Business Recorder Editorial March 20, 2018

Faizabad dharna revelations

The 20-day dharna (sit-in) by the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYRA) in November 2017 at Faizabad in Islamabad came up for hearing in the Supreme Court (SC) on March 19, 2018. Notable in the proceedings was the ‘comprehensive’ report submitted by the ISI. In sum, it carried a description of the character of three central figures of the TLYRA: Khadim Hussain Rizvi, Dr Mohammad Ashraf Asif Jalali and Pir Muhammad Afzal Qadri. The last named escaped any adverse inference, but the first two were called unsavoury in more ways than one. The report went on to delineate the sequence of events during the dharna, the failed operation by the government on November 25, 2017, the role of the Punjab government and civilian intelligence agencies and the police. None of these escaped censure for sins of omission and commission, which the ISI said had been exploited by the TYLRA to spread unrest throughout the country. The ISI, the report states, recommended avoiding the use of force and seeking a peaceful solution through negotiations between the government and the TLYRA leaders. This advice was finally accepted after the botched police operation and the ISI was mandated by the Prime Minister’s Office to act as ‘mediator’ to defuse the situation, which it managed. While the report paints the ISI in positive colours, the federal and Punjab governments, the police and civilian intelligence agencies could not escape criticism. This may have served the ISI well but the SC was having none of it and trashed the report on the grounds that it had failed to enlighten the court about the profession and source of income of Khadim Hussain Rizvi and the other TYLRA leaders. Nor was the court satisfied with the generalised description of these worthies as corrupt without any flesh on the description how such corruption was being carried out and what was its source. So disturbed was the court at the inadequacies of the country’s top intelligence agency’s report that Justice Qazi Faez Isa was moved to say that he feared for the fate of the country if this was the state of affairs where the ISI could not enlighten the court on the TYLRA leaders’ source of funds and was unaware that millions of rupees of damage had been inflicted by the protestors.

While the SC was taking the ISI and other actors to task for their failure to explain adequately what had taken place in Faizabad, an Anti-Terrorist Court, losing patience with the non-appearance of Khadim Hussain Rizvi and other TYLRA leaders despite repeated summons, ordered non-bailable arrest warrants for the accused on the plea of various petitioners, including a father whose child died on the way to hospital because of the dharna blockade. However, the law enforcement agencies so far have been unable to lay their hands on the accused. This simply adds to the woeful lack of monitoring of the TYLRA before the dharna and the continuing neglect of this critical task even after it. Those of a suspicious bent of mind find all this highly dubious and the conspiracy minded find it smacking of collusion between the TYLRA and the deep state. Such allegations were rife at the time of the dharna. The reports submitted in the SC have done nothing to allay such suspicions and conspiracy theories and may even have deepened these perceptions. The people of Pakistan deserve to know the truth behind the curtain of half-truths and obfuscation that has continued to cloak the whole affair in smoke and mirrors. If the highest court in the land cannot get the intelligence agencies and authorities to inform it of the facts, what hope for ordinary citizens befuddled by this latest of a series of events befalling the polity that defy meaningful explanation.

Business Recorder Column March 19, 2018

Putin triumphant

Rashed Rahman

Russian President Vladimir Putin has won a record fourth term in the elections held on March 18, 2018 with 74 percent of the vote. This is the preliminary official exit poll and the final figure could be higher. Predictably, the opposition has alleged incidents of ballot stuffing and fraud, but these have not found traction with the election authorities or the public. Apart from Putin, there were seven other candidates in the running, with his most vocal critic, Alexei Navalny, barred on legal grounds. The Kremlin had hoped for a high turnout to provide greater legitimacy to Putin’s victory as Russia is currently under attack from the west over allegations of responsibility for the poisoning by a nerve agent of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain. This has coincided with fresh US sanctions over alleged Russian interference in the election of President Donald Trump.

Counting from 1999 when he became prime minister under then president Boris Yeltsin, Putin has been in power for two decades. During this period he has oscillated between the two top positions of prime minister and president, since the Russian Constitution does not allow more than two terms to a president. The current victory therefore will see Putin serve out his fourth term as president, punctuated by a middle stint as prime minister. Presidential terms were increased from four to six years in 2012. While the final outcome of the election was never in doubt given Putin’s 80 percent approval rating, the turnout amongst 107 million voters of 60 percent lends weight and legitimacy to his mandate till 2024. Putin will be 71 by then, and it is not beyond the imagination that thoughts of the transition and a successor is likely to exercise his mind and that of his colleagues to ensure the stability and restored sense of national pride he has presided over after the disastrous Yeltsin years prevails.

The west paints Putin as an autocrat presiding over a corrupt system dominated by his cronies. But the west’s own role in bringing about a brutal, unfettered loot sale of assets and wealth to the old communist party nomenklatura and a new breed of predatory emerging oligarchs under Yeltsin is glossed over, if it is mentioned at all. In fact, over the last two decades, it cannot be a coincidence that Putin’s actions against such oligarchs have aroused their hatred, political opposition, and open seeking of western support against him.

Russia is not a country that has evolved a democratic system a la the history of the west. It would be politic to remind ourselves of Russia’s modern history. The Czarist Empire extended over more contiguous territory than any other contemporary rival or country. Even after the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 into 15 countries, the remaining Russia is still the largest country by area in the world. The huge Czarist Empire expanded from Moscow from the sixteenth century to enfold through conquest not only its European part, but the huge expanse to the east running through Siberia all the way to the Pacific. It also succeeded in subjugating Central Asia and tying it firmly to its apron strings. This gave the Czarist Empire a unique character, not only in physical size but in the diversity of the peoples and nations in its fold. Virtually all religions could be found in its territories. Peoples and nations with diverse histories and stages of development lived there, all the way from pastoral nomads to aspiring capitalists and everything in between.

Capitalism developed late in the Czarist Empire, compared to western Europe and even the US (the latter could be considered an extension of the European system to the New World through settler colonialism). In fact feudalism thrived and lingered under the Czars, so much so that serfdom was not abolished until 1861. The reform effort of the nineteenth century, as often happens in hidebound, ossified systems (cf. the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century), began to feel the strains of the new forces being born in its womb colliding with the antediluvian hangovers of the past. One of the latter was the continuation of Czarist absolutism, supported on the pillars of the court nobility and feudal landowning class. However, within the womb of this medieval system were growing the seeds of the modern world, underpinned, albeit relatively weakly, by the green shoots of capitalism. Many attempts at overthrowing the Czarist system from within by rivals at the court, from without by a panoply of populists, anarchists, peasant revolutionaries and others produced great turmoil during the latter half of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th century. This culminated finally in first the February 1917 Revolution in the midst of WWI that overthrew the monarchy and declared a republic, later the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that ushered in communism.

Long after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) proclaimed by the Bolsheviks was established, went through the twists, turns, bloodshed of the civil war (1918-22), the revolution’s architect and leader Lenin’s passing away (1924), the penchant of all revolutions to consume their own children being played out under Stalin (1924-38), the initial defeat turned into triumphant victory over Hitler (1941-45), the devastating losses and privations of WWII rooted the desire for peace above all else in the hearts of the people of the USSR. That this desire gave rise to Khrushchev’s détente policies has to be located in that context, whatever one’s views about that thrust. Khrushchev did not survive the contradiction between détente and the aggressive Cold War anti-communism of the west led by the US. His successors, while clinging to the idea of a socialist world (largely the USSR and the Eastern European communist bloc), and not always consistent support to third world national liberation and revolutionary movements, imploded largely because the adventure in Afghanistan finally took its toll of the by now creaky system, which Gorbachev was trying to reform.

Communist old guard hardliners’ attempted coup against Gorbachev, who much later confessed to have been swayed towards social democracy, proved the last nail in the coffin of the USSR in 1991 and arguably the 20^th century edifice of worldwide communist revolution. While the capitalist west exulted in its victory in the Cold War and dismantling of the original home of the communist revolution, they saw in Gorbachev’s successor Yeltsin the perfect buffoon allowing them to penetrate the Russian economy for capitalism’s benefit (as part of the horizontal expansion of capitalism worldwide, later dubbed globalisation). While the dismantling of the old system overnight produced hunger and even starvation, the new breed of oligarchs aligned with the west became Yeltsin’s abiding legacy.

Putin took over from Yeltsin when the west’s machinations and the legacy of the post-Soviet past had reduced Russia to its knees. He was soon to face the betrayal of then US President Ronald Reagan’s assurances to Gorbachev while asking the latter to dismantle the Berlin Wall that the west (NATO) would not expand eastwards into the former (now independent) territories of the USSR or Eastern Europe. Today, NATO’s expansion eastwards is a fact. Threatened in its ‘near abroad’ by a west ruthlessly committed to weakening and keeping Russia on its knees, Putin pushed back. Hence the best laid plans of the west vis-à-vis Georgia and Ukraine were blunted. During the engineered Ukraine crisis, Putin took back Crimea, gifted to Ukraine during Khrushchev’s period, much to the teeth gnashing of the west. Abroad, after the debacles in Iraq and Libya, Russia drew a line in the sand in Syria and helped beat back the western effort to remove one of the last anti-Israel bastions in the region.

Putin’s push back to the US-led west’s desire to consolidate a unipolar world under their hegemony is what has produced the vilification campaign, personal against Putin, general against a recovered Russia. With all the flaws that could be pointed to in Russia’s system today, the people love and have rallied to Putin for recovering for them their just place in the sun and in today’s increasingly complex and conflict-ridden world.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

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Business Recorder editorial March 17, 2018

Bajwa’s assurance to FATA

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has told a tribal Jirga in Landi Kotal, Khyber Agency, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that he is very much in favour of the proposed merger of FATA into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. However, he added, nothing would be done without the stakeholders’ consent. No decision in the matter would be imposed from the outside. A meeting of pro-merger and anti-merger elements would be organized in the near future to deliberate on the matter. He went on to dilate on the reasons for FATA’s suffering, chief amongst which over the last four decades was a consequence of the Afghan wars that saw militants, mujahideen and terrorists based there. Not only did this lead to the emergence of a Pakistani Taliban, it added to the historical woes of the tribal areas because of an anachronistic colonial construct in pursuit of the British occupying power’s security considerations on the northwestern frontier of its Indian empire. To achieve this objective, and knowing well the penchant and history of the Pashtun tribes of the area to resist any occupier, the British imposed a draconian system of control. This included collective punishment of tribes under the notorious Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), total control of the lives of people in FATA by Political Agents appointed by the Governor-General, the absence of even those minimum rights available to the indigenous inhabitants of the rest of the subcontinent, and the ‘system’ of ‘gold and guns’ to bribe the tribal Malliks (chiefs) to keep their peoples quiescent. If today, some of those Malliks pose a vested interest roadblock to the merger of FATA with KP, while the dialogue suggested by General Bajwa may not be a bad thing, no section that benefited from this antediluvian construct in the past can be allowed to block the emergence of the people of FATA into the light of day in the modern world out of the darkness and backwardness in which they have been deliberately frozen for more than a century. Some political forces, for example Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F, have been resisting the notion of the merger of FATA with KP, ostensibly on the ground that the wishes of the people of FATA should first be ascertained. It is not clear whether General Bajwa’s proposed meeting of pro- and anti-merger elements springs from and is a response to such objections, but if handled properly, it could serve to let the air out of this and other vested interest balloons. And while FATA’s fate is being pondered, we should not forget the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), which may be considered the ‘poor cousins’ of the people of FATA. All these areas, FATA and PATA, should now be merged into KP, the colonial legacy done away with, and the rights of the tribal people as full citizens accorded to them.

It is a matter of regret that Pakistan, despite emerging as an independent state 70 years ago, failed to overcome the legacy left behind by British colonialism vis-à-vis the northwest frontier of the new state. They say old habits die hard, and in this case, partly at least because of the irredentist claims of Afghanistan on this area, the colonial legacy was considered the best defence and security bulwark for this frontier. However, this construct was retained at the expense of the people of the tribal regions. Better late than never, it is a step that is long overdue. Unfortunately, while the governments at the Centre (PML-N) and in KP (PTI) as well as parliament have been seized of this matter since long, an effective decision in principle (so far only lip service) and an efficacious implementation plan have been mooted time and again without a leaf stirring on the ground. The merger of FATA and PATA with KP is only the first step in a perhaps lengthy process of bringing the political, legislative, administrative and social conditions at par with the rest of the country. This mainstreaming process of the benighted tribal areas cannot and should not be subject to further delay.

Business Recorder Editorial March 14, 2018

Shahbaz Sharif’s challenges

Given the PML-N’s current travails, amongst which mention cannot be avoided of their leader Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification and ousting from the posts of prime minister and party head, coupled with the debacle of the loss of the Balochistan government and the election for the top slots of the Senate, the meeting of the party’s General Council and the unopposed election of Shahbaz Sharif as the party president provides some solace. In a charged atmosphere, the party members roared their approval of what Nawaz Sharif and the new party president Shahbaz Sharif had to say. While the former pulled no punches in castigating the ‘conspiracies’ against him, in which the ‘bowing down’ before the altar of power of the ‘remote controlled toys’, i.e. unlikely ‘allies’ PPP and PTI, took pride of place, the latter read from a written speech that was much more moderate and restrained. This was the first major gathering of the PML-N after the shock of what transpired in the election of the Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman. However, in a change from the defiant narrative of Nawaz Sharif since his ouster, the critique of the judiciary was conspicuous by its absence. As was the seemingly estranged ‘dissident’ former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar. Nawaz Sharif attempted to put a brave face on the Senate debacle by characterising his rivals’ victory as actually a loss and the loss of the PML-N as a victory. Whether that is true only time will tell. However, there is no denying the fact that the unanimous election of Shahbaz Sharif as party president has meant the party under attack has closed ranks, scotched any speculation of cracks in its defences and thereby avoided the history of Muslim Leagues wilting and fracturing under pressure. Nawaz Sharif himself benefited from such a ‘revolt’ against then leader Mohammad Khan Junejo in 1988 when the latter fell out of favour with military dictator General Zia. And was himself subjected to something similar in the shape of Musharraf’s King’s Party in the shape of the PML-Q, overwhelmingly drawn from the splintering ranks of the PML-N. To that extent, the PML-N has demonstrated its resilience in the face of adversity, Nawaz Sharif providing the momentum and lending force to this trend with his defiance of the powers-that-be. He has now declared that his slogan for the coming general elections is ‘respect the vote’, which will help turn the elections into a referendum on how he has been treated.

While the PML-N can pat itself on the back for weathering so far the storm that threatened shipwreck, there is little doubt that the new president faces considerable challenges. Shahbaz Sharif has the reputation of being a pragmatist, which in the obtaining situation would suggest a different approach to his elder brother’s defiant tone and stance. The critical question then is whether it will be Nawaz Sharif or Shahbaz Sharif who will be calling the shots. If Shahbaz’s acceptance speech after being elected party president is any guide, he pulled out all the stops in praising Nawaz, going so far as to say that as a leader of the party Nawaz is irreplaceable. But this whole debate about the strategy the party will adopt under Shahbaz Sharif may be trumped by developments in the NAB cases against the Sharifs, which threaten to knock out not only Nawaz Sharif and his emerging heir-apparent Maryam, but also Shahbaz Sharif. It would seem politic therefore for the party to have a fallback position if such an eventuality overtakes it. Coming to the office of party president just four months away from the general elections, Shahbaz Sharif has his work cut out in holding the party together (something that it seems is only possible through recognizing that the party’s power centre remains Nawaz Sharif), balancing his pragmatic instincts with the defiant stance of Nawaz Sharif, and leading the PML-N into the general elections to win. An unenviable raft of tasks indeed.

Business Recorder Editorial March 13, 2018

The seasonal sparrows of our spring

The unedifying spectacle playing out in our political firmament provides much food for thought. The elections of the Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman yesterday reflected the state of our politics. The defeat of the ruling PML-N candidates, whose victory was widely expected and predicted by most pundits, surprised everyone, not the least the PML-N itself. On the eve of these elections, PML-N spokesman Mushahidullah Khan was confidently predicting his party had about 57 votes in the bag, more than sufficient to achieve victory. How then did this claim turn out to be reversed almost exactly, producing 57 votes for the ‘combined’ opposition’s candidate for Chairman, a relatively unknown politician from Chaghai, Balochistan, Sadiq Sanjrani? And how did the PPP’s candidate for Deputy Chairman, businessman Saleem Mandviwalla, garner 54 votes? The PML-N’s candidates were Raja Zafarul Haq and Usman Kakar of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party for Chairman and Deputy Chairman. They got 46 and 44 votes respectively. The MQM-P abstained in the vote for Deputy Chairman and Ishaq Dar obviously was not there, so only 98 votes were cast for the Deputy Chairman’s slot. Sadiq Sanjrani and Saleem Mandviwalla owe their success and good fortune to a number of factors. First and foremost, they were the ‘indirect’ choice of not only the PPP, but also PTI and some other smaller parties. Asif Zardari once again proved himself a master of wheeling-dealing, turning the tables on perhaps an overconfident ruling party that delayed its choice of candidates till virtually the last minute and failed to keep a vigilant eye on our seasonal sparrows who have heralded the onset of spring by flying the coop. Inevitably, the PML-N is now engaged in a soul searching exercise that reportedly has so far yielded the speculation that about seven Senators voted against their party’s mandate, amongst whom two could be PML-N members. That still does not explain the exact swing of 11 votes for the Chairman and Deputy Chairman’s slot. Amongst the PML-N’s allies, Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F and the FATA Senators are suspected of playing a dubious role. Be that as it may, accusations of vote buying have once again resurrected, much as they did after the Senate elections and before that in the toppling of the PML-N-led coalition government in Balochistan, arguably the first shot in Zardari’s campaign of turning the tables on Nawaz Sharif in the upper house elections. One of the strangest phenomena of this election for the two top slots of the Senate was the unholy ‘alliance’ of strange bedfellows in the shape of Imran Khan and Asif Zardari. After all, until recently Imran Khan considered any cooperation with either the PPP or PML-N as anathema because of his ‘moral’ crusade against corruption. A strategy of ‘indirect approach’ was adopted by Imran Khan, whereby he ‘surrendered’ his party’s Senate members to new Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo, who in turn reportedly ‘delivered’ them to Mr Zardari. Call this political expediency, pragmatism, opportunism or realism, it smacks of yet another tissue thin U-turn by Imran Khan. The justification being trotted out that Sanjrani’s elevation will allay the sense of deprivation of Balochistan and strengthen the federation still does not explain the support to the PPP’s Mandviwalla.

One is at a loss to describe the Senate elections. Was it the exercise by the Senators of the mandate of their respective parties or, as Hasil Bizenjo put it, a ‘free market’? And if this is the lay of the land, what implications can be drawn for the impending general elections? Logically, it would seem implausible that the powers-that-be have gone to all the time and trouble to remove Nawaz Sharif as prime minister and party head only to see him romp home in capturing a majority and the top slots of the upper house, not to mention the general elections (again, a PML-N victory is being predicted on the basis of the popular momentum a defiant Nawaz Sharif has attained). If that is the game plan, the first two tasks having been accomplished, what lies ahead vis-à-vis the general elections? Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar has weighed in with a ‘guarantee’ of fair and free elections through shuffling the administrations throughout the country. That assurance notwithstanding, thoughts turn to the credibility of the general elections if some form of manipulation, a la ‘seasonal sparrows’, is contemplated. Neither the upper house nor parliament as a whole that emerges from this sleight of hand is likely to be stable, posing worries about how election year will end up and with what so far hidden consequences.