Business Recorder Editorial September 17, 2020

Justice system’s injustices

 

Two speeches at the ceremony to mark the start of the new judicial year at the Supreme Court (SC) in Islamabad on September 14, 2020 laid bare the problems and injustices at the heart of our justice system. First, the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmad stressed the criticality of the independence of the judiciary for delivering justice and protecting the fundamental rights of the citizen. The CJP underlined the importance of judges being fully independent without any external pressures. This statement is doubly significant in the backdrop of the shrinking space for dissent and questions about the credibility of the legal system. The CJP underlined the concept of the judicial year as an opportunity to scrutinize the balance sheet of good and bad points of the justice system. Although the CJP’s view is to be respected, one is inclined to ask whether such annual ceremonies have succeeded in tackling the glaring flaws and gaps in the justice system, chief amongst which must be counted the interminable time taken to adjudicate cases, leading to a mountain of the backlog of cases that seems to have become a permanent feature of our lives. A stronger critique was aired by Attorney General (AG) Khalid Jawed Khan, who pulled no punches in describing the criminal justice system as heavily tilted in favour of the perpetrators of a crime rather than the victim. This injustice, he went on, is at its worst when the perpetrators are socially and financially powerful. Wealth and social status raise an impregnable defence in favour of the perpetrators, while gender-related crimes are endemic, he argued. Women in particular are targeted, whether through rape, molestation or honour killings, depriving them of peace even in the grave. The AG called for serious collective retrospection on these issues. The criminal justice system may be bad, the AG continued, but the civil justice system is wont to allow matters to linger on for generations, thus answering to the description of justice delayed is justice denied.

The central culprit in the interminable delays in both our criminal and civil justice system is adjournments. These, granted almost without thought, compound the other delaying factors in the objective of cases being decided in a reasonable time frame. The government should, with the superior judiciary’s help, constitute a justice system reform commission that can look into and suggest ways and means to cut down unnecessary adjournments and tackle other causes of delay in order to bring cases to a timely close. While we are on the subject, the indignation, anger and rage produced across society by the motorway gang rape incident has elicited calls for harsh punishments for rapists and paedophiles. While the sentiments expressed in this regard from the prime minister down to ministers, parliamentarians and outraged citizens calling for public hangings and castration as punishments are understandable in the context of the horrendous incident, it is time for calmer heads when everyone around appears to be losing theirs. Barbaric punishments are supposed to deter crime, but the argument is refuted by the evidence of long standing. All such practices that are a throwback to barbarism do is brutalise society even further without necessarily any noticeable effect on the incidence of such crimes. Of course there are more rational courses to meet the objective of keeping society safe from the perpetrators of such crimes, particularly repeat or serial offenders. Life imprisonment without the present legal limit and no chance of parole would be the harshest but perhaps most just punishment for such offenders. Public hangings and castration may or may not do much to deter such crimes (or any other crimes for that matter), but what they may do to our collective notions of justice is a grave and potentially greater social damage than the original sin itself.

Business Recorder Column September 15, 2020

Peace or surrender?

 

Rashed Rahman

 

After innumerable delays and amidst uncertainty, the intra-Afghan talks process was kicked off in Doha on September 12, 2020. However, the difficulties surrounding the process have been highlighted by the persistence of fighting on the ground in Afghanistan. While the agenda for the talks has still to be hammered out in Doha, six policemen were killed in a Taliban attack in Kunduz on September 13, 2020, while five officers were slain in Kapisa province. A roadside mine blast in Kabul wounded two civilians, while another explosion did not result in any casualties. Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry said in Kabul that on September 11, 2020, on the eve of the inaugural ceremony in Doha, the Taliban carried out 18 attacks against the government forces and installations across the country, causing heavy casualties. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid countered by stressing that the Taliban had attacked a convoy of government forces that arrived to launch an operation along a key highway in Kunduz, while security forces carried out air and artillery strikes on September 12, 2020 in Baghlan and Jowzjan provinces. In other words, shifting the blame to government attacks and trying to present the Taliban actions as ‘defensive’.

However, the ‘defensive’ argument of Mujahid failed to explain the bomb attack on Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh in Kabul on September 9, 2020, in which he fortunately escaped unharmed but the 10 people killed were not so lucky. Saleh is a staunch opponent of the Taliban. One could argue endlessly whether this posture of continuing attacks is Taliban leadership-led, reflects their relative lack of control over their local commanders, or can be attributed to the Islamic State (IS) factor in the brew.

After the September 12, 2020 inaugural ceremony in Doha, Afghan government negotiators appeared cautiously optimistic, which to sceptics seemed merely hoping against hope. At the opening ceremony, ceasefire calls dominated the speeches of the Afghan government, the US, and allies of both, but the Taliban simply ignored the demand. The Taliban therefore seem to be adhering to a classic ‘talking while fighting’ strategy, not the least because of concern that tapering off the fighting would lessen their leverage against their enemies and weaken the resolve and unity of their own ranks.

Latest reports say the ‘talks about talks’ in Doha have already hit deadlock over the insistence by the Taliban of a restoration of their draconian version of Islamic law, including harsh punishments, while the Afghan government is not prepared to budge on its stand that the gains since 2001 in democracy, rights (including women) and the rule of modern, civilised law cannot be reversed. The deadlock has persuaded US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad to travel to Pakistan to get help from their ‘daddy’ in persuading the Taliban to show flexibility. Let us see how that plays out.

Pakistan’s leaders continue to pat themselves on the back for playing a role in fostering the February 2020 agreement between the US and the Taliban and facilitating the current attempts at an intra-Afghan dialogue. The mantra beloved of our leaders of supporting an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” peace process translates in critics’ mind as a ‘Taliban-led, Afghan government-owned (under duress, mind)’ one.

If we blow away the chaff surrounding the issue, it seems clear that the Taliban are clearly dictating terms relentlessly, relying on their control of a claimed 50 percent of the countryside. They are faithfully following Mao Tse Tung’s dictum “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The rest is political-diplomatic camouflage. The US has been defeated in Afghanistan after incurring heavy losses of life, money, and credibility. They have turned to negotiations in the hope of a face-saving extrication from the longest war the US has ever fought, with the Trump administration hoping for a breakthrough that will impact the presidential election in November 2020. In the process, their spokesmen, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have admitted failure in their ‘nation-building’ ambition. It was never more than imperial hubris that persuaded Washington that it could invade and occupy developing countries and mould them in its own image. This imposed, inorganic effort did not succeed in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. No wonder US President Donald Trump has resurrected the critique of the military-industrial complex that is the stoker of foreign wars, as former US President Eisenhower had warned long ago.

To allay fears regarding what will follow after a complete US withdrawal, the Americans revert every now and again to the ‘conditions’ they have laid down. One such important one from the US’s point of view, was the commitment by the Taliban that they would severe ties with al Qaeda to prevent a repeat of Afghan soil being used for attacks against the US or its allies, a la 9/11. But a recent report by the UN reveals that these ties have not been broken and al Qaeda continues to operate in a number of Afghan provinces.

With the best goodwill and intentions in the world, no flight of imagination can convince one that the Taliban, holding all the cards as they do, are negotiating anything other than a US withdrawal, after which the Afghan government may prove a sitting duck. Its ability to resist and survive the likely offensive by the Taliban once the foreign forces are out of the way is already questionable. Given the US defeat, it is difficult to envisage any country being in a position to bolster the Afghan government. Another abandonment of Afghanistan, a la post-Soviet withdrawal in 1989, seems likely.

If Islamabad is having difficulty hiding its crowing at the victory of its creation the Taliban, it should pause and reflect. A Taliban victory in Afghanistan refreshes concerns regarding the Pakistani Taliban sheltering on Afghan soil along the poorly policed border with Pakistan. It should not be forgotten that the folly of fostering local Taliban during the Afghan wars eventually forced their erstwhile patrons to conduct massive military operations against them, which seriously wounded the snake and forced it to retreat across the border, without having scotched it. Such unthinking follies have been the hallmark of our Afghan policy for decades. One fears fresh problems of security along the border and the postponement of any return of the remaining Afghan refugees if and when a fundamentalist Taliban regime is once again in control of Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

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Business Recorder Editorial September 15, 2020

Politicisation of the police

 

In a country reeling from the shock and horror of the gang rape of a mother in front of her children on the motorway, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmad has weighed in with his concern. Addressing the closing ceremony of a training workshop for district commercial courts’ judges at the Punjab Judicial Academy, Lahore on September 11, 2020, the CJP ascribed the failure of the police to protect the lives and property of the people to having been politicised as an institution. He said even innocent travellers on the highways suffer serious crimes like the one mentioned above and it is shameful to note that there was neither a security system nor any safety mechanism on the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway (LSM-M11). The CJP reminded his audience that maintaining law and order was the prime function of a government, for which effective policing was indispensable. He said the government needed to wake up and restore the credibility of the police (never very high, one might add) by allowing the department to exercise initiative and settle its affairs on its own. There should be no interference by the government or any political person in the affairs and functioning of the police, the CJP stated. The autonomy envisaged in the Police Order 2002, whatever its lacunae and flaws, was precisely intended to bring about this result. But not much has changed in the sense that the ‘politicisation’ referred to by the CJP originates in governments’ predilection to appoint officers to critical positions in the police not on the basis of merit but political favouritism and objectives. The latest example of this is the recent row over the transfer of senior police officials in Punjab, the CJP reminded us, a development that was a reflection of the deteriorated system and political interference in the police department. CJP Gulzar Ahmad concluded on the despairing note that policing appeared to be in the hands of unprofessional, inept persons, which had seriously eroded law and order.

Terrible as the incident of gang rape on LSM-M11 is, it is noteworthy that the authorities were aware of the missing security and safety protocols and arrangements on this motorway. It transpires that the now transferred (because of the row over the appointment of CCPO Lahore Umar Sheikh) IG Punjab Shoaib Dastagir had made multiple requests to the Ministry of Communications headed by Murad Saeed to deploy the National Highway and Motorway Police along the LSM-M11, but to no avail. As if this were not bad enough, CCPO Umar Sheikh’s stupid and abhorrent remarks regarding the victim of the gang rape, essentially shifting the blame for the incident onto the victim, have aroused a firestorm of indignation, condemnation, disgust and calls for his removal. In the usual fashion of shutting the stable door after the horse has fled, in the wake of the incident and its fallout on political and citizen opinion, officials have gone into a flurry of activity to ensure motorways are safe. However, this has not prevented a robbery on the Lahore-Islamabad motorway near Sheikhupura on September 11, 2020. Reports say patrolling on this motorway has been reduced in recent times. This shows our bad habit of letting even good arrangements slip through sheer inertia with time. Many stretches of relatively newly motorways throughout the country lack even basic facilities such as rest stops and filling stations, what to speak of security and safety. The government should review all these arrangements throughout the country and plug any inadequacies and gaps to ensure citizens, particularly women, can travel on these roads and highways without fear or insecurity. Last but not least, the federal and Punjab governments should pay heed to the CJP’s words regarding avoiding politicising the police (or other departments, one might add) in the interests of good policing and governance, which after all would redound to the credit of none other than the government itself.

Business Recorder Editorial September 11, 2020

A perpetual revolving door

 

The removal of Punjab Inspector General (IG) Police Shoaib Dastagir comes as the latest episode in what has become a perpetual revolving door. Dastagir is the fifth Punjab IG to be replaced in the two years the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) has been in power, a fact that speaks for itself. The former IG got embroiled in the controversy over the government’s appointment of Umar Sheikh as the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) of Lahore, apparently while bypassing the IG. Subsequently it transpired that the newly appointed CCPO held a meeting of police officers in which he is alleged to have told them not to obey the orders of the IG in ‘sensitive matters’ and to report only to Sheikh. He is also accused of passing disparaging remarks about the IG, his commanding officer. Naturally IG Dastagir was very miffed at these developments and tried to persuade both Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and Chief Minister (CM) Punjab Usman Buzdar that a disciplinary inquiry should be conducted against the CCPO and appropriate punishment administered. However, the IG’s pleas fell on deaf ears, after which he had no choice but to request his transfer elsewhere. This ‘request’ was almost immediately ‘accepted’ by the government, choosing to keep the controversial new CCPO intact on his seat. But there was worse to come. The replacement for IG Dastagir as IG Punjab, Inam Ghani, turned out to be a BPS-21 officer, although there are more than 10 BPS-22 police officers available for the post. One immediate consequence (and embarrassment) of IG Ghani’s appointment was the refusal by the Additional IG Finance Tariq Masood Yaseen to work under him as Ghani was his junior. These goings on have helped deepen the factional divide amongst police officers in the province as 50 senior officers met to express their solidarity with outgoing IG Dastagir. CCPO Umar Sheikh tried to join this meeting to also express his ‘solidarity’, but was barred. Despite the rapid rate of change of IGs over the last two years, the present fiasco reflects the deep disciplinary and chain of command crisis in the Punjab police, fuelled, some would argue, by the PTI government playing ducks and drakes with merit and appointing ‘favourites’ to critical positions. Some would say this is meant to pursue the PTI’s partisan agenda in Punjab, others, that it is a reflection of the PTI’s penchant for using the police against the opposition, a la National Accountability Bureau (NAB). A petition has been moved on September 9, 2020 in the Lahore High Court against these latest appointments of the IG and CCPO.

The police is not the only institution that has suffered the ‘revolving door’ set in motion by the PTI government in Punjab. In its two years in power so far, the PTI government has changed four chief secretaries, five deputy commissioners, and now five IGs. Arguably, in the process to have ‘favourite’ or malleable (read unprincipled) officers at their beck and call, the PTI government has created a disciplinary and chain of command crisis across the police and bureaucracy’s ranks. ‘Rough’ treatment of civil servants at the hands of the frequently visiting PM is reportedly sapping the morale of the bureaucracy, and leading to paralysis in its decision making and working (to add to the ‘contribution’ in this regard by NAB). Given the latest fiasco regarding the change of IG, it is not hard to imagine a similar atmosphere amongst the ranks of the police. Is all this politic, or even in the best interests of the government itself? After all, no political administration can function without the bureaucracy and police on board. The present state of affairs does not bode well for governance in Punjab (or the country as a whole), CM Buzdar’s ‘not to worry, sab achha hai(all is well)’ damage control statement notwithstanding.

Business Recorder Editorial September 10, 2020

 The tip of the iceberg

 

Two cases were heard in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on September 7, 2020, which have a grave bearing on the protection of the fundamental rights of citizens, including the right to life. First, IHC Chief Justice (CJ) Athar Minallah, while hearing a habeas corpus petition seeking the recovery of Securities and Exchange Commission official Sajid Gondal, expressed serious concern at the rising number of enforced disappearances in the federal capital. He directed the interior secretary to brief the prime minister and federal cabinet on the issue. CJ Minallah expressed his despairing view that if the state and the courts cannot protect the right to life of a citizen, there is no reason for them to continue in existence. The interior secretary had informed the court that Sajid Gondal had proved untraceable by the two police teams assigned to the case. The IHC had on September 5, 2020 summoned federal government high-ups, but on their appearance on September 7, 2020, they were unable to give the court a satisfactory explanation regarding their failure to trace Mr Gondal. The court responded with serious strictures against the officials, stating that they do not seem to appreciate the gravity of the alleged offence and its consequences for the loved ones of the disappeared as well as the general public. What was shocking for CJ Minallah was that the offence occurred in the federal capital, a city that houses all the topmost offices and residences of the apex power structure. He also observed that the court had been inundated in the recent past with petitions alleging the abduction of citizens. Connected petitions revealed that ministries, agencies and other state organs were involved in illegal real estate business. This exponential increase of complaints/grievances, the CJ remarked, exposes the abysmal state of governance, lack of rule of law and impunity against serious crime. Failure to trace the whereabouts of allegedly abducted persons had become the norm. In fact, the CJ asked, has even a single abductee been recovered or information gleaned of his whereabouts? And yet there is no accountability of the organs of state responsible for upholding the rule of law and constitutional rights. Mercifully, Gondal was released by his abductors on late evening of Tuesday, September 8, 2020 and he safely reached his home. Gondal owes his reprieve in substantial measure to the strong view taken by CJ Minallah in the matter of his abduction.

In a similar vein, IHC Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani summoned Interior Minister Ijaz Shah, the interior secretary and the Attorney General on September 16, 2020 in the case of Abdul Quddus, reported missing since January 1, 2020. The SP Investigation revealed before the court that he had been heading the joint investigation teams in the cases of 50 people missing from Islamabad. Needless to say, none of them have been recovered. Justice Kayani lamented that now even green number plates (official) vehicles are being used in the abductions.

It is heartening to note the IHC has strongly criticised the federal authorities for their failure to act on the growing number of cases of abductions and missing persons from Islamabad. If the federal capital is unsafe for citizens, what hope for the rest of the country? Journalist Matiullah Jan escaped soon after his abduction in Islamabad in broad daylight only because the incident was captured and distributed on social media. The growing pressure as a result persuaded his captors that letting him go was the better option. Not many amongst the disappeared have been so lucky. Thousands have been reported subjected to enforced disappearance, starting from Balochistan and then slowly but surely spreading to all parts of the country. The Commission on Enforced Disappearances (CED) has all but ‘disappeared’ itself without bringing hope or succour to the loved ones of those who suffered enforced disappearance. All the talk of constitutional rights and the rule of law, and the state institutions charged with upholding them, seem helpless before these draconian practices of the deep state. The latter has been emboldened to carry on in the same vein even in the federal capital because of the impunity it enjoys from accountability and the track record of getting away with this heinous practice in the rest of the country for many years. It is high time the CED was either disbanded or heads rolled to make it effective rather than the perception of it being little else than a ‘cover up’ for the hanky panky on enforced disappearances that has become part of the warp and woof of our lives. The judiciary must be lauded for continuing to ask piercing questions on the issue from those responsible for the elimination of such draconian, high handed, abhorrent actions.

 The September 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. From the Editor: Political impasse in Pakistan.

2. Dr Taimur Rahman: Marx is back. Book Review of Eric Rahim: A Promethean Vision: The Formation of Karl Marx's Worldview. 

3. Rafay Alam: The River Ravi Riverfront Development folly.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review

Director, Research and Publication Centre.

Business Recorder Editorial September 3, 2020

Single National Curriculum

 

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government seems hell bent on its pet programme of introducing a Single National Curriculum (SNC) for the education system in Pakistan. The stated and unstated objectives of this enterprise are unclear, subject to confusion, divorced from the ground realities, and a classic case of misplaced concreteness. For a start, after the idea of the SNC was floated and discussed in the public sphere, great resistance arose to the idea of doing away with the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations and their replacement by a uniform examination system countrywide. These foreign examinations have proved over time to be the entry point for students to be accepted for higher studies abroad because of their quality education that no indigenous system has so far been able to match by and large with some notable exceptions. Obviously, the objection raised against this ‘U-turn’ by the government is that it negates the principle of equality in educational opportunities, but the chimera of equal opportunity cannot be used to throw the baby out with the bath water without any equally excellent system to replace it. If and when Pakistan can boast an indigenous stream of education and examinations to rival ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, the changeover can be contemplated but not till then. Wherein resides the superiority of the foreign examinations? Not in the curriculum (although theirs is far better than our existing or proposed one), but in their philosophy of education. That philosophy stresses comprehension, reasoning and problem-solving. Our systems still rely heavily on rote learning (by no means confined to the madrassas). There is also a big gap in our knowledge of the implementation and financing plan for the proposed introduction of the SNC. The ‘integration’ of madrassas in the SNC runs the risk of casting a seminarial hue on the secular schools too, especially as the ever-present stress on religious learning has been recently strengthened by the introduction of laws in Punjab for this purpose. Critical reasoning, inquiry, questioning are critical for the development of young minds but anathema to religious instruction. As it is, Pakistan stands at 125^thout of 130 countries worldwide in the sphere of education, with around 23 million children still out of school.

While the quantitative goal of universal literacy requires investment in bricks and mortar and raising the required number of adequately trained teachers, the qualitative requirement is not to standardise a lower quality of education in the name of social levelling and equality, as the SNC threatens to do. The underlying thought behind SNC appears to be the quixotic notion that it will unify the country. Therein lies perhaps the SNC’s greatest single fallacy, divorced as it is from the ground realities. Like it or not, Pakistan is a multi-national state, ignoring which has cost us heavily in the past and, if we do not learn the lessons of such experience, threatens more and greater discord in future. As it is, the success track record in achieving universal literacy globally shows that the medium of instruction is a key variable. Instruction in the mother tongue till class five at least, with Urdu and English taught as subjects, promises rapid progress in inducting the out of school children’s populace and their acquiring literacy much more easily and quickly. Teaching Urdu and English as subjects would provide the base for instruction in these languages at the higher stages of the education ladder.

The government claims it has conducted a wide consultation on the SNC with experts. Yet the most prominent voices critical of the inadequacies of our education system seem to have been ignored. Great disquiet exists whether the SNC is a well thought through good idea, its outcomes, potential for fostering disharmony, and reservations about the government ability to implement it. Given this state of affairs, perhaps the government and the country would be better served by going back to the drawing board instead of embarking on what appears a half-baked and faulty approach.