Business Recorder Editorial July 31, 2020

Missing persons ‘black hole’

The issue of missing persons has assumed the characteristics over time of a ‘black hole’ from which neither many of those subjected to enforced disappearance reappear, nor does information about their whereabouts and welfare. In what may be considered a strong message delivered to the government, law enforcement machinery, and even (by implication) the state widely believed to be behind the heinous practice, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has directed the government to immediately remove the Secretary Interior, Secretary Defence, Inspector General Islamabad Police and the concerned Station House Officer (SHO) for their failure to provide protection to the citizens of the country. On July 25, 2020, IHC’s Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani wrote in his judgement in the case of a missing person, Suleman Farooq Chaudhry, that the Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT’s) report clearly states that the 27 year old electrical engineer was picked up by the law enforcement agencies, but they are not interested in producing him before the court or releasing him despite the court’s direction. Therefore there is no other remedy except to proceed against them. The court also imposed a fine of Rs two million on each of the above named officials. The court directed these respondents to nevertheless take solid steps to ensure recovery of the abductee within one month. The judgement further revealed that Suleman Farooq Chaudhry has been missing since October 4, 2019. Justice Kayani noted that the JIT report was submitted in a sealed envelope, reflecting that this was a case of enforced disappearance. On the other hand, not a shred of evidence is on the record to connect the missing person with any anti-state activities. No doubt the government will likely appeal against the strong strictures passed by the IHC. However the IHC judgement fares through the legal process, there is little doubt that the judgement has touched a raw nerve and exposed once again the heinous practice of enforced disappearance that has led to thousands missing in Balochistan and hundreds more all over the country, including the federal capital Islamabad.

What began as an extra-legal practice in Balochistan to counter the nationalist insurgency (including the notorious ‘kill and dump’ policy) some two decades ago has by now assumed the contours of a deliberate policy of the state throughout Pakistan. Those disappeared include dissidents, critics, journalists, and all those differing with the government in power. As long as such dissent or critique remains within the bounds of the Constitution and the law, there are no grounds for subjecting the holders of such views to the unwanted attentions of covert operatives. And even if, in the view of the state some red line has been crossed, this does not give it carte blanche to take the law into its own hands and disappear people. In a civilised, democratic society regulated by the rule of law, no matter how serious the alleged breach of constitutional and legal boundaries, the task of the law enforcement machinery (overt and covert) is to arrest the accused and present him/her before a court of law for adjudication. That course is the exception rather than the rule in our polity. So much so that some years ago, a Commission on Missing Persons was set up with great fanfare, with now National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chief retired Justice Iqbal as its head. To say that the Commission has signally failed to provide any relief or succour to the agonised families of the missing is to put it politely. Better late than never though, if the powers that be realise finally that these illegal practices of disappearing people, subjecting them to ill treatment, and killing and dumping some of them is likely to have the opposite effect to that intended. Far from inducing the kind of paralysing generalised fear amongst people the perpetrators may be aiming at, such cruelty is more likely to swell the ranks of the disaffected, and persuade some of them to take to means other than peaceful protest if such injustices continue.

Business Recorder Editorial July 24, 2020

PTV’s woes

On July 21, 2022, the federal cabinet discussed a proposed increase in the television licence fee collected through electricity bills from the present Rs 35 to Rs 100. However, after at least three ministers objected to the proposal, a decision was deferred till the next cabinet meeting. The dissenting ministers’ argument was that imposing the increase without taking the public into confidence was not the best course. Instead, the dire financial and operating crisis of the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV) should first be explained. It will come as no surprise to the viewing public that PTV is virtually on the verge of collapse, with an annual loss of Rs 14 billion, outdated equipment, etc, which has brought PTV to a state in which virtually no programme production is going on. Once bustling with activity, PTV studios throughout the country appear abandoned. The internal reasons for the decline too are not unknown. Once the pride of the country, PTV, like so many other institutions such as Pakistan Steel Mills and PIA, has been run into the ground over the years. Information Minister Shibli Sarfraz of course trotted out the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government’s stock explanation for all that is wrong in the country by putting the blame on the corruption and faulty policies of the previous governments, but PTV’s malaise has been longer in gestation and existence. The main reason creativity and good programming, once the hallmark of PTV, have fallen by the wayside is incrementally increasing total control over content by successive governments, causing a stifling atmosphere unconducive to sensitive and creative souls, which PTV could boast of in its heyday. While the decline of professionalism and creativity because of government strictures was already well underway, the death blow may have been administered by the introduction of private satellite TV channels, the internet and social media. These developments completely altered the media landscape the world over, with Pakistan no exception. Now the contrast between PTV’s subservient and fawning on the government in power news programming stood out in bold relief when compared to these other sources of news and information, particularly the private TV channels.

To the extent that Shibli Sarfaz points to overstaffing without merit in the past, he may be correct. The figures show that whereas the budget for the 110 private TV channels is a total Rs 38 billion, the budget of PTV alone is Rs 22 billion. Of course the latter figure may be swelled not only by overstaffing costs, but also the fact that PTV is the only terrestrial channel (all the private ones are only satellite channels). While there is hardly any excuse or justification for overstaffing, and that too more likely on the basis of cronyism practiced by successive governments rather than professional merit, this terrestrial advantage could help PTV compete because of its unrivalled outreach, provided it is once again run by professionals as a state-owned but autonomous media organisation along the lines of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The days of treating PTV like the handmaiden of the government are truly over. If PTV is to survive, let alone thrive, in the intensely crowded and competitive media landscape today, it must say goodbye to the tightly controlled, sycophantic culture of yesteryear and embrace a new vision of professional excellence compatible with today’s global media industry. In its present shape and form PTV does not serve the interests of the state as it has little or no credibility.

Business Recorder Editorial July 23, 2020

An unjust, unequal world

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, speaking on the 102^ndbirth anniversary of the late Nelson Mandela, has delivered a devastating indictment of the present world order. He said the coronavirus pandemic has served as an x-ray to reveal the fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built, shone a spotlight on global injustice, and could push 100 million people into extreme poverty. In Guterres’ view, entire regions that were making progress on eradicating poverty and narrowing inequality have been set back years in a matter of months. The economic fallout of the pandemic that has infected over 14 million people and killed close to 600,000 worldwide is being disproportionately felt among informal workers, small businesses and women. We face the deepest global recession since World War II. Guterres shone his own spotlight on the crisis having revealed unequal healthcare provision, unpaid care work, income and wealth disparity, and climate change. He also said the pandemic is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the delusion that we live in a post-racist world (badly exposed by the global anti-racist movement after the death of George Floyd in the US), and that we are all in the same boat (some are in super yachts and others clinging to floating debris). Guterres pointed out that the world’s 26 richest people hold as much wealth as half the global population. Between 1980 and 2016, the world’s richest one percent captured 27 percent of the total cumulative growth in income. But income and wealth are not the only measure of inequality. People’s chances in life depend on their gender, family and ethnic background, race, whether or not they have a disability, and other factors. Multiple inequalities intersect and reinforce each other across the generations, defining the lives and expectations of millions of people before they are even born. Guterres proposes a new social contract and a new global deal to meet these deep rooted problems. This would include making education and digital technology two great enablers and equalisers by providing lifelong opportunities to learn, adapt, and acquire new skills for the knowledge economy. Fair taxation of income and wealth, a new generation of social protection policies with safety nets including universal health coverage and a universal basic income are essential. A fair globalisation is required to ensure that power, wealth and opportunities are shared more broadly at the international level, the rights and dignity of every human being are guaranteed, living is in balance and harmony with nature, the rights of future generations are respected and success measured in human rather than purely economic terms. Global structures of governance must be democratised, the global debt architecture reformed and fiscal space created for a green, equitable economy.

Guterres has put his finger on what ailed the world even before the pandemic, which has exacerbated those trends and exposed the dark underbelly of global inequality and injustice. Perhaps what could be added to his penetrating analysis and well intentioned solutions is the fact that for at least three decades, the world has been hurtling pell-mell down the slippery slope of a neo-liberal paradigm that saw the free market and private capitalism as the panacea of the world’s problems. But unfortunately, the unbridled recourse to this paradigm has increased already existing inequalities and injustices while adding new forms to the list, including the devastation of nature by rapacious capitalism wedded to profit above all else. Poor societies such as Vietnam, Laos and Cuba have handled the pandemic with remarkable success. The difference lies in their continued adherence to social safety nets espoused by communism, which places the welfare of the people above all other considerations. Even if other societies do not choose to embrace their system in its entirety, it has become crystal clear after the pandemic, even if it was not before, that private capitalism cannot be left unfettered and society cannot be left bereft of social safety nets. The wholesale faith in free markets and private capitalism needs, at a minimum, reform in the direction of taking care of those members and aspects of society that this system signally fails to do.

Business Recorder Editorial July 22, 2020

Unelected aides

The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government seems bent on setting new records in the ‘bring me news of fresh disasters’ race. Only last week, Minister for Food Security Syed Fakhar Imam told the National Assembly that the record procurement of six million tons wheat had ‘disappeared’, and that the ensuing shortage would have to be met by import of 0.7 million tons. He went on to ascribe the escalating price of wheat and flour in the market to the ‘disappearance’ of the procured wheat from the government’s stocks. This statement rivals the ill-considered statement regarding pilots’ licences by the Aviation Minister in the National Assembly recently that has knocked PIA out of the skies. Do ministers not consider and weigh their words carefully before speaking? But why blame just these elected worthies of the government. On July 16, 2020, while hearing petitions regarding the petrol crisis, the Lahore High Court Chief Justice Qasim Khan, while observing that Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Nadeem Babar prima facie appeared responsible for the fiasco, expressed his concerns over unelected individuals running the government’s affairs. He went on to state that elected representatives were answerable to their electorate, but unelected aides could just pack up their bags and go back to wherever they had come from. As though on cue, the government responded by revealing the dual nationalities of at least four of its Special Assistants to the Prime Minister out of 19 non-elected cabinet members. Another four hold permanent residence in various foreign countries. The government, in the shape of Minister for Information Shibli Sarfraz, is claiming credit for making the information about the Special Assistants to the Prime Minister public on Prime Minister Imran Khan’s directive. But the unvarnished truth may lie closer to the obvious embarrassment caused to the government by the Lahore High Court Chief Justice’s remarks. The remaining question suggests itself: does this revelation let the government off the hook vis-à-vis running the affairs of government through unelected individuals whose stakes in and loyalties to the country may be divided and who have a readymade escape rout abroad if and when things go south for this government?

Such a large number of unelected aides (some handling critical areas such as national security, power, petroleum, finance and the economy) in what is already an overly large cabinet can and does raise concerns. If memory serves, General Pervez Musharraf’s first finance and then prime minister Shauqat Aziz fled to his country of permanent residence abroad as soon as the General was shunted out. He has not deigned to return to the country despite (or because of) cases pending in the courts against him. This less than illustrious example serves to underline what Lahore High Court Chief Justice Qasim Khan has pointed out. With power must come responsibility, but in the case of unelected aides, their foreign escape routes could preclude any notion of being held to account for their actions in office. Even more seriously, as the opposition entire is now demanding and Imran Khan while in opposition did insist, people with dual loyalties or more stakes abroad than in the motherland cannot be relied on without reservation to choose the latter’s interests over and above those of their adopted countries in the event of a conflict of such interests. The opposition therefore is calling for the prime minister to sack such dual nationality or possibly divided loyalties aides. Pakistan must take account of the practice that has crept into our polity of shutting our eyes to putting the country’s interests at risk by handing over important areas of responsibility to those not unequivocally wedded to the country’s interests.

Business Recorder Column July 21, 2020

The Baloch ‘disappeared’

Rashed Rahman

How long are 11 years, or 4,000 days? Especially if the best part of them has been spent in a protest camp outside the Quetta or Karachi Press Clubs? The answer to these questions can only provided by the two daughters of Dr Deen Mohammad. The good doctor was ‘disappeared’ in 2009. On June 28, 2009, a daily sit-in protest against his enforced disappearance was launched before the Quetta Press Club. Amongst the protestors on that day were his two daughters, then aged 10 and eight years. Eleven years later, they are still protesting against their father’s disappearance, with the elder, Sammi Baloch, now 21. She tells us of the poignancy of her family’s grief and misery: “Our little hands were holding pictures of our father back then; now we have grown up and we still have no clue if he is alive.”

If we have any humanity left, we should try and put ourselves in her shoes to experience second-hand what it means to be robbed of a dear one and suffer the agony of not even knowing if he is still alive. What dreams of these two young girls must have been shattered along the way of their arduous and painful emotional journey of waiting, waiting, seeking, seeking their lost father. Sad as this is, what is even sadder is that there are many more like Sammi Baloch who have lost dear ones to the dread hand of the enforced disappearers.

The problem Balochistan and its affairs have suffered from since Independence is that we are fed only on a daily diet of officially sanctified truth, which proves a thin tissue of making all real news about Balochistan disappear into a black hole from which not even light can escape. This has been the pattern of Balochistan’s troubled relationship with the Pakistani state from day one.

A brief recap of that sorry history may help readers unfamiliar with what ails Balochistan. At the time of negotiations with the departing British colonialists in the 1940s, the Khan of Kalat, the head of the Baloch tribal confederacy, wanted to stake out his people’s claim to be treated as a state having treaty status with the British Crown. To fight his case, the Khan employed the services of one of the most brilliant constitutional lawyers of the time, none other than Mr Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Mr Jinnah argued Balochistan’s case right up to the Privy Council, only to reverse his sympathies for his former client once partition had taken place, Pakistan had been created, and Mr Jinnah had become the Governor General. Commentators have wondered whether this change of a sympathetic understanding of Balochistan’s case was owed to the difficulties the newly created state faced, especially the first war in Kashmir in 1947-48. Whatever the merits of this view, the Khan’s autobiography states unequivocally that he was forced to accede to Pakistan in March 1948 in Karachi.

That event sparked off the first nationalist Baloch armed rebellion with the Khan’s brother, Agha Abdul Karim, leading it. The rebels were invited to parleys with an oath on the Quran that they would not be harmed. However, the state went back on this solemn oath and Agha Abdul Karim spent 16 of the next 22 years in prison, while his comrades also suffered various terms of imprisonment. The smouldering resentment at this treatment had not quite dissipated when the next blow to Baloch-Centre relations was administered in 1958, just 10 years after the first revolt.

Then President Iskandar Mirza, and his ambitious army commander General Ayub Khan sought an excuse to impose martial law and take over the country. An accusation was framed against the Khan of Kalat that he was preparing an armed rebellion against the state. He was arrested after a military assault on Kalat and brought to Lahore where he was kept under house arrest for many years (as children we often cycled past the house in Gulberg where the Khan was detained, only to be shooed away by the armed guards outside). The Khan’s arrest and incarceration had the opposite effect of what the martial law regime may have been aiming at. Whether there was a rebellion in the making or not (and the Khan has vehemently denied it), the treatment of the Khan led to an uprising in 1958 led by octogenarian tribal chief Nauroze Khan. Again the state swore an oath on the Holy Quran of no harm to induce the rebels to come down from the mountains and hold negotiations. Again the oath was violated and Nauroze Khan and his followers were arrested. Subsequently, nine of Nauroze Khan’s sons and nephews were hanged for treason in Hyderabad Jail, where the elderly chief too passed away.

The quelling by underhand means of the second Baloch rebellion did nothing to quieten things down. The Marri tribe rose in 1962, led in the field by famous guerrilla commander Sher Mohammad Marri. This uprising continued till the Ayub military regime fell in 1969, gathering support from other Baloch tribes such as the Mengals along the way.

General Yahya Khan, who took over from Ayub and declared yet another martial law, led a regime with a mixed bag of good and bad steps and policies. As far as the Baloch question was concerned, he negotiated a ceasefire and peace with the Baloch guerrillas and gave Balochistan the status of a province for the first time in preparation for the 1970 elections. The East Pakistan debacle led to Yahya’s fall, with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto invited by the military to pick up the pieces of a broken up Pakistan. Initially Bhutto did negotiate with the Baloch, giving them their own elected coalition government for the first time in Pakistan’s history and garnering moderate nationalist support such as that of Mir Ghaus Buksh Bizenjo for the 1973 Constitution. Unlike the received wisdom, the four elected MNAs of Balochistan, including towering figure Nawab Khair Buksh Marri, refused to sign that Constitution on reservations about its quantum and quality of provincial autonomy and the retention of laws militating against political and human rights, shattering the myth of it being unanimous. Sardar Attaullah Mengal’s provincial government was dismissed by Bhutto within one year, triggering the fourth armed struggle in Balochistan since Pakistan came into being. That struggle ended only when Bhutto was overthrown by General Ziaul Haq in 1977.

For the next 25 years, the Bizenjo line of peaceful political and parliamentary struggle for the rights of the Baloch (which by now included control over provincial natural and mineral resources such as Sui gas) dominated Baloch politics but failed to yield even an inch of concession or reform from the state. Despairing of this toothless strategy, a new generation once again took up arms in 2002, a struggle that continues to date. Along the way, General Pervez Musharraf ensured for the first time in history the entry of one faction of the Bugti tribe into the armed struggle by killing Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006. Since then, the nationalist armed struggle has spread from the Marri and Bugti areas to the Mengals and the Mekran belt.

It is in this latest period of nationalist revolt in Balochistan that the tactic of enforced disappearances first appeared. Students of history will wonder whether the Pakistani authorities took a leaf out of the 1960s military dictatorships in Latin America that first introduced this heinous practice. Whatever the inspiration, the policy of enforced disappearances of peaceful dissidents has yielded by now thousands of disappearances, a handful of such cases being traced and returned to their homes, and thousands more disappeared over the years.

The state comforts itself with the assertion that the Baloch struggle is India-sponsored and -supported and therefore the policy of total repression (including enforced disappearances) is justified. Those familiar with Pakistan’s history will bear witness that such assertions have accompanied the castigation of every political movement and leadership that does not meet with the approval of the state (not just the Baloch). Evidence to back up these assertions of Indian support vis-à-vis the current conflict cannot be had for love or money. This short-sighted, historically-proved-disastrous approach is only embittering the Baloch further, hardening their resistance, and stoking the fires of separation amongst the angry youth. In the long run, it may prove once again to be disastrous for the country.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

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Business Recorder Editorial July 17, 2020

Provincial finance commissions

The federal cabinet on July 14, 2020 issued directives to the provincial governments for the constitution of Provincial Finance Commissions (PFCs) in order to arrive at Awards for the equitable distribution of resources within the provinces. Minister of Information Shibli Faraz revealed during a press conference after the cabinet meeting that matters pertaining to the PFCs in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan would be supervised by Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar. It may be noted that these three provinces have Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf governments or allied ones. The significant omission is Sindh. Not that it can be  realistically envisaged that Asad Umar would be able to play the same role regarding the PFC in Sindh, given the state of continuing acrimony between the Centre and the province. Nevertheless the issue of PFCs is deeper and of longer standing than the current political lay of the land. Just as the National Finance Commission (NFC) Awards ensure a consensus equitable distribution of resources vertically and horizontally amongst the Centre and the provinces, the PFCs are required to play a similar role vis-à-vis the Local Governments (LGs) within the provinces. This architecture of resource distribution is fundamentally tied to the existence and healthy functioning of LGs. However, the track record of LGs and PFCs in our history remains a sorry one. LGs, if and when they have existed legitimately through elections, have more often than not suffered at the hands of military and authoritarian rulers keen to use them as an electoral political base but less interested in fostering a democratic LG structure. Consequently, the PFCs that are supposed to issue consensus Awards for resource distribution to these LGs were never formed. Even the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the champion of provincial autonomy and the devolution of powers from the Centre to the federating units through, for example, the 18^thAmendment, has more often than not failed to carry through the devolution logic from the provinces to their LGs. In fact, it could be said of the whole political class that they have consistently shown a marked reluctance to devolve powers from the provinces to the LGs for fear of ‘diluting’ their hold on their constituencies.

If and when the directive of the federal government is put into effect, the provincial governments may be confronted with long standing competing claims on resources by LGs, districts, rural and urban communities, different ethnic groups and developed versus underdeveloped areas within the respective provinces. For example, the urban community in Sindh (until lately almost exclusively represented by Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)) has a long standing complaint about alleged neglect of the cities in the province. The counter-argument flows from the Sindhi nationalist groups that it is in fact the rural areas that have suffered neglect in comparison with the cities. Interestingly, the PPP too advances an identical argument. This urban-rural conflict therefore also assumes the hues of an ethnic divide, making it more combustible than usual. Southern Punjab has been complaining of neglect and underdevelopment in comparison with central and northern Punjab for years, giving birth because of these unrequited grievances to the movement for a southern Punjab province/s. KP wrestles with its own Pashtun-Hazara ethnic divide on the same lines, as does Balochistan with its Baloch-Pashtun cleavage.

Verily, if and when the sorry track record of the now on, now off again existence of LGs and PFCs is reversed in favour of a permanent elected existence for the former and timely one for the latter (PFC Awards are for three years, as opposed to NFC Awards’ five years), the can of worms listed above may prove a tough nut to crack to arrive at unanimous PFC Awards. But it is not a task beyond the imagination, if the political will to give the country a representative and responsive-to-the-citizen LGs structure is in evidence. Rural areas, in Sindh in particular but throughout the provinces generally, must be provided agreed and adequate resources to stem the tide of humanity seeking economic and life opportunities in the cities. Ethnic sub-groups in the provinces must be provided a fair share to mitigate their past grievances. All this requires patient, tolerant, democratic consensus building amongst competing political parties, communities and ethnicities. Can the PTI government find the reserves of goodwill and vision required for this consensus-building task?

Business Recorder Editorial July 16, 2020

NFC ruction

Strange indeed are the ways of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government. On July 13, 2020, Senator Muhammad Ali Saif of the ruling coalition’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) attempted to move a Constitutional Amendment Bill in the upper house to amend Article 160 (3). The Article in question bars reduction of the share of the provinces in the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award. After a heated debate, the Bill was not allowed to be moved by a vote of 25-17 in the Senate. For some time now, the government and its allied parties have been raising a ruckus about the 18^thConstitutional Amendment and the NFC Award. Essentially all this wailing was on two points. The first was that the 18^thAmendment is not a perfect document and needs amendment. When the opposition (particularly the Pakistan People’s Party) raises objections to this line of thinking, the ‘good cops’ of the government assuage them by saying no such thing is being contemplated since in any case the 18^thAmendment cannot be changed without a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament, an advantage the PTI-led coalition clearly lacks. Why this impeccable logic does not then quell the government’s tilting repeatedly at this windmill is beyond comprehension if examined on the touchstone of its own ‘good cops’ narrative. Second, the government is even more peeved about the current NFC Award dating from 2010 that holds the field since no Award could be agreed since. This Award gives 42.5 percent of the federal divisible pool to the Centre, and 57.5 percent to the provinces. The federal government’s complaint is that this allocation to it is insufficient to meet debt servicing, military expenditure, development and administrative functions. However, the underlying logic of the NFC Award was tied to the 18^thAmendment’s devolution of 17 Concurrent List subjects to the provinces (the original intent of the framers of the 1973 Constitution after a period of 10 years, it might be added, which passed long ago). The recipient provinces, however, maintain that the devolved subjects were precisely the reason for increasing the share of the provinces in the NFC so that they could be funded. The federal government on the other hand retained these ministries/departments, thereby unnecessarily burdening its non-development expenditure. Further, the federal tax collection through the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) was to increase at least one percent of GDP per year. That, unfortunately, has not come to pass and the percentage stubbornly clings to its present around 11 percent. In short, neither did the federal government divest itself of the devolved ministries/departments under the 18^thAmendment (it could have simply delegated these subjects’ coordination to the federal Inter-Provincial Coordination Ministry), nor did it follow through in any meaningful sense to raise the tax-GDP ratio as envisaged. For it therefore to now cry hoarse that it is financially hamstrung is one more instance of self-inflicted wounds.

What the PTI government seems incapable of understanding is that issues such as constitutional amendments and NFC Awards can only be resolved through dialogue, conferring with the opposition, and forging a consensus cutting across party lines. That seems a far cry given the strident tone and derogatory language regarding the opposition that is recognised as the leitmotif of this government. In the polarised atmosphere created by this manner of discourse inside and outside parliament, is it possible to conceive that unanimity (in the case of the NFC Award) and consensus (in the case of amendments to the 18^thAmendment), the necessary conditions for both objectives, are at hand? If the government genuinely wants its case sympathetically and objectively heard, for which there are indeed justifiable grounds, it will have to reverse its manner of speaking to and about the opposition if it really desires to achieve its objective. Unfortunately, however, there are no signs that the government is contemplating a departure from its ‘container-type’ harangues. Hence the chances of unanimity on the NFC Award and consensus on reform of the 18^thAmendment are akin to a snowball residing in hell.

Business Recorder Column July 14, 2020

Not much in the way of good news

Rashed Rahman

There is not much in the way of good news about Pakistan these days. However, there is plenty of bad news for the taking. First and foremost comes the news of another clash with terrorists in North Waziristan on July 12, 2020 in which four terrorists and four soldiers were killed. This latest incident proves that informed observers’ warnings after the military operations in erstwhile FATA had ceased that talk of having broken the back of the terrorists should not lull us into complacency since the bulk of the terrorists who had Pakistan in their grip for years managed to escape to Afghanistan, from where they were expected to launch terrorist actions inside Pakistan. This is the sorry endgame of our jihadi and Taliban adventures in Afghanistan stretching back over almost 50 years.

Meanwhile the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government continues to flounder. After the sugar, wheat, petrol, PIA fiascos, the low cost housing scheme launched by the government promises to be another debacle. While the ‘honest and clean’ PTI government unabashedly invites investors to whiten their black money by pouring it into the construction and real estate sector, the financial structure of the low cost housing scheme may prove a damp squib. The subsidy offered to potential low cost housing customers is peanuts and, going by the track record of the banks in funding housing loans, there is unlikely to be much in the way of an emerging mortgage sector. Meanwhile, like all else, the Karachi Electric (KE) load shedding too has become a political ‘football’ between the federal and Sindh governments on the one hand, and the former and KE on the other. KE’s perpetual carping about insufficient electricity supply from the national grid, shortage of fuel oil, gas, LNG and what have you has become tiresome by repetition over the years. KE has invested precious little since it took over the power system of the country’s industrial and commercial hub in its creaking and leaky distribution network. Such are the wages of turning over such a critical power supply system to a private company trying always to maximise its profit, over and above its responsibility as a critical utility company. This speaks volumes to the much touted privatisation of state owned enterprises solution to Pakistan’s economic problems.

As though the tiresome daily fisticuffs between the federal and Sindh governments were not already enough, the Uzair Baloch JIT report/s have become the latest stick to beat each other with. This confrontationist style (initiated by the Centre and by now responded to in like fashion by the Sindh government) promises to drag the country down into the gutter (if it has not already).

Uncomfortably for the ‘squeaky clean’ PTI government, a number of its ministers are now on the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB’s) radar for corruption and like misdeameanours. They include (and this may not be a comprehensive list) Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar (also credited with knocking PIA out of the skies), Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qadri, ex-Health Minister Aamir Mahmood Kayani and Health Special Assistant Dr Zafar Mirza. The fissures opening up of late in the PTI’s ranks now have another addition: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi is accused by a Multan PTI MNA of ‘encouraging’ corruption. And let us not forget the architect and main financier of PTI’s (assisted) rise to power, Jehangir Tareen, currently cooling his heels in London after fleeing the possible adverse fallout of the sugar scandal. So much for the PTI’s favourite ‘corruption’ mantra.

Even a generous offer by the PTI government to build a Hindu temple in Islamabad (none exists in the federal capital) has run afoul of the cast of usual suspects: maulvisand sundry other intolerant right wing types. The issue resonates in the context of Hagya Sophia in Istanbul being turned into a mosque from a museum and worst of all, the tearing down of Babri Masjid in India. If religion is to be a divider of peoples, this only serves to reinforce secularism, which relegates religion out of the state’s purview and into the private sphere, as the best way forward for humanity to avoid hate-filled, violent religious strife. Strife of another kind festers in Balochistan. The ‘disease’ of enforced disappearances has spread throughout the country by now, albeit Balochistan remains its epicentre. The spread of the affliction is now bringing Sindhi nationalist groups too to the armed struggle. Is this a wise course, given how the Baloch nationalist insurgency has refused to die down since Pakistan’s independence because of heavy-handed repression of what are political grievances? The effect of such a recurring Baloch insurgency may not have had the same effect as a nationalist insurgency in Sindh, which is second only to Punjab in population and strategic and economic importance.

This brief and wholly inadequate survey points to a few lessons to be derived from the manipulated rise to power of the PTI. The Subcontinent’s history is rich in betrayal and collaboration by opportunists with the reigning power. That ‘tradition’ is alive and kicking even today. Most of the commentariat and people at large are bogged down in the binary PTI versus the opposition. This hardly offers any solution to the country’s crippling problems since the former has failed and the latter (in particular the PML-N and the PPP), despite the flawed witch hunt against their leaders by NAB, stood exposed as the practitioners of political office for private gain long before the PTI was plumped for by the establishment. This implies there is actually a vacuum of political leadership in the country at present. No ‘minus one’ or any other similar formula can resolve this impasse and extricate us from the cul de sac the country has been pushed into. Thinking observers are deeply concerned about the implications of such a vacuum of political leadership for the future of the country.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column July 7, 2020

BLM and us

Rashed Rahman

The killing of an Afro-American man, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis, USA has proved one of those historic tipping points no one could have predicted. The tragic US history of Africans’ slavery, being worked to death in the plantation economy of the South, oppression, lynching, etc, was not exactly unknown. Despite the civil rights movement of the 1960s led by such luminaries as Dr Martin Luther King, racial profiling, oppression, discrimination, police and white supremacist violence had remained the lot of the Afro-American community in the US. How to explain then the outburst of criticism, both of words and physical challenge, of this long standing and entrenched system of racial abuse to which not only black people but all non-white communities are subjected in the US? There is no other explanation except to say that this is one of those seminal moments when it can be claimed that this (equality, justice) is an idea whose time has come.

This claim is substantiated by the spread of the idea that Black Lives Matter (BLM), the slogan under which the movement has spread throughout the US and abroad to virtually all countries with a history of slavery, racial, ethnic, indigenous populations’ oppression, the rape and murder of whole societies from the least developed to ancient civilisations through colonialism. But if we think the BLM is restricted to challenging white-dominated police and other repression, think again. In Africa today, post-colonial police behave no differently towards citizens than they did during the white man’s rule. If anything, they are even more brutal to preserve authoritarian and dictatorial rulers in power.

So while a long overdue reckoning of the sins of colonialism (in all its varieties, including settler colonialism) unfolds, it is necessary to reflect on the fact that the post-colonial order in most developing countries is as bad, if not worse, than in colonial times. As an example of colonial brutality, the decapitated heads of 24 Algerian resistance fighters during the 19^thcentury have only now been returned to be buried in their native soil after being kept in archives in France for about 170 years. This may be the most recent example, but even a cursory perusal of colonial history would throw up a whole gallery of the cruelty, murder, rapine and plunder to which a few emerging capitalist European (white, of course) powers subjected most of the rest of the world.

It may interest readers to know that the Mughal Empire that succumbed to British colonialism in the 17^th-18^thcenturies, represented some 33 percent of world GDP at the height of its powers. It goes without saying then that the Subcontinent was arguably the richest country in the world. Within a period of 250-300 years, the British so exhausted the wealth of the Subcontinent as to leave its people poor, starving, subject to famine, etc, a fate from which they have still to extricate themselves, not the least because the post-colonial state and social construct has left them at the mercy of the structures of power erected/created by the colonialists.

Given this history of oppression at the hands of colonialism, you would have expected a wave of sympathy for the BLM and related movements questioning the colonial legacy in the Subcontinent. Yet an embarrassing virtual silence is all that is available. The other countries of the Subcontinent may have their own reasons/explanations for this unseemly indifference, but in the case of our own country, Pakistan, there could be a number of factors causing this.

First and foremost is the phenomenon of a vacuum of credible political leadership, stretching across the board from the Right to the Left. Even a cursory glance at our mainstream or social media will reveal the dark underbelly of self-censorship (in the mainstream) and wild abuse, conspiracy theories galore (in the social media), adding to the general drift and confusion in our polity for at least the last three decades. A leaderless people are bogged down in the task of daily survival, exacerbated by the corona virus affliction. Noble ideals and principles are far from their thoughts presently, and there is scarce hope of even a glimmer of light.

Can we honestly say that the issues raised by BLM and the calling-to-account of colonial history is irrelevant to us? Can we, hand on our heart, claim there is no clan, caste, colour, religious, gender, smaller nationalities discrimination in our society? Can we continue to blithely ignore our even worse police and thana(police station) culture and practice of routine recourse to violence and torture, either to extract confessions or extort bribes? Can we continue to ignore the daily fare of deaths in so-called ‘encounters’ with the police that are a well exposed method of police murders of suspects and the innocent? Can we continue to hide our head in the sand at the long standing practice of enforced disappearances, the spread of which is bringing more smaller provinces/nationalities to the portals of rebellion?

Pakistan is like most post-colonial states in terms of the system bequeathed by our erstwhile white masters. A nexus of privilege and wealth unites post-colonial state structures and the classes (inherited from British ‘largesse’ and newly emerged since Independence) sitting on top of a most iniquitous heap. Whereas developed modern states rely on force to quell unrest amongst their own citizens with restraint and as a last resort (the US being a notable exception), opting instead to fashion consensus around the kind of state and society most people would (consciously or unconsciously) accept, our state’s first recourse is to violence and repression instead of dialogue and toleration of dissent. This is what led to the loss of half of Pakistan in 1971. A continuation of such repressive attitudes from the everyday base to the top portals of power threatens what remains of the country. Where there is sham democracy, the throttling of honest dissent, violent repression of movements of grievance, what could be the likely outcome or future? Food for thought, if they wish, for our real rulers.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The July 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out

The July 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Contents:

1. From the Editor: PTI coalition unravelling?

2. Book Review: I A Rehman: An outstanding study of TV drama –

Navid Shahzad: Aslan’s Roar: Turkish Television and the rise of the Muslim Hero (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 2019).

3. Abdul Khalique Junejo: Finance and Water Issues and the role of the State.

4.Rashed Rahman: Marxist strategy today – III: Gramsci’s alternative to the Third International.

5. Prof Dr Major General (retd) M M H Nuri: Tele-medicine in the service of heart patients.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review

Director, Research and Publication Centre