Business Recorder Column February 16, 2021

Anti-corruption mantra, anyone?

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Amidst the hectic to and fro of nominations for the upcoming Senate elections, the video scandal showing some Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) Members of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly receiving wads of cash for their votes in the 2018 Senate elections has dented, if not destroyed, the high moral ground from which Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and his party launched their (continuing) anti-corruption mantra. In response to the growing scandal, the PM has set up a three member ministerial committee to probe the affair. The ‘honest’ PM does not seem to see the contradiction in his government being a judge in its own cause. The committee lacks credibility, composed as it is of Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry, Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari and Adviser to the PM on Accountability and Interior Shahzad Akbar. If anything, sceptics and critics are inclined to view this committee and its intended ‘probe’ as an attempted whitewash of the scandal.

Interestingly, some commentators on television have revealed that Imran Khan was shown videos of such bribery shenanigans of Members of Provincial Assemblies from his party much earlier. They have also alleged that the PTI government was behind the release of the video publicly now as an attempt to bolster the government’s floundering case for an open ballot in the Senate elections to prevent just such goings on. However, these commentators hold that the ill thought through gambit has backfired if not blown up in the government’s face. As an aside, reflect on Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid’s latest two cents in which he says even an open ballot will not prevent horse trading and bribery, allegedly a fact of life in every Senate election.

Speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser stands accused of involvement in the video skullduggery. Of course he has denied it vociferously. Defence Minister Pervez Khattak is accused of being a central figure if not the main force in the scandal. Circumstantially, it needs to be recalled that the MPAs concerned came from Aftab Sherpao’s Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) to the PTI, and were allegedly being bribed to stay loyal to the PTI in the 2018 Senate elections. Pervez Khattak was once a luminary of the QWP.

As though all this were not enough, Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda faces disqualification proceedings before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for failure to reveal his dual nationality when he contested the 2018 general elections for a National Assembly (NA) seat. The PTI has nominated him for the Senate election now, a move seen by analysts as an attempt to render these proceedings defunct as he would resign from the NA once elected to the Senate. But even if the IHC and the ECP find the petitions against him infructuous as a result, Vawda could, in legal experts’ opinion, be haunted by his hiding the truth about his dual nationality through a false affidavit, since he would no longer qualify as sadiqand ameen(honest and truthful). Readers need to recall that these were the very grounds on which the Supreme Court disqualified Nawaz Sharif.

Sadiq and ameen Jahangir Tareen, the architect and reputed ‘ATM’ of the PTI, stands disqualified because of the sugar and other scandals. The importance of Jahangir Tareen for the rise to power of Imran Khan can also be assessed on the basis that he ‘engineered’ the south Punjab large landowners who are reputedly perennial collaborators of the establishment (since British colonial times) into joining the PTI-led coalition to ensure a majority, without which even the tissue thin credibility of the PTI government would not have been possible. Now his waning fortunes within the PTI may be reviving since his extraordinary ‘herding’ skills are required for the upcoming Senate elections.

Last but certainly not least, the hype about Imran Khan being an ‘honest’ and well meaning man despite his self-confessed lack of ‘homework’ before taking office (which has translated into arguably one of the most inept governments in our history) needs to be tested on the touchstone of the fact that he accepted office on the basis of a general election widely believed to have been orchestrated if not rigged by the military establishment and after coming to power, had his illegal ‘palace’ in Bani Gala regularised for a paltry sum of money (purportedly a ‘fine’) while the rest of the illegal residents of Bani Gala were left crying that this was discrimination and injustice.

A perusal of just these few facts indicates that Imran Khan and the PTI have never taken the trouble to glance at their own reflection in the mirror of corruption that is endemic to our politics and national life, including our ‘holy cow’ institutions. Forget the corruption of state institutions whose example and practices have impacted society’s values across the board. Are we not aware of the ‘corruption’ that bedevils all elections in Pakistan? In general elections this is not confined to ‘pork barrel’ promises but takes the open form of material bribery of voters. An endemic, systemic state of corruption cannot be rooted out by targeting selectively the leaders of the opposition through a by now thoroughly discredited National Accountability Bureau as little more than the instrument of a political witch-hunt. ‘Accountability’ in our history, through successive regimes from Farooq Leghari, Nawaz Sharif to Pervez Musharraf and the present day, has been little else.

Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru was fond of saying: give me 70 percent work and I will accept 30 percent corruption. In our experience, these percentages are incrementally veering towards the latter being 70 percent and the former a dubious 30 percent, a reversal-in-progress that is impacting and likely to destroy whatever is left of the state and its institutions’ functioning. Nawaz Sharif is still remembered for building the motorways. Perhaps that was a time when the percentages had not yet ‘reversed’. Now, in exile and therefore beyond the reach of our army of anti-corruption crusaders of dubious credentials, Nawaz Sharif speaks boldly against the top brass of the military in the belief and with the supreme confidence that history is on his side. Only time and circumstance will show whether he, our latest unlikely hero (of which our panoply stretches back through time), will be proved right or not.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The February 2021 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out

 The February 2021 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Hassan Basharat: Afghan peace process: What is Pakistan's dilemma?

2. Key address by Dr Fidel Castro Ruz.

3. Professor Dr Maqsudul Hasan Nuri: Cuban-Soviet relations in Africa (1975-1980): 'Partner-proxy' relations: a theoretical debate – III.

4. Liliana Plumeda and Carlos Vargas: IWC Report MEXICO.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre 

Business Recorder Editorial February 6, 2021

PM and missing persons

 

On Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s bidding, a recent order of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on missing persons was presented in the federal cabinet’s meeting on February 2, 2021. IHC Chief Justice (CJ) Athar Minallah in his judgement on the issue had stated that the PM and the government could be held responsible for their failure to protect the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of citizens, since the buck stops at the top. The judgement went on to state that enforced disappearance is the most heinous crime and intolerable in a society governed under the Constitution (or, one might add, any society). The judgement related to a petitioner whose son went missing in 2015 and despite the poor father’s running from pillar to post, no trace of the man could be found. Of course this is the disconcerting pattern of almost every case of missing persons that finds its way to the courts. The basic reason for this injustice is the embedded impunity enjoyed by the security services, widely believed to be the authors and practitioners of these heinous acts. The IHC CJ did not confine himself to the current PM and government, but sought the assistance of the Attorney General  for Pakistan (AGP)to submit a list of all the PMs and federal ministers who held office since 2015. The AG was further asked to inform the court why exemplary costs may not be imposed on all those who may be declared responsible for the failure of the state to give a satisfactory explanation for the disappearance of the petitioner’s son. In short, the IHC CJ has put the current and past governments since 2015 on notice in this case. If this becomes a legal precedent, a veritable Pandora’s box may be opened up regarding the heinous practice of enforced disappearance from its early beginnings about 20 years ago, seemingly justified by the security agencies as necessary to combat fundamentalist terrorism generally as well as the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan. The practice has reaped hundreds if not thousands of people missing, and from its early avatar of the ‘kill and dump’ policy in Balochistan that has delivered many dead bodies drilled with bullet holes and bearing marks of torture, it has by now spread all over the country. Enforced disappearance not only threatens the life and well being of the missing, it has proved a heart rending torture for the families and near and dear ones of the ‘disappeared’, whose wails and cries for news of their loved ones and pleas to try them in a court of law if they have committed any crime have gone unnoticed by the powers that be. The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED) set up in 2011 under former Justice Javed Iqbal who is the present chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has failed to provide justice to even the victims whose cases have been reported to it, which in any case seems an insignificant number compared with the extent of the problem. Nor has the COIED held even a single perpetrator of the illegal practice of enforced disappearance responsible or taken any action against the same who, as mentioned above, seem to enjoy an unbreachable impunity even before the courts. Many instances are by now part of the record that if and when the security agencies have had the admission wrung out of them by a court that a disappeared person is being held by them in some detention centre, the incarcerated person still cannot be confident of being charged before a court of law, released, or even allowed to meet his grieving family and loved ones.

It is good, if not encouraging, that PM Imran Khan has been shaken awake by the IHC verdict. His reported statement in the cabinet meeting that he did not want even a single person to be missing contrasts with the continuation of enforced disappearance during his over two years in office. Since the impunity in which the security services are cocooned is the heart of the problem, it will be a test of the PM’s rhetoric that he and the military are ‘on the same page’ whether he can penetrate this dark barrier. If not, his agreeing with and acceptance of the IHC verdict may become one more in a long list of promises unkept.

Business Recorder Editorial February 4, 2021

Press freedom under attack in Modi’s India

 

Indian Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government appears to be rattled by the protest of tens of thousands of farmers camped on the outskirts of the capital New Delhi in the biting cold since November 26, 2020. These farmers are demanding the withdrawal of new agricultural laws by Modi’s government that they say will end guaranteed pricing, place them at the mercy of corporate buyers instead of government controlled markets, leading to the possible loss of their small holdings of land. Despite decades of economic growth, up to half of India’s population still relies on growing crops on small parcels of land, typically less than three acres. The hitherto huge but peaceful farmers’ protest took on militant hues on India’s Republic Day on January 26, 2021, when a contingent of protestors, taking advantage perhaps of the mass breach of barriers erected by the police, entered the Red Fort in Delhi and raised a Khalistan flag instead of India’s national tricolour. In the ongoing melee, a witness and relative of a man who died reported to journalists on the ground that he had been shot dead by the police. Reports in mainstream and social media to this effect followed, but were later negated by the clarification that the man had in fact died when his tractor overturned. The Modi government has pounced on the earlier incorrect reports to have its supporters in at least five states file charges against several veteran journalists, including Rajdeep Sardesai, a prominent anchor on the India Today TV channel, and Vinod Jose, executive editor of Caravanmagazine. The cases by residents of those states (largely those ruled by the BJP – no surprise – according to Anand Sahay, President of the Press Club of India) were filed under as many as 10 legal provisions, according to the Editors Guild Of India, including sedition, promoting communal disharmony, and insulting religious beliefs. In language disconcertingly similar in all the filings, the journalists named are accused of having provoked the protestors for political and personal gains through false, misleading information online. In blatant kowtowing to government pressure (and not acceding to legitimate ‘requests’, as Twitter’s mea culpa pretends), Twitter blocked about 250 accounts and tweets, including farmer protestors and a prominent news magazine. Indian media associations and international press freedom organisations such as Reporters Without Borders have condemned all these actions, including Twitter’s, as a shocking case of blatant censorship.

Anand Sahay has rightly described the Modi government’s move as a criminal act to ascribe the reporting of a developing story to motivated reporting. He may well have added that this is not the first occasion the Modi government had attempted to stifle the media, nor, given its Hindutva agenda, is it likely to be the last. Authoritarian, right wing, fascist regimes are endemically prone to shooting the messenger. Of course for this to be happening in the ‘largest democracy in the world’ certainly gives pause for thought. Press freedom in India has shrunk under Modi, while being marked by attacks on and intimidation of journalists. Of course the BJP government goes blue in the face denying this. However, India slipped two places in the annual World Press Freedom rankings by Reporters Without Borders in 2020, which noted constant press freedom violations, including political violence against journalists and increased pressure on the media to toe the Hindutva line. It is regrettable that journalists all over the country are now more or less in the same boat as the media in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir since its illegal annexation. But that should encourage journalists across the length and breadth of the country to unite and fight in the cause of press freedom, without which democracy runs the risk of being reduced to either a hollow sham or the expedient handmaiden of the Hindu Rashtramobs.

Business Recorder Column February 2, 2021

Military coup in Myanmar

 

Rashed Rahman

 

On a cold, wintry morning of Monday, February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military proved the weeks-long rumours of an impending coup correct. In early morning raids and other steps, the civilian de facto leader of the country, Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior government leaders were detained, a one-year state of emergency declared, an internet and communications blackout imposed, banks and all TV channels except the military-owned Myawaddy TV shut down and soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital, Yangon. The coup came just hours before the first session of the newly elected parliament in the November 2020 elections that Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), swept, garnering 83 per cent of the votes cast. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won just 33 of the 476 seats, much to the disappointment of army chief Min Aung Hlaing.

The military retaliated by levelling allegations of voting irregularities. Min Aung Hlaing’s office issued a statement that fresh elections would only be held after the Election Commission (EC) is ‘reconstituted’ and voter lists ‘investigated’. The EC responded by denying there had been any voter fraud, arguing that errors such as duplication of voters’ names were not enough to impact the result.

The coup has been greeted with widespread international condemnation. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement calling for the release of all detained government officials and civil society activists, respecting the people’s will, and reversing all the military’s actions immediately. Similar sentiments flowed from the self-described ‘international community’ (read the west).

Myanmar was in a perilous state even before this aborted election. The country has been awash with weapons for decades, not only because of the long running nationalist/ethnic insurgencies by minorities. With millions unable to feed themselves, a crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, and the arrest along with the NLD leaders of the chief minister of Karen state, one of the ethnic minorities with a long history of armed struggle since the first military coup that overthrew Suu Kyi’s father and national hero Aung San, the NLD’s call for peaceful protests may well be accompanied by a resurgence of the ethnic minorities’ insurgencies.

One set of speculations surrounding the coup and its timing revolves around the personal agenda of army chief Min Aung Hlaing. He is under US sanctions since December 2019 and under investigation by the International Criminal Court for serious human rights abuses of the Rohingya Muslim community/refugees. The military’s crackdown on and expulsion of the Rohingya also impacted Aung San Suu Kyi’s repute since she did not come out unequivocally against this treatment of the Rohingya. Despite this issue ‘sullying’ her Nobel Peace Prize of 1991, earned while she spent 15 years in detention from 1989 to 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi retains immense popularity amongst her people. It will be no simple matter for the military to overcome the peaceful protests and also possible armed ethnic insurgencies. Army chief Min Aung Hlaing is reported to have stashed away considerable investments abroad. He is due to retire later this year. Perhaps the coup is his way of safeguarding his wealth without questions asked and clinging to power despite his impending retirement.

Myanmar was under isolationist military rule for 50 years from 1962 to 2011. Amongst its few friends and supporters was China. Beijing has assumed (so far) a meaningful silence on the coup. It remains to be seen whether China resurrects its generous aid and investment relationship with Myanmar once again under the military’s thumb. In 2015, because of domestic and international pressure, the military, having released Aung San Suu Kyi from her 15-year internment in 2010, allowed elections under the 2008 Constitution drafted by the ruling military junta, which allocates 25 per cent seats in parliament to the military, control of key ministries such as defence and home affairs and veto powers on constitutional issues. Despite these formidable powers of and control by the military, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD scored a landslide victory. This led to the formation of the first civilian government since the 1962 military coup. But even this ‘flawed’ democracy has now been demolished to prevent the NLD from forming a stronger government as a result of its November 2020 election sweep.

A military prone to coups, clinging for an interminable period to power, denying democracy and the rights of ethnic/national minorities. Why does this sound so familiar? Admittedly, unlike the Egyptian and Myanmar militaries, ours has only ‘intermittently’ mounted coups. Most of our military dictators have not been able to stay in power for more than a decade. With all the weaknesses and flaws of our political parties, the people of Pakistan have time and again shown their rejection of military rule. They may not be entirely enthused about the civilians in power in our history, but apart from members of the permanent collaborationist elite clique in our society, the people of Pakistan have time and again rejected military rule.

Ah, but tarry a bit. Unlike the Myanmar military that lives in a world of its own (supported by its few friends like China), ours is far more sophisticated in its ‘management’ of our polity. New and increasingly sophisticated means of control have flowered on our horizons over the years since military coups are by now frowned upon by even the west (unlike in the past), which finds sham democracies in the erstwhile Third World the best shell to protect and promote its capitalist interests. One such means of control over state and society is our version of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which today provides the ‘democratic’ window dressing to military control from behind an increasingly flimsy veil (no prizes for guessing its name). Alas, what we sorely lack is a leader of the courage, conviction and principles the world has come to associate with Aung San Suu Kyi, her failure to address the difficult Rohingya question notwithstanding.

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial February 2, 2021

SC verdict in Daniel Pearl case

 

The Supreme Court (SC) verdict on January 28, 2021 by a 2-1 majority in the appeal of the Sindh government against the Sindh High Court’s (SHC’s) April 2, 2020 overturning of Omer Sheikh’s conviction for kidnapping and killing a US journalist, Daniel Pearl, has raised a number of contentious issues. Although the SC verdict is still only a short order extending the benefit of the doubt to Omer Sheikh and the co-accused and ordering their release, the Sindh government, without waiting for the detailed judgement, has filed a petition for review/suspension of the order. The federal government too is preparing to file its own review petition soon. Daniel Pearl’s parents too will challenge the SC verdict. Two factors have impelled the two governments to make haste in this matter. One, the verdict has to be complied with immediately as no other charges exist against the accused and they are being held, since the SHC verdict reducing Omer Sheikh’s sentence to seven years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs two million, under the West Pakistan Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance 1960, which translates into preventive detention since he has been in prison since 2002. Two, the US’s virulent reaction has forced the authorities’ hand. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the White House spokesperson and the US Justice Department have expressed outrage at the verdict and the last has sent a formal proposal to Pakistan on January 29, 2021 to take custody of Omer Sheikh to stand trial in a US court. The Pearl family too have reacted with shock and anger at the outcome of the case and pleaded for justice to be done, if necessary through US intervention. The US reaction prompted Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to call US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ostensibly to congratulate him on his appointment and discuss a broad range of issues, but observers were quick to note that the Daniel Pearl case also came up. Despite Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s formulation that the case should be resolved through legal means, this remains a hollow assurance since it is the SC alone that will pronounce on the review petitions, starting February 1, 2021.

The case has once again highlighted the poor quality of our law enforcement agencies’ investigation and prosecution abilities. Interestingly, the conviction of the accused by an anti-terrorism court and sentence of death was badly exposed in the appeals procedure that indicated the absence of the theoretically higher bar of evidentiary evidence in the terrorism courts. Nor does the fact that the accused have been in prison longer than the SHC reduced sentence speak well of the creaking judicial system’s ability to bring cases to a timely conclusion, such an important case not excepted. The result is the absurd outcome of being forced to retain the accused in prison through a preventive detention law. Omer Sheikh’s track record indicates the character and proclivities of this man. British-born, he dropped out of the London School of Economics, disappeared into the Balkans, and resurfaced in India, where he was imprisoned for the kidnapping of four foreign tourists in Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (including a US citizen). Omer Sheikh was subsequently released in a hostage swap. He was believed to be part of the conspiracy to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, and called then President Asif Zardari from his prison cell in Pakistan pretending to be the Indian External Affairs Minister and threatening an impending attack. But his most heinous and grisliest adventure was the decapitation of Daniel Pearl after he was kidnapped and circulating the horrible crime via a video. In the last case, he was not just an abettor but widely considered the mastermind. Does such a person deserve clemency or freedom? The problem of course is that judges can only decide cases on the basis of what is presented before them in court. If that material is inadequate, flawed or unconvincing, judicial principles lay down that the accused must be given the benefit of the doubt. The real fault of course lies with the investigation and prosecution process, about which, in the light of this debacle, the less said the better.

Business Recorder Editorial January 29, 2021

Madrassa reforms

 

Like in the past, the long-standing struggle to reform the madrassas has once again run into snags and evasion by means of entangling the current government in legal and official complexities. As an indicator of this fact, it needs only to be pointed out that despite efforts by successive governments stretching back to 2003, so far only 295 out of an estimated 30,000 madrassas in the country have applied for registration. Nor have their sources of financing or lists of students been forthcoming. The rampant practice of building madrassas on government or private land through encroachment could not be checked either. It may be recalled how the Lal Masjid clerics and their student body in the affiliated madrassa next door invited a bloody tragedy in Islamabad. Every effort over the years to streamline the affairs of madrassas and bring them into the mainstream as far as education is concerned has been unsuccessful because of the resistance of the mullahs organised in five main madrassa boards that function collectively under the banner of the Ittehad-i-Tanzeemaat Madaris Pakistan. This august body held a meeting in Lahore on January 25, 2021 where a decision was taken to offer suggestions to the government on the registration issue. Registration was ‘agreed’ after prolonged discussions between the government and the madrassa boards as part of the enactment of the Islamabad Capital Territory Waqf Properties Act (ICTWPA) 2020 on September 24, 2020. This law forms part of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) requirements. Despite the ‘agreement’, the madrassa boards took up the matter on October 2, 2020 after the Education Ministry advertised in the national dailies that the madrassas should get themselves registered in their respective districts. Now the clerics and their students have taken up cudgels against the ICTWPA 2020 through a protest on January 26, 2021 before the National Press Club, Islamabad, claiming the government had backstabbed them through a law that violates their integrity and they would therefore continue boycotting the registration process.

Madrassa reform is not a new idea in Pakistan. As long ago as General Ayub Khan’s era, when Auqaf departments were first set up, the attempt to register madrassas was stymied by the formation of the five boards representing the Barelvi, Shia, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith and Jamaat-i-Islami madrassas that then claimed that all madrassas were managed by them. The idea was resurrected by General Pervez Musharraf in June 2001 with the formal registration process starting in 2003. The pattern of the madrassa boards’ evasion of registration and reform shows that even after successive governments have discussed and agreed the way forward, the boards simply shift the goal posts. Why this has happened and what it signifies can only be understood if we glance back at the mushroom growth of madrassas, thanks to Gulf Arab funding, during the Afghan wars that then fed recruits into the so-called jihad outfits that later mutated into active militant organisations. Foreign funding may be a thing of the past, at least substantially, but in the meantime the madrassas have acquired the kind of heft and clout that would be the envy of any political formation. To hold onto this advantage, reinforced by street power, the madrassas have resisted all attempts to bring them into the mainstream through their registration and reform of their curricula. Since the madrassas’ financing remains obscure and non-transparent, if not a closely guarded secret, this situation could run afoul of the FATF requirements. Pakistan simply cannot afford to invite the draconian punishments under the FATF. The Lal Masjid proved how difficult it is to restrain these elements from taking the law into their own hands and challenging the writ of the state, but a combination of persuasion and pressure has to be applied to straighten out a long-standing threat to state and society that now could drive the country into dire economic and other circumstances if Pakistan falls foul of the FATF conditions.