hussain, Asfandyar Wali and, inevitably, Maulana Fazlur Rahman were to be all in the government, except as totalitarian. Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, unless he is also lured into the consensus conglomerate, would be the lone but timid dissenter. Mushahid Hussain may be a bit more forthcoming, because he has, it is believed, no skeletons in his closet.

The dissenting voices of Imran Khan and Qazi Hussain Ahmad from outside would hardly worry the government for their parties do not have a large enough following to harness mass dissatisfaction into street protest which, in any case, would be long in coming.

A consensus polity carries the seeds of totalitarianism. Already, as we all observe, the party councils or executives, if at all they exist, constitute no check on their heads. Thus, when Asif Zardari persuasively told the BBC recently that whether or not he keeps the party office once he is elected president will be decided by the party, Owen Bennett-Jones, the interviewer, visibly squirmed. Of course he knew what all of us know, that he is the party. He alone decides who would be the prime minister and the holder of every other office — elective or bureaucratic — down the line.

Hardly anyone in the party ever defied Nawaz Sharif when he was the prime minister nor would anyone do so now when he is only a party chief but one with a halo around him. Defying Altaf Hussain is even less thinkable and much more hazardous. Asfandyar Wali and Fazlur Rahman dominate their parties under one or the other rubric. Both are third-generation family leaders.

That said, Nawaz Sharif’s refusal to share power at the centre and risk it in Punjab too has lifted the sights and hearts of people who have seen their leaders only crave for power. It is as if a tired wave has met with a tide of hope. From here should also begin his journey from hubris to humility.

This is also the right moment for Asif Zardari to make his tryst with destiny by giving up his ambition to be the president of Pakistan. The threats that he sees hanging over the country will be better averted if he were to sponsor someone from Balochistan, say Sardar Ataullah Mengal, or even Bramdagh Bugti if the rebel can be persuaded to come down from the hills. In any case, the president cannot be a symbol of unity nor will the parliamentary system return if Mr Zardari is the president even if Article 58-2(b) were to repealed.

Mr Sharif and his party must not succumb to Asif Zardari’s passionate pleas to come back into the coalition for the “sake of Pakistan and to strengthen democratic institutions”. Both ends will be better served if PML-N remains in the opposition. The lawyers’ agitation has been a godsend for the restoration of parliamentary democracy. This opportunity must not be squandered.

The explanations being offered that promises in politics are provisional and stretchable make the PPP spokesmen sound ridiculous. The word of a gentleman is a bond. Of all the people Babar Awan who practises Roman law and also passes for an Islamic scholar should be the last to defend his party’s blatant retractions.

MR Nawaz Sharif’s unbending stand on the impeachment of President Musharraf is wholly understandable, though to his detractors it is to avenge the pain and insult he suffered at his hands.

The public weal or national security, both in jeopardy at the moment, is not the real consideration.

It is much less understandable, in fact surprising for some, that a long-dithering Asif Zardari should not only join him but also take a lead role in that direction. After all, everybody knows that Mr Zardari owes his return to the country and entry in politics to an authoritarian Musharraf’s unusual, perhaps illegal, National Reconciliation Ordinance.

A constitutional president would have gone to parliament or to the courts to withdraw the cases registered against him and others who coincidentally benefited from it.

What utterly defies comprehension, however, is the earnestness with which the sponsors of impeachment and almost every other friend or foe of Musharraf are now persuading, cajoling or threatening him to resign to escape impeachment.

Ishaq Dar (he has a vested interest in Musharraf’s early exit) should not be arguing for his resignation only to save the nation time and money. A parliament that has cost a lot of both for five months without working should now be made to earn its keep by working for a period which is expected to be much shorter. In any case, such mean considerations should not stand in the way of a high objective.

In the reasoning and rhetoric generated by the impeachment move it seems that the stock of an authoritarian Musharraf has gone up, if only a bit. That of the democratic legislators, never so high, can be seen diving.

Why some leading politicians would rather see Musharraf resign than face impeachment ceases to be an enigma if you imagine, as this writer does, that one day they see it descending on them — individually and as a class. Coups by the army have been, in fact, a kind of impeachment for them.

Accountability is not a hazard of Pakistani politics nor do its practitioners want it to be. But the danger for them is looming already. While preparing to brave the charges, Musharraf has let it be known that he would be bringing up his own pile against his tormentors. Musharraf must be held to account by the legislators for his conduct especially now that Asif Zardari has publicly accused him of misappropriating American money — more than he spent on fighting terror.

The agony and harm that the failing war on terror has caused demands that the money he pocketed be recovered to repair the damage done by the war rather than his taking it along to live in peace and opulence in Massachusetts, US.

Mr Zardari must surely have based his charge on the official record to which he now has easy and full access. Proved, Musharraf’s travails would go much beyond his removal from office. At the same time, the people must know what he has to say against his accusers.

Irrespective of its outcome, Musharraf’s accountability in parliament offers an opportunity to make the holder of every public office accountable likewise. The people, the press and the intelligentsia, the enraged lawyers in particular, must not let this opportunity pass. The scheming minds in politics do not want to hold Musharraf accountable so that, in turn, they too are not ever held accountable.

The constitution provides for the accountability only of the president and that too through a process which exposes the members of parliament to the same kind of temptations for which they are called upon to impeach the head of state. Switching loyalty is already said to carry a reward of Rs25m — the amount an honest legislator wouldn’t make in a lifetime of politics.

Musharraf is the first and, perhaps, the last president being impeached. The impeachment of a president in a parliamentary form of government, to which we are soon going to revert, is irrelevant. The president, as constitutional head, always goes by the advice of the prime minister. Imagine, Chaudhry Fazal Elahi being held accountable for what Z.A. Bhutto did or Rafiq Tarar for what Nawaz Sharif did.

Therefore, when the constitution comes up for amendments for its parliamentary character to be restored, it must provide for the accountability of the prime minister and all others who exercise high authority in the federation and provinces.

The fate of accountability, however, must not hinge on parliament alone. The people, in a broad sense, should also be associated with it so that it doesn’t remain a game of numbers with consequent horse-trading or harassment. Financial corruption, philandering and the abuse of power in many other forms cut across party lines. It cannot be left to parliamentarians alone to take cognisance of this and adjudicate as well.

The existing laws and tools having proved wholly inadequate, consideration must be given to a new strategy to check misconduct in all walks of life — be it politics, the bureaucracy or business.

Reacting to a suggestion for the open accountability of public servants, a former inspector-general of police, Mian Mohammad Amin, recalls a dramatic moment from the early days of Islam when in a public assembly a Bedouin stood up to question Hazrat Umar.How, he asked the caliph, was he able to carve out a long tunic (Umar was a tall man) for himself from a piece of cloth that he along with every returning fighter from the battlefield had received in equal measure from the booty when it was not enough even for the questioner’s shorter shirt? Hazrat Umar had to summon his son to testify that he had given his piece to the father to make his garment longer.

The world may have become more complex today and officials less accessible and much less tolerant but dealing with maladministration as an in-house clandestine activity has only been aggravating matters. A way has to be found to bring it on to the public stage where the Bedouins of today can question the propriety of the conduct of public officials without risking jail or banishment.

President Musharraf’s impeachment provides an occasion for a national catharsis to make accountability a part of public life. But the intention all around seems to be to draw a curtain on the past and let business proceed as usual. That the country is falling apart both morally and physically is hardly a concern.

This column is taken from DAWN.com

PUNJAB Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has publicly pledged to recover every penny looted by his predecessor in office, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi.

He must proceed further and not let it rest as an empty threat or just a brag. However, to be on an even footing he must also throw open the accounts of his own first term as chief minister to enable Pervaiz Elahi to look for looted pennies.

A lot is said about the accountability of the politicians in power but it hasn’t ever really taken place. Any action whenever initiated, more in revenge than in public interest, invariably got stuck somewhere along the way or succumbed to a deal. The worst example is Musharraf’s National Reconciliation Ordinance issued last year which, in essence, has closed all cases instituted against politicians for “political reasons” between January 1986 (when Mohammad Khan Junejo took over as prime minister in Ziaul Haq’s regime) and October 1999 (advent of Gen Musharraf). The ordinance has thus enabled even criminals to get away if they happened to be in politics.

This extraordinary ordinance, unprecedented in the country’s legal history, was issued purportedly to “foster mutual trust and confidence amongst the holders of public office”. Ironically, the reverse has happened. Mistrust never ran deeper. A nervous country is bracing for the outcome of the deceitful manoeuvres in progress and the presidential (or military) and judicial interventions that must inevitably follow.

The ongoing activity may lead to the impeachment of the president or he may pre-empt it by dissolving the National Assembly or the Supreme Court may intervene to stall it altogether. But surely no other public representative — ministers, nazims and the rest — will be called to account for his misconduct and for wasting or embezzling public funds. Indeed, hardly ever has anyone been held accountable in the past. The leaders who are now about to embark on a life and death struggle at the top would rather pamper than prosecute them. After all they need their votes.

In Shahbaz Sharif’s determined effort to hold Pervaiz Elahi to account, and if he also agrees to be held accountable likewise, one can see the beginning of a speedy and just era of accountability of the holders of public office. Formal and long-winded accountability under the law, as the 2007 NRO concedes, results only in the institution of false cases against rivals to victimise them or to induce them to switch loyalties.

The normal methods of investigation and judicial determination fail to work where the offenders have been in power and expect to be in power again one day. The futility of this course of action and the cost it exacts is amply demonstrated in the cases started by Musharraf’s National Accountability Bureau and pursued for seven years at home and abroad. The process has, by and large, ended only in legalising the assets that were alleged to have been illegally acquired by abusing public trust. And, to boot, London and Dubai have become alternative homes for our politicians for recreation or convalescence and also for refuge when the need arises which, inevitably, will one day.

It should be a source of concern to a society that is rooted in Islamic faith and has inherited legislative and judicial institutions from Westminster (where democracy and rule of law have found their finest expression in modern times) not to have ever held its elected representatives accountable for their corruption and maladministration. It has been left to the army commanders to intervene at intervals to institute enquiries which in course of time also trail into greater corruption.

Since no accountability whether conducted by judges under the normal laws or by generals under the military regulations has worked, parliament together with civil society (NGOs like the Human Rights Commission) should devise a less formal but speedier and fairer system to keep the conduct of the holders of important offices — governors, ministers, judges, civil servants, military commanders — under constant public surveillance. This system should require their personal and family assets to be published at the time they assume office and subsequent additions should also be open to public scrutiny. So should be their tax statements.

The whole process should be supervised by a board of venerable citizens who are no longer involved in public life nor intend to come back. Wherever they observe or suspect, on their own or on complaint, dishonesty, extravagance or impropriety of behaviour they should examine it in an open kutchery. Surely it would serve as a greater deterrent to malpractices than the possibility of prosecution in a court of law which is always remote and seldom succeeds.

Not as a proposal but just as a thought, the first board could comprise the three old but alert former chiefs of the Pakistan Air Force — Asghar Khan, Nur Khan and Zafar Chaudhry. Their first clients should be Shahbaz Sharif and Pervaiz Elahi for the scrutiny of their conduct and assets at the start and at the end of their past terms as chief ministers.

A word here on the accountability of President Musharraf should be in order. The parties in the coalition possibly could muster the parliamentary majority required for impeachment but they have to be wary of the constitutional position. The president can be impeached if he is found to be “unfit to hold the office due to incapacity or is guilty of violating the Constitution or of gross misconduct”.

Musharraf’s capacity can be hardly called into question. His coup and emergencies stand validated by the Supreme Court. Parliament will be hard put to proving gross misconduct on his part. Though the parties launching the impeachment have the benefit of legal advice, their motivation is obviously political. If the Supreme Court holds the impeachment proceedings unconstitutional, the president will have a reason to dissolve the assembly and instantly call for fresh elections.

The common man, already disenchanted with a parliament that has failed to function and a government that remains involved in its own squabbles while lawlessness spreads and the economic crisis deepens, is then more likely to opt for electioneering than for agitation.