Another move towards absolutism

SO we are back to square one. Back to Oct 12, 1999. All the gains over the years have gone down the drain. All this talk about the forward thrust towards democracy, about the impending 'third phase' of the political process and the lip service to the sanctity of judiciary turned out to be one great deception. The people have been cheated. In a nutshell, one-man rule has been reinforced, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel — a tunnel that is dark and winding with an end that is perhaps blocked. The reports about emergency rule were denied umpteenth times by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The denials were bogus. From now on it would simply be a waste of newspaper space and channel time if ever a denial by this government is printed or aired.

In a sense this is Gen Pervez Musharraf's second coup. Just as Ziaul Haq assumed all powers for himself twice — first in 1977 in what was a classical coup d'etat and in 1988 by using powers under article 58-2b of the Constitution —Musharraf has followed suit with some difference. In his second coup, Zia sent Junejo packing; in this second Musharraf coup, the Constitution has been held in abeyance and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his ministers will continue to function. But his rule is now absolute, and civil society and democracy have received a blow. The general had not addressed the nation till the writing of these lines. All private channels had gone off air, and only the state-controlled PTV released the proclamation of emergency order which spoke of the ‘visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists’ as the reason for imposing the emergency. Frankly, not even the most naïve amongst us would buy this line. In what way does the proclamation of emergency help in prosecuting the war on terror?

Already, the president enjoys all the powers that a ruler could possibly hope to amass. He is Chief of the Army Staff, he is president and he is supreme commander of the armed forces. What more power does he want? After all, for crushing the militants he will use those very military and paramilitary forces which are already doing the job -the Frontier Constabulary, the Frontier Corps, the army, the Rangers, and the plethora of intelligence agencies about whose incompetence now no one has any doubts. We state emphatically what has forced Gen Musharraf to declare emergency are the doubts about the outcome of the Supreme Court’s judgment on his right to contest the presidential election. No one is going to accept what he is going to tell us, neither the people of Pakistan nor the aid-givers. Despite public declarations to the contrary, the voices demanding him ‘to do more’ may be the only ones not unhappy with these developments as they would expect him to deliver more effectively. But we ask: can a general who does not enjoy the people's mandate really carry the nation along and fight the terrorists alone?

PIA in the spotlight again

IT would seem that a strike is the only way to get a point across. Unfortunately, most view it as an inconvenience or harmful to those least connected with the strikers’ gripes. This is certainly true for the hundreds of passengers who were left stranded at airports on Friday and Saturday due to the strike call given by PIA engineers. They have been demanding an increase in wages along with an improvement in their work conditions for some time now but upped the ante on Friday by going on a full strike. However, the cancellation of 92 flights, local and international, caused massive problems for passengers as well as huge losses to an airline already financially crippled. According to a Public Accounts Committee report last year, PIA’s losses stand at one billion rupees a month. Last year, it suffered Rs12.7bn in losses, the highest the airline has ever incurred. The management is right to say they cannot afford to accept the engineers’ demands for an increase in their wages but by the same token they cannot afford to sit by and let the issue slide. There are serious issues at stake here that require urgent remedial steps, the most important being some kind of settlement with the engineers so that flights can be resumed.

Unfortunately, PIA has been on a downward spiral for the past few years and its senior management, over the years, is largely to blame for making foolish decisions or not taking action when it should have. The airline is one of the most heavily overstaffed organisations in the world. The EU ban on it could have been averted if the situation had been better handled. At a time when the airline was in dire financial straits, the decision to hire foreign cabin crew at $5,000 per month when local staff was being paid around Rs15,000, made little sense. Such irresponsible decisions lend credence to the popular theory that the airline is forcibly being run into the ground so that it can be privatised and sold for peanuts. Despite how it seems, the situation can still be salvaged if sound management decisions are made.

Islamabad’s heritage

A BLOW was dealt to the built legacy and architectural history of Islamabad when bulldozers finally brought down the Siraj covered market recently, wiping out all trace of one of the prominent landmarks dating from the initial history of the capital city. Designed by a British architect, built by the Capital Development Authority in 1965 and then leased to a private owner, the covered market was significant not only because it was one of the oldest buildings and markets but also because it was the only ‘covered’ market of the kind in the city if not in the country. Although not eye-popping architecturally, the single-storey covered market’s design was nevertheless unique as compared to other commercial buildings and plazas in Islamabad, new and old. The enclosed market was most famed for its concentration of picture frame shops which, with their many framed paintings and sketches on display, gave the look of an art gallery of sorts.

While efforts have been made, in the name of heritage preservation, to retain and restore some of the structures of ancient history still standing within the vicinity, e.g. the historic Hindu temple and the mediaeval fort in Saidpur Village which is being renovated, structures built in the 1960s have not been considered valuable enough culturally to warrant preservation. While this may be a reflection of the lack of a public forum where the community can voice their opinion on public issues in time, it also points to a general lack of dynamic policy guidelines by the federal ministry of culture on the preservation of some of the buildings built after 1947 as tangible reminders of our contemporary past. In the pursuit of development, particularly when development comes into conflict with heritage preservation, the choice is not necessarily between bulldozing an old building or retaining it as it is. If we can only recognise the importance of built legacy, we can always find ways of incorporating an old structure into the new development.

Bush’s piece de resistance?

PERHAPS it’s all Mikhail Gorbachev’s fault. Becoming the world’s only superpower was the worst thing that ever happened to the United States. Can anyone disagree anymore?

The sudden giddy rise to an unquestioned top dog status after the dissolution of the USSR was, in retrospect, only an invitation for intoxicated elites to run the US in a way that the country is at the brink of self-inflicted ruin today.

American leaders, who formerly reckoned with a formidable ideological foe abroad and therefore had to be mindful of the democratic welfare of the ordinary people at home, grew rapidly more arrogant, ambitious and detached from reality. So, instead of keeping a steady course, they hatched dubious schemes to put the US — meaning, really, the super rich — in the global driver’s seat forever. For these habitual plotters there is no God but the marketplace. Might makes right.

And the fix is in. As so feverishly proposed in the ‘Project for a New American Century’, years before George W. Bush sneaked into office, the neo-con elite aimed to go straight for the oil jugular in the Middle East — Iraq and Iran.

Only now do we witness high-ranking honchos, such as former Federal Reserve Bank chief Alan Greenspan and former General John Abizaid, admit what anyone without media blinders on could see at the time. Oil was the driving motive. The 9/11 attacks only issued the all-purpose security alibi these ideologues needed to inflict even more grisly tragedies around the world to accomplish their goal of cornering the energy market.

It’s not just foreigners sitting on oil who these elites disdain. America, once envied for its egalitarian ethos and fairness, has been rushed relentlessly by rightwing policies (in which Democrats too often connived) backwards towards the social conditions of a Third World plutocracy. It is a cliché by now that few Americans who grew up in the early post-war era recognise their country anymore. One surely romanticises America if one believes that rulers observed all their own professed values, but those values mattered as a check on excess when the breaches were plainly exposed.

Not anymore. Torture is okay. Invading weak countries is okay. Wiretapping everybody is okay. Lobbyists buying the government away from the electorate is okay. Treating the dimmest-witted president in US history as if he were ‘der Fuhrer’ is okay. A carte blanche for the idle rich, who detest democracy as a matter of principle, is okay.

The top one per cent siphon off 21 per cent of all wealth now while the lower half of wage earners get by on 13 per cent. The top one-tenth of one per cent of Americans — 300,000 last year — made more money than the bottom 150 million Americans, according to David Cay Johnston’s new book Free Lunch. These supremely well-heeled folks are insulated from any catastrophe, any setback.

Of course, they adore Bush, as do some religious fundamentalists of lesser means. Still, although only 24 per cent of Americans, according to Zogby polls, still back Bush, he and his wrecking crew still behave as if he were unanimously acclaimed.

The cost of his appalling acts is nearly 30,000 troop casualties, deteriorating public services, official lawlessness, rising prices, a punctured balloon of a property market, and stagnant wages and greater insecurity for the average earner. Bush, the patrician with a ‘just folks’ accent, vetoes a bill to provide healthcare for poor children while the military sucks down more than half a trillion dollars a year. The Iraq war squanders nearly three quarters of a billion dollars every vile day. The dollar has fallen about 40 per cent since Bush became president because he ran printing presses to pay for invasions and tax cuts.The number of US billionaires soars because money formerly distributed through wages and social programmes goes exclusively to them and Americans are all urged to cheer by a media so pliant it would make an old Pravda hack blush. What next? Why Iran? If Bush and Cheney can get away with it now, that would fit their perfect pattern of making life much worse for everyone but themselves and their richest constituents.

Dissidents in the US are now reduced to the pathetic posture of praying that wary military chiefs will block an attack on the Iranians. The Pentagon reportedly already squelched an earlier daft plan to bomb Iran. Admiral William Fallon, Abizaid’s successor as head of the Central Command in the area, is quoted as seeing his most pressing priority as trying to ‘put the crazies back in the box’, meaning fending off an implacable faction within the White House under Vice President Dick Cheney who wants to contrive grounds for a war with Iran. Is Ahmadinejad such a threat?

When successful new revolutions are attacked, they are forced to swing defensively to the right and, because authoritarianism so easily becomes a habit, the revolution soon expires. So in Russia, after the czar fell, an assault by the white armies and western intervention forces ultimately brought Stalin to power — a consolation prize to western powers for their failure to overthrow the upstart social experiment. Stalin was no advertisement for the joys of socialism.

Iran in the early 1950s was slowly democratising under Mossadegh — until he nationalised oil. The CIA dispatched him for his disgraceful policy of looking after Iranians first. In the 1970s, Ayatollah Khomeini arose as the glowering symbol of the anti-Shah movement which, however, also consisted of leftists and liberals. They were the very first casualties as the rightwing Islamic regime was established under external duress. But the constant western threat against Iran only conjures up dangerous politicians like Ahmadinejad, who is the exact counterpart of Bush.

It will not be easy to attack Iran because diplomatically they are coming closer to Russia and China. The region itself hardly wants more mayhem unleashed. Even Iraq’s Shia coalition, despite its collaborationist status, will not condemn an Iranian deterrent.

Recently, at a London seminar, Norman Lamont, who was chairing the session, asked the Bahrain ambassador. “Would you join the forces if Iran is attacked?” The ambassador dared not to say ‘Yes’ because he knew very well that the Arab street supports an Iranian nuclear deterrent. The rulers of the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, under US urging, halfheartedly foster the impression that any future Iranian nuclear weapon capacity will be used against other Arabs. It isn’t selling. An Al-Jazeera poll, however, shows that a majority of Arabs want Iran to have a bomb so as to offset Israel.

If Iran is destabilised in the same dreadful way as Iraq then terrorism is only likely to increase exponentially in Europe as well as across the region. If the Bush crew, despite all good sense, launches an aerial armada against Iran it would all too readily be interpreted by many angry witnesses as undeniable proof that America wanted nothing less than to destroy Islam too. Other than oil, what alternative explanation can there be? Bush and Cheney long ago proved conclusively that they are not fighting for democracy at home or abroad.

OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press

Sindh coal remembered in the last days of rule

THE Sindh government had accused Nepra and Wapda of obstructing the plan for the gainful exploitation of Thar’s huge coal reserves and had demanded the review of the power policy. As the rates of electricity generated through Thar coal of Sindh were not fixed, a Chinese company left work halfway and returned home, while other investors were reluctant to take up the project.

The use of Thar coal might be obstructed by the oil mafia and other vested interests…though the coal reserves of Sindh are the seventh largest in the world. Due to a flawed policy these reserves of black gold were not exploited. Gen Musharraf’s government has totally ignored this project — a negligence that has led to the current power crisis.

In the gainful exploitation of Sindh’s coal, Wapda has been the main hurdle. The Chinese company wished to fix the electricity rates first, but Wapda refused to do so.

Wapda’s role in Sindh is very dubious, and controversial, as its priority is the construction of the Kalabagh dam at all cost. Sindh considers the dam a death warrant to its environment and economy. Wapda has been supporting the cause of the dam on the ground that it will meet the power needs of the country. Hence it has obstructed the development of coal in Sindh as it will weaken its argument for the Kalabagh dam.

It is regrettable that the Sindh government has at no stage made a concerted effort towards that end and now with only two weeks to go for its tenure to end, it is raising the issue of power policy and the development of Thar coal. This is just an empty boast and a cover-up for its inefficiency. — (Nov 1)

Emergency and interest of the country

PPP chairperson Ms Benazir Bhutto has warned that the people of Pakistan would resist the imposition of emergency in the country. After the Oct 18 incident, blasts in Rawalpindi and Sargodha have further tarnished the image of the country and also affected the people’s faith and interest in the political process.

To face the domestic crisis, the first and foremost need is to encourage the political process. It is the PML-Q’s responsibility to encourage and promote the political process. But the intolerant attitude and statements of its leaders were…giving the impression that they were not serious about the solidarity of the country. Even the election code appears to be another attempt to drive people away from politics. This may benefit the PML-Q but will not defuse the political crisis.

For fighting against terrorism, it is necessary that people should be pulled out of the state of fear that they have fallen into. They should be allowed to express their political opinion freely. Big rallies and processions are a symbol of people’s unity.

Our observation is that all measures taken by the government without taking the people into confidence have failed. In this dangerous situation if the government opts for emergency, it would be another big mistake as the government would find itself isolated in the war against terror. There are signs that the people would resist this extreme measure of the rulers creating further disorder and anarchy. Such a move would go against the people’s will. It is important that the government should refrain from declaring an emergency or postponing elections. — (Nov 2)

––Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi