Beyond popularity ratings

CONCEDING for arguments sake that the Pakistani peoples likes and dislikes are mirrored in the results of the opinion survey conducted by a foreign think-tank, the issue in Pakistan is much more serious than popularity ratings. One important question overshadows all others: will the 2007 election be fair and transparent in a manner that gives the people of Pakistan the chance to have a government of their choice? The lurking suspicion that this is not going to be the case stems from what has happened since the military takeover of Oct 12, 1999, and the political shenanigans that have gone into foisting on the people the kind of civilian-military mix they have for a government. In its judgment of May 12, 2000, the Supreme Court gave legitimacy to the military government, laid down a timeframe before which elections should be held, and authorised it to make such changes in the Constitution that were necessary for the day-to- day running of the government; it did not authorise the ruling junta to make wholesale changes in the Basic Law or to make amendments which the apex court itself did not have the power to do.

The Legal Framework Order enacted by the military government violated the spirit of the Supreme Courts orders by making changes of a fundamental kind which has turned the parliamentary system of the government into a presidential one in all but name. The amendments have concentrated most powers in the hands of the president, rendered the leader of the house a lame-duck prime minister, and have made the head of state, who also happens to be army chief, the head of the National Security Council, the nations highest policymaking body. An element of distrust of the representatives of the people was seen in the way the LFO was enacted and made part of the Basic Law. Instead of seeking its ratification by the National Assembly that was to come into being as a result of the October 2002 election, the government promulgated the LFO before the polls in the form of an ordinance. The elections were thus held within the parameters laid down by the LFO, and it contained many clauses which appeared specific to some personalities. No doubt, the National Assembly later ratified the ordinance, but it was done after a deal with the MMA in the form of the 17th Amendment which, minus some changes, made virtually the entire LFO part of the Constitution.

Contrary to his pledge to give up his uniform by Dec 31, 2004, Gen Musharraf is still army chief while holding the office of president. Suspicions that he will continue to hold the two offices have been reinforced by repeated declarations by PML leaders that the existing assemblies will re-elect the general as president for another five-year term. If that is going to be the case, the election next year will give the people anything except democracy. If the president thinks that he has some unfinished agenda requiring his continuation in office, he must seek re-election as a civilian like any other candidate after the new assemblies come into being. True that a civilian or military office-holder cannot contest elections before the expiry of two years after retirement, but perhaps this part of the law can be taken care of and amendments made to give exemption to the general to prove that the survey results after at all were not wrong.

Private practice by doctors

ALTRUISTIC notions of serving humanity are fast becoming obsolete. The medical profession is no exception and, as in any other trade, the emphasis is on maximising revenue by any means necessary. At least that is the public perception of doctors and, sadly, the assessment is not wide of the mark. This is not to say that there are no ethical medical practitioners in the country. There are many and, what’s more, a majority of them work for a pittance in government hospitals. On the whole, however, the public healthcare system is characterised by ineptitude and negligence made worse by inadequate funding and staff shortages. Horror stories abound of patients dying at the hands of unskilled or negligent doctors. Greed can now be added to this roster of failures, many of which are also applicable to private institutions. In government hospitals, patients routinely receive inadequate attention from doctors who are more interested in diverting ‘customers’ to their private practices. There have also been cases where people have died because doctors delayed treatment until patients were shifted to private clinics or ‘hospitals’. Making matters worse is the fact that many of these facilities are not properly equipped to deal with surgery and other procedures.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court expressed concern over what it saw as the “discriminatory policy” of doctors engaging in private practice outside their full-time government jobs. As a result, patients were not receiving due care in government hospitals, the court held. While there can be no denying that standards in government hospitals need to be improved considerably, it is debatable whether a ban on private practice can by itself achieve this goal. The experience in the NWFP, where a ban was imposed in 2002 and lifted last month, was not encouraging. In Punjab, a similar ban was announced at least twice but was never really enforced. There is also the danger that standards may fall further if the best doctors decide to leave their government jobs once they are denied the option of private practice. To succeed, a ban must be accompanied by a significant upward revision in pay scales. Only then can doctors in government hospitals be expected to perform their duties diligently.

Striking at the core

ANOTHER strike, another day of death and destruction. In keeping with past practice, Friday’s strike in Karachi quickly degenerated into violence and arson. A young man freshly arrived in the city was shot dead while sporadic clashes left scores injured, including six law enforcement personnel. Several vehicles were set ablaze and property damaged. Called by the Pakhtun Action Committee to protest against alleged police high-handedness and victimisation of Karachi’s Pakhtun community, the strike paralysed the public transport system and crippled industrial and commercial activity. Commuters endured endless misery and attendance at educational institutions remained poor, so much so that two universities were forced to postpone exams. For some among the salaried class, the strike offered an excuse for leisure and absence from the office. Less fortunate were the city’s daily-wage earners, who eat what they earn and for whom the loss of even a single day’s employment is a serious setback. Karachi’s overall productivity also took a massive hit. The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry has estimated that a one-day strike in the city causes an economic loss of over a billion rupees. The financial impact of such shutdowns in the port city is felt by businesses in other parts of the country as well. All indications are that Friday’s strike produced similar privations.

The vicious cycle of violent strikes must be broken and the responsibility for this rests with those who announce shutdowns. Resort to violence will only beget brutality, not an acceptance of demands, legitimate or otherwise. Attacking the police to protest against their ‘high-handedness’ is bound to fuel further crackdowns. The political parties and other organisations that call for strikes need to ensure that their activists remain peaceful even in the face of provocation. Otherwise, their constitutional right to gather and air grievances may stand imperilled. The loss, in that case, will be democracy’s.

In Beijing, East is now West

HOW does one recycle a million or more bicycles? Whoever in Beijing knows the answer must be doing a roaring trade, for almost overnight the millions of bicycles that used to commute on the streets of Beijing when it was still Mao’s Peking have been replaced by metal ribbons of motors cars, buses, trucks and heavy trailers. Endlessly, they ply along the city’s broad avenues and curve into the six ring roads that girdle modern Beijing.

The China that innumerable Chinese dynasties shaped and squandered, the China that Napoleon predicted, that Mao Zedong liberated from its archaic past and his successor Deng Xiaoping catapulted into the 21st century with his socio-capitalist reforms, is on the move. It surges sleeplessly into the 22nd century, and if by chance it does encounter any red light, it pauses only long enough for the light to turn green again so that it can rush further forward.

Modern China is becoming rapidly a skyline of skyscraper statistics. Once, the only figure above a billion known about China was the number of its burgeoning population. Today, those 1.3 billion people are self-sufficient in food.

Chinese agriculture feeds 22 per cent of the world’s population from only 10 per cent of the world’s arable land. Its GDP rate of growth in 2005 was 9.9 per cent. It has exports of over 760 billion dollars. It has foreign exchange reserves of almost one trillion dollars. Every year, it adds to them another 160 million dollars — ten times what we in Pakistan have been able to accumulate over the past six years.

Today’s China has given ancient numerology a new twist: one out of every two cameras in the world is being manufactured in China, one out of every three televisions, out of every four washing machines, and one out of every five refrigerators.

Eight out of every ten pairs of shoes imported into the United States originate from China. China’s achievements over the past decade are, as its planners say, ‘extraordinary.’

The current 11th Five Year Plan which China follows as it once did the fine print in Chairman Mao’s little Red Book has set even more ambitious targets for the country. It anticipates a consistent annual GDP growth rate of 7.5 per cent and per capita GDP of yuan 19,270 (1995: 13,985 yuan). It aims at increasing expenditure on research, for example, from 1.3 per cent to two per cent and to invest in the service industry.

However, in certain key essentials, China leaves nothing either to chance or to its population.

The total population is capped with a one-child family policy. They have been warned to reduce water consumption per unit of GDP by 30 per cent, and to reduce energy consumption per unit GDP by at least 20 per cent. China consumes more energy than Japan and is second only to the oil-voracious United States.

China relies heavily on coal (64 per cent) at the moment, and its energy security plans include expanding its electricity generation capacity by more than 15,000 megawatts per year. Sceptics who doubt China’s word should read the opening chapter to its 11th Five Year plan: “Major development targets of the 10th Five Year Plan were achieved ahead of time.’ China intends to be both the socialist tortoise and the capitalist hare simultaneously.”

Meet anyone in Beijing and the only name you will hear extolled as the prime mover of its phenomenal economic growth is Deng Xiaoping. Go anywhere in Beijing and the only person you will find still wearing a Mao jacket is the embalmed figure of Mao Zedong himself.

He may no longer be the pulsating heart of modern China but he lies enshrined at the heart of it, in Tienanmen Square which he continues to dominate.

At the southern end, in the grand mausoleum built for him, his body is kept on display reflecting, almost radiating, an eerie yellowish glow. At the northern end, his gargantuan portrait hangs above the central doorway of the Gate of Heavenly Peace that leads into the Forbidden City. Only emperors could use that entrance; today, only Mao has a right to the space above it.

When he was alive, Mao would appear on public occasions on parapet of the Gate of Heavenly Peace and receive delegations of the party faithful.

Having shaken his hand, they would return privileged and glassyeyed to the masses waiting in the square below. Within seconds there would be a concentric ripple of movement as each person tried to touch the hand of the person who had touched the hand of the person who had shaken the hand of Chairman Mao.

A once living icon has now been replaced by a showcase, and his formidable aura by showcases crammed with flashy Mao badges and shiny memorabilia. To find a used Mao badge in China, one needs to go to a curio dealer.

To the youth of China, Mao is a valuable relic, just as the Great Wall is a tourist money-spinner. Fifty years ago, any mandarin who wore his traditional finery might have found himself summarily executed or sent to a correction facility; today tourists are encouraged to dress as Chinese overlords and to balance unsteady headgear dangling with ornate pendants.

Perhaps the most telling reversion in both China and Russia to pre-revolution days was a poster for an exhibition arranged in a gallery within the Forbidden City of artifacts from Russia.

The advertisement showed not the Red Star nor of the hammer and sickle, nor the teeming, toiling proletariat. Instead the single image used was of a bejewelled golden Easter Egg, made by the court jeweller Carl Faberge for Tsar Nicholas II to mark the anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.

Although China has, like Russia, privatized many of its state enterprises (60 per cent though still remain under state control), it has not created a hyper-class of multibillionaires. Moscow, for example, boasts that thirty of the world’s richest 100 live in Moscow itself. In China, wealth has yet to catch up with power, and power for the foreseeable future rests in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

Deng Xiaoping had once said, defending his policy of liberalisation, that he did not care what the colour of a cat was so long as it could catch mice.

His cats remain ideologically Red and lean, unlike their Russian fat-cat counterparts.

Sentiment — even a nostalgia for Marxism — has little place in China. Smaller blocks of flats are giving way, like bicycles have done to heavier traffic, to high-rise apartment buildings and glitzy office blocks. Roads are being widened, hotels constructed, infrastructure expanded.

While most cities have a 20:20 vision, Beijing sees its future as through the singularity of a telescope. It has one objective: the Olympic Games in 2008.

Overtly the Chinese are constructing almost an entire city containing state of the art sports facilities. An Olympic stadium that from the sky looks like a bird’s nest, an Olympic pool that on its outside walls shimmers like reflections of water, and a huge Olympic village that after 2008 will be auctioned to lucky Beijing citizens.

Covertly the Chinese are training contestants for every Olympic sport, from ice skating to hockey. China does not intend simply to host the 2008 Olympics; they plan to sweep them and win the maximum number of gold medals.

And if the Asian Games 2006 being held in Doha are a dress rehearsal for the Olympics, and the performance of the Chinese is any indicator, smaller nations like Pakistan should consider cancelling their bookings to Beijing and practice instead for the 2012 London Olympics.

Understandably, China’s dramatic emergence has created as many Sino-watchers outside China as there are Chinese living within. An early voyeur was Lord Montgomery of Alamein who toured China in 1960. He recalled being taken into the canteen of a people’s commune where the staple diet was balls of rice with a little vegetable filling. Men received two, women one and a half, and children one ball each. “Don’t you want anything more?” Montgomery asked one of the workers.

“Of course,” he replied. “But we eat like this so that our future generations can eat better.”

Beijing is not rural China. Nevertheless, the present generation is the beneficiaries of that earlier sacrifice when in Beijing, Haagen-Dazs ice cream and McDonald burgers are almost as commonly available as noodles or rice balls.

A span of only 47 years separates Montgomery’s visit from modern China. Will another forty-seven see a transformation in the United States economy, where a gas-starved US will bicycle to the nearest McDonald and be rationed two burgers for every man, one and a half for every woman and one for every child? It could happen.