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| December 08, 2007 | Saturday | Ziqa’ad 27, 1428 |
Living with corruption
Physical punishment or abuse?
High-passion politics fascinates EU
OTHER VOICES – Bangladesh Press
THE topsy turvy world of Pakistani politics continues to fascinate, bewilder — and often amuse —Europe’s top diplomats, officials and reporters. True, the European Union’s attention has been diverted in recent days by controversial elections in Russia, trade problems with China, the still uncertain future of Kosovo and the political fallout from the new US intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear programme.
GIVEN the divergence in their approach to some of the most vital political and constitutional issues of the day, one should not be surprised if two days of negotiations between the Bhutto and the Sharif camps failed to produce results. Technically, the talks were held between the ARD and the APDM. But for all practical purposes it was the two former prime ministers who were exploring the possibility of adopting a joint stand on the general election. The ARD team was relatively homogeneous, but the diversity in the APDM delegation did not seem to have come in the way of a consensus within the Nawaz camp, Prof Khursheed Ahmad’s presence itself symbolising the hard line adopted by the MMA’s Qazi faction. The two sides also have differed in their attitude towards President Pervez Musharraf. While Benazir Bhutto had implied that she was willing to work with a president out of uniform, Nawaz Sharif made it absolutely clear that President Musharraf, whether in or out of uniform, was not acceptable to him.
The sticking point in the negotiation was the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary. The APDM wanted a boycott if Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry and his team were not rehabilitated; the ARD (read PPP) seemed determined, like Maulana Fazlur Rahman, to go ahead with the election. The PPP lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, has offered a via media — the candidates should take an oath to get the judiciary restored if they are elected — but it has so far not won general acceptance. Talk about agitation, Ms Bhutto thinks, should be reserved for Jan 9 if the elections were proved conclusively to be a farce. It is significant that even the PML-N has not ruled out participation in the elections, keeping that option with ifs and buts. Ms Bhutto, too, has not been without her share of a politician’s ambiguity, but more or less the PPP is all for elections and does not believe a countrywide agitation could be successful.
Looking at Pakistan’s history, it would appear that agitations and postponements of elections have served to retard rather than advance democratic growth. A greater question is the need for correctly gauging the people’s mood. The crisis beginning on March 9 has begun to take its toll, the economy has slowed down, and the excessive use of force by the state’s coercive apparatus on peaceful protesters seems to have added to the people’s despondency. President Musharraf may be out of uniform, but the state machinery is not out of the dictatorial mode. Hence an opposition determined to make a success of the agitation will meet an equally determined Musharraf government. That could mean a prolonged state of chaos and anarchy leading into the unknown.
The issue perhaps lies less with the APDM and more with President Musharraf and his ‘neutral’ caretakers. They must remove all misunderstandings the opposition has about the election. The rejection of the Sharif brothers’ nomination papers, the continuation of emergency and the short time between its scheduled end and Jan 8 have strengthened the people’s suspicions about the regime’s intentions towards the general election.
PAKISTAN tends to feature prominently in unflattering ratings and has done so for decades. So it is not surprising that the country ranks among the top 10 offenders in Transparency International’s latest Global Corruption Monitor. According to TI’s 2007 survey, 30 per cent of Pakistani respondents said they had to pay bribes to obtain services from the police, taxation departments, utility services, registry and permit authorities, educational institutions and the military and the media, among others. This shows a 100 per cent rise in services-related corruption over the previous year. Religious groups were perceived to be the least corrupt in 2007, a popular view that should serve as a warning to anyone aspiring to a liberal and secular Pakistan. Also no surprise is the fact that the country’s poor are the worst affected by corruption. Their powerlessness means that they are usually singled out for harassment and extortion. Two, the bribes they pay for services that ought to be their right as citizens represent a significant portion of their income and can even exceed it, trapping them in a vicious cycle of debt. At the same time, people who pay large sums who get posted in the police or taxation departments, do so because the ‘investment’ — and more — can be easily recouped once they are on the favourable end of bribery.
It has rightly been pointed out that corruption is anything but a victimless crime. The additional privations suffered by the poor have already been noted, albeit briefly. A corrupt state machinery and unscrupulous politicians also encourage disdain for the law and the erosion of civic sense among the general population — why should a citizen be law-abiding when officialdom isn’t? The public, in effect, is given reason that dishonesty pays in a lawless society. Also, efficiency and productivity suffer grievously when merit is ignored and key positions are filled by unqualified favoured personnel. Corruption can also impede investment and economic growth. True, many foreign investors are willing to play by the ‘rules’ of corrupt governance in countries such as our own. What we forget, however, is the opportunity cost — the countless others who choose not to come to corrupt countries because of the time and money wasted in sorting out bureaucratic hassles. Bribery can also kill us. Substandard construction in private and public projects, with the connivance of the authorities, is a prime example. What is perhaps most tragic and telling is that corruption thrives in societies where it has become culturally acceptable.
IT is incomprehensible how the educational authorities have allowed matters to come to such a pass at schools that children are routinely beaten black and blue, sometimes nearly to the point of death, by their teachers on the slightest pretext. This was amply demonstrated in the case of 13-year-old Mudassar Aslam who had to be operated upon twice for intestinal complications allegedly following a severe beating with a stick and after being made to do 100 sit-ups by his teacher at a government school in Hyderabad. What is also disturbing is that the boy’s family is reluctant to talk about the case lest they should get into trouble. Have we, as a society, sunk so low that the poverty-stricken family of a young boy, beaten brutally for not doing his homework, imagine that speaking out against such barbarity would cause problems for them? Why should they perceive all avenues of justice being closed to them just because they are under-privileged?
In any developed country with a system of justice, similar punishment — or even less — would have ensured that the teacher was not only removed from service but was made to face criminal charges. In this case, the teacher has been suspended, but only now — much after the boy was beaten last month and the matter had been reported in the press. Perhaps until there are drastic reforms in the education sector, little can be done to prevent such occurrences again. But there are ways to curb the sadistic tendencies of teachers who vent their frustrations on children. While they need to be reminded that the adage ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ no longer holds true, regular school inspections and stiff penalties for those who strike children are measures that should be adopted. More important is enacting a comprehensive law that bans corporal punishment.
But there’s no denying it: with its unique mix of men in uniform, feudal princesses, brave human rights defenders and former businessmen and cricketers turned politicians– not to mention angry, violent extremists – Pakistan’s high-passion political soap opera retains a strong grip on Europe’s imagination.
That’s hardly surprising. While political debate in the EU is often heated, with leaders from the 27 member states defending their national interest with fervour, discussions about the future of Europe tend to be largely decorous affairs. European politicians – with the possible exception of former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi and Poland’s former premier, the pugnacious Jaroslaw Kaczynski – tend to favour logic over passion.
Bickering is more common in national capitals. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely known to be squabbling over policy with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is entangled in an array of domestic political scandals and French President Nicolas Sarkozy keeps getting entangled in controversy over labour reform and rising violence among young immigrants living in the grim suburbs of Paris.
Interestingly also, six months after national elections, Belgium remains without a government. In the latest twist, Belgium’s outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has embarked on a new mission to form a federal government. He is holding talks with the full spectrum of Belgium’s political landscape including the Flemish Christian Democrats, francophone Liberals, francophone Socialists, Flemish Liberals and Flemish Socialists. All Belgian political parties have expressed willingness to work with Verhofstadt after the Flemish Christian Democrat Yves Leterme gave up his second attempt last month to form a new coalition.
While the Belgian political crisis continues to be an issue of intense discussion and debate, the political deadlock has had little impact on the country’s daily life. Belgium continues to function, normally, sedately, practically unchanged.
Political drama, Bollywood-Pakistani style, therefore offers a welcome change from the humdrum politics of Europe. And at least on this front, Pakistan does not disappoint. The last few weeks have offered the world glorious technicolour images of the lives, loves and intrigues of Pakistan’s political elite.
The spotlight has been, of course, on President Pervez Musharraf as he took the visibly wrenching, final steps to ‘doff’ his army uniform/second skin and rejoin the world as a mere civilian, a poor achkan-clad shadow of the man he used to be.
Most EU policymakers, who have never worn a uniform in their lives – not even at school — admit to being mesmerised by Musharraf’s teary-eyed farewell to arms and emotional - albeit unsubstantiated - claims that the Pakistani army had ‘played an important role in the integration and development of Pakistan’. As one EU journalist asked me: “Was that a reference to the army’s role in helping to establish Bangladesh?”
The president’s message — when he was still a general — to western governments to stop their ‘impractical obsession’ with imposing unfair democratic values on Pakistan by demanding that the government adhere to the United Nations conventions on human rights and civil liberties (that Pakistan signed up to at another, brighter moment in its history) also raised eyebrows in Europe.
EU policymakers, especially those who hail from central and eastern European states that were part of the former Soviet bloc, appear to think that promoting and protecting human rights at home and abroad is actually a good thing. In fact, projecting values such as good governance and the rule of law to the rest of the world is a central tenet of the EU’s ‘soft power’ foreign policy.
Most attention in Europe has focused on Musharraf’s innovative use of the so-called ‘Sinatra doctrine’. Introduced by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 - and named after Frank Sinatra’s song ‘My Way’ – this policy, in contrast to the previous Brezhnev doctrine, under which the internal affairs of satellite states were tightly controlled by Moscow, allowed the people in the Soviet republics to go their own way.
The Pakistani leader’s fervent admission that he too wanted democracy, human rights and the rule of law — but he intended to fulfil these goals ‘our way’ –– will probably make less of a lasting impression on global politics than Gorbachev’s decision to allow Moscow’s allies to decide their own future. But as a European diplomat pointed out, it was a nice, final touch to a plaintive farewell address by a man who like France’s ‘Sun King’ seemed to equate his own future with that of Pakistan.
Former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif continue to grab the limelight as does Imran Khan whose photogenic ex-wife Jemima appears to be working exceptionally hard to interest Britain’s jet set in the struggle for democracy in Pakistan.
Significantly, however, while the politicians get their fair share of public attention, the focus is also on the country’s new military chief Ashfaq Kayani, amid media speculation over how long he will remain loyal to Musharraf.
Significantly, in a sign of changed times, Europeans are increasingly interested in the fight for democracy being led by Pakistan’s lawyers, human rights defenders and journalists. As such, Sharif’s calls for the reinstatement of deposed judges, including ousted Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, have found an echo in EU capitals where policymakers believe that strengthening civil society, institution-building and promoting good governance are key to ensuring political stability in Pakistan.
As such, whether President Musharraf likes it or not, European governments appear to have little appetite for allowing him to run Pakistan his way.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.
Please be lenient
THE sentencing of four Rajshahi University teachers to two years in jail for violating the emergency rule is mind-boggling.
Politicians, teachers and other civil society representatives termed the court verdict “unwarranted and unfortunate”.
A Rajshahi court Tuesday jailed the four teachers for breaching the state of emergency by bringing out a silent procession on the campus on Aug 21. The campus unrest — the first flare-up of violence since the January changeover — prompted the government to impose curfew in major cities.
The procession came amid countrywide violent protests which began after army personnel, camped at Dhaka University, beat three DU students.
Such a jail term for teachers is the first since independence. Some said it has ruined the honour of teachers. During Pakistan’s rule, no teacher was jailed for standing by their students in the movements.
When the four teachers were jailed in Rajshahi, teachers at Dhaka University took out protest processions — although silent and peaceful. It is indeed sad to see teachers end up behind bars. But Dhaka University Vice Chancellor Prof S.M.A. Faiz did not lose hope. He was upbeat about the release of his four colleagues facing similar charges and said the university authorities have made endless efforts to free DU teachers.
People from a broader spectrum of society called for the acquittal of captive teachers, which many said was necessary for a congenial atmosphere in education.
The government must take the fallout from the sentencing into account. The judiciary is independent and people hope that the detained teachers will get justice. Law adviser Mainul Hosein said that there was scope for leniency. We pin our hopes on the government. — (Dec 6)
Inqilab
Staring into a bleak year
CYCLONE Sidr has caused severe distress in another group among us. Students are fairly hard hit as it has robbed them of books, stationeries and regular school. According to media reports, the cyclone has slowed down the life of about 5million students in 12 administrative districts.
A new academic year is set to begin and the results of secondary or higher secondary exams are not far. The situation has left students in the coastal region in the grip of uncertainty. The government must come forward and help them out.
This newspaper appreciates the fact that the government has started funding the rebuilding of damaged schools.
At the same time, we are concerned that schools charge students high fees for signing up for SSC and HSC exams — sometimes five times the fee fixed by educational boards.
It is learnt that the government allocated Tk 2, 00000 as rebuilding funds for a “completely destroyed” school and Tk 50,000 for a “partially damaged” school.
Teachers say the funds are inadequate.
The government should increase the funds and allocations must be fast-tracked.
SSC exams are only two and a half months away to be followed by HSC exams. People in battered districts are busy rebuilding their lives mauled by the Nov 15 cyclone. For hundreds of thousands of students, food is the immediate need.
Teachers and students want the Ministry of Education to defer the exams as it will take more time for crippled areas of Bangladesh to return to normal. It is all but impossible for students to sit exams now, and we understand that a lost year translates into a huge loss for them.
Still, we suggest that the government should defer the exams. — (Dec 6)
Jai Jai Din
— Selected and translated by Arun Devnath