Right to information

THE views voiced at a seminar in Lahore weren’t exactly groundbreaking news. Be that as it may, the importance of responsible reporting, verification prior to broadcast or publication and a self-prescribed code of ethics for the media are matters that ought to be revisited from time to time. Ethical and accurate reporting of events is not only in the public interest but also serves the media itself. If crossed, the fine line between gripping and sensational presentation can generate a level of public anxiety and even panic that may not be warranted. Horrific, gory images can moreover traumatise viewers and readers or, conversely, desensitise people and help cultivate a mindset that sees violence as the norm. Such tactics may pull in viewers or temporarily boost sales but can, over time, also harm the media itself. They give the state an excuse for censorship. Seizing on, say, gory images as a pretext, governments of the day can introduce curbs that are aimed entirely at protecting the interests of the rulers. This can happen under military regimes as well as ostensibly democratic dispensations. Clearly, a self-imposed code of conduct is a far healthier option than state diktat.

Accurate reporting is another matter altogether. In a real-time medium such as television, mistakes can be made in the heat of the moment — a gas cylinder explosion, for instance, may initially be described quite erroneously as a bomb blast. But this happens elsewhere as well, though the western media does lay greater emphasis on the unconfirmed aspect of initial reports. The major problem, however, is access to information. How can journalists verify all the facts at the official level when confronted with stonewalling at every turn? More than five years after its promulgation, the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 exists only in name and to this day it is next to impossible to quickly and conveniently access documents that should by rights be in the public domain. At the same time, so many types of documents are off-limits under FIO 2002 that anything even remotely ‘sensitive’ — we aren’t talking of defence-related documents here — cannot be accessed by citizens. If a request is turned down, the process of appeal is so long-winded that the requester may as well give up then and there.

The point is this: a free media and the right to information go hand in hand, and factually accurate reporting and analysis are critically dependent on freedom of information. The draconian curbs placed on the media post-Nov 3 have been lifted by the new government and this is a welcome move — though exception could be taken to the information minister describing the restoration of a basic right as a ‘gift’ from the government. Those at the helm have also promised to ensure public access to official records so as to introduce transparency in governance. Anything will be an improvement over the previous regime but the new administration would do well to go the extra mile in this key area.

SPSC in the news

THE Pakistan People’s Party has won its first parliamentary victory in Sindh. Earlier this week, in the provincial assembly’s regular session, the ruling party managed to wrest from the governor power to appoint the chairman of the Sindh Public Service Commission. This will now revert to the chief minister. Twice in recent years similar attempts by the PPP were thwarted: first by denying an almost identical bill adopted in 2004 the constitutionally required gubernatorial assent and then delaying the follow-up legislative process. Sindh has been the only province in the country where the governor — and not the chief minister — has been empowered to appoint the chairman and members of the public service commission. This anomaly was introduced in the Sindh Public Service Commission Act, 1989, through an amendment in December 2001 at a time when the province did not have an elected government. Later, this amendment led to constant friction between the two parties that ruled Sindh after the 2002 polls, given the public service commission’s key role in making appointments to government jobs. This even prompted former chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim to openly cross swords with the governor.

One would not object to the amendment now adopted to remove the aberration. But the bill appears to be tailored to the specific needs of the present government when it gives the chief minister discretionary powers to reconstitute the commission and reappoint the chairman within a period of 30 days from the date the new law comes into force. The problem began when the caretaker government overstepped its mandate and against the PPP’s advice appointed a new SPSC head in March on the expiry of the last chairman’s tenure. It was in this context that the PPP government inserted in the SPSC law what is definitely a highly controversial clause. Since the country is all too familiar with the havoc that discretionary powers enjoyed by politicians have wrought over the years, a strong case should be made for their complete abolition. The current piece of legislation will set a bad precedent. What is important is the need to recognise that only an independent public service commission chief, appointed for a fixed tenure of five years, can supervise the recruitment process in the province without fear or favour. That is the need of the hour, if appointments are to be made impartially and on merit.

Rectifying past mistakes?

But pronouncements like this go only as far as populism can take the country and its people. One wrong done to the exchequer cannot be righted by committing another. If a multi-storey luxury structure for the chief executive of the province was extremely undesirable, the idea of turning it into a university is preposterous. No one would quarrel with the idea of setting up an institution to teach women information technology. But has it to be in the way it is planned? It will not just need more money for converting a purpose-built office into a university requiring classrooms, labs and lecture halls. It will also bring hundreds of students and teachers, as well as their chaperons and transport, six days a week into a residential area where the physical environment has remained relatively unharmed. But most importantly it revives the tragic memories of the 1990s when every incoming government would first change, modify or demolish whatever its predecessor had done — no matter whether right or wrong. Haven’t the bigwigs of the current dispensation promised that those bitter days were already behind them? Haven’t they said that they would not indulge in one-upmanship in claiming credit and apportioning blame?

OTHER VOICES - Indian Press

Anything for China!

The Tribune

ONE state from which the Tibetans would have expected some sympathy was West Bengal, what with its pro-proletariat CPM-led government. But then the Marxists are more pro-China than pro-people. So, the state known for never-ending bandhs and agitations for the smallest of causes has gone to the extent of banning protest rallies by Tibetans against the Chinese occupation. ….But the fatwa which has been lauded by the Chinese masters may be despised by lovers of democracy and freedom which the Marxists otherwise swear by. It is very much the right of the government to maintain law and order but it is in the wrong when it tries to do so by curtailing basic freedom….

Ironically, it did not show the same alacrity in banning protests by hooligans targeting Taslima Nasreen. Not only were they allowed to hold boisterous protests, the West Bengal government even made the Bangladeshi writer pack her bags and leave. All that proves that the government has two entirely different sets of rules, which it applies depending on considerations of convenience, not principles.

In Taslima Nasreen’s case, even the Union government had turned coy. But as far as the protests by the Tibetans are concerned, the Centre has refused to toe the Bengal line. It must go a step further and show the mirror to the comrades extending support to it from outside…. After all, the communist parties have been criticising it … and issuing threats to pull the rug on an almost daily basis. — (April 14)

Democracy in Nepal

Central Chronicle

THE foundation of democracy through constitutional assembly elections has been laid in … Nepal…. Now, the Maoists will play an important role in the government in Nepal. … Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachand and Baburam Bhattarai are certain to be made president and prime minister respectively. Some of the important allies of the ruling alliance have indicated (they will) not participate in the next government. Seven ministers have (resigned) from the Koirala government. One of the members of parliament in the Nepali Congress has said that the Maoists have got the mandate to form a government. Now, the Maoists have to decide how they will form the government.

The basic aim of the election of a constituent assembly is to draft a constitution for the establishment of a federal democratic republic…. According to the rules, the party having a majority of 240 seats would have the right to form the government. Thus it is clear that the Maoists will form the government in Nepal. It is well known that communists do not believe in following the path of democracy. The organisation and its head adopt a dictatorial attitude….

West Bengal is an example in our country. Elections are held under the concept of democracy, but the (government’s) way of ruling (is) not democratic. Thus even through a base for democracy has been laid in Nepal … the end of the government lies within it…. Let us see what the form of democracy and (the government’s) attitude will be. — (April 19)

The old order remains intact

THE proverbial champagne bottle for the transition to democracy seems to have been uncorked a bit too early and its fizz and flavour seem to be going out before people are ready to savour the taste.

Something funny seems to have happened on the way from the election booths to the corridors of power, which were intruded upon by visiting foreign dignitaries who wanted to delineate a Washington-scripted path, prolonging the transfer of power to more than two months.

Even then the new rulers find themselves powerless on many issues both at the centre and in the provinces. The judges’ issue continues to hang fire. The MQM’s off-again, on-again reconciliation with the PPP continues to puzzle both the public and political pundits. All this has increased political uncertainty and confusion.

While patience is being advised by those who have assumed the reins of power, those who had voted to throw out the old order and usher in a new one, are disappointed to see many old faces, the continuity of many failed policies, little change in ground realities and not enough recognisable change in the old ways of governance, except to make superficial waves. Some are beginning to share Shakespeare’s lament in Macbeth: “From that spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort swells.” People are impatient for the promised change.

After the euphoria about reconciliation in the wake of unanimous elections of speakers, deputy speakers and leaders of the House at the centre and in most provinces, visible signs of fissures and attempts to derail the train of democracy appeared right from the day it steamed off the station.

The forcible eviction of Justice Ramday from the judges’ colony was the first sign that the old guards of the establishment were up to some mischief and wanted to provoke the lawyers to take action which would create a rift between the two coalition partners.

This attempt was firmly and promptly nipped in the bud by the new government’s advisor in the ministry of interior, who was presciently installed to guard the tracks. The Arbab Rahim and Sher Afgan Niazi incidents took some time to engineer, but both eventually backfired, though not without causing initial damage to the reputation of both the PPP and the lawyers’ movement and considerable loss of life and limb in Karachi in their aftermath. Such incidents are unlikely to stop until the present climate of political uncertainty disappears.

In the meantime, bread (which fewer can afford enough of) and butter (which only a few could ever afford) issues continue unabated, with the price of atta touching a new high (of Rs185-190 for a 10kg bag of wheat flour No 2.5) and the petrol prices being slated for a further upward revision and the load-shedding in some areas reaching almost half a day.

The riots in Multan by power-loom workers who lost their livelihoods because of load-shedding, could spread all over the country, especially as the summer sets in, if drastic measures are not undertaken to ensure a minimum of 18 hours of power supply and the burden of shortages is not more equitably shared.

Mr Ayaz Amir’s half-serious plea to the prime minister to use candlelight seems to have been taken with misplaced seriousness by burdening his hometown, rather than his workplace, with additional load-shedding. Much of the rioting appeared to be spontaneous and the result of the Obamaesque ‘bitterness’ of economic exclusion; partly it could have been instigated by those who want to embarrass the new government.

The new leadership must, however, eschew the blame game and convince the protesters of their efforts to address these problems through their on-the-spot presence and intervention, rather than that of the police and their coercive weapons. In an open democratic society such protests are inevitable and must be squarely faced.

For many who voted against the ancien regime, symbolism was as important as substance. The continuance in office of the retired general president, especially with the hubris and authority that is alien to his constitutional position, continues to rile those who have voted for the return of democracy.

It is obvious that he is being suffered largely because of his perceived support from the US and the army — although the latter has tried to bend over backwards to distance itself from politics. But his capacity to destroy the democratic process can’t be underestimated, given his past record, and he is likely to repeat it if pushed into a corner. The strategy of waiting to strike when the iron is hot or to marginalise his position in the power structure to the extent that he himself finds it pointless to continue, thus seems acceptable.

Even if Musharraf can be considered sacrosanct for the sake of expediency, it is puzzling why the appurtenances of the failed regime that he headed and the flawed policies he pursued, should be left untouched. Besides the provincial governors, such high officials as the attorney-general, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, the chairman of the HEC, the secretary of the National Security Council, the chairman of Erra and the chairman of the food security committee, who were among the architects of the last regime’s flawed policies, remain firmly ensconced in their positions.

It is difficult to see how the new leaders can hope to meet the aspirations of the people who voted for them without replacing these high officials to ensure a new, progressive, democratic, socially equitable and non-elitist Pakistan.

A disturbing feature of the transition is that the policies inherited from the previous regime’s economic team, which was responsible for creating large imbalances in the economy and building a false euphoria, through fudged data, about growth and poverty reduction, is being retained by the present regime, under Mr Ishaq Dar.

What is even more disconcerting is that the finance minister has promised the ‘continuity’ of economic policies at the recent IMF and World Bank meetings, instead of crafting new economic policies in keeping with the new mandates.

There is a need for arriving at a new minimum economic programme acceptable to all political parties. There is also a need for an institutionalised consultative process, such as establishing an economic advisory board and reviving the Planning Commission, to prepare a new economic blueprint for the next five years to be presented to parliament for approval.

syed.naseem@aya.yale.edu

Women in world politics

AN Italian politician preoccupied with fashion, hair and fake tan, and prone to emotional outbursts? I refer, of course, to Silvio Berlusconi.

This week it emerged, to no one’s great surprise, that the newly re-elected Italian prime minister seems to have something of a problem with women in government. Referring to the fact that the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has just appointed Spain’s first female-majority cabinet, Berlusconi said on Wednesday that “Zapatero has formed a government that is too pink, something that we cannot do in Italy because there is a prevalence of men in politics and it isn’t easy to find women who are qualified . . . He will have problems leading them. Now he’s asked for it.”Berlusconi isn’t the only person who has been critical of Zapatero’s decision to appoint nine women to his 17-strong cabinet (including 37-year-old defence minister, Carme Chacon, who just happens to be seven months pregnant). One conservative commentator in Spain described Zapatero’s female-majority cabinet as his “battalion of inexperienced seamstresses”, as if the deputy prime minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega (who has a doctorate in law, and a political career stretching back to the 1970s), and Magdalena Alvarez (a doctorate in economics, and a political career that dates from the 1980s) had just wandered in off the street.

And the attacks on Zapatero’s decision have underlined the ongoing antipathy to women in politics. There seems to be an increasingly wide gulf internationally between those who are supportive of women in government — and make great strides towards representative government as a result — and those who think that the very idea of women bothering their pretty little heads with such matters as foreign policy is completely beyond the pale.

Zapatero, a self-proclaimed feminist, naturally represents the former attitude, being intent on equality. And he has shown that, given the right policies, it is possible to create a much more representative ruling class. When first elected four years ago, Zapatero appointed an equal number of men and women as ministers. Two years ago, he ruled that no more than 60 per cent of candidates of any political party could be male, and that by 2010, the boards of any company pitching for public contracts should be made up of at least 40 per cent women.

Berlusconi, who has promised to include “at least four women” in his cabinet, embodies the less enlightened side of the equation. Campaigning in the recent elections, he referred to his female supporters as the “menopause section”; his women candidates are known as “the knight’s ladies” (the knight being Berlusconi himself, of course, that noble 71-year-old ladies’ man).

He has also referred to the appearance of the female candidates, in a bid to both publicise his party and undermine his women opponents. “The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women,” rightwinger Berlusconi said recently. “As for our [women candidates] being more beautiful, I say that because in parliament they have no competition.” Not to be outdone, Berlusconi’s rival Walter Veltroni began amassing his own young good-looking female members for the cameras, prompting the media to brand them “Walter’s angels”.

When Labour came to power in the UK in 1997, the policy of selecting candidates from all-women shortlists for half of their winnable seats resulted in the doubling of women in Westminster from 62 to 121 — a hugely significant result, which should have marked a new political age. And yet a single unfortunate photograph of Tony Blair surrounded by women MPs, spawned the lazy, misogynistic tag “Blair’s babes”, which was used against them for years and undermined that great leap forward.

When Jacqui Smith, Britain’s first female home secretary, gave her first statement to the Commons after the failed terrorist attacks last year, the focus of many of the news stories wasn’t so much on what she said, but the amount of flesh she had on show (by most measures, not very much). The same fate befell Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, this week, when she wore a black evening dress with an admittedly plunging neckline to the opening of Oslo’s new opera house. “Merkel’s Weapons of Mass Distraction” was the London Daily Mail’s headline.

In Britain the divide between the forward-looking and dinosaur elements was on show again last month, when the leader of the Opposition Conservative (Tory) party, David Cameron — who has just seven women in his 30-strong shadow cabinet — promised to give a third of senior jobs in his first government to women.

The proportion of Labour MPs who are women increased to 27 per cent in 2005 — considerably more than the Conservatives (8 per cent) and the Liberal Democrats (16 per cent) — but still not great. Overall, women make up just less than a fifth of British MPs. In Sweden, women make up 47 per cent of MPs. In Germany, more than 30 per cent of its elected representatives in the Bundestag are women.

To see just how far some people’s unease with women leaders extends, you only have to look at Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in the US. Clinton’s body, face and wardrobe have been pored over relentlessly, as if she was some kind of novelty specimen. The American media has been agonising over the question, “Are we ready for a woman president?” with Clinton being cast, variously, as a witch, a bitch, and a ballbuster. There is that repeated accusation that she is only where she is because of her husband.

In a talk given last month, the American academic Barbara Pendleton said: “Many commentators appear to be unable to criticise her without dusting off their favourite sexist cliches, stereotypes and insults. Together they create an environment of hostility toward all women, not just Senator Clinton.”

When it comes to the UK, she says that the quickest way to get more women into the House of Commons would be to use quotas. “If you want anything nearing 40 or 50 per cent, you are going to have to use all-women shortlists and only the Labour party does that. I don’t buy this argument that there are not enough women who want to be MPs — it’s a house of 646. There are 300 women out there. It’s about how you turn those who want to be MPs into MPs, and making sure political parties select women in their winnable seats. If you do that, you can get them in.”

As Zapatero has shown, with the right attitude, you can truly cause a revolution in politics.

—The Guardian, London