Business Recorder editorial Aug 10, 2016

Russia-Turkey ties reset Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on his first trip abroad after the failed coup of July 15. It is logical that his first port of call is Russia, specifically Saint Petersburg, the hometown of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In these salubrious surroundings, Erdogan tried to reset his country’s strained relations with Russia. These relations have historically been anything but straightforward. But after the downing of a Russian fighter by Turkey last November on the Syrian border, relations plunged to an all-time low, with a furious Putin imposing a raft of sanctions on Turkey. Cooperative and strategic projects were put on ice, trade between the two countries plummeted by 43 percent in January-May 2016 to $ 6.1 billion and Russian tourist numbers, on which Turkey’s tourism industry critically depends, plunged 93 percent. The ice was finally broken in June 2016 following a letter of regret over the downing of the Russian plane from Turkey, which Russia accepted as an apology. In their press conference after the meeting, Putin said they had lived through a very complicated moment and want to overcome their difficulties but this would take painstaking work and some time to return to business as usual. Erdogan echoed these sentiments, stressing how important Putin’s support after the coup was. This contrasts sharply with Erdogan’s complaints against the US for ‘harbouring’ his ‘nemesis’, Fethullah Gulen, and against the European Union as well for allegedly showing more concern about Turkey’s post-coup crackdown than the attempted putsch itself. Russia itself has strained relations with the west currently, centred on Ukraine but also differences over Syria. The convergence between Turkey and Russia therefore seems natural, albeit worrying for the west since Turkey is a key NATO ally. Russia and Turkey in the past did not let their rivalry over influence in the Black Sea region and the Middle East (particularly Syria, where they are arraigned on opposite sides) stand in the way of mutually beneficial trade and economic relations. With this visit, these cooperative relations seem poised for revival. One of the first fruits of Turkey’s expression of regret over the downing of the Russian plane and now the visit has been Russia’s lifting the ban on package holidays in Turkey by Russian tourists. Moscow has indicated it will now end measures against Turkish food imports and construction firms. What is likely to follow is the revival of strategic projects such as the TurkStream gas pipeline to Europe and a Russian-built nuclear power station in Turkey. The normalisation of cooperative relations between Turkey and Russia is being viewed in the current climate of strained relations with the west as a zero sum game by western capitals, largely because they have ‘taken on’ Russia since the Ukrainian crisis and its intervention in Syria on the side of Bashar al-Assad. This can only lead to weakening influence and fewer and fewer options or room to manoeuvre for the west in the region and beyond, as the outcome of the west’s proxy interventions in Ukraine and Syria are proving. While the west’s post-cold war triumphalism has translated into trying to prevent Russia’s recovery to its erstwhile superpower status and adventurous attempts to nibble away at its ‘near abroad’, its relations with its ostensible NATO ally Turkey have not panned out well in recent times either. On the one hand, the US is dependent on Turkey’s Incirlik airbase for its air campaign against Islamic State in Syria. On the other hand, Turkey’s policies in the region have clearly, at least until it suffered reverses, been at odds with the west’s. The mess in Syria is one fruit of these ill-considered and divergent policies of the NATO allies. Turkey, in the aftermath of the failed coup, finds more purchase in mending fences with its near or immediate neighbours such as Israel and Russia, rather than keeping faith with a Washington that appears unsympathetic to its present travails, or a Europe not being able to see the wood for the trees, at least in Turkish eyes. This fluid, shifting scenario in the region is reminiscent of similar trends in other parts of the world, where the traditional hegemony of the US-led west is declining and regional actors are reconfiguring their relations in the light of their own perceived interests. Verily, the geopolitical map of the world is undergoing tectonic shifts that may well come to define the shape of a new world order in the not so distant future.

Business Recorder editorial Aug 9, 2016

The curious case of M C Barrett Matthew Craig Barrett is a US national married to a Pakistani woman, reportedly the daughter of an Islamabad lawyer, with two sons, and had been living in Pakistan some years ago. After being deported from Pakistan in 2011, ostensibly on suspicion of snooping around and photographing sensitive military (nuclear?) installations not far from Islamabad, Mr Barrett made what turned out to be a dramatic re-entry into Pakistan the other day despite being on a blacklist, a development that sent sections of the media and politicians into a frenzy of speculation regarding his motives and intent. Without adding more fuel to that raging speculative fire, it is nevertheless useful to recap some of the known facts about Mr Barrett. He flew to Islamabad with a valid four-year multiple entry visa issued by our Consulate in Houston. He was initially cleared by FIA Immigration and allowed to proceed but then, according to sources, another layer of checking discovered his name on the blacklist. A frantic chase and eventual arrest by the FIA followed (Keystone cops anyone?). Curiouser and curiouser, it turns out that Sub-Inspector FIA Raja Asif Raza and his son Constable Ehteshamul Haq were on duty when Barrett was initially cleared for entry. Since a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has been set up to investigate how Barrett obtained his visa in Houston and how Immigration cleared him initially, the FIR in this regard has named the father and son as culpable. The father has obtained interim pre-arrest bail until August 15 from a Special Judge Central (FIA). The son’s fate is that he and Barrett have been detained and a four-day physical remand of both ‘accused’ has been obtained by the FIA Immigration Cell. The father’s counsel’s plea in court was that the Immigration officers saw that Barrett had a valid visa but when they entered his name into their data base to ascertain routinely whether his name was on the blacklist, the system cleared him. The fault therefore on the human side was unintentional, and on the machine side, a systemic error. He did not go on to explain why the second check with the same system produced a contrary result to the first time. Our penchant for and obsession with conspiracy theories notwithstanding, the circumstances of the Barrett case are even stranger than fiction. Barrett has told the FIA that he was here on a scouting mission because he wanted to move to Pakistan (a somewhat different ‘scouting’ mission than the one for which he was deported five years ago). Fair enough, but the unanswered questions just won’t go away. How did he manage to obtain a four-year multiple entry visa in Houston? Is it the usual case of some under the counter hanky-panky? Why did he enter a wrong address on his disembarkation card? Given his earlier track record, Barrett appeared to be playing with fire. In 2011 when he was arrested, incriminating maps of the sensitive installations he was allegedly photographing were recovered from him. His visa at that time was curtailed and he was asked to leave the country in the climate of heightened suspicion after the Raymond Davis affair and Osama bin Laden raid. Instead, he went into hiding but was arrested days after his curtailed visa expired. The spreading ripples of the affair now have enveloped FIA Assistant Director (Immigration) Nadeem Zafar too. The officer has been suspended for allegedly clearing Barrett. Zafar was reportedly also suspended in 2009 for alleged links with foreigners while he was an Inspector in the FIA. He reportedly moved to the UK on ex-Pakistan leave and rejoined the FIA on his return in 2013. This curious cast of players is headed by none other than our doughty Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. Despite the speculative furore, the minister has attempted to play down the ‘spy’ angle, presumably to spare the government’s blushes. However, what is still missing from the usually loquacious minister’s statements is some clarification regarding Barrett’s expulsion five years ago. Instead the usual umbrage and blame being heaped on junior officials is on display. Surely the minister must realise in the context of the security situation of the country and the current anti-terrorism drive that this incident has badly exposed the possibility of either corruption in our immigration setup or systemic failures or both. Can a country in the middle of trying to implement an anti-terrorism National Action Plan afford such glaring mistakes, glitches and loopholes? A rhetorical question if ever there was one.

Business Recorder Column Aug 9, 2016

Erdogan’s counter-coup Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), including the opposition (except for the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party), turned out for a ‘Democracy and Martyrs’ rally in Istanbul on Sunday, August 7 to celebrate the overcoming of an abortive coup by a faction of the military on July 15. Similar, albeit smaller rallies were also held in the capital Ankara, tourist destination Izmir in the west of the country, Antalya in the south and Diyarbakir in the Kurdish southeast. These rallies bring to an end the daily manifestations of support for democracy and against the foiled coup for the last three weeks. Although no one in their right mind in today’s day and age would support the ‘Man on Horseback’ syndrome, the failed military coup that claimed at least 273 lives, including 34 coup plotters, has spawned even uglier consequences than the condemnable putsch itself. The reasons for the attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP government are not hard to seek. In power since 2002, Erdogan must be credited with transforming Turkey into a modern economic powerhouse. And this was achieved during his two stints as prime minister while allaying apprehensions about his and the AKP’s Islamist roots by adopting a moderate stance that would not disturb Turkey’s fundamental status as a secular state. However, signs of trouble began appearing after Erdogan was elected president three years ago. Observers noted his increasing bent towards authoritarianism, with accompanying expressed intent to shift power from the prime minister, hitherto the chief executive, to the presidency. The coup attempt may have been triggered by such trends. The main suspect behind the coup attempt in Erdogan’s eyes was self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, now residing in the US. Turkey insists Gulen must be extradited from the US to face trial at home, but has yet to move a formal request for the same since that would require substantiation and evidence for the charge. Gulen also stands accused of earlier trouble making through the alleged influence of his followers in the police, bureaucracy, judiciary and the media. Ironically, till 2013, Gulen was an ally of Erdogan against Turkey’s traditional secularism and to clip the military’s wings. After they fell out over Gulen’s criticism of Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies and the latter’s suspicion that Gulen was behind leaks on the social media linking Erdogan’s family and colleagues to massive corruption, many police, prosecution and intelligence officers were sacked, but this purge was small compared to the ongoing wholesale witch-hunt. What has cut little ice with Erdogan is the denial of responsibility and condemnation of the coup attempt by Gulen. The collapse of the putsch by a section of the armed forces (the conspirators did not even have the backing of the entire military) has been followed by a wide-ranging purge that has alarmed even Turkey’s friends. US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel had the ‘temerity’ to suggest the other day that the turmoil surrounding the coup bid and the subsequent round up of dozens of Generals could affect US military cooperation with Turkey. Despite Erdogan taking umbrage at this statement, was this an idle thought? Turkey’s critical position as a member of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) in Syria and the strategic Incirlik air base from which strikes against IS are launched cannot but be affected by the purge of 150 Generals and Admirals, nearly half of Turkey’s High Command, not to mention 10,000 members of the armed forces. Add to these the sackings and arrests of 9,000 policemen, 2,475 judges, 21,000 private school teachers, journalists and other alleged ‘Gulenists’, including 1,700 education ministry, 1,500 finance ministry officials and 1,500 university deans being forced to resign. Amnesty International has reported the beatings, severe torture, rape of the accused coup plotters in detention. This does not behove a democracy wedded to the rule of law. The media has received more than its due share of unwanted attention too, including the shutting down of 130 media outlets amongst whom can be counted 45 daily newspapers and 16 TV channels. Besides this, arrest warrants have been issued for nearly 50 former staffers of the Zaman newspaper. Earlier, 42 arrest warrants were issued for journalists, 16 of whom have been detained. Amidst the wider crackdown against Gulen’s alleged or actual supporters, the witch-hunt in progress seems to be Erdogan and the AJK government’s seeing an opportunity to purge Turkey of all political rivals, dissidents and the critical media. Although Erdogan in his paranoia has rounded harshly on General Votel for his remarks, his crackdown promises the opposite of what is intended: further polarisation of Turkey amidst the country’s backsliding on human rights, the right to information, imposition of a state of emergency, partial withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, and contemplation of the restoration of the death penalty. The Euro three billion migrants deal with the EU may unravel amidst the latter’s reservations regarding Turkey’s present course and Erdogan’s accusation that his country has only received one third of the promised amount. Even the Pak-Turk 26 schools educating 10,000 children in Pakistan are threatened with closure because of Ankara’s linking them with Gulen. The shock of the attempted coup notwithstanding, nothing justifies this response and this trend. No democratically elected ruler/s, no matter how solid their majority and the demonstrated support against the attempted coup by even the opposition, can simply throw all restraint to the winds and ride roughshod over the rights, even existence, of all dissident opinion. Turkey, beset by a full plate of problems with IS turning its guns on its erstwhile covert supporter, the war against the Kurds escalating in the southeast and now the attempted coup, is not being well served by Erdogan’s turn towards what increasingly is looking like a ‘fascist’ state. For that matter, in the long (or perhaps not even that long) run, neither are Erdogan’s own interests or future, particularly because of his increasing public attacks on the US for being behind or at least complicit in the abortive coup and on the west generally for allegedly being more sympathetic to the coup plotters than his regime. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder editorial Aug 6, 2016

US-India convergence There are indications in the air that Pakistan’s worst nightmare scenario may be unfolding. This development sees the US and India converging in terms of interests as well as a shared vision of their partnership in today’s world going into the future. The bigger picture of course, internationally and regionally, shows Washington increasingly drawing closer to India, both as a counterweight to China and as a country with which the US is comfortable in terms of commonalities of political system (democracy) as well as opportunities for trade, economic cooperation and so forth. Perhaps the US’s support to India in the nuclear field despite India having set off the nuclear arms race in the subcontinent can be read as part of this changing dynamic of relations between Washington and New Delhi. Thus, for example, the US signed an agreement on nuclear cooperation with India during George Bush’s tenure and the outgoing Obama administration is still bending its back to get India concessions from the Nuclear Suppliers Group amongst other favours, ignoring in the process Pakistan’s genuine concerns and apprehensions at ‘rewarding’ India in this manner. One other factor that has, at least since 9/11, caused a gulf of mistrust and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad is Pakistan’s continued policy/stance (unstated or otherwise) on terrorism and proxies. On the heels of the Pentagon deducting $ 300 million from the Coalition Support Fund money owed to Pakistan because of the condition attached by the US Congress that the Defence Secretary must certify that Pakistan is acting against the Afghan Haqqani network before such funds are released, the US State Department spokesman has reiterated Washington’s urging Pakistan to strive for closer cooperation with India in the anti-terrorism fight, close all safe havens for terrorist groups, and ‘do more’ by shedding its discriminatory policy of targeting only groups perceived to be harmful for Pakistan in favour of targeting all groups, even those not inimical to Pakistan’s interests but posing a threat to its neighbours. In other words, the US still sees Pakistan as practicing a duality of policy informed by the ‘good/bad’ Taliban binary. This perception of duality extends to groups fighting in India Held Kashmir or attacking India on that basis. While acknowledging Pakistan’s actions in recent days against some terrorist groups and their safe havens (Operation Zarb-e-Azb in FATA) as positive and having contributed to regional security at the cost of Pakistani lives, it is the ‘selectivity’ practiced by Pakistan that rankles with Washington’s establishment. To soften the Coalition Support Funds blow, the State Department spokesman did point to the fact that it had released aid to Pakistan, including some security aid. But this reassurance effort does not negate the bad vibes being generated by the denial of Coalition Support Funds and the pressure being exerted by Washington on Pakistan to dump all its remaining proxies to west and east and contribute with immediate neighbours Afghanistan and India respectively against all proxy groups operating from Pakistani soil. As a token of encouragement to the partial shift in Pakistan’s policy under pressure of circumstance, the spokesman welcomed the emerging quadrilateral anti-terrorism group of China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as the path for the future. Whether the State Department statements and the bad outcome of the SAARC conference in Islamabad come together to engender the perception of the US and India ‘teaming up’ against Pakistan in a coincidental, incidental, accidental or more significant mode can be concluded or not, the fact remains that on the global, regional and bilateral stage, Pakistan’s foreign policy woes multiply by the day in the direction of isolation. Whether the Pakistani envoys in important capitals of the world’s conference in Islamabad the other day will translate into concrete measures to tackle this trend or remain futile talking points alone depends crucially in our establishment’s revisiting its long standing reliance on proxies for projecting power and interests in the neighbourhood. That strategy’s sell-by date has long passed. It is now a matter of the establishment’s doing a correct reading of the tea leaves.

Business Recorder editorial Aug 3, 2016

Affirmative action and quotas The Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice discussed the other day the Bill moved by Senator Babar Awan for elevating women judges to the Supreme Court (SC) according to a fixed quota. Senator Awan’s Number of Judges (Amendment) Bill 2016 sought to reserve one-third or six seats in the 17-judge SC specifically for women. A previous Bill on the same lines was rejected by a standing committee on the basis that there could not be a quota for women judges in the SC, as judges were elevated to the SC from the High Courts. However, there is no bar on the appointment of women judges to the SC per se, as affirmed to the committee in writing by Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid, citing the provisions of Article 177 of the Constitution that does not make any distinction on the basis of sex. The sense of the committee discussion was that the idea of a quota is in any case premature as there are not enough women in the judiciary. The National Commission on Status of Women secretary’s contention that women must be made part of decision making as there was a great deal of violence against women, while unexceptionable in principle, seemed logically misplaced as most such cases are adjudicated at the level of the lower courts and rarely find their way to the SC in appeal. On the other hand MQM MNA Dr Nikhat Shakeel Khan’s fresh Bill to be introduced for the elevation of women judges to the Islamabad High Court makes sense since it is only by reversing the paltry proportion of women judges in the High Courts of 5.8 percent that the situation can be improved. It is a fact that no woman has been elevated to the SC or appointed the Chief Justice of a High Court to date. The Supreme Court Bar Association president Ali Zafar however opposed the very concept of quotas as the antithesis of merit, which should, in his opinion, be the only criterion for appointment or elevation of judges, up to and including the SC. The idea of affirmative action to encourage the historically received disadvantages of marginalised and deprived groups or communities is good in principle. This is the logic of reservation and quotas for disadvantaged groups or communities. It has been practiced in India in the case of scheduled (considered backward or underdeveloped) castes and tribes. In Pakistan, it has manifested itself in reserved quotas in jobs and education on an ethnic-urban-rural divide basis in Sindh and in the reservation of seats in the Assemblies for women, technocrats, specialists, experts and special interest groups such as labour. However, the quota in Sindh has caused and continues to cause much resentment and heartburn on the ground of being anti-merit. As far as reservation of seats in the Assemblies to encourage the participation in political life of women and other under-represented and marginalised groups is concerned, in practice it has proved to be a process at the mercy of the ‘mother’ political parties that have complete say in the candidates put forward for such seats, thereby fundamentally negating the idea of affirmative action and trumping it through patronage. Provincial quotas for jobs at the federal level and educational opportunities in the best institutions too ignore merit under the umbrella of an overarching provincial quota. If we take Punjab as an example, it is obvious that any quota it enjoys will unduly favour a city like Lahore at the expense of citizens from smaller cities and towns, not to mention a rural milieu. One possible cure for this historically received ‘natural’ bias in favour of more developed areas, groups and communities may be to recast such provincial quotas by fixing them at the district level while allowing various districts to compete for scarce opportunities to balance the concern for the less developed with some element of merit.

Business Recorder editorial Aug 2, 2016

Hindutva’s bitter fruit India’s Gujarat state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Minister (CM) Anandiben Patel has resigned after the state has been rocked since last month by protests against atrocities and attacks on Dalits, the lowest in India’s caste hierarchy. The protest on July 31 in the state capital Ahmedabad seems to have finally tipped the scales against the incumbent CM when thousands of Dalits, joined, some reports say, by Gujarat’s hard done by Muslims, blocked roads and attacked buses. This was an unusual show of militancy by the discriminated against but generally quiescent Dalit community. What has incensed the Dalits to the point where they have taken militant protest action is a series of incidents since the BJP government came to power in 2014 in which Hindutva offshoots of the BJP have been taking vigilante action against cow slaughter in many states across India. These attacks have led to beatings, torture and deaths at the hands of hardline ‘gau rakshak’ (defenders of cows) Hindutva vigilantes. In Gujarat the protests erupted in July when four Dalit men in the city of Una were tied to a car, stripped and flogged by Hindutva vigilantes for allegedly skinning a dead cow. The incident was recorded on video and went viral, was eventually picked up by TV channels and enflamed the community beyond endurance. This latest atrocity against Dalits came as the culmination of a series of incidents in which Dalits (and even some Muslims) were attacked on accusations of cow slaughter or eating beef. Slaughter of cows, considered holy by orthodox Hindus, is banned in most Indian states, including Gujarat. Landless Dalits earn a livelihood (as do some Muslims) by skinning cows and buffalos that have died naturally. The protests and their fallout in the shape of the resignation of the Gujarat CM come at a particularly sensitive time for the BJP, which faces a state election there next year, as well as in UP, which has also seen some spillover of the Dalit protests. The BJP is desperately casting around for a replacement for Anandiben Patel, a longtime confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who appointed her as his successor in his home state in 2014. Having ruled as CM Gujarat for 13 years, Modi is credited with the state’s rapid industrialisation on his watch, a model the BJP pitched successfully as the path forward to prosperity for India’s 1.3 billion people and which won Modi the prime ministership in 2014. Anandiben Patel’s relatively brief tenure was full of caste-driven strife, first by the peasant-entrepreneurial powerful Patel upper-caste community, whose agitation brought the Gujarat government to its knees and forced it to concede job and education quotas to the relatively well off Patels. The BJP had barely had time to digest the outcome of that agitation when its young leader, Hardik Patel, was released from prison and greeted by thousands of supporters. If the possibility of that upper-caste agitation being revived were not troubling enough, the provocations of Hindutva hardliners against Dalits has now confronted the BJP with a lower-caste protest movement that has taken its toll of its sitting CM because of inept handling of the troubles. It should be recalled that Modi rose to national prominence after the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat when he was CM. If those atrocities helped Modi electorally then, 2016 presents an entirely different scenario, with aggrieved Muslims in Gujarat joining hands with the Dalits in a joint movement against the BJP. The BJP’s troubles, brought on entirely because the Hindutva brigade hardliners are attempting to impose their religiously motivated ideology on India’s diverse religious, ethnic and caste reality, could translate into political disadvantage in state elections and even take the shine off its development promises. Quick to take advantage of the opportunity, the Aam Aadmi Party’s leader and CM of New Delhi Arvind Kejri has claimed Patel’s resignation is because of the challenge the rise of his party poses for the BJP. He adds that the government is arresting his party’s MLAs to harass them, and warns he may be killed by a BJP that has lost its composure. Whatever the weight of these assertions, the irreducible fact remains that the very hardline atrocities against Muslims and Dalits that brought the BJP to power are now turning against them. The BJP is discovering just how bitter the fruit of being hoist by its own petard may prove.

Business Recorder Column Aug 2, 2016

Draconian Cybercrimes Bill Rashed Rahman The Cybercrimes Bill 2016 has been unanimously passed by the Senate after incorporating about 55 amendments in the draft received from the National Assembly. It will now be sent back to the National Assembly for consideration. The National Assembly had discussed the Bill in committee earlier but failed to pass it before the deadline for the Bill expired. Although the Senate version of the Bill was passed unanimously after the Senate’s deliberations, disquiet and reservations regarding its provisions and the punishments prescribed remain. For one, Minister of State for IT Anusha Rehman’s claims of all stakeholders, civil society, etc, being consulted and taken on board after public hearings do not stand up to scrutiny, since these groups continue to criticise the fact that their views and objections to the draconian thrust of the Bill have not been taken into account. Even in wider society, apprehensions abound regarding the purposes and workings of the legislation. The government claims cyber crime, terrorism and various social ills such as women’s harassment or child pornography online pose new challenges that require a special law to control and regulate the complex and rapidly evolving world of cyberspace. While there is weight in the argument that misuse and abuse of the unprecedented freedom and outreach of the internet for terrorist, hate and other crimes is a fact of life, seemingly harmless online activity such as simply sharing memes lampooning politicians to downloading your favourite movie or TV show could also attract the penal clauses of the Bill, with varying punishments up to 14 years imprisonment and fines up to Rs 50 million. Also, the authority to manage this prosecution (persecution in some cases?) will be a body under the executive. An attempt has been made through the amendments introduced in the Senate to provide parliamentary and judicial oversight but critics are not satisfied this will be sufficient to prevent recurring abuse of the law. Other criticisms of the Bill revolve around its nebulous, overly generalised language, opening the doors to the possibility of endless abuse by overzealous guardians of Pakistan’s cyber frontiers. These critics argue that misuse or abuse of cyberspace, if they cause tangible harm, can and should be dealt with under the existing penal codes. Second, it has been argued that the legislators who passed this Bill know very little about the possible consequences of what they have proposed. The Bill has been rushed through while going through the motions of a public and parliamentary debate. Even its authors admit it is not ‘perfect’. Why the hurry? What was the pressing rationale for not allowing experts in the field (far more to be found outside rather than in parliament) to have their say, thoroughly debate the provisions and implications of the Bill, and come to a sensible consensus that would have weighed the inalienable right of freedom of speech against the purported concerns of the movers of this legislation? As it stands, the Bill has not satisfied its critics that it is not fundamentally skewed against the constitutional democratic right of freedom of expression. Again, critics are not prepared to concede in the matter of this Bill that it is ‘democratic’ merely because it bears the imprimatur of parliament. Rather, in their eyes it bears the stamp of a ‘fascist’ piece of legislation that can and may be used against dissident opinion in our society of all shades and hues, but particularly of the progressive and liberal variety. Can the exploitation of cyberspace by terrorists and hatemongers be prevented by such legislation? It seems a tall ask, if not a virtual impossibility. Perhaps our legislators should have occupied themselves more usefully in crafting the missing counter-narrative to the terrorists and intolerant elements in our society and discovering, amongst other means, the methods of disseminating it through the internet and cyberspace. The internet and cyberspace are new worlds inadequately understood by most people. In this unenlightened category must now regretfully be added the worthies who inhabit the hallowed halls of our parliament. Democracy is desirable, but if our elected representatives fail to uphold the collective wisdom of society through their own pooled wisdom, where is the aggrieved citizen to turn? As it is, the much needed continuation of democracy notwithstanding, our elected representatives have not covered themselves with legislative glory and on occasion, crocodile tears notwithstanding, attracted heaps of ignominy on themselves (e.g. the 21st Amendment that conceded the setting up of military courts). What our legislator worthies have failed to grasp is that the internet inherently, by its very design, cannot be controlled or regulated. One has only to cast one’s eye back on the farce of the ban on YouTube, which was almost immediately breached by our incredibly smart, tech-savvy youth, to realise that our parliamentarians are on a Quixotic mission of tilting against windmills. Nowhere in the world, despite concerns about cyber security, terrorist recruitment and the like, have governments attempted to control the internet world and cyberspace by throwing the baby of the unprecedented freedom associated with the new technology out with the bathwater of concerns about security, terrorism and morality. So what after all is the real purpose behind an exercise that is more than likely to end in a futile chase after shadows? It is precisely the lack of control and inability to regulate the world of the internet and cyberspace that terrifies a ruling elite that has succeeded in ‘taming’ the old mainstream media. It is the new media of the future that this elite wishes to bring under its putrefying thumb. In this endeavour, however, it may find the Myth of Sisyphus a good source to predict how this will end: not with a bang, but a whimper, repeated endlessly until ennui overtakes us all. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com