Business Recorder Editorial March 16, 2021

Crude Senate satire

 

The immediate dust may have settled following the victory of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s) candidates for Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman, but this saga is far from over. Sadiq Sanjrani, the outgoing Chairman and PTI candidate, won by 48 votes to his Pakistan Democratic Party (PDM) rival Yousaf Raza Gilani’s 42 in a house of 98 voters, the Jamaat-i-Islami’s sole Senator having abstained and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N’s) elected senator Ishaq Dar not having taken oath. However, the result immediately produced an outcry by the opposition since presiding officer Senator Muzaffar Hussain Shah rejected seven votes for Gilani on the grounds that the stamp on their ballots was affixed on Gilani’s name rather than the space in front of it. An eighth ballot was rejected because the stamp was affixed on both candidates’ names. Had the seven Gilani votes not been rejected, he would have won by a narrow margin of 49-48. Interestingly, after Sanjrani took his oath of office despite the opposition’s loud protests and presided over the election of Deputy Chairman, the PTI’s candidate, Mirza Mohammad Afridi won by 54 votes to the PDM’s Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri’s 44. While the victory of Sanjrani can easily be traced to the seven rejected votes, Afridi’s clear margin of 10 is not as easy to explain. The common factor in both cases is seven votes, rejected in the case of the Chairman’s election, and possibly cast for the government’s candidate in the Deputy Chairman’s election. The opposition is discussing a legal challenge to Shah’s ruling in the courts, citing a body of case law laid down by the higher courts holding that the intent of the voter, if it can be clearly determined, cannot be shot down on a mere technicality. On the other hand, the argument by legal experts goes that parliament’s proceedings cannot be challenged in any court of law. The question to be adjudicated by the courts therefore will be whether the Senate elections fall within the purview of parliamentary proceedings or, since the Senate becomes an electoral college for the purposes of electing a Chairman and Deputy Chairman, any irregularities in this process are open to legal review. It may be mentioned in passing that the discovery of hidden cameras in the polling booth just before votes were cast has created yet another controversy as to who was responsible for this surreptitious act. Shah announced an inquiry committee with three members from each side to conduct an investigation into this skullduggery.

While the victory has elevated the government badly rattled by Yousaf Raza Gilani winning the Islamabad Senate seat against Hafeez Shaikh, which they countered by Prime Minister Imran Khan taking a vote of confidence from the National Assembly, the victory may prove pyrrhic. It is, however, important to note that the number of Hafeez’s rejected votes had exceeded Gilani’s victory margin! Apart from the legal challenge, the PDM may be forced to more seriously consider the streets rather than parliament as the political battleground. The PDM has already announced a “long march” on Islamabad on March 26, and we may witness in the days ahead a greater concentration on organising that event. Further, given the parlous state of relations between the treasury and opposition benches, it remains to be seen if the government will be able, as is its stated desire, to pass meaningful legislation through the Senate with a narrow and possibly uncertain majority. Joint sessions of both houses could offer a way out of this conundrum, but frequent resort to these could create further difficulties. To say that the shenanigans in recent days surrounding the Senate elections have saddened thinking people about the state of our democracy would be a huge understatement. Although allegations of dirty tricks are routine regarding the upper house’s elections, some new records may have been set in this round. For one, the PTI may have won the elections, but has lost the moral high ground on which it perched with its anti-corruption narrative. The opposition too stands tainted with charges of using money to swing electoral verdicts its way. The role of the establishment, cloaked as it is in a thick veil of secrecy, continues to trouble those desirous of the country finally seeing a credible, transparent, democratic system functioning as it should.

Business Recorder Editorial March 13, 2021

Afghan peace plan threatened

 

US Special Envoy for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, as expected, swung by Islamabad after visits to Kabul and Doha, where he met the Afghan government leaders and the Taliban, respectively. In Islamabad, Khalilzad met COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa, ISI chief Lt-General Faiz Hameed and other government officials. What little has emerged into public view after this round of shuttle diplomacy is the new proposed plan by the Biden administration to push the peace process forward. This plan entails a 90-day period of reduction in the violence that has continued to rage, if not incrementally increased, since the US-Taliban accord signed in Doha in February 2020, and national elections under a transitional Afghan government. In addition, Washington is launching an international and regional diplomatic effort to forge a consensus on the way forward to a negotiated peace. The reduction in violence, particularly by the Taliban, is expected to boost this diplomatic effort and pre-empt the traditional Taliban spring offensive. However, ever since the Doha accord, the Taliban have avoided attacking the US and NATO forces while pressing home their offensive against the Afghan government and its security forces irrespective of the season. It must be said that the response of the parties to the conflict and important stakeholders says it all about the chances of success of the new initiative. The Taliban are said to be considering the plan, but reports of their rejecting outright fresh elections as western interference says all there is to say about the chances of the plan’s success. The Afghan government, on the other hand, seems adamant that there will be no compromise on Afghanistan’s Constitution and the people’s right to vote. Pakistan, perhaps because it has yet to digest the intricacies of the proposed plan, is meaningfully silent despite the US’s desire for Islamabad to use its influence with the Taliban to get them to agree. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has written a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani urging him to develop a consensus in Afghanistan on negotiations with the Taliban on governance, power sharing, and related essential supporting principles, warning that the Taliban could make rapid territorial gains in the event of a US withdrawal. That withdrawal, fixed at May 1, 2021 by the previous Trump administration, now seems destined to become a casualty of the review initiated by the Biden administration because Washington feels the Taliban have violated the spirit if not the letter of the Doha accord by their persisting violence against the Afghan government.

The US’s difficulties in Afghanistan eerily echo similar dilemmas for every foreign invader and occupier of Afghanistan. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan has earned the sobriquet of ‘the graveyard of empires’. In the rush of blood following the 9/11 attacks, the US felt compelled to act once the Taliban government refused to play ball against al Qaeda, the author of the attacks. Twenty years and many lives and lucre lost later, the classic dilemma Washington faces is it is likely to be damned if it does not withdraw, and damned if it does. The Taliban, sensing the exhaustion amongst the Americans regarding a seemingly never ending and unwinnable war, have pressed home their advantage by committing only to make it impossible in future for Afghan soil to be used to attack the US and its allies in return for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Arguably, the Ashraf Ghani government can be described as a bystander insofar as this deal is concerned. However, Pakistan, as a major stakeholder and supporter of the Taliban, feels compelled to play its role to facilitate the peace process since there may well have crept in a realisation that pushing the Pashtun Taliban card beyond a point could end up in a catastrophe in Afghanistan, with concomitant negative fallout for Pakistan itself. This catastrophe could, if it appears the Taliban are poised for victory and a total takeover, resurrect ethnic and sectarian fault lines that could conceivably tear Afghanistan apart. Islamabad therefore, in its own long term interests, must follow up the positive role it has played in facilitating the Doha accord by bending its back to persuade the Taliban to find a modus vivendi with the Afghan government for a peaceful transition, lest the whole powder keg blow up in everyone’s face.

Business Recorder Editorial March 11, 2021

Offers and counter-offers

 

The furore over the Islamabad Senate seat won by former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had yet to die down when intense lobbying and jockeying across the board was witnessed for the Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman elections tomorrow. The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) has fielded incumbent Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani as its candidate for the top slot, and is still in discussions when these lines are being written about its nominee for Deputy Chairman. But what surprised and shook up the intense political scene on the eve of the polls was the ‘offer’ on March 9, 2021 by Defence Minister Pervez Khattak to Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) secretary general Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri to be its candidate for Deputy Chairman. Khattak revealed this to reporters after a meeting with Maulana Haideri in the presence of Sadiq Sanjrani. Although Maulana Haideri did not comment on the ‘offer’ then, later he rejected it out of hand as emanating from a government his party did not recognise as legitimate. Interestingly, following this development, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) special committee nominated Maulana Haideri as its candidate for Deputy Chairman, thereby elevating him to running mate for the PDM candidate for Chairman Yousaf Raza Gilani. The special committee also announced its decision to retain the seat of Leader of the Opposition for Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after former incumbent Raja Zafarul Haq bowed out of the Senate. This would, if he wins, be Maulana Haideri’s second stint as Deputy Chairman, the first being under former Chairman Raza Rabbani’s tenure. The belated refutation and condemnation of the so-called offer by the PTI to Maulana Haideri was further embellished by casting the move as an attempt to sow discord in the PDM, albeit unsuccessfully. During these to-and-fro goings on, some troubling noises emanated from the government’s side. Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan expressed total confidence that the government would win the coveted Chairman’s post despite the government being a hair’s breadth short of a majority in the upper house after the recent Senate polls. Information Minister Shibli Faraz on a TV show went a step further by asserting the government would do whatever was necessary to win the chairmanship. While refuting the ‘offer’ to Maulana Haideri, he argued the government could not be expected to play ‘nice’ when the opposition had allegedly resorted to corrupt practices during the Senate polls. It may be recalled that a controversy broke out after those polls regarding the ‘treachery’ of 15-16 PTI MNAs who either allegedly voted against Hafeez Shaikh or deliberately spoiled their ballots in exchange for huge bribes. Reading between the lines of Shibli Faraz’s statement, the government is implying that it will be a no holds barred contest. Perhaps both PM Imran Khan and his redoubtable Information Minister do not realise what such statements and attitudes could do to the credibility of the PTI’s anti-corruption narrative, if not the credibility of the government itself. As it is, even the vote of confidence obtained by PM Khan from the National Assembly following the Hafeez sheikh debacle has been rendered controversial over the actual number of PTI MNAs present and voting.

The intense lobbying on the eve of the contest tomorrow would be considered legitimate and according to parliamentary practice so long as no corruption was involved. However, given the murky goings on over recent days, the ‘everything is kosher’ attitude of the government would leave it with a lot of explaining to do if it is able to somehow convert its minority into a majority in the Senate tomorrow. Not only would this dent the high moral stand of the government that is its leit motif, it may also end up besmirching the fair face of our still fragile democratic system.

Business Recorder Editorial March 9, 2021

PM-ECP row

 

An unseemly row has broken out between Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government on the one hand and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on the other following the shock defeat of Hafeez Shaikh by former PM Yousaf Raza Gilani for an Islamabad Senate seat. Gilani won by five votes, while seven ballots were rejected. Following this defeat in the high stakes contest, PM Imran Khan in his television address to the country the next day roundly castigated the ECP for ‘damaging democracy’ through adhering to a secret ballot for the Senate elections, which, according to this logic, resulted in 15-16 PTI MNAs being able to vote against the government’s candidate or deliberately defacing their ballot in return, it is alleged, for money. The ECP’s response to this angry diatribe was to iterate that it would not succumb to pressure just to appease somebody, could not ignore the Constitution and law, and advised the PTI not to be so very upset, have a big heart to accept defeat, and stop its mudslinging on the ECP after losing one (albeit politically important) Senate seat while being happy at the rest of the seats it had won. This prompted a press conference by three PTI heavyweights arguing the ECP should be ashamed not saddened for not being able to conduct a clean, corruption-free election as mandated by the Supreme Court (SC) in its verdict on the presidential reference. Naturally the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) did not feel it could stay out of this exchange, with Maulana Fazlur Rehman and other PDM leaders arguing Imran Khan was trying to pressurise the ECP in the context of the PTI foreign funding case before the ECP. As to the meeting between the PM, COAS and ISI chief one day after the Hafeez Shaikh debacle, the hitherto unremarked upon confab took on new meaning in terms of its timing. The PDM view was that this was an attempt to drag the military into the current political crisis, but would not benefit the government in any way.

During his address to the country, PM Imran Khan revealed he would take a vote of confidence from the National Assembly (NA) on March 6, 2021, which he did and secured 178 votes, five more than required. However, it proved a one-sided and lacklustre affair simply because the opposition boycotted it. In the buildup to the confidence vote, the PM and other ministers hosted the party’s MNAs in Islamabad, implying the 15-16 ‘traitors’ had been extended a ‘forgive and forget’ clean chit or an ‘NRO’ to use the PTI lexicon, despite Imran Khan’s rant the previous day. The logic for this turnaround was impeccable and undeniable. The wavering members’ votes were needed to prevent the fall of the government if it did not achieve the magic figure of 172 votes. This contradiction at the heart of the government’s approach was of course pounced upon by the opposition to argue that this had demolished the PTI’s anti-corruption narrative, on which it had come to power. No amount of reiteration of commitment to this objective by PM Imran Khan on the floor of the house after the confidence vote could erase the discomfort around the compromise.

Actually, the PTI government has repeatedly shot itself in the foot in its misplaced efforts to change the Senate elections mode to some form of open balloting or, at the very least, technologically making votes traceable and identifiable. Although the campaign meandered through multiple levels and directions of push, including an attempted (but doomed) constitutional amendment and a presidential reference to the SC, it all proved too little, too late, and arguably fundamentally flawed and misconceived. The real area to introspect on for the government after this debacle is not seek scapegoats such as the ECP, but reflect on the manner in which Imran Khan has injured his chances of meaningful legislation through at least a minimum of healthy relations with the opposition, ignored (by and large) parliament, and remained aloof (and thereby created an impression of arrogance) from his party’s and coalition’s parliamentarians. In recent days, as a result of the government’s worries regarding the solidity of their parliamentarians’ loyalties, some of this was reversed. A summing up of these events would indicate that PM Imran Khan has to draw the (sometimes bitter) lessons of the flaws in his approach to politics. However, his speech in the NA after the confidence vote was on such familiar lines that scepticism must attend any hopes for such a change.

Business Recorder Editorial March 5, 2021

Afghanistan quagmire

 

A general spike in violence in Afghanistan since the Doha agreement between the US and the Taliban carries within its fold an increase in targeted killings. The latest such incident took place on March 2, 2021 in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, when three women employees of a media group, Enikass Radio and TV, were gunned down in two separate attacks while they were walking home from work. Media workers generally are considered at risk in the war-torn country. Their death toll in the last six months alone is 15, if these latest three fatalities are included. Not only journalists, but clerics, activists and judges have been targeted in the recent wave of attacks, generating panic and forcing some to go into hiding or even flee the country. There has so far been no claim of responsibility for the Jalalabad atrocity, although in December 2020 the Islamic State (IS) claimed killing another Enikass employee. The Taliban have denied they are involved in the latest killings, but Nangarhar police chief Juma Gul Hemat announced that an armed suspect had been arrested while trying to flee, and had confessed to mounting the attack and being a member of the Taliban. Since the Doha agreement, both the Taliban and the Afghan government blame each other for attacks to discredit the peace deal or wring greater concessions. The Doha agreement lays down a withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 US troops by May 2021, but the new Biden administration is reviewing the deal in the light of what appears to be the Taliban declaring open season on the Afghan government and its forces while avoiding attacking the remaining US and NATO forces. It needs to be recalled that the Afghan government was not taken on board in the Doha agreement, and subsequent planned talks between Kabul and the Taliban barely appear to be sputtering along.

Meanwhile US Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, seems to be undertaking another round of shuttle diplomacy. After visiting Kabul for talks with President Ashraf Ghani and Chairman High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah on March 1, 2021, Khalilzad was expected to travel to Doha for discussions with the Taliban. The obvious purpose of this round of visits is to expedite the barely alive talks between all parties, especially the Afghanistan government and the Taliban. Once Doha is done, Khalilzad may visit other regional capitals, and it would be surprising if he did not stop over in Islamabad, Pakistan being a major stakeholder in the Afghan endgame. The US State Department meanwhile has hinted at follow up visits by their diplomats to nudge the stalled process forward. Although Pakistan has earned kudos from the former Trump administration and the new Biden set up for facilitating the Doha talks, if the peace process makes shipwreck on the intransigence of the Taliban regarding their increased violence instead of a negotiated ceasefire, Pakistan may suffer some adverse consequences of the fallout of such a failure to move from war to peace. Pakistan managed to reverse Trump’s initial hostility towards it by lubricating the Doha process. Similar words of praise do lace the new Biden administration’s statements too, but Pakistan should no longer sanguinely continue patting itself on the back while the peace deal unravels before our eyes. Logically, if the desire for US and NATO withdrawal is traced from Obama to Trump, it would be in the interests of the Taliban, if they think history is on their side, to exercise restraint and thereby ensure western withdrawal instead of extending dire warnings as Taliban deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani has done, to adhere to the May 2021 withdrawal deadline. It would be in the interests of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the region and the western alliance to persuade the Taliban to go slow if not cease violent attacks. If Pakistan can exercise its influence on the Taliban in this regard, it seems the wise course. Otherwise the long running war in Afghanistan may see an indefinite prolongation, with all the consequences that entails for all stakeholders, but particularly Pakistan.

The March 2021 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out

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

Contents:

1. Asad Pervaz: The historical development of Saraiki identity and impediments in the establishment of South Punjab province.

2. Book Review: Aisha Ahmed reviews Dr Mubashir Rizvi: The Ethics of Staying: Social Movements and Land Rights Politics in Pakistan.

3. Marxism and National Liberation (Tricontinental).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review

Director, Research and Publication Centre

Business Recorder Editorial March 3, 2021

SC on Senate polls

 

The much-anticipated Supreme Court (SC) ruling on the upcoming Senate polls was delivered on March 1, 2021, just two days before the scheduled polling. In sum, the apex court has delivered its opinion through a short order (detailed judgement to follow) whereby by a majority of 4-1 (Justice Yahya Afridi dissenting in rejecting the presidential reference as it did not pertain to a point of law), it has declared that the Senate elections are indeed held “under the Constitution” and therefore by a secret ballot. However, given the concerns expressed of late (particularly by the ruling party) regarding the malign influence of corruption in the Senate elections, the SC has reminded the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of its responsibility to ensure these elections are held honestly, justly, fairly and in accordance with the law, with corrupt practices being guarded against, on which the SC had issued successive judgements, the most exhaustive being Workers Party Pakistan through Akhtar Hussain, 2012. In this regard, the SC’s short order makes reference to its judgement in Niaz Ahmed vs Azizuddin, 1967, whereby secrecy of the ballot had not to be implemented in an ideal or absolute sense but tempered by practical considerations necessitated by the processes of election. This reference has engendered a new controversy, with the government pouncing on it as a ‘directive’ to the ECP to use whatever technology or other means can ensure the traceability and identification of votes cast, and the opposition and bar councils seeing the short order entire as having placed the ball in the ECP’s court through a general declaration regarding the issue of secrecy without any directive to the ECP to make ballots traceable or identifiable. Despite the government side approaching the ECP to press it in this regard, there remains a healthy dose of scepticism whether the change in the method of balloting can satisfactorily be carried out literally in the few hours remaining for the election. Second, as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz has stated, considerable doubts continue to linger regarding technology in the light of the Result Transmission System (RTS) debacle during the 2018 controversial general elections. Last but by no means least, in the zeal to eliminate corruption in the Senate elections through traceability and identification of votes, could we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater regarding parliamentarians’ right to vote according to their conscience? These are indeed weighty considerations, and deserving perhaps of a calmer and more considered examination rather than rushing pell-mell into new and perhaps unanticipated problems.

Even if the ECP pulls the rabbit of a traceable and identifiable vote through technology out of its hat, will that in and by itself rid us of the curse of corruption in the Senate elections? If we go by the shenanigans in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan on the eve of these elections, the jury is out. Punjab has, thanks to the manipulative skills of the Chaudhries, arrived at a traditional ‘muk muka’(compromise) with the opposition that gives every party in the Punjab Assembly the exact number of seats in the Senate according to their party strength. Can this by any stretch be described as an ‘honestly, justly, fairly and in accordance with the law’ election as the SC enjoins in its short order? Can the definition of ‘corruption’ then be stretched by this example to non-monetary mutual ‘benefits’? In Sindh, where the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) is in the opposition, dissenting voices are being heard from its MPAs regarding the buying and selling of votes and the central leadership’s turning a deaf ear to their MPAs’ pleas. In Balochistan, the Deputy Speaker National Assembly, Qasim Suri, has taken on the role of negotiator with the opposition, offering them four Senate seats in return for allowing the ruling alliance’s candidates unchallenged election. It is another matter that the opposition is holding out for six seats. But the really important question is whether it is appropriate for the National Assembly Deputy Speaker to be openly lobbying for the ruling coalition? And what of the role of the Governors, particularly in Punjab and Sindh, who are at the heart of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sudden interest in meeting his party’s parliamentarians on the eve of the vote? If the definition of ‘corruption’ is to be limited to monetary benefits in exchange for parliamentarians’ votes, what chance does the aim of a clean politics have? In this controversy initiated and fuelled by the government, even the office of President has been ‘sullied’ (with some help, it must be admitted, of the incumbent himself) because of ill thought through moves such as presidential ordinances and references, all of which have fallen through after the SC decision. A corruption-free and credible electoral system is the need of the hour across the board, not just for the Senate, but the government’s misplaced and failed efforts as well as ‘ignoring’ our corrupt political culture hardly provide any efficacious answers.