Business Recorder editorial Nov 29, 2017

Nawaz Sharif’s ‘unhappiness’ Former prime minister and head of the PML-N Nawaz Sharif is very upset by the mishandling of the sit-in in Islamabad and the subsequent total surrender to the protestors. In a meeting with party leaders in Islamabad, Nawaz Sharif said recent events had damaged Pakistan’s international repute and sent a negative message to foreign capitals, especially Beijing. It should be kept in mind that China is making a huge investment in Pakistan through the CPEC and would look unfavourably at religious extremism rearing its head once again. Nawaz Sharif also expressed his displeasure at the language used in the one-sided army-brokered agreement between the government and the protestors. Reports say he was unhappy at not being consulted during talks with the protestors’ leaders and over the preparation of the draft of the six-point agreement in which the government conceded all the protestors’ demands. Nawaz Sharif only learnt about the agreement through the media when it was presented in the Islamabad High Court. When Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal was interrogated by Nawaz Sharif about the handling of the sit-in, he requested a private meeting where he and Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry briefed their leader on the issue. Despite the ministers’ efforts to placate an angry Nawaz Sharif, he wanted to know if the government knew if the protestors had been ‘facilitated’ by someone. This is a valid question given that the protestors seemed able to quickly call on reinforcements when required and had managed to smuggle into the sit-in weapons and state-of-the-art teargas guns that even the law enforcement agencies do not possess. Nawaz Sharif also wanted to be informed who drafted the agreement that praised the protestors and the role of the army. Ahsan Iqbal later denied that his party leader had expressed any displeasure. He also attempted a mea culpa by describing the agreement that ended the Faizabad sit-in as ‘undesirable’ but unavoidable to save the country from the threat of “religion-based violence”. He claimed that the civil and military leadership acted “collectively” in making the deal. But this attempt at post facto justification was blown away by the revelation by Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi that it was the army and ISI that had ‘ensured’ the government would accept the protestors’ demands. That statement shed a more than uncomfortable light on why the government seemed to have capitulated so completely. If people breathed a sigh of relief that the Faizabad sit-in had ended, it may prove to be only a temporary peace. For one, another faction of the TLYRA has refused to end its sit-in before the Punjab Assembly in Lahore that has already disrupted traffic and life in the city. They have set forth another set of demands beyond those agreed in Islamabad, first and foremost amongst which is the demand for Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s resignation. This development indicates that the Pandora’s box opened up by the Islamabad agreement has yet to play out fully. The Khadim Hussain Rizvi faction of TLYRA has announced a rally on January 4, 2018. The date is significant as the day Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was murdered by his police guard Mumtaz Qadri, whom the TLYRA has elevated to the status of a shaheed (martyr) and hero after he was hanged in 2015. The TLYRA, whether the Islamabad or Lahore factions, seem bent upon continuing their intimidatory campaign indefinitely, seeking new issues with which to feed it. The government and the state may live to rue the day ink was deposited on the agreement in Faizabad. No wonder Nawaz Sharif is ‘unhappy’.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 28, 2017

IHC on military’s role After the controversial agreement arrived at between the government and the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) to bring and end to the sit-in in Islamabad and the rest of the country, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) summoned Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal to appear within 15 minutes. The quick summons was a portent of things to come. Justice Siddiqui took umbrage at the agreement, particularly the role of the military in acting as a ‘mediator’ to seal the deal. He was also furious at the minister for ceding civilian supremacy. Both the government and the military were on the receiving end of a thorough dressing down from the bench. Justice Siddiqui’s ire was directed not only at the terms of the agreement, which had rubbed out the difference between the law breakers and law enforcers, he asked how the army could act as a ‘mediator’ between the government and an organisation responsible for terrorist acts. He went on to say that the deal confirmed the widely-held impression of who was behind the sit-in. He then ordered the district administration, the Intelligence Bureau and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Barrister Zafarullah Khan to submit separate reports on the whole episode from beginning to end by November 30 and deferred the hearing to December 4. Justice Siddiqui had also directed the Attorney General to help the court on the issue of how the armed forces could act as an arbitrator in the matter. He found it most alarming that Major General Faiz Hameed of the ISI had signed the agreement as one through whom the deal was arrived at. He described as very strange the acknowledgment of the special efforts of COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa and his team in brokering the agreement. Justice Siddiqui clearly enunciated this role of the military as contrary to the constitution and law. He ‘advised’ military officers interested in politics to first shed their uniform and only then indulge in politics. He showed his annoyance at the fact that despite highly abusive and filthy language used against the honourable judges of the Supreme Court, no apology had been sought from TLYRA. Having delivered his remarks reflecting outrage and delivering a written order on the lines described above, Justice Siddiqui declared that he may be assassinated or join the ranks of missing persons, but could not shrink from stating the truth. He argued that there were no longer any followers of Justice Munir in today’s courts (a reference to the authorship of the doctrine of necessity in our early history). Justice Siddiqui expressed his astonishment at the clause in the agreement that the federal and Punjab government would compensate the damage to state and private property inflicted by the TLYRA. Even for Justice Siddiqui, whose plain speaking in court is by now well established, the outburst was extraordinary. It targeted the government for its incompetence in handling the sit-in but even more the military for its perceived extra-constitutional role in the affair. It should be borne in mind that Justice Siddiqui, soon after the sit-in started, had ordered the Faizabad Interchange cleared of the protestors and on the failure of the government to comply since it was still bending its back to arrive at a negotiated settlement of the problem through the good offices of religious leaders and scholars, issued contempt notices to the Islamabad administration and police. The good justice was dismissive of the authorities’ attempted explanation that the matter was complicated and had religious connotations, always of course a potentially inflammatory factor. While all that Justice Siddiqui declared and wrote then and now is correct according to the letter and spirit of the constitution and law, it was the intemperate manner in which the message was delivered that raised eyebrows. Perhaps this was a reflection of the bench’s frustration at the manner in which the issue had been handled and its eventual outcome. However, this does not justify the rush of blood that seems to have informed Justice Siddiqui’s views and the manner in which they were delivered. While appreciating Justice Siddiqui’s candour and courage, we need to remind ourselves of the need for judges, particularly of the higher judiciary, to examine even the most fraught matters coolly and in a considered manner, no matter how severe the provocation.

Business Recorder Column Nov 27, 2017

Abject surrender Rashed Rahman The Faizabad sit-in by the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) ended after 20 days not with a bang but a whimper. The government folded in abject surrender despite its earlier bluster about being able to clear Faizabad within hours but, as it argued, exercising restraint to deny the protestors the dead bodies they desired to widen their protest movement and perhaps escalate their demands beyond the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid. The minister was accused by TLYRA of being responsible for a deliberate attempt to water down the declaration about the finality of the prophethood of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) despite the attempts by the government to paint the issue as a ‘clerical error’ that was corrected as soon as it was pointed out. The whole episode throws the government’s performance in a pathetic light. First and foremost, the PML-N federal and Punjab governments were caught napping otherwise the TLYRA activists could not have gained access to and been able to blockade the Faizabad Exchange. Had these governments acted in time in concert, the blockage of access into and from Islamabad would never have succeeded, nor would citizens have been subjected to serious problems in movement into and out of the capital. Second, the government appeared to have been frightened into paralysis for fear of the consequences of using lethal force against the protestors. The latter were able to use this period of inaction by the government to strengthen their presence at Faizabad and reportedly import weapons, state-of-the-art teargas canisters (which Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal says even the law enforcing agencies do not have) and the usual weapon of the religious extremists, batons and sticks. This arsenal they used to devastating effect before and during the failed police operation on November 25. When the operation was launched, reportedly 1,800 protestors were present but this soon swelled to 4,000. This reinforced contingent blunted and forced the retreat and calling off of the police operation midway. Before the abortive police action, numerous incidents of policemen being attacked, kidnapped and beaten by the protestors were reported. So much so attacks were mounted against the homes of former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar and besieged Law Minister Zahid Hamid in their home districts. The attack on the former's residence sparked off a public slanging match between the former and current Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal. These attacks outside Islamabad were accompanied by blockades of roads, highways and motorways throughout the country. The kind of ‘instantaneous’ mobilisation and arms the protestors were able to muster point to well-laid plans in advance, anticipating all the moves of the government to tighten the noose of the state of siege around the government’s neck. After its ill-planned and half-hearted police operation in Faizabad, the government turned to the military for help in clearing the blockade. COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa responded in meetings and calls with Prime Minister (PM) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi with the advice that the issue should be handled without use of lethal force. As far as the request for the army’s help in clearing Faizabad, the COAS said the army could not risk the trust reposed in it by firing on its own people. At best, the army was prepared to play the role of securing sensitive buildings and sites in the capital, thereby freeing the police from these duties. Last but not least, the COAS agreed with the PM the deployment of the Rangers under whose command the police was placed. One of the added concerns for the government was the looming date of Eid Miladun Nabi (the birthday of the Prophet, PBUH) on December 1. The TLYRA had threatened many times the number of the protestors at Faizabad would join the sit-in from all over Punjab if not the country on that day. Under the cosh of all these pressures, the government has signed an agreement with the TLYRA, reportedly with the mediation of a Major General who is also a signatory, which not only fulfils all the demands of the protestors (first and foremost the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, which has now been duly tendered and accepted ‘in the supreme national interest’) but bowed to even absurd conditions such as the freeing of all protestors arrested for various acts of arson, rioting, kidnapping and beating police personnel without any further legal action against them. A joint commission of the government and TLYRA will be formed to investigate Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s views on the Ahmedis and he will have to accept its verdict no matter what it is (it does not take any flight of imagination to guess what the commission’s conclusion will be). Those commentators bemoaning the incapacity of the state to handle a protest by at best 10,000 protestors throughout the country are missing the point. It is not the state but the sitting government’s incapacity that has been exposed by laying and then springing the trap, opportunity for which was provided by the stupid mistake and/or deliberate attempt to water down the anti-Ahmedi language of the oath in the Elections Act 2017. This was a self-inflicted wound that almost brought the government crashing to its knees. The state, whose main component is the establishment, seemed supportive of, if not in collusion with, the challengers of the government. Whatever lessons are derived from the whole episode, including the purposes of the protest/blockade, the implications for the future are frightening. Several thousand protestors throughout the country could bring any elected government to its knees, including forcing it to resign as a result of the state of siege they have proved capable of mounting with the suspected covert support of the deep state. Welcome to the confused state of Pakistan. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column Nov 27, 2017

Abject surrender Rashed Rahman The Faizabad sit-in by the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) ended after 20 days not with a bang but a whimper. The government folded in abject surrender despite its earlier bluster about being able to clear Faizabad within hours but, as it argued, exercising restraint to deny the protestors the dead bodies they desired to widen their protest movement and perhaps escalate their demands beyond the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid. The minister was accused by TLYRA of being responsible for a deliberate attempt to water down the declaration about the finality of the prophethood of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) despite the attempts by the government to paint the issue as a ‘clerical error’ that was corrected as soon as it was pointed out. The whole episode throws the government’s performance in a pathetic light. First and foremost, the PML-N federal and Punjab governments were caught napping otherwise the TLYRA activists could not have gained access to and been able to blockade the Faizabad Exchange. Had these governments acted in time in concert, the blockage of access into and from Islamabad would never have succeeded, nor would citizens have been subjected to serious problems in movement into and out of the capital. Second, the government appeared to have been frightened into paralysis for fear of the consequences of using lethal force against the protestors. The latter were able to use this period of inaction by the government to strengthen their presence at Faizabad and reportedly import weapons, state-of-the-art teargas canisters (which Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal says even the law enforcing agencies do not have) and the usual weapon of the religious extremists, batons and sticks. This arsenal they used to devastating effect before and during the failed police operation on November 25. When the operation was launched, reportedly 1,800 protestors were present but this soon swelled to 4,000. This reinforced contingent blunted and forced the retreat and calling off of the police operation midway. Before the abortive police action, numerous incidents of policemen being attacked, kidnapped and beaten by the protestors were reported. So much so attacks were mounted against the homes of former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar and besieged Law Minister Zahid Hamid in their home districts. The attack on the former's residence sparked off a public slanging match between the former and current Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal. These attacks outside Islamabad were accompanied by blockades of roads, highways and motorways throughout the country. The kind of ‘instantaneous’ mobilisation and arms the protestors were able to muster point to well-laid plans in advance, anticipating all the moves of the government to tighten the noose of the state of siege around the government’s neck. After its ill-planned and half-hearted police operation in Faizabad, the government turned to the military for help in clearing the blockade. COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa responded in meetings and calls with Prime Minister (PM) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi with the advice that the issue should be handled without use of lethal force. As far as the request for the army’s help in clearing Faizabad, the COAS said the army could not risk the trust reposed in it by firing on its own people. At best, the army was prepared to play the role of securing sensitive buildings and sites in the capital, thereby freeing the police from these duties. Last but not least, the COAS agreed with the PM the deployment of the Rangers under whose command the police was placed. One of the added concerns for the government was the looming date of Eid Miladun Nabi (the birthday of the Prophet, PBUH) on December 1. The TLYRA had threatened many times the number of the protestors at Faizabad would join the sit-in from all over Punjab if not the country on that day. Under the cosh of all these pressures, the government has signed an agreement with the TLYRA, reportedly with the mediation of a Major General who is also a signatory, which not only fulfils all the demands of the protestors (first and foremost the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, which has now been duly tendered and accepted ‘in the supreme national interest’) but bowed to even absurd conditions such as the freeing of all protestors arrested for various acts of arson, rioting, kidnapping and beating police personnel without any further legal action against them. A joint commission of the government and TLYRA will be formed to investigate Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s views on the Ahmedis and he will have to accept its verdict no matter what it is (it does not take any flight of imagination to guess what the commission’s conclusion will be). Those commentators bemoaning the incapacity of the state to handle a protest by at best 10,000 protestors throughout the country are missing the point. It is not the state but the sitting government’s incapacity that has been exposed by laying and then springing the trap, opportunity for which was provided by the stupid mistake and/or deliberate attempt to water down the anti-Ahmedi language of the oath in the Elections Act 2017. This was a self-inflicted wound that almost brought the government crashing to its knees. The state, whose main component is the establishment, seemed supportive of, if not in collusion with, the challengers of the government. Whatever lessons are derived from the whole episode, including the purposes of the protest/blockade, the implications for the future are frightening. Several thousand protestors throughout the country could bring any elected government to its knees, including forcing it to resign as a result of the state of siege they have proved capable of mounting with the suspected covert support of the deep state. Welcome to the confused state of Pakistan. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column Nov 27, 2017

Abject surrender Rashed Rahman The Faizabad sit-in by the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) ended after 20 days not with a bang but a whimper. The government folded in abject surrender despite its earlier bluster about being able to clear Faizabad within hours but, as it argued, exercising restraint to deny the protestors the dead bodies they desired to widen their protest movement and perhaps escalate their demands beyond the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid. The minister was accused by TLYRA of being responsible for a deliberate attempt to water down the declaration about the finality of the prophethood of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) despite the attempts by the government to paint the issue as a ‘clerical error’ that was corrected as soon as it was pointed out. The whole episode throws the government’s performance in a pathetic light. First and foremost, the PML-N federal and Punjab governments were caught napping otherwise the TLYRA activists could not have gained access to and been able to blockade the Faizabad Exchange. Had these governments acted in time in concert, the blockage of access into and from Islamabad would never have succeeded, nor would citizens have been subjected to serious problems in movement into and out of the capital. Second, the government appeared to have been frightened into paralysis for fear of the consequences of using lethal force against the protestors. The latter were able to use this period of inaction by the government to strengthen their presence at Faizabad and reportedly import weapons, state-of-the-art teargas canisters (which Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal says even the law enforcing agencies do not have) and the usual weapon of the religious extremists, batons and sticks. This arsenal they used to devastating effect before and during the failed police operation on November 25. When the operation was launched, reportedly 1,800 protestors were present but this soon swelled to 4,000. This reinforced contingent blunted and forced the retreat and calling off of the police operation midway. Before the abortive police action, numerous incidents of policemen being attacked, kidnapped and beaten by the protestors were reported. So much so attacks were mounted against the homes of former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar and besieged Law Minister Zahid Hamid in their home districts. The attack on the former's residence sparked off a public slanging match between the former and current Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal. These attacks outside Islamabad were accompanied by blockades of roads, highways and motorways throughout the country. The kind of ‘instantaneous’ mobilisation and arms the protestors were able to muster point to well-laid plans in advance, anticipating all the moves of the government to tighten the noose of the state of siege around the government’s neck. After its ill-planned and half-hearted police operation in Faizabad, the government turned to the military for help in clearing the blockade. COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa responded in meetings and calls with Prime Minister (PM) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi with the advice that the issue should be handled without use of lethal force. As far as the request for the army’s help in clearing Faizabad, the COAS said the army could not risk the trust reposed in it by firing on its own people. At best, the army was prepared to play the role of securing sensitive buildings and sites in the capital, thereby freeing the police from these duties. Last but not least, the COAS agreed with the PM the deployment of the Rangers under whose command the police was placed. One of the added concerns for the government was the looming date of Eid Miladun Nabi (the birthday of the Prophet, PBUH) on December 1. The TLYRA had threatened many times the number of the protestors at Faizabad would join the sit-in from all over Punjab if not the country on that day. Under the cosh of all these pressures, the government has signed an agreement with the TLYRA, reportedly with the mediation of a Major General who is also a signatory, which not only fulfils all the demands of the protestors (first and foremost the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, which has now been duly tendered and accepted ‘in the supreme national interest’) but bowed to even absurd conditions such as the freeing of all protestors arrested for various acts of arson, rioting, kidnapping and beating police personnel without any further legal action against them. A joint commission of the government and TLYRA will be formed to investigate Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s views on the Ahmedis and he will have to accept its verdict no matter what it is (it does not take any flight of imagination to guess what the commission’s conclusion will be). Those commentators bemoaning the incapacity of the state to handle a protest by at best 10,000 protestors throughout the country are missing the point. It is not the state but the sitting government’s incapacity that has been exposed by laying and then springing the trap, opportunity for which was provided by the stupid mistake and/or deliberate attempt to water down the anti-Ahmedi language of the oath in the Elections Act 2017. This was a self-inflicted wound that almost brought the government crashing to its knees. The state, whose main component is the establishment, seemed supportive of, if not in collusion with, the challengers of the government. Whatever lessons are derived from the whole episode, including the purposes of the protest/blockade, the implications for the future are frightening. Several thousand protestors throughout the country could bring any elected government to its knees, including forcing it to resign as a result of the state of siege they have proved capable of mounting with the suspected covert support of the deep state. Welcome to the confused state of Pakistan. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column Nov 27, 2017

Abject surrender Rashed Rahman The Faizabad sit-in by the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLYRA) ended after 20 days not with a bang but a whimper. The government folded in abject surrender despite its earlier bluster about being able to clear Faizabad within hours but, as it argued, exercising restraint to deny the protestors the dead bodies they desired to widen their protest movement and perhaps escalate their demands beyond the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid. The minister was accused by TLYRA of being responsible for a deliberate attempt to water down the declaration about the finality of the prophethood of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) despite the attempts by the government to paint the issue as a ‘clerical error’ that was corrected as soon as it was pointed out. The whole episode throws the government’s performance in a pathetic light. First and foremost, the PML-N federal and Punjab governments were caught napping otherwise the TLYRA activists could not have gained access to and been able to blockade the Faizabad Exchange. Had these governments acted in time in concert, the blockage of access into and from Islamabad would never have succeeded, nor would citizens have been subjected to serious problems in movement into and out of the capital. Second, the government appeared to have been frightened into paralysis for fear of the consequences of using lethal force against the protestors. The latter were able to use this period of inaction by the government to strengthen their presence at Faizabad and reportedly import weapons, state-of-the-art teargas canisters (which Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal says even the law enforcing agencies do not have) and the usual weapon of the religious extremists, batons and sticks. This arsenal they used to devastating effect before and during the failed police operation on November 25. When the operation was launched, reportedly 1,800 protestors were present but this soon swelled to 4,000. This reinforced contingent blunted and forced the retreat and calling off of the police operation midway. Before the abortive police action, numerous incidents of policemen being attacked, kidnapped and beaten by the protestors were reported. So much so attacks were mounted against the homes of former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar and besieged Law Minister Zahid Hamid in their home districts. The attack on the former's residence sparked off a public slanging match between the former and current Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal. These attacks outside Islamabad were accompanied by blockades of roads, highways and motorways throughout the country. The kind of ‘instantaneous’ mobilisation and arms the protestors were able to muster point to well-laid plans in advance, anticipating all the moves of the government to tighten the noose of the state of siege around the government’s neck. After its ill-planned and half-hearted police operation in Faizabad, the government turned to the military for help in clearing the blockade. COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa responded in meetings and calls with Prime Minister (PM) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi with the advice that the issue should be handled without use of lethal force. As far as the request for the army’s help in clearing Faizabad, the COAS said the army could not risk the trust reposed in it by firing on its own people. At best, the army was prepared to play the role of securing sensitive buildings and sites in the capital, thereby freeing the police from these duties. Last but not least, the COAS agreed with the PM the deployment of the Rangers under whose command the police was placed. One of the added concerns for the government was the looming date of Eid Miladun Nabi (the birthday of the Prophet, PBUH) on December 1. The TLYRA had threatened many times the number of the protestors at Faizabad would join the sit-in from all over Punjab if not the country on that day. Under the cosh of all these pressures, the government has signed an agreement with the TLYRA, reportedly with the mediation of a Major General who is also a signatory, which not only fulfils all the demands of the protestors (first and foremost the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, which has now been duly tendered and accepted ‘in the supreme national interest’) but bowed to even absurd conditions such as the freeing of all protestors arrested for various acts of arson, rioting, kidnapping and beating police personnel without any further legal action against them. A joint commission of the government and TLYRA will be formed to investigate Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s views on the Ahmedis and he will have to accept its verdict no matter what it is (it does not take any flight of imagination to guess what the commission’s conclusion will be). Those commentators bemoaning the incapacity of the state to handle a protest by at best 10,000 protestors throughout the country are missing the point. It is not the state but the sitting government’s incapacity that has been exposed by laying and then springing the trap, opportunity for which was provided by the stupid mistake and/or deliberate attempt to water down the anti-Ahmedi language of the oath in the Elections Act 2017. This was a self-inflicted wound that almost brought the government crashing to its knees. The state, whose main component is the establishment, seemed supportive of, if not in collusion with, the challengers of the government. Whatever lessons are derived from the whole episode, including the purposes of the protest/blockade, the implications for the future are frightening. Several thousand protestors throughout the country could bring any elected government to its knees, including forcing it to resign as a result of the state of siege they have proved capable of mounting with the suspected covert support of the deep state. Welcome to the confused state of Pakistan. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder editorial Nov 26, 2017

Hafiz Saeed’s release Jamaat ud Dawa’s (JuD’s) chief Hafiz Saeed’s release after over 300 days under house arrest under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance seems set to set off another round of frictions with the US. Washington has come out with a trenchant statement asking Pakistan to re-arrest Saeed and put him on trial for the crimes he has committed. It has reminded Pakistan that Hafiz Saeed has been designated a terrorist by both the US State and Treasury Departments since 2008. Washington has described Hafiz Saeed’s mother party Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) as having been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of US citizens. The US Treasury Department branded Hafiz Saeed a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in May 2008. After the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, the UN too designated him a terrorist individual in December 2008. The Mumbai attacks resulted in the deaths of 166 people, including six Americans. LeT and several of its front organisations, leaders and operatives remain under US State and Treasury Department sanctions since 2012. In addition, the US has announced a $ 10 million reward for information that brings Hafiz Saeed to justice. On the eve of US Defence Secretary Mattis’ visit on December 3, the White House warned Pakistan that Hafiz Saeed’s release would negatively impact bilateral relations. India has been even more vociferous in its condemnation of the release. Both have pointed out that the move indicates Pakistan is continuing its policy of nurturing and protecting terrorists as a tool in its pursuit of its foreign policy objectives. Pakistan’s foreign office on the other hand has responded by saying it is not under obligation to follow US laws, only the UN. What this ‘defence’ misses is the fact that the UN too has designated Saeed a terrorist. However, the foreign office tries to shield itself by arguing that it is the courts (and detention review board) that have ordered Saeed’s release on the grounds that no evidence is available against him. The foreign office also says it has been asking for evidence from India to establish Hafiz Saeed’s links to the Mumbai attacks but without any joy. In turn, it accuses India of stoking terrorism within Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed after his release has laid similar charges against India. As the above narrative indicates, this appears to be an argument going round and round in circles without end. Sticking to the letter of the law is one thing, but allowing the country’s interests to be negatively impacted as a result does not appear wise. The Trump administration is already pressing Pakistan to bend its back vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Now Hafiz Saeed’s release is likely to further muddy the waters. Logically, recourse to the MPO for Hafiz Saeed’s detention implied that hard, clinching evidence was not available. However, circumstantial evidence existed in credible enough form to persuade the government that it was in the country’s interest to put away Saeed. That consideration has not disappeared. If anything, given the US’s reaction, it has once again assumed centre-stage. The Mumbai attacks affair is already nine years old. At the present rate of ‘progress’, it promises to stretch into the foreseeable future, providing an insurmountable obstacle to persuading India to return to the suspended dialogue with Pakistan, this being the only viable course for both countries to resolve their issues, provide the foundations for normalisation of relations between the two countries and ensure hostilities and frictions between the nuclear-armed neighbours ease, to the comfort of the peoples of both countries. The Pakistani authorities should return to the drawing board to find ways and means to keep Hafiz Saeed under house arrest at least to escape the possible ire, and worse, of Washington and help pave the way for the resumption of dialogue with India.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 22, 2017

Where are we going? The accountability court hearing Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s case regarding possession of assets beyond known sources of income has rejected his counsel’s plea to be exempted from appearance on medical grounds. This order followed the counsel’s submission of a fresh medical certificate that specifically barred him from travelling until the doctors in London had examined him on November 27. Further, he raised the issue of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) not having verified so far the two previous medical reports as per the court’s earlier direction. He pleaded with the court that an audio-visual arrangement could be set up to allow the court to see the medical condition of the accused. But the NAB prosecutor opposed the request on the grounds that the medical report did not fulfil the legal requirements of the UK’s Criminal Procedure Rules 2014, did not mention the expertise and qualifications of the doctor concerned, and that none of the material the doctor had relied on in his diagnosis had been attached. To add to the saga, a NAB investigation officer deposed that he had raided the residences of Dar in Lahore and Islamabad after non-bailable arrest warrants were issued for him but failed to find him there. The conclusion the sleuth drew from this was that Dar was deliberately concealing himself from legal proceedings and had reportedly absconded to England. He should therefore be declared a proclaimed offender. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud. The court in its wisdom then dismissed Dar’s application seeking exemption from appearance till his recovery. Further, it declared him an absconder and issued a notice to his guarantor asking why the Rs five million surety may not be considered forfeited. Mercifully, the court deferred any order to confiscate Dar’s, or rather a trust’s properties in Lahore that runs a children’s charity. The haste and hurry with which the accountability court is proceeding in this case is of a piece with the accountability cases against the Sharifs. Speedy justice may be a desirable goal, but not at the expense of normal due process. Of course the fire has been lit under NAB and the accountability courts by none other than the apex court, which has even appointed a monitoring judge of the Supreme Court to supervise the accountability courts’ proceedings and ensure its six month deadline to wrap up the cases is met. This continuing tale has aroused concerns amongst independent jurists. The courts increasingly are becoming the battleground for matters political. Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen are facing cases of disqualification in the Supreme Court. The Sharifs and Dar are arraigned before accountability courts. There are reports Asif Zardari and Faryal Talpur may soon have accountability cases against them reopened. Meanwhile the courts have found it necessary to issue orders that seem difficult to comply with. For example, the Islamabad High Court has issued contempt notices against the capital’s officers for not following its orders to clear the Faizabad sit-in. Now even the Supreme Court, hearing a separate case, has issued notices to administrative and police officials to submit reports on the same issue. The executive and parliament seem to be nowhere in the picture. Judicial activism seems to be peaking. The Supreme Court seems ready and willing to invoke its original jurisdiction under Article 184(3) in matters that may or may not involve the fundamental rights (as opposed to inconvenience) of citizens. The country seems to be inexorably grinding towards a denouement that may be unforeseen and unintended, but may nevertheless throw the whole democratic edifice out of kilter. Surely this is not something anyone, let alone the honourable members of the higher judiciary, desire. Some modicum of judicial restraint therefore may not be a bad thing.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 21, 2017

Elections 2018 in the doldrums The priorities of our politicians sometimes leave one scratching one’s head. The PPP pulled out all the stops to have its bill to undo the clause in the Elections Act 2017 that allowed disqualified former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to be reinstated as party head of the ruling PML-N passed by the National Assembly (NA). The PTI and some other opposition parties were also on board. That the venture was quixotic was written not in the stars but in the numbers. The PML-N enjoys a clear majority in the NA, unlike its lack of a majority in the Senate. It was therefore a likely conclusion that the PML-N would be able to defeat the bill. And so it did on November 21, 2017, when the issue came to a vote in the NA, by a healthy majority of 163 to 98. Not that the treasury too did not bend its back to ensure this result. Nawaz Sharif had tasked NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq and some other party stalwarts to ensure the party’s MNAs turned up en masse to ensure the bill was killed. The backdrop to this concerted mobilisation drive were the reports last week at the passing of the 24th constitutional amendment by the NA. The amendment is necessary for the delimitation of constituencies according to the provisional results of Census 2017. Not much of a problem was anticipated in the passing of the amendment since it had been approved by the Council of Common Interests (one of the PPP’s conditions for supporting it) and garnered the consensus of all the parliamentary parties. The amendment was indeed passed by the NA but then reports appeared that around 20 PML-N MNAs claimed they had been receiving calls from unknown numbers warning them not to attend the session last Thursday (November 16, 2017). Some PML-N leaders feared that a few MNAs were deliberately staying away, providing a source of embarrassment for the treasury benches. While Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi called a parliamentary party meeting before the crucial November 21 session, the PPP’s Khursheed Shah too did not lag behind in this mobilisation race. However, at the end of the day, sheer weight of numbers on the treasury side proved too much for the heroes of the opposition despite their fiery speeches in reply to even more fiery rhetoric from government ministers before a voice vote was called on the bill. Not satisfied, the opposition insisted on a division. The result was a resounding victory for the government, leaving the opposition to lick its wounds. This narrative notwithstanding, the priorities of politicians with which this editorial began now need reflection. While so much sweat and effort was being expended by the opposition in the NA on unseating Nawaz Sharif as PML-N chief, the upper house seemed abandoned and bereft of the necessary numbers to pass the 24th constitutional amendment, the last necessary act to allow the Election Commission of Pakistan to get on with the (increasingly tight because of the delays) onerous task of delimitation to pave the way for general elections on time next year. As noted above, the government lacks a majority in the Senate. Hence it is dependent on the cooperation of the opposition to pass any constitutional amendment. Thin attendance and sometimes even lack of quorum forced a deferment of consideration of the amendment for three days on November 20. Now that the opposition has staked so much on its bill in the NA and lost, perhaps it would not be unreasonable to expect it to buckle down to the task of passing the amendment in the Senate in line with the consensus that exists on it. The stakes for the entire political class in this matter could not be higher. Any further delay could throw the schedule for Elections 2018 out of kilter, with unforeseeable consequences. Parliamentary democracy is the bread and butter of the entire political class irrespective of divisions on any other issue. It is therefore imperative for their interests as much as the interests of the country as a whole for Elections 2018 to be held on time. The opposition must now rise to the task without allowing its defeat in the NA to affect the consensus on the amendment.

Business Recorder Column Nov 20, 2017

Balochistan’s troubled landscape Rashed Rahman The discovery of the bullet-riddled bodies of 20 young men from Punjab within three days in Balochistan has evoked anger, condemnation, and calls for ‘revenge’, cleaving the ethnic divide in the country wider open. Now the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Saqib Nisar has taken suo motu notice and ordered the Inspector General of Police Balochistan and the Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency to submit a report within three days, underlining the steps being taken by the security forces in the province to curb such incidents. With due respect, the CJP should also perhaps spare a thought for the thousands of disappeared Baloch and the hundreds of tortured, bullet-riddled bodies dumped all over Balochistan over the years. There is anger and resentment on that side too, which arguably leads to such tragedies. The death of innocents is always painful. But while we offer condolences to the families of the recently deceased, let us pause for a moment to reflect on the manner in which the dead persons are being lauded by the state authorities. Recovering the bodies and delivering them to their dear ones for burial is the appropriate thing to do. But draping their coffins in the national flag, almost as though they were shaheeds (martyrs) in some noble national cause forgets that they were breaking the law of the land in seeking to emigrate illegally to Europe via Iran. The sole survivor of the killings has returned home without any sign that any action under the law is contemplated against him. All this of course follows if one has made up one’s mind that they were indeed illegal would-be immigrants and not the workers of the Frontier Works Organisation working on CPEC projects as asserted by the nationalist insurgent organisation the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) of Dr Allah Nazar, which claimed the killing of at least the first batch of 15 killed. Subsequently, the evidence suggests that they were indeed nothing but would-be illegal immigrants. Human trafficking of poor young men from some districts of Punjab to greener climes via illegal border crossing is rife. The pressures of unemployment or lowly paid employment, vistas of visible prosperity of those lucky enough to have made it abroad, the wiles and lures of unscrupulous human smugglers whose conviction rate is so abysmal as to be sneezed at, all combine to fill the ranks of this ‘underground railroad’. However, as this and earlier incidents indicate, the path through the troubled province of Balochistan is not free of risk. The state and the Balochistan government’s narrative revolves around the allegation that the nationalist insurgency is a purely India-backed and -funded movement intended to damage the CPEC project. The Balochistan government in particular has lately taken to conflating nationalist insurgent violence and equating it to the terrorist activities of Mulla Fazlulah of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The distinction, however, between the two is both stark and necessary to understand. Whereas the TTP is a fanatical homegrown outgrowth of the tribes of FATA hosting first the Afghan Mujahideen and later the Afghan Taliban over the last four decades and represents a millennial aspiration to return to the glorious past of Muslim power (in the Islamic State vocabulary, the ‘Caliphate’), the religious extremist nature and character of such movements and their indiscriminate use of terror renders any negotiated settlement with them impossible. They have to be fought with force. Operation Zarb-e-Azb has knocked them onto the back foot but not entirely eliminated them as they have fled across the Afghan border and found bases in the poorly policed area on both sides of the divide. From there, they mount sporadic attacks on the military and security forces guarding the border on our side. The Baloch nationalist insurgency however, is a very different kettle of fish. This fifth insurgency in Balochistan since Independence started in 2002, sparked off at the time by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), led by their slain leader and son of the late Nawab Khair Buksh Marri, Balach Marri. Currently it is said to be under the control of his younger brother, Hairbyar Marri, who reportedly lives in exile in London. Why has the youth of Balochistan take to arms virtually in every generation over the last 70 years? This is a long and sorry tale, but briefly, the problem began with the forced annexation of the tribal confederacy of Balochistan soon after Independence and resulted in nationalist resistance and insurgencies in 1948, 1958-62, 1962-69, 1973-77 and 2002 to date. Each time, the common thread was grievances of the Baloch centring on rights of self-determination, harsh treatment of dissidents, critics and rebels (including kidnappings, terrible tortures in internment camps and extrajudicial executions), resentment at poor and underdeveloped Balochistan’s natural resources being siphoned off for the benefit of the state without adequate share, compensation or representation of the Baloch (e.g. Sui gas, gold, copper, minerals, etc), and now increasingly resentment at Balochistan’s territory and Gwadar Port serving CPEC without any visible benefit to the locals. Even if one argues that the peculiar circumstances surrounding the Partition and Independence of the subcontinent produced the impatient mindset that rode roughshod over the aspirations for independence or autonomy of Balochistan, the treatment of its people ever since has culminated in the demand for separation today through the lengthy labyrinth of peaceful (and parliamentary) struggles for rights, due representation, a just share in the resources of the province and redressal of the approach that sees only the knout and the bayonet as the solution to Balochistan's troubles. The difference therefore, between the terrorism of the TTP and the struggle of the Baloch people for justice and rights is the difference between a fanatical, non-persuadable-by-rational-argument terrorist movement pure, and an armed guerrilla resistance that has a political agenda. Of course the latter errs when it kills innocent poor people caught up in the maelstrom of violence that afflicts the province. Neither does it do its just cause much good, nor does it reflect the necessary understanding on the part of the guerrillas that the poor people of Punjab are not the enemy. It is the ruling elite, in which admittedly the Punjabi ruling elite has an overwhelming share, that oppresses and exploits the ethnic groups and poor classes all over the country. If the BLF and other insurgent groups were to take a leaf out of the Vietnamese people’s heroic struggle against first French colonialism and then US imperialism, in which they always distinguished between the people and state of the aggressor, they would advance their cause better and avoid their being simply dumped in the terrorist basket. This difference between terrorism and guerrilla resistance suggests that the use of force approach, which has yielded the fifth insurgency to date, needs revisiting. If India is involved, for which there are loud allegations but so far little concrete proof or evidence, it is because our house is on fire. If we could find the wisdom and means to douse this fire within the four corners of the constitution and law, no outsider can make mischief in our internal affairs. Precedents for resolving long running conflicts exist. In recent times, the almost six-decade-old Colombian guerrilla war has yielded to a peaceful political solution. All it needs is the requisite wisdom and political will. Sadly, both seem in short supply. The conflict in Balochistan therefore, is likely to drag on interminably and get bloodier, with the distinct possibility of taking an ethnic turn if these recent events discussed above are kept in mind. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder editorial Nov 18, 2017

Culturally acceptable phenomenon? There is much one can find distasteful about the US military’s presence in Afghanistan. But last year’s report in The New York Times on bacha bazi (child sexual abuse) in the country and the US military’s attitude to it appears to hit a new low. The story alleged that the Pentagon prevented US troops from reporting on Afghan police and militias’ sexual assaults on children and punished US troops when they reported the abuse. The Pentagon at the time rejected the story but US lawmakers were sufficiently incensed to instruct the Pentagon’s Inspector General to investigate and report to Congress on the issue. The findings of the Inspector General, far from reassuring anyone have exacerbated concerns about the attitude and conduct of the US military in Afghanistan. The Inspector General’s report says US troops were told to ignore child sexual abuse in Afghanistan as a “culturally acceptable phenomenon”. However, the report goes on to say that a review of “cultural-awareness training” did not lead to specific command or policy guidelines that expressly discouraged military personnel from reporting incidents of child sexual abuse. In some cases, US military personnel were told “nothing could be done about child sexual abuse because of Afghanistan’s status as a sovereign nation”. Further, military personnel were informed it was not a priority for the US command to discourage such practices and it was best “to ignore the situation and to let local police handle it”. The Inspector General’s report goes on to say the US army and air force training does not discuss paedophilia in Afghanistan but that of the navy and marines does. The navy training manual advises readers to control and overcome any frustration that they may experience during their deployments. The marines manual on the other hand advises to be mentally prepared to encounter this ‘attitude’ and to move on. Similarly, several current or former service personnel told investigators they were told to ignore such behaviour. If they witnessed child sexual abuse, they were to let local officials and police know and not interfere with the locals. An interviewee said the reason given was that this would ensure continued cooperation with the Afghans. Another said the chain of command didn’t care until the NYT report. A more damning indictment of the US military’s ‘policy’ would be hard to find. Many of those involved in this sordid business are powerful, well-armed warlords and police and militia commanders. For its expedient reasons, the occupying power either ignores the former or advises its personnel on the ground to report such incidents to the latter! Considerations of Afghanistan’s sovereignty did not stop the US invading and occupying (continuing since) Afghanistan in 2001 after 9/11. Nor did ‘culturally acceptable phenomena’ impede subsequent efforts to improve women’s rights in Afghanistan, with some success. In response to the NYT report and the controversy it sparked off, the Martland Act was mooted to not condone child sexual abuse on any US military base or abroad, whether the perpetrator was American or foreign. However, it appears that in practice that remains a dead letter. One tragic consequence of the US command’s preference for its soldiers to ‘look away’ when confronted with child sexual abuse was the suicide of a soldier subsequent to hearing the screams of a child being sexually abused in an adjacent room and his inability to intervene. Some military personnel have been punished for reporting such abuse in answer to their conscience. The US is very fond of lecturing the world on human rights and the highest values of its enlightened, democratic society. What the Pentagon Inspector General’s report lays bare however is the hypocritical dark underbelly of the purported carrier of these values. Shame.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 15, 2017

Writ of the state For over a week now, some 2-3,000 protestors of the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYRA) have blocked traffic between Islamabad and Rawalpindi through a sit-in protest at Faizabad Interchange. This has made the lives of the residents and commuters of the twin cities miserable since people cannot get to work, children and students cannot get to their educational institutions and even the sick and elderly are deprived of medical attention. The protestors are demanding Law Minister Zahid Hamid’s head for a mistake in the wording of the Elections Act 2017 regarding Khatm-e-Nabuwat, which was corrected soon after. But that did not satisfy the firebrands of the TLYRA, who have sworn to continue their lockdown of the capital until their demand is met. Not even the formation of a parliamentary committee under Senator Raja Zafarul Haq to probe the matter has cooled the anger of the TLYRA, which claims the mistake was a deliberate attempt to water down the clause regarding belief in the finality of Islam’s Prophet (PBUH). Actually this ‘anger’ and charges of deliberate attempts to water down the provisions of Article 260 of the Constitution appear to be motivated by anything but an adherence to the truth and facts. In fact they smack of another agenda altogether: using the sensitivities around the anti-Ahmedi constitutional provisions and the blasphemy law to browbeat the government and all those who do not subscribe to the TLYRA’s extremism. The government has been treating the disruption of life in the capital with kid gloves, perhaps fearing the fallout of the use of force to remove the recalcitrant blockers. Ministers from Ahsan Iqbal to Talal Chaudhry have been blowing hot and cold for days, trying in one breath to persuade the protestors to come to the table for talks and threatening the government has the means to clear the road within half an hour in the other. This flip-flop performance has done little except make the government look weak and ineffectual and embolden the extremists to continue their defiance of the writ of the state. The illogical and irrational stubbornness of the TLYRA defies all norms of conduct allowed by the constitution, law and civility. Citizens have a right to protest peacefully on issues that concern them. But such concerns must rest on the facts, not imagined conspiracies when the mistake has already been corrected. Second, one citizen’s right to protest ends where another citizen’s nose begins. By blocking access to Islamabad, the protestors have deprived thousands of citizens of the right to a normal life, freedom to travel about their business and not be accosted by stick-wielding, stone-throwing violent extremists who do not hesitate to beat up citizens attempting to gain passage through their blockade or policemen deployed to maintain law and order. Complaints of violent beating of citizens, attacks on and kidnapping of law enforcers and ratcheting up the nuisance factor are multiplying. If the TLYRA are not open to reason and civilised conduct, there appears little recourse except to establish the writ of the state by whatever means are necessary. A clear message needs to be delivered to the protestors: their rights stop where others’ begin. This might also have a salutary effect on their ravings elevating Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Salmaan Taseer, to the status of a ‘saint’ and attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill to fulfil their sinister agenda of browbeating all and sundry into submission to their warped vision.

Business Recorder Editorial Nov 14, 2017

Abandoning confrontation Two back to back meetings in Lahore of the PML-N high command in Lahore on November 12 and 13, 2017 reviewed the party’s strategy for the cases the Sharifs are facing in the courts and in the run up to the 2018 elections. The two issues are linked since the aggressive stance of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz since his disqualification has raised concerns about its effects. After deliberations, the meetings laid out a policy of non-confrontation with state institutions (the army and judiciary) and stepped up preparations for the coming elections by means of restarting Nawaz Sharif’s mass contact campaign to mobilise the party’s electoral support and its workers. It was left to former information minister Pervaiz Rashid to brief the media after the deliberations. He offered a mea culpa regarding the aggressive response to Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification by arguing that criticism of the Supreme Court’s (SC’s) verdict/s in the Panamagate case was the inherent right of citizens, let alone the aggrieved, and did not constitute confrontation with the judiciary. He pointed out that even eminent jurists have raised serious questions over the judgement, particularly comments such as ‘Godfather’, ‘Sicilian mafia’, etc, which reflected emotion rather than legal points. In reply to a question about the seasonal birds amongst the PML-N ranks chafing to fly the coop (a phenomenon well known from the PML’s past whenever its leadership is in trouble), Rashid said they would not be able to be elected without Nawaz Sharif’s umbrella. He went on to reveal that it had been decided in principle that Nawaz Sharif would lead the election campaign since there was no other candidate for prime minister. On the surface this seems to have dealt a body blow to Shahbaz Sharif’s ambitions for the top slot. But Rashid left that door open a crack by adding that if the party won in 2018 (and Nawaz Sharif remained disqualified), it is Nawaz who will pick the prime minister (like he did Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after disqualification). About the fear of some unconstitutional or extra-constitutional actions aimed at winding up the present setup before the Senate elections in March 2018, Rashid was of the view that the PML-N’s opponents, particularly the PTI, were aiming for this. The stakes in this regard as much as in the coming general elections could not be higher for the PML-N. With regard to the Senate elections, the PML-N is poised to gain a majority in the upper house. The general elections, all other things being equal, is an even juicier fruit, low hanging so far since the PML-N’s vote bank in Punjab seems intact. Disqualification, Rashid argued, had made Nawaz Sharif even more popular. Therefore if there was no interference with the electoral process, the PML-N will win. Last but not least, Rashid dealt with the perception of rifts within the Sharif family. In a carefully worded response, he said Shahbaz, Maryam and Hamza Shahbaz gave their opinions in the meetings but once Nawaz Sharif takes a decision, all will follow his directions. It seems cooler and wiser heads in the PML-N have finally prevailed to avoid any untoward development vis-à-vis the party’s stakes in the democratic system. It now appears that the party has internalised the argument that it must not provide any excuse or justification to inimical forces to abort or otherwise subvert the path to parliamentary success, perhaps the best option under the prevailing circumstances. Now that the issue of delimitations for the 2018 elections appears to have been resolved to the PPP’s satisfaction in the Council of Common Interests, the path to elections on time seems to be in hand. Meantime the ‘engineering’ on display via the short-lived MQM-P and PSP alliance/merger, the efforts to revive the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and mainstreaming some of the newly formed religious extremist parties all seem to have hit various roadblocks. With the Karachi Rangers chief denying his organisation’s role in the MQM-P and PSP fiasco, the idea seems to have died a natural death. It is in the PML-N’s interest to stay the course to parliamentary success in as cool and measured a manner as possible since this is the best way to overcome its present difficulties. However, given the paralysis of governance because of its travails, particularly in the Finance Ministry because of Ishaq Dar’s absence, the government should seriously and post-haste appoint at least an acting finance minister to tackle the economy’s urgent issues.

Business Recorder Column Nov 13, 2017

Games some people play Rashed Rahman Although electioneering season has not been officially or formally declared open, the political landscape increasingly resembles a period leading up to next year’s scheduled general elections. Political rallies, engineered hastily and as rapidly collapsing alliances, efforts to resurrect some other lapsed alliances and mainstreaming the religious extremist parties sums up the menu on offer. First the abortive Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) merger/alliance. The latter party’s head Mustafa Kamal has spilt the beans after the euphoric announcement of an alliance possibly leading to a merger collapsed within 24 hours. Kamal accused the MQM-P and its leader Farooq Sattar of playing the establishment’s game. In actual fact, as he half admitted later, both parties are creatures of the same establishment. Why was there an interest in and efforts to bring the two surviving Muhajir parties together? Probably the calculation was that it would consolidate the Muhajir vote bank in Karachi and the other cities of Sindh and thereby create room for the establishment to weaken the PPP in its home province and last bastion of electoral strength. The spectacular collapse owed itself to disquiet within the ranks of the MQM-P about its leader’s post-haste decision to join hands with the PSP, particularly over the latter’s rejection of the name ‘MQM’ on the grounds that it was tainted by founder Altaf Hussain’s imprimatur. The next (simultaneous) alliance to see the light of day and then prove stillborn at birth was the 23-group platform announced by former dictator Pervez Musharraf. The man has to be given a medal for cheek. An absconder from justice (he faces murder charges in the killings of Benazir Bhutto and Akbar Bugti and a treason case), he continues to live in the fantasy never never land of his ‘popularity’. Having tested the waters last time he returned to the country, one would have thought he would have learnt the lesson that his so-called Facebook popularity had no reality on the ground and for good measure was hauled up on serious charges (this may have been one factor in the souring of civil-military relations). The fact that the institution he belonged to reportedly got him off the hook and arranged for his departure from the country would be enough for most mortals. But the commando general has always been long on chutzpah and short on wisdom. As to mainstreaming the religious extremists, two moves can be discerned in recent days. First, the street agitation by the Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYRA) on the omission of the anti-Ahmedi clause in the Election Reforms Act 2017, calling for Law Minister Zahid Hamid’s head, threatening ministers’ families if their demand is not met and threatening to close down the entire country has been treated with kid gloves by the government, fearing a crackdown might provide an excuse for its downfall. Apart from its ongoing Khatm-e-Nabuwat campaign (assisted by the Sunni Tehreek), the TLYRA has spread a climate of fear throughout the country by declaring Mumtaz Qadri, Salmaan Taseer’s assassin, a ‘saint’ of some sort and brandishing blasphemy accusations left and right to browbeat liberal, secular and progressive forces in the country. TLYRA managed to garner a surprising number of votes in the NA-120 and NA-4 by-elections. Representing the Barelvi persuasion, the TLYRA and Sunni Tehreek may have been launched at this juncture to weaken the PML-N’s Punjab vote bank. It is not yet clear whether the TLYRA and the Jamaat ud Dawa floated party, Milli Muslim League are now registered as legitimate political parties with the election commission or not. In a law abiding society, no group associated with extremism, fanaticism and terrorism should be accorded such legitimation. Religious parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl) have come together to revive their political fortunes and resurrect the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance that brought them to power in two provinces during Musharraf’s reign. This platform, dubbed early in its life a Military-Mullah Alliance, hopes to dent the PTI’s vote bank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In the meantime, the seeming plan to decapitate the two mainstream largest parties and keep leverage over the third appears to be unfolding. Decapitation in the case of the PML-N means turning the PML-N into just a PML by removing from the political firmament the Sharifs (and Ishaq Dar). In the case of the PPP, the targets may be Asif Ali Zardari and Faryal Talpur. For Imran Khan, a different tack may be in store. The powers that be have used him in the past and will likely use him again in future. However, knowing what a loose cannon he is, these same powers may accumulate cases against him to be used in any ‘emergency’. If the pattern of such political manipulation and manoeuvring in our history is any guide, there appears to be a recurring cycle of the establishment creating parties and leaderships to suit its purpose (e.g. MQM, PML-N), empowering them so long as they toe the establishment’s line, and then targeting them when their utility is over or they acquire wings because of the inherent dynamic of power. Since the political class is disunited in the face of the establishment’s manoeuvrings, this unequal fight has usually gone in favour of the latter. The present scenario promises little different. rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder editorial Nov 11, 2017

Hudaibya case reopening A three-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) will begin hearing a petition by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for reopening the Hudaibya Paper Mills case on November 13, 2017. The petition follows the Panama case in which former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified. In the judgement in that case, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who is also heading the bench in this case, had directed NAB to proceed against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who was not an accused in the original reference filed in 2000 as he had been pardoned after signing a confessional statement. Justice Khosa had also argued there was a flaw in the Lahore High Court’s (LHC’s) decision in 2014 to quash the reference and disallow reinvestigation by NAB while apparently accepting Dar’s plea that his confessional statement was extracted under duress. However, he had refrained from issuing directions to NAB to file a fresh case because that could be construed as compromising the impartiality of the appellate court. During the Panama case, the SC had given the NAB chairman a dressing down for refusal to file an appeal against the LHC verdict in the Hudaibya case. Now, with a new chairman in place, NAB has followed through on the commitment by its prosecutor general before the SC on September 15, 2017 to file an appeal within seven days, moving a separate application for the delay to be condoned. In its petition, NAB has argued that fresh material unearthed by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) set up by the SC to investigate the Panama case necessitated reopening the Hudaibya reference before the relevant accountability court. The original reference in the Hudaibya case in 2000 had relied on Ishaq Dar’s confession to accuse the Sharif family of setting up Hudaibya Paper Mills to launder money under cover of the Economic Reforms Act 1992. Money was allegedly laundered by converting it into Foreign Exchange Bearer Certificates to be deposited in foreign currency accounts opened in the name of benamidars and friends by forging the signatures of the ostensible account holders. These foreign currency accounts were then used as collateral for credit lines in rupees for Hudaibya Mills. The laundered money, shown as share deposit equity of Hudaibya Mills, was used to retire the liabilities of the mill and other allied companies of the group amounting to Rs 642.7 million. Another sum of Rs 600 million was transferred from abroad for settling borrowings from Al Tawfeeq Bank, which was actually owned by the Sharifs. Thus a total sum of Rs 1.2 billion was allegedly amassed by the Sharif family. If the SC accepts NAB’s plea to reopen the case, it would put Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, their mother Shamim Akhtar, Maryam Safdar, Hussain Nawaz and Hamza Shahbaz in the dock when other corruption references against most of them are already in motion in the accountability courts. The significance of the Hudaibya reference, however, lies in the inclusion in the list of accused of Chief Minster Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, who is considered most likely to replace Nawaz as prime minister if the PML-N wins the 2018 elections. That succession plan now has acquired a spanner in the works because of the possible resurrection of the Hudaibya reference. Given the set of circumstances the Sharifs find themselves in with the legal noose tightening around them, Nawaz and Maryam’s strategy of playing on the front foot and aggressively taking on all comers, including powerful state institutions, albeit indirectly, needs revisiting. Whether the Sharifs can ride out or emerge unscathed from their legal travails or not, their troubles may find reflection in further uncertainty and instability, rocking the boat of democracy once again.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 8, 2017

Elections deadlock A new political crisis looms as a result of the deadlock over the delimitation issue, which could make the holding of the general elections on time in 2018 difficult if not impossible. This was the outcome of the latest meeting of parliamentary parties on November 8, 2017. The main obstacle appears to be the PPP and MQM-P’s reservations about the census in Sindh. Both parties consider the province’s population has been undercounted, resulting in no change in the province’s seat allocation for the next elections. This contrasts with Punjab’s loss of nine seats, which have been reallocated to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (five), Balochistan (three) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (one). FATA retains its 12 seats, although there are rumblings from FATA representatives about this too. First, the areas on which the parties do agree. There is consensus on maintaining the same number of seats overall. There is also agreement that the elections should be held on time. However, in order to achieve this, the constitutional amendment bill allowing the provisional results of Census 2017 to be used as the basis for delimitation of constituencies, preparation of fresh electoral rolls, etc, needs to be passed by November 10, 2017, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan’s deadline. The Election Commission has said time and again that without the constitutional amendment being passed by this (latest) deadline, it will not be possible for it to prepare to hold the elections by August 2018, the constitutionally laid down schedule after the present Assemblies complete their tenure in June next year. The PPP wants the constitutional amendment bill sent to, and approved by, the Council of Common Interests. It says this was its understanding, but now the government seems reluctant to do so. The government, on the other hand, argues there is no need to send the bill to the Council of Common Interests. The PPP has also suggested that since the Census 2017 results have become controversial, perhaps next year’s elections should be held on the basis of the 1998 census. Since this is likely to be challenged legally, it appears that whether the parties agree to use the provisional results of Census 2017 or the 1998 census, a constitutional amendment will be required in either case. That implies that without a meeting of minds across the board amongst the parliamentary parties, the November 10 deadline set by the Election Commission of Pakistan may be missed. Needless to say, this would engender a great deal of fresh uncertainty, speculation and rumour about the future, the democratic system per se, and the threat waiting in the wings once again of an extra-constitutional intervention to cut through the Gordian knot. It may appear obvious that it is in the interests of the political class as a whole that this government, like the previous PPP one, completes its tenure and elections are held on time. But for the parliamentary parties to rise above partisan considerations in the interests of continuity of the democratic setup seems at present a virtually insurmountable obstacle. Perhaps they need to reflect on the demonstration effect of another elected government completing its tenure and the ballot box determining the government for the next term. Coming on top of the peaceful transfer of power from the PPP government that completed its five-year tenure to the present incumbents through the ballot, another such demonstration of continuity would go far in consolidating the democratic system, which remains vulnerable to shocks. If, God forbid, some parties remain adamant about their ‘principled’ stance and block the timely passing of the constitutional amendment bill, history and the electorate may judge them harshly if the country is plunged once again into a maelstrom of instability and all that could follow in its wake.

Business Recorder editorial Nov 7, 2017

Non-accountability Reportedly, the General Musharraf-created National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had initially been charged with tracking down the offshore assets of more than 200 retired Generals, bureaucrats, business people, politicians and their families, and the recovery of such assets compiled through corruption. NAB engaged a foreign detective agency, Broadsheet LLC, registered in the Isle of Man (notorious as one of the safe havens for the wealthy of the world to park their money), to track down the offshore assets of those on the list and recover them. Unfortunately, this engagement ended in litigation in the Council of International Arbitration, with Broadsheet claiming breach of agreement and non-payment of its fees (20 percent of all recoveries, irrespective of whether these occurred because of Broadsheet’s or NAB’s efforts). Broadsheet claims the information it shared with NAB was used as leverage for brokering plea bargain deals with the targets. In 2014 NAB hired an international law firm, Appleby, to get expert advice on how to handle the international arbitration case. Later, another company, International Assets Recovery (IAR) was hired by NAB to do what Broadsheet had initially been hired for. Whereas Broadsheet was handed a list of over 200 prominent names from the top echelons of Pakistan’s elite, it is not known how many targets were assigned to IAR. As for Broadsheet’s claims, it says NAB entered into plea bargain agreements with several of the targets, using information supplied by Broadsheet, without informing the latter or paying its agreed fees. Broadsheet quotes some examples to substantiate its claims that it suffered losses because of expenditures incurred on tracking down the targets’ offshore assets. In one instance, Broadsheet managed to have $ five million frozen in the Isle of Jersey (another notorious offshore safe haven) belonging to an identified target but NAB stopped pursuing the case. In another instance, NAB reached a settlement directly with a target valued at $ 25 million but refused to pay Broadsheet’s commission. For all its efforts over several years, Broadsheet says it was paid only one small fee in connection with a recovery from Admiral (retd) Mansour-ul-Haq (a former Chief of Naval Staff), and the amount paid was less than the terms of the agreement. Even a casual perusal of the list of luminaries amongst the 200 plus targets indicates that this was the crème de la crème of Pakistani society. With hindsight, it may be more properly described as our top Rogues Gallery. Although NAB argues that the information shared by Broadsheet was not actionable, the real reason appears to have been that General Musharraf had first and foremost targeted his political and other enemies and left out his political collaborators (indicating the partisan purposes of the endeavour) but soon succumbed to the political expediency of retaining his hold on power by ‘forgiving’ or allowing plea bargains by those who came over to his camp. Amongst those who benefited from this partisanship, top of the list are the Chaudhries of Gujrat who, having helped Musharraf get a political base of support by forming the King’s Party (PML-Q), were left off the list entirely. Those provided relief later included Rao Sikandar, Faisal Saleh Hayat and Aftab Sherpao (defectors from the PPP) and brothers Humayun and Haroon Akhtar (by joining the PML-Q). What is not clear from the reports is what transpired in the cases of former COAS General (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, Chiefs of Air Staff Anwar Shamim and Abbas Khattak, and apart from Chief of Naval Staff Admiral (retd) Mansoor-ul-Haq, another naval chief Saeed Muhammad Khan. Below them in rank but not insignificant were Lt-Generals (retd) Zahid Ali Akbar and Fazl-e-Haq. Amongst the politicians on the list, prominent amongst whom were the Sharifs, Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari, the issue of accountability still hovers on the horizon today. Musharraf’s turn from a so-called desire to improve financial integrity at the top of the heap to political expediency pure and simple doomed accountability almost at birth. The founding chairman NAB, Lt-General (retd) Syed Amjad and its first prosecutor general Farouk Adam Khan both resigned when NAB’s mission was shifted by Musharraf from recovery of assets to the rehabilitation of corrupt targets who then re-emerged as powerful figures in politics. Two conclusions can be drawn from this sorry saga. First, no accountability regime has a snowball’s chance in hell if political expediency trumps it. Two, the list of targets is a timely reminder of the scope and breadth of corruption at the top of our state institutions, political and business elite. Partial, partisan or politically motivated accountability therefore will never bring about the desired purge of state and society from this affliction.

Business Recorder Column Nov 6, 2017

The Revolution: 100 years young Rashed Rahman Today, November 7, 2017 marks the hundredth anniversary of the Great October Revolution in Russia. Why October? Because Czarist Russia adhered at the time to the Gregorian calendar. Therefore the date according to that calendar fell in October. Revolutionary Russia abandoned the Gregorian calendar. It is fashionable nowadays, even in Russia, the cradle of the first revolution in human history to attempt the construction of a socialist society based on justice and equality, to dismiss the Russian revolution as a disaster, tragedy, something to be shunned. The facts however, stubborn things that they are, present a more nuanced picture. Revolutionary seizure of power by the people and transformation of state and society in the direction of a more just order is as old as the emergence of class in mankind’s early history. If the primitive revolution in cultivation (agriculture) and its concomitant emergence of private property evolved in the parts of the world we know as Europe into a slave owning mode of production, in other parts of the world it displayed a different form of state and society, later dubbed the Asiatic mode of production. Whereas the former found its highest expression in the Greek and Roman empires, the latter gave rise to the civilisations of China and the Subcontinent, amongst others. Slave owning empires experienced repeated rebellions, the largest and most spectacular one being that led by the slave-gladiator Spartacus, that all but overthrew the Roman Empire. In the Asiatic mode, the picture that emerges is more mixed and varied. This mode of production can essentially be understood as the state controlling water works (and thereby agriculture) and exacting tribute from the toiling peasants to finance its departments of administration and war. In China, this mode developed the peculiarity of repeated peasant revolts and rebellions against the owners of land and extractors of tribute for themselves and the Emperor. In the Subcontinent however, such rebellions were rare and peripheral. The relative stability of the Subcontinent’s Asiatic mode compared to China’s is a vast subject beyond the scope of this piece, but needs to be noted. The dissolution of the Roman Empire at the hands of ‘barbarian’ tribes from largely the Teutonic north plunged Europe into the dark Middle Ages, during which time classical feudalism emerged as the successor order to slavery. In the Asiatic mode however, if China and the Subcontinent are taken as leading examples, the system persisted well into modern times. That is the main reason why the colonial encounter between a Europe that had embarked upon the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment and Renaissance and parts of the world still stuck in pre-capitalist mode proved so unequal and devastating for the latter. The Industrial Revolution inadvertently set into motion phenomena hitherto unknown in human history. Perhaps the most important of these was the freeing of the new mode of factory production from the traditional location of naturally occurring energy (flowing water being the chief source) to anywhere with the induction of fossil fuels as the energy source (coal, later oil). Since places of manufacture (factories) now no longer needed to depend on naturally occurring sources of energy, they tended to be concentrated in or near the towns and cities, offering advantages of transportation infrastructure, etc. This concentration of the workplace spawned in turn the concentration of workers drawn from the scattered peasantry into densely populated workplaces and towns/cities. The conditions of work and life this new system imposed on the newly emerging working class evoked resistance on the latter’s part against this inhumane, oppressive system. The first manifestations of this resistance were irrational, atavistic, tending to blame the machines the workers toiled at for long hours as their enemy. This gave rise to the Luddite movement, which attacked and smashed machinery. But soon this atavistic urge revealed its mistaken target and negative fallout in the shape of the unemployment that followed in the wake of smashing machinery. This is the tipping point between this primitive reaction to the new system of capitalism and the modern trade union consciousness that replaced it. From this platform, the working class began to organise in defence of its interests and for reform of the conditions and terms of work and life. At this stage, the working class proved capable of joining and providing the radical wing of bourgeois democratic revolutions (anti-monarchy, anti-feudal). This is observable in the spate of revolutions that broke out in 1848 almost throughout the continent of Europe. Each of these revolutions however, proved short-lived and was crushed. A dark reign of oppression descended, forcing revolutionary thinkers and activists such as Karl Marx to adopt self-exile from his native Germany, first in France, later and permanently in Britain. There in London he was fated to spend the rest of his days writing his magnum opus Capital and remaining engaged with revolutionary movements in the period of defeat, retreat and exhaustion after the 1848 setback and the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1870 (this was the first proletarian seizure of partial power in human history), Although Marx did not live to see a successful revolution, within 34 years of his passing away in 1883, his ideas inspired the Russian Revolution of 1917. Marx’s follower and leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) updated Marx’s theories in the light of the changes capitalism had undergone in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He brilliantly applied these advanced theories to the concrete circumstances Russia and the world was passing through in the early 20th century. Lenin’s contributions are so many, in thought and practice, but some stand out as critical for bringing about the Russian Revolution and setting it on its forward march. First and foremost, Lenin analytically drew from the incremental concentration and monopolisation of capital by big corporations, export of capital to the enslaved colonies as a source of enhanced extraction of profits, uneven character of the development of the system due to these and other factors, and the virtual inevitability of a war of contention between the older, more developed capitalist states and late emerging capitalist powers to grasp the opportunity for the revolution’s advance. Russia’s crisis during WWI proved the trigger for the anti-monarchy February Revolution of 1917. While most Marxists relied on the received wisdom that Russia was still too backward for a socialist advance, Lenin was convinced the time to strike while the iron was hot had arrived. The October seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was not, as some commentators like to describe it, a coup. It was the seizure of power through a protracted process of contention between a feeble and ineffective Provisional Government that had been thrown up by the February Revolution and the Soviets (councils) of soldiers, workers and peasants that challenged the Provisional Government with the popular slogan of “Land, bread, peace” (this contention has been described as the period of ‘dual power’). The declaration by Lenin of a socialist order after the October seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, leading the Soviets, triggered the military intervention by the troops of 22 capitalist states in support of the overthrown monarchist, feudal forces. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Soviet Union for short, proved victorious in this resistance/civil war. What happened subsequently, including, it must be noted, the defeat of Hitler in WWII by the Soviet Union (virtually singlehanded), needs more space than this column permits. Suffice it to say that a beleaguered first socialist state survived capitalist and fascist attempts to strangle it and the revolution. The fact that in subsequent years it succumbed to its internal contradictions and collapsed takes nothing away from its achievements in uplifting its people by providing universal education and healthcare, providing rights to the mosaic of nationalities the Soviet Union inherited from Czarist Russia, and providing a role model and support for revolutionary, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movements worldwide. Marxism, socialism, revolution are neither passé nor dead. The hiatus post-1991 is a period in which the revolutionary forces have licked their wounds and sought paths to their resurgence in a difficult climate worldwide. That resurgence is embryonically visible in the green shoots of resistance and rebellion against a now globalised, exploitative, inherently unequal and therefore repressive system of capitalism. Lenin once said either revolution will stop war or war will lead to revolution. The latter half was demonstrated in 1917. The former half is the task for revolutionaries in 2017, armed with advanced knowledge and theory regarding the shape of 21st century capitalism. Judging by the wars unleashed by a rapacious and ruthless capitalism since the Cold War, the choice once again before mankind has come full circle to the question: socialism or barbarism? rashed.rahman1@gmail.com rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder editorial Nov 4, 2017

A dubious cover-up The recent episode of the arrest/abduction of the wife of Dr Allah Nazar, leader of the Balochistan Liberation Front, along with his daughter, three other women and two children, first revealed on the social media, became a hot potato for the Balochistan government. Initial reports said the women and children had been abducted/disappeared from a hospital in Quetta. The Balochistan government did not respond until the uproar around the affair reached the hallowed halls of the Senate and National Assembly, where protests by some members at this treatment of women and children led to walkouts by opposition members. The Balochistan government took three days to respond, and when it did, the reasons for the delay became obvious. Such disappearances have become the norm in Balochistan for many years, often ending with tortured dead bodies being dumped all over the province. But even for the troubled province, this kind of action against women and children appeared to be a horrible first. Given the sensitivity of the honour of women and families in Balochistan’s culture (nang in Balochi), the government seems to have pulled out all the stops to recover the women from the clutches of the security agencies and free them with manifestations of respect, gifts, and facilitation for medical treatment in Karachi. At a release ‘ceremony’, Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri asked Dr Allah Nazir’s wife to convey a message to him that the “killing of brothers” was not the right way and that “he should not use women and children in the war”. Further light was thrown on this cryptic message during a press conference by Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti. The Home Minister claimed that contrary to the earlier reports, the women and children were not disappeared from a hospital in Quetta but were arrested by security forces at Chaman when they illegally crossed the Pak-Afghan border on October 30, 2017. He displayed CCTV footage purportedly showing the women and children crossing the zero point at the Chaman border. He said during investigation it was revealed that the women were involved in delivering funds to the Balochistan Liberation Front and the Balochistan Army, two insurgent nationalist groups. He then went on to conflate the incident in support of his argument that Afghanistan was hosting inimical forces on its soil, from where unrest was being created in Pakistan. The story spun by the Balochistan government raises more questions than it answers. First and foremost, Dr Allah Nawaz’s wife is reportedly very ill because of injuries sustained during heavy bombardment of her home in 2010 and is said to have difficulty walking. An unlikely candidate for the task of delivering funds to insurgent nationalist groups if ever there was one. Second, is it likely that the women would have risked the lives of their children on such a perilous mission? Third, if they were indeed on such a mission, would they have chosen zero point at Chaman to enter the country? These holes in the officially certified truth can only be explained by a more rational version. If the wife of Dr Allah Nazar was not seriously ill, why would the Chief Minister shower his largesse on the group and send her to Karachi for medical treatment after releasing her to her brother-in-law? The probable, and more believable sequence of events seems to be that the security forces, as is their wont in Balochistan and increasingly in the rest of the country, disappeared the women and children after discovering their presence in a Quetta hospital, but the uproar and threatened rise in anger, resentment, and worse, forced the provincial government to persuade the security agencies that the disappearance of these women and children would prove detrimental to the Balochistan government because of the province’s traditions of nang, and therefore it would be more politic to have them released. In principle, if this reading of the incident is correct, the perpetrators, like so many others of their disappearance brigade, should be brought to justice for their illegal and inappropriate action. However, given the Balochistan government’s spin on the incident, this appears to be wishing for the moon. The only silver lining is that the women and children have been safely recovered and sent to the relative safety of Karachi where Dr Allah Nazar’s wife’s treatment can be better handled. The pattern of disappearances in Balochistan is part of the long standing approach of handling Balochistan’s issues through the use of force. It has yielded little positive in the last 70 years and is unlikely to yield anything different in the foreseeable future. Balochistan needs a process of political negotiation and resolution, not the heavy handed tactics of which this incident is only the latest alarming manifestation.

Business Recorder Editorial Nov 1, 2017

Welcome maturity A meeting of the heads of parliamentary parties chaired by Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has shown a welcome maturity in forging a consensus on retaining the same number of seats for the National and provincial Assemblies while reallocating some seats amongst the provinces based on the provisional results of Census 2017. This has paved the way for the quick passage of the constitutional amendment required for this purpose and ensured that the controversy that emerged of late regarding these provisional results of Census 2017 does not become an impediment in holding the general elections 2018 on time. The Election Commission of Pakistan has extended its deadline for the passage of this constitutional amendment by one week to November 10, 2017, a concession that takes nothing away from the Election Commission’s concern regarding the quantum of work it has to complete before the elections can be held. This work includes delimiting the constituencies anew in the light of the provisional results of Census 2017 while taking into account the reallocation of seats amongst the provinces accordingly, followed by a revision of the electoral rolls. Neither task is easy or quick. The deadline if the elections are to be held within the 60 days constitutionally laid down after the expiry of the present assemblies on June 5, 2018 looms. The display of maturity exhibited by the leaderships of the parliamentary parties has prevented any uncertainty, instability or possible crisis inherent in any delay in the elections and may have helped scotch all the talk about replacing the present setup with a technocratic government. Punjab is to be commended for accepting the reduction of its National Assembly seats by nine, of which seven are general and two reserved seats. Given the PML-N’s stakes in ensuring elections on time, this generosity is underpinned by its political interests. There were some reservations and dissenting notes expressed in the meeting. The MQM-P wanted the delimitation of constituencies on the basis of voters rather than people in the constituency, informed by its reservations about what it considers a low count of the population of Karachi, its main political base. The PPP joined the MQM-P in asserting that if their reservations about the provisional results of Census 2017 are not addressed, they will approach the courts for legal redress. The Statistics Division on the other hand told the meeting that there would be no major changes between the provisional and final results of the census. The arithmetic of seats reallocation for the National Assembly has worked against the biggest-by-population province Punjab since it seems its population grew less than other provinces. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will see an increase of five National Assembly seats, four general and one reserved. Balochistan will get three additional National Assembly seats, two general and one women’s reserved seat. This may not satisfy the province entirely since its vast area and scattered population translates into huge territorial constituencies, but it is good to see that the consensus has been accepted for elections 2018. Balochistan’s special problem in this regard it seems has been deferred for future discussion. Islamabad Capital Territory gets one more general National Assembly seat while FATA will retain its 12 seats. There is no change in Sindh’s seats allocation. Parliamentary parties’ heads are to meet on November 2, 2017 to have the details of the census down to tehsil level placed before them for scrutiny. This had been the demand of some provinces, especially Sindh. It is heartening to note that the political class as a whole has risen above partisan considerations in the interests of the smooth and timely holding of elections 2018.