Business Recorder Column October 29, 2019

The March and its fallout

Rashed Rahman

Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s ‘Azadi’ (Freedom) March is off and running. Starting from Sohrab Goth in Karachi, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F’s) rally set off for upcountry on October 27, 2019 as scheduled. Other opposition parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Awami National Party (ANP), National Party (NP) and others saw off the march from the Sohrab Goth rally. The JUI-F march from Quetta also set off the same day, supported by the opposition Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), NP and others. While the first contingent from Karachi will traverse the eastern route via Hyderabad and Sukkur, the second one will travel along the western route via Sibi and D G Khan. According to last reports, Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s contingent has reached Sukkur, having conducted rallies addressed by the Maulana in Hyderabad and Sukkur.

There was much speculation in recent days about the intent of the marchers and the government. When sufficient mud-slinging by both sides accusing each other of the worst intentions had been exhausted, the two sides met in Islamabad and agreed (according to the official account) that the march and possible dharna(sit-in) would be peaceful, within the law and the Supreme Court’s judgements on such activity in the capital. In return, the government committed not to block the march. Both sides also agreed that the venue of the rally should be an open ground in the H-9 sector of Islamabad, adjacent to Peshawar Mor, as opposed to the JUI-F’s desire to hold its rally in D-Chowk. The Peshawar Mor venue implied the JUI-F had agreed not to enter the ‘forbidden’ Red Zone. It had also, according again to the government’s lead negotiator, Defence Minister Parvez Khattak, agreed not to demand the resignation of Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and fresh elections, the two main planks of the JUI-F’s drive.

However, two developments vitiated the atmosphere just one day after the agreement was finalised, with not even the ink dry on it. First and foremost, a prominent leader of the JUI-F, Mufti Kifayatullah, was arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance (basically a law inherited from the military dictatorial past that sanctifies preventive detention) for ‘incitement’ to attend the march and collection of donations for it. After arresting him from his residence in Islamabad, he was shifted, after some delay, to Mansehra, whose Deputy Commissioner had ordered the arrest. The government exposed its true status by denying any knowledge of the matter. It boggles the mind how the mobilisation all over the country by the JUI-F for the march is kosher, particularly in the light of the JUI-F-government agreement just one day before, but Mufti Kifayatullah’s calls fall in the category of ‘incitement’! Clearly, keeping in mind the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government’s denial of knowledge let alone responsibility, whoever (no marks for guessing right) is responsible for this step has acted out of malign intentions. If this is indeed the case, they have succeeded in souring the atmosphere once again. One consequence of this blunder is that the Maulana and the JUI-F in their public statements and march rally speeches have reverted to the demands for PM Imran Khan’s resignation and fresh elections.

As if this absurdity were not enough, the government took the unprecedented step of ‘cancelling’ the Pakistani citizenship of another JUI-F leader, Hafiz Hamdullah, and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) ordered all TV channels to stop inviting him on their talk shows. Again, it boggles the mind that the authorities have ‘suddenly’ discovered that Hafiz Hamdullah is an alien barred from our TV channels. In the first place, the timing of the ‘cancellation’ suspiciously seems a ploy to stifle his bold criticism of the military establishment and its defenders in the shape of the ubiquitous retired military officers on TV, an enterprise at which he has proved more than adept. Second, even if the spurious plea of his being an alien is accepted (although he has appealed against it), is there any law or rule that forbids an ‘alien’ from appearing on our TV channels? Maulana Fazlur Rehman responded to this bit of stupidity by reminding the starting rally in Karachi that foreign nationals such as Moeen Qureshi and Shaukat Aziz had been ‘imported’ and ruled the country while Pashtun Hafiz Hamdullah, whose tribe straddles the Balochistan-Afghanistan border, has been relegated to the status of an ‘Afghan’.

As usual, the PTI government appears a rudderless and uncoordinated outfit, horizontally as well as vertically. Contradictory utterings are the norm. At the federal level, ministers go off half-cocked in a manner that damages the image and credibility of the government (a case in point being Fawad Chawdhry’s revelation that he government not only could not provide jobs, despite its 10,000,000 jobs commitment in its election campaign, but was shutting down 400 government departments). The federal tone and tenor is in turn not matched by the provincial PTI governments (especially Punjab). Whether this is sheer incompetence or some too-clever-by-half carrot and stick strategy is not clear, but the end result is the same: incremental polarisation and the washing away of all the conciliatory efforts and noises of Parvez Khattak et al.

It is not clear at this point whether the chosen venue will disrupt life in the capital. The JUI-F is estimated to be able to truck in 100,000 workers from across the country to Islamabad. If we count the other opposition parties’ participation (however uncertain still), that translates into a huge crowd. If the dharna is prolonged, all bets are off. The government has mobilised police forces from all over Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and ordered the Rangers and military to remain on standby in case of need. It goes without saying that the purposes of the JUI-F and the rest of the opposition would be better served by a peaceful rally and dharna. However, if some bright spark in the PTI government or its ‘handlers’ gets it into his head to stop the marchers by force, things could easily and quickly spiral out of control. The greatest damage in such a scenario would be done to the incumbents. Let us hope in their wisdom they recognise this truth and refrain from heavy-handed measures against the protestors. The latter too, in their own interest, should occupy the moral high ground by remaining peaceful and within the law, as they have repeatedly vowed to do in their public statements in recent days.

Fingers crossed.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial October 29, 2019

Carrying political rivalry too far

The issue of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s deteriorating health in prison has been agitated by his family for months but the government has either been making fun of his eating habits being responsible or portraying the alarm raised by the Sharifs as a ploy to get him out of incarceration and off the hook. In the process, government officials from Prime Minister Imran Khan downwards have been on the attack on the issue while reiterating their vow never to let corrupt elements go free. What the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) worthies neglected to take account of was that there may be some truth in the Sharif family’s protestations that Nawaz Sharif’s health problems were getting worse behind bars. Had the government taken appropriate notice earlier and arranged the kind of medical attention they have now showered on Nawaz Sharif, it would not have faced its present embarrassment at having to eat its previous words and peddle furiously in the water to stave off direct or implied criticism that it had been negligent in the matter and that if anything God forbid happened to Nawaz Sharif in prison, it is the government that will be held responsible. This is an unnecessary pit the government has dug for itself and into which it has now ignominiously tumbled. Had it exercised some restraint in its earlier statements, a quality conspicuous by its absence in this government’s pronouncements, it would not have landed itself in the pickle it is now facing. Now, when things have reached a critical pass, including a reported heart attack, however minor, suffered by Nawaz Sharif on October 25, 2019, the government suddenly appears to have acquired a great deal of ‘sympathy’ for Nawaz Sharif on moral and humanitarian grounds, a narrative jarringly at odds with what we have grown accustomed to hearing over the last year and a half, if not longer.

The criticality and complexity of Nawaz Sharif’s afflictions, as reflected in the reports submitted by the medical board constituted to treat him, has persuaded the Lahore High Court to grant him bail in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case on the grounds of ill health requiring treatment in hospital, while the Islamabad High Court has granted temporary bail in the Al-Azizia reference till October 29, 2019, when it has summoned a detailed medical report on Nawaz Sharif and directed the Punjab Chief Minister, Usman Buzdar, to appear in his personal capacity. The proceedings in both high courts proved a difficult test for the federal and Punjab governments as well as the National Accountability Bureau, especially in the Islamabad High Court where their representatives were repeatedly asked by the court whether they opposed bail for Nawaz Sharif or not, and if yes, were they prepared to take responsibility for his health and well being? All three institutions were stumped for an answer and with the greatest difficulty, produced a mealy mouthed response that they did not oppose bail.

The entire episode provides valuable lessons for the PTI government if it is willing to learn them. First, when the criticality of Nawaz Sharif’s health could no longer be ignored, brushed away or even made the butt of crude jokes, the government was forced to entertain a humiliating U-turn in the tone and content of its statements. In the process it tried to hide behind a suddenly found soft corner for ‘poor, suffering’ Nawaz Sharif, an attitude whose contrast with the harshness of the past, especially recent days when the prisoner’s health was rapidly deteriorating, as well as the ‘shield’ of the courts and their independent decisions, to which the government declared itself bound. This is an object lesson in the perils of hubris, arrogance, and the tendency of the PTI government to carry political rivalry a step too far to be acceptable. The only silver lining in the whole government farce is that at least it has woken up (just in time, we hope) to reality, showing willingness to modify its policy or attitude.

Business Recorder Editorial Oct 26, 2019

Churlish behaviour

Prime Minister Imran Khan needs to revisit some aspects of his personality and behaviour after ascending to the highest elected executive office in the land. The 2018 general elections threw up Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) governments at the Centre, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Balochistan’s coalition government is tilted towards the Centre/PTI. Sindh therefore was the only province that elected an opposition party government, that of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Relations between the Centre and Sindh have been tense ever since. While the PPP Sindh government is within its constitutional and political rights to demand that the Centre not interfere in its affairs under our constitutional construct, particularly after the 18^thAmendment, it has a lot to answer for in terms of governance in Sindh, particularly where Karachi’s long standing (and arguably incrementally worsening) problems are concerned. The conclusion is hard to resist that the Centre has been attempting to muscle in to what is the Sindh government’s writ on the basis of its perceived and real failures. This apprehension has been voiced by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari too the other day. It would be unwise and impolitic to attempt to bypass the Sindh government in these or any other matters. Things have unfortunately reached such a pass that when Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Karachi the other day, the Sindh government was not informed of his plans, time of arrival, etc. The obvious result was that Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah was not at the airport to receive the prime minister. To add to this breach of protocol, Prime Minister Imran Khan snubbed Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah by not meeting him and instead holding parleys with the heavyweights of the Sindh opposition Grand Democratic Alliance. This smacked of political partisanship and rudeness, and seems inappropriate on the touchstone of institutional and constitutional propriety, the interests of the federation, and democratic and parliamentary conventions. Meeting the opposition Grand Democratic Alliance and not the elected Chief Minister further added insult to injury.

Prime Minister Imran Khan comes across in his public persona and attitudes as dismissive of the opposition generally, whom he and his government and party never tire of castigating with allegations of corruption. This has had the unintended effect of colouring the National Accountability Bureau’s drive against opposition leaders as politically partisan if not a witch-hunt. The result is extreme political polarisation in the country, a situation not conducive to running a federal democratic parliamentary system, whose boundaries, limits, conventions and culture are being routinely violated by the prime minister and his government. The feeling amongst the Sindh government ministers and party people is of their province being under siege by the Centre. Whether one likes the PPP or not, the irreducible fact remains that the people of Sindh have elected its government overwhelmingly once again. That mandate deserves respect. This does not imply that the workings of the Sindh government cannot be criticised. It is simply that whereas the Sindh opposition in the shape of the Grand Democratic Alliance is at liberty to play its role as a parliamentary opposition, elevating it to a political ‘partner’ while relegating the head of the elected Sindh government to a virtual pariah leaves a bad taste in the mouth. If Prime Minister Imran Khan, the federal government and the PTI want to change the government in Sindh, they should refrain from acts and attitudes that smell of extra-parliamentary means and rely only on the electorate’s mandate, as any democratic dispensation enjoins.

Business Recorder Editorial October 24, 2019

The Afghan conundrum

The protracted war in Afghanistan has of late produced its inevitable counter efforts for peace. The peace talks in Doha between the US and the Taliban appeared to be tantalisingly close to producing a settlement, especially when reports emerged of US President Donald Trump having invited a Taliban delegation to Washington for what may have been the final act of the peace negotiations. However, these seemingly positive developments nosedived when Trump abruptly cancelled the proposed meeting with the Taliban and declared the peace process ‘dead’ in response to continuing attacks by the Taliban. The issue of a ceasefire declaration or at the very least a scaling down of the violence by the Taliban eventually emerged as the main stumbling block to further progress in bringing the US’s longest foreign war to a close. If that was the eventual verity that emerged from the many repeated rounds of talks in Doha, the bombing of a mosque in the eastern Nangarhar province on October 19, 2019, in which 70 worshippers died and 33 were wounded, amongst them dozens of children, certainly does not portend a turn away from the impasse that played out in Washington. There was no claim of responsibility for the atrocity, with the Taliban denying they had carried it out and attempting to shift the blame to the Islamic State (IS) or the government. IS too retains its enigmatic silence on the incident, presumably because both it and the Taliban fear the negative fallout of such a dastardly attack on innocent worshippers at Friday prayers. Whatever the truth of the matter, neither group has been above such atrocities in the past. Meanwhile a flurry of statements and visits has followed the massacre in Nangarhar. First and foremost, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated Washington’s commitment to peace and stability in Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism. On October 20, 2019, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper made his maiden visit to Kabul for talks with the Afghan government to review options for restarting the stalled peace process. It may be mentioned in passing in this context that so far the Afghan government has been kept out of the talks process. Back home in Washington, the US’s chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad met the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and then flew to Europe to get the US’s allies on board and hold discussions in Moscow with his Russian and Chinese interlocutors to advance the peace process. The EU too has called for a ceasefire in Afghanistan to create the necessary conditions for a permanent political settlement. Pakistan, not to be left behind, is reportedly pressing the Taliban to declare an ‘unannounced ceasefire’ without so far any response from the insurgents. In the absence of such a ‘non-announcement’, confidence-building measures such as a scaling back of the fighting is another idea on the table.

The survey of statements and visits above highlights what now appears to be the focus of Washington vis-à-vis the Afghan quagmire. The US’s initial demand that Afghanistan never again serve as the launch pad of terrorism against it and its allies a la 9/11 has been agreed. The now central demand for a ceasefire or at the very least a diminution of the violence is still to be clinched. In the process, one or two other factors are noteworthy. The Afghan government, ignored for the peace talks by Washington and dismissed out of hand by the Taliban as ‘puppets’ is currently in flux after the Afghan presidential election results have been delayed, ostensibly due to some technical hitches. A round of mutual jockeying, claims and counter-claims by the two leading contenders, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, as in the last election, could leave the new Afghan government even weaker and more irrelevant to the power play in progress between the US and the Taliban. The abrupt decision by Trump to throw the US’s erstwhile Kurdish allies to the wolves in Syria has triggered alarm and speculation that Washington may well leave Afghanistan to its own devices in a similar manner, although US officials have been at pains to deny this. With an unreliable imperial power, a weak and ineffective local government, and the battlefield threats from the Taliban and IS, the Afghan brew appears to be heading for some form of catastrophe. Pakistan cannot remain unaffected, especially if increased violence produces a fresh flow of Afghan refugees to our soil. The global and regional powers and the Afghan protagonists must come together and find an acceptable path out of this morass if the long suffering Afghan people are to be spared more of the same deadly mixture they have endured for so long.

Business Recorder Editorial October 18, 2019

Maulana’s ‘Azadi March’

After months of dithering on the issue of Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s ‘Azadi (Freedom) March’ on Islamabad by the two main opposition parties, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and the redoubtable Maulana’s urging them to join it, a flurry of activity and contacts between the JUI-F and all the opposition parties in recent days point to an emerging convergence of the opposition against the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government. With literally days to go for the planned march and dharna(sit-in) in Islamabad on October 31, the JUI-F has actively increased its contacts with all the opposition parties to garner support for the march and strengthen its hand. Apart from the PML-N and the PPP, the emerging opposition ‘alliance’ now includes the Awami National Party, with its president Asfandyar Wali Khan having accepted the role of ‘substitute’ leader of the agitation in case the JUI-F leadership is arrested; the National Party led by Hasil Bizenjo, and even the JUI-F’s rival religious party the Jamaat-i-Islami making sympathetic noises. As for the PML-N and PPP, the former’s internal divisions regarding participation in the march seem to have finally been overcome by incarcerated leader Nawaz Sharif’s letter the other day instructing the party to join in, while the latter’s reservations about the use of the ‘religious card’ by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the PPP’s complaint of the JUI-F ‘supporting’ the PTI in the recent by-election in Larkana seem to have been papered over. The JUI-F’s core committee met in Islamabad on October 15 to finalise the strategy for the march/dharna in the light of the party’s discussions with the other opposition parties. Hasil Bizenjo after meeting the Maulana and pledging his party’s support explained that the opposition agreed to go into the Assemblies on the urging of the PML-N and PPP despite the rigging charges surrounding the 2018 elections that brought the PTI to power. Time, however, he added, had proved that the ‘elected’ government was fake, enjoyed no public mandate, and non-elected people were ruling the country. The Maulana reiterated that all the opposition parties were agreed that the 2018 elections were rigged, the government was not a legitimately elected government, and fresh elections should be called.

An intriguing note during all these developments was added by Federal Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid when he hinted that ‘those whose language is understood’ were in contact with Maulana Fazlur Rehman and he would soon be presented a face-saving way out of his predicament of trying to wriggle out of an embarrassing situation he had landed himself in. The Maulana refuted this reference to alleged establishment contacts by pointing out that the ‘agencies’ were pressurising and threatening lower level leaders of the JUI-F not to participate in the march. He said these tactics would not work, nor could talks with the government be possible until Prime Minister Imran Khan resigns and early elections are announced. Whatever the value of this exchange between the minister and the Maulana, it would be instructive to examine how a seemingly reluctant and divided opposition has been able to move closer together. Both the PML-N and PPP, with big stakes in the continuity of the democratic system, were initially disinclined to mount any agitation despite their complaints about the flawed 2018 elections. However, unrelenting pressure on their respective leaderships over corruption charges during the last one year, and the incremental jailing of many of their prominent leaders, has finally persuaded them of what is perceived as the writing on the wall. Amidst accusations of the National Accountability Bureau carrying out a witch-hunt against the opposition, it is circumstances that have compelled both the PML-N and PPP to set aside their reservations and commit more or less fully to the Maulana’s plans. Now that the die seems all but cast, it is in the fitness of things to remind both sides of the yawning political divide that peaceful protest is the right of any party in a democracy. The JUI-F’s danda-bardar(baton-wielding) force however has raised hackles in the government circles as well as amongst objective observers about what this may portend. If the government tries to use force to prevent the marchers reaching Islamabad, this could potentially lead to violent clashes, which in the end would not help the opposition’s case. On the other hand a peaceful protest and calls to decide the conundrum through a fresh appeal to the electorate via the ballot box would serve all sides well, not to mention democracy and the country.