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| February 03, 2008 | Sunday | Muharram 24, 1429 |
A losing battle
Bird flu in Karachi
Three myths about elections
OTHER VOICES Indian Press
NOW who are all these ‘winning candidates’ who, we are so told, have already landed in the next National Assembly barring a formal announcement on Feb 18? Some of these winners have to lose to keep our faith in the beautiful unpredictability of a few million expressing themselves in the secrecy of a polling booth.
CARETAKER Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan’s insistence that all political parties must make their stance on terrorism clear deserves to be noted. In a television interview, the minister said many parties were going soft on terrorism, and this could help the militants. One wishes the minister had named the parties he had in mind, but one can see that many parties on the extreme right have maintained an attitude that often appears paradoxical, if not intriguing. All political parties are, of course, quick to condemn an act of terrorism when it occurs, but often it appears that this is done for record’s sake. The Lal Masjid affair was more than an act of terrorism, and the stand-off leading finally to the crackdown in July last year provided ample evidence of the various parties’ stance on terrorism.
The issue gets mixed up with politics. Even the secular parties criticised not the Lal Majid brigade but the government in harsh terms. But here they were acting the way all opposition does — to make capital out of a situation, any situation, and embarrass the government. But, regrettably, many religious parties refrained from using their influence with the Rashid-Ghazi duo to end the stand-off peacefully. This was surprising because almost all madressah heads had distanced themselves from the Lal Masjid clerics, so blatantly criminal were their activities.
Similarly, many parties have chosen to keep quiet on the issue of suicide bombing. Suicide attacks have been planned and executed in cold blood as is evident from the targets that have been chosen — mosques, imambargahs, religious gatherings including Eid congregations, shopping centres and at least one school bus. Those in the opposition today ought to know they could be in power tomorrow and they will have to deal with the monster of terrorism, to which they are at the moment indifferent but which gets stronger by default. Unfortunately, civil society on the whole has failed to stand up to extremism. The religious militants are a microscopic minority, but they have combined terror with their misguided concept of religion to frighten the majority into silence. This could prove disastrous for the nation. Also, those fighting for human rights causes ought to know that the threat to freedom does not merely come from the government of the day; it also comes from parties with a fascist outlook and groups that preach persecution of women and minorities and wage war on culture in the name of Islam. Unless society itself stands up to terrorism, it is difficult to see how the state alone can deal with this monster.
THE State Bank’s battle against the rising pace of price inflation entered a challenging phase when it raised the policy rate by another 0.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent and enhanced the Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) for banks by an additional one per cent to eight per cent for the next half a year from Feb 1. The twin measures are aimed at curtailing money supply in line with the tight monetary stance adopted by the central bank in 2005 to curb the emerging inflationary pressures in the economy after a few years of expansionary policy. As was expected, the tight monetary policy did not go down well with the market because it made borrowing more expensive for the corporate sector by spiking interest rates and reducing liquidity, thus squeezing the companies’ margins. The stock market recorded its protest the same day by losing some of its value.
The policy of tightening money supply has so far yielded limited success in the war against inflation, particularly food inflation. Though non-food, non-energy inflation came down to just three per cent in May last year, the unprecedented hike in global commodity prices, especially crude and wheat, in later months thwarted the central bank’s efforts to contain core inflation. The central bank maintains that the latest steps are critical to check inflation which is already threatening to surge beyond this year’s target of 6.5 per cent to an officially estimated 7.5 per cent. More important, it says the government is not helping it in this effort and is working at cross-purposes and contributing significantly to inflation by borrowing excessively to cover the ballooning budgetary deficit. It is feared the deficit will surge to around six per cent of GDP against the target of four per cent for the year on account of the oil subsidy being borne by the government.
Islamabad is reluctant to pass on the increase in oil prices directly to consumers because of political reasons ahead of this month’s general elections, forcing the government to borrow Rs237bn from the central bank in less than seven months to finance its expenditure. Factors like the falling rupee because of an expanding external account gap are emerging as new threats to the effort to combat inflation. It is advisable for the government to curtail its borrowings, which have far exceeded the ceiling for the year. One way of reducing the growing reliance on borrowed money is to pass on the burden of global oil price increases to consumers, substantially cut non-development expenditure and slash less essential development spending. Unless the government realises its responsibility, we will continue to lose the fight against inflation.
THIS is not the first time that Karachi’s Gadap Town has been hit by bird flu. Last April, the area witnessed a similar outbreak of the H5N1 virus among poultry, leading to the culling of thousands of chickens. However, what needs to be investigated is how prepared the government is to deal with the spread of an easily communicable infection among birds, and one which could also affect poultry workers. So far, its response has not been adequate. Lack of effective monitoring resulted in many of the dead chickens being thrown into an open pit (just prior to the confirmation of the virus) increasing the risk of infection to other birds. Also, the fact that bird samples were sent to Islamabad for testing shows how poorly equipped local labs are to detect the virus. What is also of concern is the opposition of traders to public information about the death of so many birds and their warnings to poultry farmers not to explain the situation to the media. True, the loss to the poultry industry would be colossal if people refrained from buying its ware — and one hopes that there will be compensation for those who are forced to cull their birds. But surely the priority should be public health.
It is this factor — and not commercial interests — that should prompt the authorities to take stringent steps to prevent the current bout of influenza from spreading and to take long-term precautions as well. By now there have been several outbreaks of avian influenza of this variety in the country, and with similar occurrences in other parts of the world it is clear that bird flu is here to stay. Not only will health and livestock officials have to coordinate amongst themselves to ward off or at least contain further outbreaks at home, they will also have to help with international efforts to keep the infection at bay. Also, there should be regular drives to inform the public about precautions they should take vis-à-vis their own health in the matter. Any carelessness now could lead to the mutation of the virus to the point where human-to-human transmission becomes a reality.
Some of them have lost in the past. Each time this exception to the rule takes place, it is blamed on the individual’s wrong choice of party — after all, parties are made or broken by the public mood. This would in turn suggest that while individuals make a group, the latter is still much more powerful than the individuals who make it. This is as good a time as any for having a shot at the myth of winning candidates that belittles the very concept of party politics.
In the buildup to the Feb 18 election, the cries of the foregone are as vociferous in Punjab as they are anywhere else. While others also have their share of invincibles, most of these names belong to the Pakistan Muslim League of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi who has fallen back on the old powerful-people nexus in his effort to get the prime minister’s job.
There is logic to it. Despite the mergers of the past and despite the presence of a leader in President Pervez Musharraf, the official camp is yet to gel as a cohesive party or a whole, what with the ex-chief minister Punjab pointing a finger at his prime minister in Islamabad over the current wheat flour crisis and some of the ministers in the Shaukat Aziz cabinet competing from platforms other than the Pakistan Muslim League’s.
The gap in the supply of some essential items just before the election perhaps makes it more incumbent upon the official League to try and shift the focus from the national to the local where it has nazims to help it out. The breakup is simple; the local powerful has no link with Mr Aziz’s blundering government but is connected by a common cause directly to the presidency.
There is no fixed formula how these unbeatables come about. In Sargodha, a certain Anwar Ali Cheema is poised to win as he has done by good margins over the last six elections. But the assertion looks rather premature when Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, who is in the race for a seat from Kasur, humbly declares that he may also be counted among those assured of a walkover on Feb 18. Last time, this winning candidate scraped through by less than 1,000 votes and would have lost but for the fact that his party was in ascendance.
There is a whole list of similar local idols in the Punjab province — who go around as winning candidates as if untouched by changing realities and perceptions — for iconoclasts to try their skills on. A fulfilment of this ultimate wish will, hopefully, show us a way out of this wonderland of no surprises that we have so diligently created for ourselves through a mix of the aspirants’ statements and our own search for a black and white picture to serve to the craving public.
The Pakistani election discourse is steeped in a myriad of mythologies comprising not man, woman, the divine servants of humanity or the gods of democracy. It is made up of an assortment of good intentions, parochial interests, arm-twisting and outright dishonesty and naivety.
The first show lion that confronts the onlooker in the local electoral circus ostensibly suggests that we the people send our representatives to the assembly charged with the holy brief of improving our lot. This is fallacious. This is the second great myth surrounding the election.
At the outset, the belief is that governments and those who run them have become irrelevant to the situation in general. Even if you change the hands, these imported tools are so overpowering that they won’t let the proceedings slip out of their grasp. In their heart of hearts, Pakistanis understand what possesses this country of theirs and they know that a release is impossible until there is a change in the package from abroad.
While there may be an election battle and victors will emerge, this will have little impact on matters relating to the everyday life of Pakistanis — issues like shortages, law and order and health and education etc, even if you were to resign yourself to inflation as an unavoidable modern-day reality.
The helplessness of the current aspirants to throw off the yoke is manifest in their previous stints in government. The myth still is that people vote in these parties for a general improvement in conditions. Ask around and the impression would be that for a sizeable number of voters, it is not so much whether or not we deserve these leaders; the emphasis often is on what these aspirants to power have come to be seen to deserve.
As it votes, this group of people, by no means small, attaches no great expectation to the politicians and is only doing its duty of promoting and helping the deserving get what is their due.
This theory can be applied to voters falling in any economic and social category but it is especially true for the hopeless and non-lobbying kind who have little say in the making of policies and strategies and hence can afford to ‘waste’ their votes. This will explain why a huge chunk of the people who have traditionally voted for the Pakistan People’s Party in Punjab happens to be economically poor. They are not our analysts’ swing voters and have long sided with those who they perceive as deserving of their support even against huge odds.
The third and greatest and the most dangerous election myth relates to rigging and riggers. All great vote thefts are carried out in the security that perpetrators would be able to control any negative fallout of their actions. The basic premise is that unrest arising out of a poll scam can be controlled or if it comes to the worst, be crushed.
Quite often, the lust for election victory makes the riggers forget the lessons of history. Only 31 years ago, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto thought that he was popular enough to quell any eventuality arising out of the vote rig in 1977. He watched helplessly as the situation pegged on the accusations of poll rigging against his government spiralled out of control. The example holds to this day.
Criminal act
THAT persons intent on looting public funds have neither a conscience nor ethics is clearly demonstrated by the massive fraud detected in World Bank-aided health projects in Karnataka. The revelations from an investigation that several crores of rupees earmarked for tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria control programmes in the state were misappropriated by government officials and their accomplices are shocking…
Considering that crooks often leave a trail that usually surfaces during an inquiry, it is not surprising that the repeated use of inaccurate spelling and duplication of quotations…helped the investigators discover the fraud. The inquiry also revealed that some officials of the Karnataka State Aids Prevention Society had used bogus NGOs for siphoning off funds and accepted bribes…to forge documents… What is disturbing is that a few years back some officials of KSAPS had been removed due to allegations of corruption and yet no corrective action had been taken.
The fact that in a number of instances the officials had distributed faulty Aids diagnostic kits that resulted in giving invalid and false positive results clearly demonstrates the unscrupulous mentality of the criminal-minded official machinery.
While a World Bank official has said that the funding for the food and drug administration project has been stopped pending institution of a safeguards system, the report does not make it clear whether any criminal action has been initiated against all those involved in corruption cases.
As state officials and other agencies located in Karnataka are involved in the misappropriation of funds, the state government should immediately offer the help of prosecution machinery to the World Bank and bring the culprits to book… — (Feb2)
Organ racket
ILLEGAL trade in kidneys in India is nothing new. Reports of this inhuman business have frequently surfaced from different corners. But the sheer magnitude of the racket unearthed last week in Gurgaon is…horrifying.
It appears that kidneys of 500 poor people were stolen in the operation in which 50 medical and paramedical staff were involved. …Even after the busting of the racket and the arrests of some culprits, kingpin Amit Kumar escaped.
The investigations show that he was earlier arrested four times. After every arrest, he apparently managed to give the law a slip, taking advantage of the loopholes in the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 which bars buying and selling of body organs, but allows transplants with the consent of the donors.
Amit Kumar and his comrades-in-crime lured hundreds of poor labourers with promises of jobs and money. After stealing their kidneys, they threw out the victims with a few thousand rupees, while they themselves made a fortune...
Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss’s decision to amend the transplant act to make punishment for illegal organ trade more stringent is…a welcome step. However, such measures may act as a temporary deterrent…
It is the all-pervasive…poverty in the country which compels people to sell their organs. Poor fishermen in coastal Tamil Nadu whose lives were torn asunder by the tsunami sold their kidneys to feed their hungry children.
Had the government effectively rehabilitated them…they might not have resorted to that drastic measure. It is a matter of shame for a country which is regarded as a booming economy that some of its citizens are so impoverished that they are forced to sell one part of their body to fill another part. — (Feb 2)