Business Recorder Column June 30, 2020

Beginning of the unravelling of the IK ‘experiment’?

Rashed Rahman

Dark clouds are lowering over the horizon of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI)-led coalition government. Almost two years into its tenure, the ‘promise’ of this controversially ushered into power government is fading. This ‘promise’ was nothing more than the unreal expectations of the PTI and its supporters. Time has shown that the PTI does not have within its ranks a competent team to handle the country’s affairs. That has led, on the one hand, to the overblown presence of non-elected persons in positions of power and responsibility, and on the other to the lid being lifted off the internal can of worms so far hidden from public view.

The trigger for these developments proved the departure of the Balochistan National Movement-Mengal (BNP-M) from the ruling coalition, citing the failure of the PTI government to live up to the terms of the six-point agreement regarding Balochistan’s affairs. Hard on the heels of this development came Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s revelations of the infighting and lack of unity between rival factions within the PTI. The unedifying picture that emerged as a result of these developments was that of a house divided.

BNP-M’s demands centred round the issue of missing persons, implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism, repatriation of Afghan refugees, fulfilling the promise of Balochistan’s quota in federal jobs, etc. As BNP-M chief Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal revealed in his speech in the National Assembly (NA) on the budget, during which he announced his party’s departure from the coalition, 18 missing persons out of thousands were ‘accounted for’, while another 500 were forcibly disappeared in the last two years since the PTI came to power. The NAP has still to be implemented meaningfully, leaving Balochistan at the mercy not only of Taliban and their like terrorists, but also the revived death squads used against all dissident voices in the troubled province. After the BNP-M horse had bolted, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan attempted to shut the stable door by ‘ordering’ fulfilment of Balochistan’s agreed six percent share in federal jobs. If ever there was a case of too little, too late, this was certainly it. The announcement of the jobs quota and attempts to woo the BNP-M back into the fold failed to leave any mark on the situation.

One likely effect whose results are already in evidence is that the other allied parties on which the precarious majority of the PTI-led coalition depends in the NA see an opportunity to press their long standing demands, putting even more pressure on the PTI to hold onto power.

The Fawad Chaudhry indiscretion laid bare the known conflict between the Asad Umar, Jahangir Khan Tareen and Shah Mahmood Qureshi factions inside PTI in lurid colour and detail. The issue resonated in the next federal cabinet meeting, where the PM had to intervene personally to calm down an agitated Faisal Vawda. During the meeting, reports revealed, Imran Khan put his entire team on notice that their government may not last more than six months unless its performance improved.

Clearly, the crisis was so serious that Imran Khan deigned to attend and address the budget session of the NA to deliver his usual homily of blaming the opposition for the ills of the country, praising his government’s (non-existent) performance on all fronts, and once again suffering an alleged (and habitual) ‘slip of the tongue’ in calling Osama bin Laden a shaheed(martyr). The shocked response across the board to this last faux pas would only have surprised those unfamiliar with Imran Khan’s long standing soft spot for the Taliban terrorists. It may be recalled that his pro-Taliban statements only ceased after the Army School Peshawar massacre of children and teachers when the military establishment had wrung all the civilian parties’ acquiescence in the NAP (including the setting up of military courts, whose tenure has thankfully expired amidst reversing most if not all their convictions of persons accused of terrorism).

Having left the NA after delivering his ‘lecture’ and not waiting (as usual) to listen to the opposition, Imran Khan tried to close the PTI coalition ranks by throwing a dinner party on June 28, 2020 for the PTI and allies’ MNAs to persuade them to pass the budget in the face of the opposition’s joint rejection of the same. Significantly, some PTI MNAs, the BNP-M, Pakistan Awami Muslim League (PAML) and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) did not attend. Imran Khan tried to paper over the growing cracks in the coalition by promising disgruntled allies that their issues would be addressed. Then he delivered the assurance to assembled company that the government was not going anywhere and would complete its term. Now this could be bravado or the result of some assurance by the powers-that-be.

The PTI government’s track record of the last two years includes buckling under to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) terms for badly needed funds and credibility with international financial institutions (during which Asad Umar lost the Finance Ministry and the IMF brought in its ‘own’ technocrats to run the show). Despite this ‘surrender’, the economy was not thriving before the corona virus pandemic knocked the bottom out it. The sugar and wheat mismanagement scandals have been followed by the mishandling of the petrol sector (see the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority – OGRA – report on this issue).

The Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has reported corruption and embezzlement in federal ministries during the first year in office of the PTI government. The latter’s ingenious defence is that corruption has come down. The AGP report is an indicator (if not the tip of a huge iceberg) that the whole mantra of the PTI about corruption being the main cause of the country’s travails is little else but misplaced (albeit politically convenient) concreteness. The anti-corruption drive cannot be confined to a handful of top opposition leaders, which has led to cries of a witch hunt and political victimisation. Corruption is endemic to our system from the top to the base. ‘Showpiece’ and politically targeted zeal against the phenomenon is a red herring at best. That is not to deny that from at least General Ziaul Haq’s day, public office has been reduced to a tool for private gain.

The last word has been had by the increasingly united opposition. They have unanimously rejected the budget (which may not prevent it scraping through), called Imran Khan a ‘national liability’ and demanded a fresh mandate (i.e. elections) before Imran Khan causes irreparable harm to the country.

The authors of this latest ‘experiment’ in controlled democracy must by now be scratching their heads what to do next. If they stick with their favoured incumbent, more debacles may be in store. If they decide a change is due, the yawning political abyss created by putting all their manipulative eggs in Imran Khan’s basket looms. Perhaps the kindest advice to the ubiquitous establishment is to finally learn some lessons, desist from trying to run the country from behind the scenes through their ‘window dressing’ satraps, and allow the suffering people of Pakistan freely to choose their own destiny and their own leadership.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The June 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out

The June 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Contents:

1. From the Editor: Racism in the US.

2. Rumman Faruqi: Experimentation with Development.

3. Professor Dr Emeritus S Haroon Ahmed: Dealing with Coronavirus: a learning exercise.

4. Rashed Rahman: Marxist strategy today – II: The Leninist break.

Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review
Director, Research and Publication Centre

Business Recorder Editorial June 5, 2020

Bureaucratic burial

The Sugar Commission report that held culpable people from both sides of the political divide has been with the government for over two weeks now. Despite the fact the report highlighted the role of a sugar mafia in receiving government subsidies on exports and manipulating domestic prices to garner a double windfall, no action has been taken on its findings. Instead, on June 2, 2020, the federal cabinet decided to conduct an audit of all sugar mills from 1985 through the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The anomaly that seems to present itself is that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government took credit for releasing the report despite it naming their stalwarts such as Jahangir Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar’s family as an unprecedented act of transparency, fairness and across the board accountability. Surely one would have expected, in the same spirit, action across the board, irrespective of political affiliation. Not a whimper has been heard in this regard so far. As to the quixotic effort to trundle through an audit of all the sugar mills from 1985, perhaps Prime Minister Imran Khan is not being well advised. The country’s laws include a statute of limitations, which would preclude action or prosecution even if wrongdoing were proved in the distant past. Two, the law requires only holding on to the record of the last 10 years. Under this dispensation, the sugar mills would be within their rights were they to argue they do not have the record before this legally enforceable time period. If so, how would the audit go back over 35 years, as the federal cabinet wishes it to? Another objection could be that such an audit of the 88 sugar mills in the country, even if the legal points enumerated above are ignored for the sake of argument, may take an interminably long time. Given the report already with the government, which highlights the practices of the sugar mafia in under-reporting their profits, underpaying (when they pay at all after long delays) the farmers by manipulating weight and sucrose content of the sugarcane they bring to the mills, and rent-seeking by expecting subsidies for exports of sugar (since the international price of sugar is lower than our production cost) while manipulating the market subsequently to raise domestic prices, if the government means what it says about transparency and not sparing anyone responsible for the scandal even if they belong to the PTI or its allies, what stops it from initiating action against the errant millers? The purported audit may in the light of this question raise suspicions that it is a diversionary and temporising distraction to wriggle out of the commitment to across the board accountability.

The sugar scandal is neither new nor are its contours unknown from the past. Until at least the nineteen eighties, the sugarcane sector had zoning laws that restricted the setting up of more sugar mills than a particular area or region could supply. In the name of the poor farmer, politicians who have made using public office for private gain a fine art did away with this restriction (the Ittefaq group was decidedly keen on this since it manufactured sugar industry machinery). The justification provided was that more mills would compete with each other, thereby benefitting the farmer. No such fond hope was realised according to the commission’s report. Instead, the proliferating sugar mill owners collaborated with each other and against the grower. Is there a clearer instance than this of ‘acting in one’s own cause’? Over the years, whatever protection used to be provided to farmers by the district commissioner or cane commissioners in the past, became a virtual dead letter. And speaking of death, the audit idea, for the reasons stated above, would be a complete waste of time, arouse suspicions of a diversionary cover up, and in any case would likely be a case of dead on arrival.

Business Recorder Editorial June 4, 2020

Missing pandemic awareness campaign

Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has announced the reopening of the tourism industry after a meeting of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) on June 1, 2020. The argument offered to justify the decision is the hardship being caused and likely to be caused to people in the tourist areas in the north and the Galliatthat only have a narrow window of 3-4 months to earn their living for the whole year. All overseas Pakistanis, especially labour, have been allowed to return home provided Covid-19 patients amongst them adopt self-quarantine. Both decisions of course run risks of further exacerbating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic that is showing signs of accelerating as a result of the loosening of lockdowns. As far as tourism is concerned, it is obviously aimed at reviving in-country visitors since international flights are frozen and in any case, even without the pandemic, our northern areas and Galliatreceived hardly any foreign tourists. The PM, while addressing a press conference after the NCC meeting, reiterated his stance of being opposed to a strict lockdown as some 25 million people in Pakistan are poor or daily wage/informal economy earners who would starve, unlike the rich. Despite his view, the PM said, after the 18^thAmendment all the provinces were free to take their own decisions in the matter. Imran Khan’s disingenuous argument that the rich adhere to the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) outlined by the government while the poor simply cannot because of overcrowding in their modest homes and lack of clean running water, etc., is a statement of undeniable fact It is, therefore, possible to partially agree with the PM that lockdowns are not a cure for the pandemic, but, as he himself admits, can merely help to reduce its incidence and flatten the curve of cases. It is also possible to agree with his forecast that we will have to learn to live with the pandemic until a vaccine is discovered (which may take 1-2 years), clinically tested and declared safe (perhaps another 1-2 years). But that should not be interpreted to mean, even impliedly, that the fond hope of ‘herd immunity’ is aimed at.

A major reason why the people at large have not adhered to the SOPs whenever lockdowns have been loosened is the failure of the government from day one to launch a public awareness campaign to educate people about the coronavirus and the dos and don’ts it imposes. Now the perceived intent of the government to incrementally loosen the lockdowns further by extending waivers to one industry or the other is likely to increase the incidence of the affliction (if it is not already showing signs of doing so). The debate still revolves around the lives versus livelihoods binary, except that an inconsistent policy outlook threatens to result in us falling between the two stools and ending up with the worst of both worlds. As it is, an experts’ report on the unreported incidence of coronavirus cases in Punjab, particularly the main hotspot Lahore, appears to have been suppressed by the Punjab government so as not to cast its performance in combating the virus in a poor light. According to the report, there may be more than 670,000 cases of asymptomatic patients in Lahore alone. One shudders to contemplate what the situation might be in the province as a whole, let alone countrywide. Yet the Punjab government in its wisdom is following the lead of the NCC decisions mentioned above to allow shops to remain open five days a week (as opposed to the previous four) and for longer hours (10:00 am to 7:00 pm instead of the previous 10:00 am to 5:00 pm). This extension in opening days and timings could cause our worst fears of an exponential explosion of cases to come true.

Business Recorder Column June 2, 2020

The American uprising

Rashed Rahman

Riots have rocked 48 cities by now in the US, from east to west, north to south, following the death of an Afro-American man in Minneapolis at the hands of police. George Floyd was arrested by police accused of using a forged currency note at a shop. He was pinned to the ground by the four arresting police officers and one of them, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on the accused’s neck while he lay on the ground. Floyd’s desperate pleas that he could not breathe had no effect on the offending police officer, who kept up the pressure of his knee on the accused’s neck for 8-9 minutes, until the man died.

This latest incident of a black life being snuffed out by the US police is neither the first, nor, given the police culture in the US, likely to be the last. Initially, peaceful protests against the murder broke out in Minneapolis and a few other cities. The US police, not for the first time, showed its well known colours of not being able to handle peaceful protest in an intelligent manner, being always ready to resort to violence unnecessarily. Inevitably, this habitual response of the police acted as fuel to the fire, both in terms of the spread of protests throughout the country, and some of the peaceful protestors expressing their rage at the original incident as well as the heavy-handed response of the police by fighting back. As the pattern of such developments in recent years has shown, the situation soon attracted a wide array of disparate forces to the protests, including some looters.

Looting and arson have emerged as widespread phenomena in the major cities of the US. The epicentre of course is still the original site of Minneapolis, which has seen five nights of an ineffective curfew defied by the protestors on the streets. The police are using rubber bullets, tear gas and truncheons on the assembled crowds, arguably making matters worse. Arrests are being made en masse and some police officers have suffered minor injuries. The uprising across the US in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed 105,000 lives so far has highlighted the sense of crisis that pervades the US today.

Things have not been helped by US President Donald Trump’s combative approach to any problem. His incendiary tweets have persuaded even Twitter that had allowed him so much leeway so far, to attempt to control the damage he continues to inflict on individuals and society as a whole through his inflammatory rhetoric and incautious pronouncements that do not behove the holder of the most powerful political office in the world. To take some examples, Donald Trump called the protestors demanding an end to police brutality, especially against black people, “thugs”, “criminals”, “vandals” and perpetrators of “mob violence”. He has blamed anarchists and far left activists as being behind the violence. He accuses the anti-fascist network Antifa of orchestrating the violence, in a new conspiracy theory, something he delights in consistently. Last but not least, Trump’s insensitivity and failure to show leadership by appeals for calm is accompanied by references to “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and threats to deploy the military if things spin out of the control of the police and National Guard.

While Donald Trump continues to stoke the fire at home, protests against police brutality and the entrenched racism in US society have been held in Toronto, London and Berlin. The American uprising has reiterated the slogan “Black Lives Matter” that emerged earlier in the light of similar incidents of police brutality against black people. It has emblazoned George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe” on its banners. The fact that the officer directly responsible for killing George Floyd, i.e. Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter while he and his three colleagues at the scene of the crime have been dismissed from service, has failed to satisfy the burning anger and grief being felt by the people of the US, black and white. Citizens in Minneapolis have expressed their sentiments by cleaning up shops and the streets and laying flowers in front of the shop where George Floyd was arrested.

Such is the anger on the streets, not the least because of the brutal police response to peaceful demonstrations to add to the injury of the original brutality against George Floyd, that some journalists covering the protests have been attacked by both sides. The CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, too has been attacked. The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a statement asking for journalists not to be targeted merely for doing their jobs.

Donald Trump has demonstrated since taking office how he is the most divisive and polarising president the US has ever had. The sum total of his statements since the tragedy in Minneapolis has been to stoke the fire by virtually calling for meeting violence with violence. Some incidents of ostensibly right wing supporters of Donald Trump attacking protestors have been reported. With the presidential election looming in November 2020, the concern is that if his right wing supporters mobilise against the protestors, the traditional peaceful election process of the US may fall prey to violence. Donald Trump is trailing in the opinion polls, a self-inflicted wound that may prove his undoing. His reckless, insulting, brash, combative style may appeal to his right wing constituents, but as the developments in Minneapolis and other cities of the US show, the country is tipping towards completing the unfinished agenda of the struggle against slavery and racial discrimination that began in the settler colonial plantation era, through the American civil war, civil rights movement and the advancement of the rights of people of colour.

The current protests may not continue indefinitely, especially if Donald Trump’s threats of using force are carried through. But in the process, the US people may overturn in November 2020 the mistake they made by electing a man like Trump to the highest office in their land. That would elicit a sigh of relief not just from the American people, but people all over the world.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial June 2, 2020

Constitutional and judicial system anomalies

An anecdotal survey carried out by Business Recorderhas revealed that the Council of Common Interests (CCI), a constitutional body tasked with resolving issues between the Centre and the provinces, has been reduced to a non-functioning entity due to the neglect of successive governments. Since its establishment in 1973 under the newly promulgated Constitution that still, amendments over the years notwithstanding, holds the field, the CCI has held only 41 meetings. Of these, 30 were held before the 18^thAmendment in 2010 and the remaining 11 between 2010 and 2019. The last meeting of the CCI was held on December 23, 2019, chaired by Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan. The 18^thAmendment shifted CCI from under the Cabinet Division to the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) with a view to making it an effective body, but to no avail. Article 153 (2) lays down that the structure of CCI shall consist of (a) the PM who shall be the Chairman; (b) the chief ministers of the provinces, and (c) three members from the federal government to be nominated by the PM from time to time. Of late, opposition parties have strongly criticised the PM for not convening a CCI meeting to forge a collective strategy against the ever-increasing challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. On the contrary, as expressed by Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Raja Zafarul Haq, the government has been guilty of bypassing parliament on most if not all important issues, ignoring the CCI’s role in the national pandemic crisis, and failed to use the platform of CCI to resolve the grievances of smaller provinces such as Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Despite IPC Minister Fehmida Mirza’s efforts, even the mandatory requirement of a separate secretariat for CCI could not come to fruition.

As if such constitutional anomalies were not enough, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) federal government has suddenly woken up to the possibility (according to the PM) that people’s confidence in our judicial system has been shaken. It might not be inappropriate to ask, was there really a people’s confidence in our judicial system in existence? The opposite could easily be argued with numerous clinching arguments and instances of the flaws and anomalies of the judicial system in our past and present. Nevertheless, the PM’s constitution of two committees to suggest constitutional reforms and recommendations to ease the plight of women prisoners cannot be slighted for lack of good intent. However, it may not be out of place to wonder if the PM is aware of similar such efforts in the past and their lack of meaningful outcome. This is not only because the tasks of constitutional reform and changing our entrenched criminal justice system, police (thana) culture, registration and investigation of cases and the colonial heritage of our prison system are formidable challenges, but also because the past is littered with the shipwreck of similar efforts. In addition, the two committees set up for this purpose also demand comment. The constitutional reform committee is composed of the PM’s Adviser on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan and Law Minister Farogh Naseem, with not even a whiff of any opposition presence. After all, it should not be forgotten that the PTI government does not enjoy a two-thirds majority in parliament and is therefore unable to bring about any constitutional changes without taking the opposition on board. The best efforts of Messrs Awan and Naseem therefore, in the absence of any opposition input let alone cross-aisles agreement or consensus, run the risk of withering on the vine. Even the second committee on reform in the conditions of women prisoners, laudable as the idea is, consists of the PTI minister for human rights, bureaucrats from all four corners of the country, and a couple of private individuals involved in justice system issues. Again, not a whiff of the opposition’s presence. Although this reform effort may not require a constitutional amendment, nevertheless the province (Sindh) ruled by an opposition party, may not buy into any reform suggestions by a committee in which it has no role.

It comes as no surprise that the PM’s two committees do not give even a nod in the direction of the opposition. This is consistent with the PTI government’s attitude to the opposition since coming into office. One had hoped that in the case of these two committees and the purposes for which they have been created, the PTI government may shed its past hostility towards the opposition for the sake of a non-partisan, badly needed reform, but this was not to be. The fear is that even after the hard work of the committees, anomalies such as the CCI ‘freeze’, the shrieks and cries of the routinely tortured in our thanas,the deathly silence around the everyday police ‘encounters’, and the loss of life and freedom for those languishing unjustly in our prisons may continue undisturbed.