Saturday, September 28, 2013
Dr Adil Najam - The banality of outrage
The slim volume – and most importantly the concept embodied in its subtitle – went on to become a seminal philosophical artefact of our times. The book was much debated by political theorists, Holocaust historians, and activists; particularly in the context of the substance of the Eichmann trial. However, the central – and harrowing – insight that the term ‘banality of evil’ sheds into the nature of evil, and of its perpetrators, resonates well beyond that context. Including, maybe especially, today’s Pakistan.
Those who have ever wondered how a seemingly ‘ordinary’ person could possibly undertake deeds of unspeakable horror – and how equally ‘normal’ people can claim to rationalise, if not defend, the mind-numbing senselessness of the patently evil – would do well to read Arendt’s treatise. In choosing the word ‘banal’ she is not suggesting that the deeds were in any way ‘commonplace’ or ‘trivial.’ She is arguing, instead, that the evil of Eichmann’s actions – as a top administrator in the Nazi death camps – was made even more terrible because he had trained himself to see them as no more than the merely routine. “The lesson that this long course in human wickedness has taught us”, Hannah Arendt points out, is “the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
Arendt saw a certain “ludicrousness” in Eichmann standing in the dock. She reports that “the deeds were monstrous, but the doer … neither demonic nor monstrous.” As he ranted in his defence, she found him “neither perverted nor sadistic” and without “any diabolical or demonic profundity.” Indeed, her most chilling realisation was that he was “terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Characterised by, more than any other thing, his own “sheer thoughtlessness.”
That is the essence of the banality of evil. The idea that great evil can be perpetuated not only by fanatical sociopaths but also by ordinary people who so conform to a corrupt premise that they view their actions as entirely ordinary, entirely defensible, even sensible. Banality is terrifying precisely because it emanates from the inability to recognise, acknowledge and confront evil for what it is.
All of this is eerily relevant to today’s Pakistan. The church massacre in Peshawar is only the latest reminder in a string of reminders that evil lives in our midst. But also, and maybe even more excruciating, is the realisation of a certain banality that is most evident in the discourse that sprouts as routinely and as predictably as the evil itself.
Bombings. Killings. Bloodshed. All have become routine. And routinised. Commonplace. Banal. Or, as Hannah Arendt may have put it, “terribly and terrifyingly normal.”
Out of desperation more than analysis, we often call these acts, “thoughtless.” And in more profound ways than we may imagine, that is exactly what they are: devoid of – starved of – critical thought. The banality is as self-evident in the discourse of those who commit this evil, as it is in the lamentations of those who purport to understand its context. And the realisation that other ‘ordinary’ people – in many ways as ‘ordinary’ as ourselves – will not see the injustice that is so very obvious to us pierces the heart as much as the injustice itself.
The only recourse one has, then, is grief. And, outrage.
In Pakistan, the predictability of senseless acts of violence is matched only by the predictability of outrage. It is a lie that we remain silent. As big a lie as the one about Muslims never speaking out about atrocities by other Muslims. Maybe it was once true, but it has not been true for a long time now. Because we have had so many unfortunate opportunities, we have perfected our rituals of outrage: editorials, TV talk shows, social media, political condemnations.
But outrage in a divided society is also divided. We are all outraged by these events, but very differently outraged. We do not rush to embrace and comfort each other in our times of tribulation. We scream out in pain. Mostly, we scream at each other. We point fingers. We score points. We jab partisan barbs. Nearly always we get into verbal bouts. Sometimes, into fist-fights. Our outrage has become cliché-ridden. As predictable, as commonplace, as those acts of violence themselves. There is, to coin a phrase, a certain banality in our outrage.
To suggest that there is a banality of outrage is not to suggest that it is not sincere. Far from it. Our hurt is real each time we are hit. Our tears are real. The hurt does not lessen over time. The tears never stop streaming. The trail of tragedy is too long to recount, but this is not a pain you get used to.
Our banality of outrage emanates from the futility of outrage. Hannah Arendt would have been the first to recognise that outrage has political potence. Ours does not.
The banality of our outrage emanates not just from the fact that it has become predictable and commonplace. Our outrage is banal, because it is politically impotent. It does not lead to action – neither political, nor societal. This impotence of outrage makes us more enraged, but it does not make our outrage any more effective. Hence, the banality of outrage.
This banality of outrage also has its farcical moments. Well-meaning, but farcical nonetheless. One such ritual is the all-too-predictable discussion on ‘whodunit’ that triggers off as soon as a bomb goes off. We become voyeuristically glued to any signs of rumour or news on who will take responsibility for that terrorist attack. As if we do not know? As if knowing the answer would make a difference in our view of whoever takes responsibility? As if we are ever able to bring those who do claim responsibility to justice?
In a functional polity, tragedy leads to outrage, outrage leads to introspection, introspection to action. In our case, the tragedies come so fast and furious and the very fabric of society is so tattered that there is no time for introspection and no political stomach for action. Our outrage, therefore, is catharsis at best; venomous vomiting at worst.
If we sound cynical, there is much reason to be so. If we lunge at each other’s throats, it is because we are a divided society. If we sound exhausted in our grief, it is because we are. But most of all, our outrage seems banal because we do not believe that outrage will lead to action, let alone change. Indeed, there seems to be a pervasive certainty that it will not. That, more than all else, explains our banality of outrage.
But our outrage need not necessarily be banal.
Hannah Ardent’s answer to the problems posed by the banality of evil was ‘thoughtfulness’. Not just thinking, but critical thinking. She suggested that there is “a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil” and wondered if “the activity of thinking as such… could ‘condition’ men against evildoing.” She was referring, I would like to believe, to education in the truest and deepest sense as the answer to the problem of ‘evil’.
If, indeed, our banality of outrage is real, its answer lies in action. Outrage is wasted if it does not lead to action. Maybe a dose of ‘thoughtfulness’ will also help in structuring our own outrage. The belief that nothing will happen needs to give way to the resolve that something must. The way ahead in linking action and words in outrage is pointed, again, by Hannah Arendt in her other book The Human Condition: “Of all the activities necessary and present in human communities, only two were deemed to be political and to constitute what Aristotle called the bios politikos, names action (praxis) and speech (lexis), out of which rises the realm of human affairs.” Lexis without praxis, is a recipe for the banality of outrage.
The writer has taught international relations and diplomacy at Boston University and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and was the vice chancellor of LUMS. Twitter: @adilnajam
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Dispossession, orthodoxy and Indo-centrism - Harris Khalique
No one who believes in a modicum of humaneness will say that the use of full force by the state should be the first option before other peaceful methods are tried and exhausted. However, there is neither a timeline given, nor conditions spelled out nor a process explained through which the objectives set forth for the government will be achieved.
Assume that – with or without the use of force – the state of Pakistan succeeds in either taming or making peace with the Taliban in the coming months. They have to be ready for some give and take, though, and one sincerely hopes that a Swat-like situation does not arise after an accord is reached.
One other thing that needs to be considered is that those citizens in areas under Taliban influence who do not carry arms and resist the writ of the state are not further marginalised through this process. When the government talks about taking all stakeholders into confidence, the category should also include those who are nonviolent but may have grievances against state institutions as well as the militants.
The larger question, however, remains: will terrorism of all kinds be eliminated after peace is achieved in this instance? The unfortunate answer is ‘no’. Any focused process of dialogue or use of force can eliminate or mainstream a particular kind of militants but the possibility of the use of terror against the state and its citizens in future will not be eliminated until the sources are correctly identified, isolated and dried up.
This is the real challenge for the elite-dominated state of Pakistan. Acute economic and social dispossession of all kinds, orthodoxy harnessed and promoted among people in the name of faith and Indo-centric internal and external policy options exercised by the state will continue to breed different forms of terrorism in the country. Let us take these one by one.
A country where almost half of the children who are of school-going age are out of school, where maternal mortality claims 75 young women daily, where a third of the population finds it hard to scrape together two square meals a day, where workers live like serfs and the lower middle-class lives in the most undignified of conditions, where only a fifth of the entire population has access to clean drinking water, where the uneducated and unemployed youth are in millions, where farming communities along the rivers and canals get inundated by floods and then remain in camps for times unending, where inhuman debt traps the poor and turns them into bonded labour, where the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of a janitor have little choice but to remain janitors – in such a country will there be no chaos in society, no crime, no disgruntlement with the state?
Crime will be rampant, it will then become organised, this organised crime will turn into mafias and the mafias will then create terror on a massive scale. This is not just a future scenario. Instigated by urban poverty and increased inequality, it has already started happening in Karachi on a large scale. Other cities find higher crime rates than ever before. In terms of politics, Pakistan’s unique socio-political conditions have not let something like the Indian class-based Naxalite movement begin here.
But can we dismiss the possibility of a violent movement along class lines in the future? A violent movement of the marginalised and disadvantaged can also articulate itself in religious or ethnic terms. Anyone who understands the Balochistan issue will agree that it is primarily the economic deprivation and inability to access their own resources that have led to a struggle against the state.
It is time for the powers that be and the classes associated with them to not just think about but also do something to get people out of this grinding economic and social dispossession. However, that would mean giving up the undeserved privileges they enjoy, redistribution of wealth and creating equal opportunities for all.
The other factor, no less important, is a certain kind of religious discourse that the state has either promoted or allowed to take root in Pakistan. From state actions to school curriculum to promotion of political and social religious movements to public messages relayed through media, all strata of the middle class, women and men, are nurtured and encouraged to develop a mindset that is exclusive, paranoid and conservative in nature. There is more hypocrisy than religiosity at the level of the elite and clerics who benefit from such mindset. However, for many ordinary people it becomes a genuinely emotional issue.
In a country, where more than 95 percent of the people practice the same faith, how can their faith ever be in danger? What makes the majority feel insecure because of a small number of non-Muslims who mostly belong to the working class anyway? Why is it only the body of a woman where religion has to be imposed in full? While we may wonder whether it is personal beliefs or social values that make people go out and kill, the fact is that Pakistan has become an intolerant religious society.
When those listening to the oath of the president of the republic find that it is more about his religious beliefs that the state is interested in and less about his ability to competently run the office, their loyalty will rest more with an abstract notion of an Islamic state rather than the interests of a real country in which they live. If the ideal theocratic state that is promised to them – and which will resolve all their issues overnight – is nowhere to be seen, they will take up arms to create such a state and wage a struggle whenever conditions permit.
Lastly, unless our state stops thinking of itself as non-India and widens its understanding of global issues, there will be trouble both within and outside. Our issues in Afghanistan emanate out of our issues with India. I fully recognise that it is not an easy task for the Pakistani state and its military in the wake of four wars, covert operations and espionage in each other’s countries and the hostile coldness shown by India on many occasions.
But it is in our interest to have peaceful borders in order to industrialise our economy, flourish in trade and commerce and bring prosperity to our people. You may be a peacenik or not, this is in our enlightened self-interest – nothing more nothing less. Like many Pakistanis used to say that the hawks in India have not come to terms with the Partition, it seems that the hawks in Pakistan have not come to terms with it either. At the cost of repeating myself in these columns, the premise for Partition in 1947 was to bring peace to the Subcontinent, not to create a neverending rivalry.
We were not liberated from India, which is the impression given to the masses, for instance, by naming the gate at the Wagah border ‘Bab-e-Azadi’ (door to freedom). Both the countries – India and Pakistan – were liberated from British colonialism. Also, it is common sense that you cannot keep non-state militant groups controlled and restricted forever. If they are organised on religious lines, they will also get more ideologically motivated with time and subscribe to some sect or school of thought as well. If they won’t succeed in imposing themselves outside, they will impose themselves upon you.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Force or diplomacy? - Dr Maleeha Lodhi
President Obama also confronts doubts among his own public about the need and risks of military strikes, especially without UN authorisation. In his weekly radio broadcast on Saturday, he sought to reassure a sceptical public that the action he envisaged would not be “another Iraq or Afghanistan”.
In a nationwide address planned for Tuesday (today) he will again press the case for military strikes. He will do this against a backdrop of opinion polls that have indicated that more people in the US are against rather than for a military attack on Syria. A Pew poll showed only 29 percent approved of military action. An ABC-Washington Post survey found that 59 percent opposed strikes.
Opinion against unilateral military intervention is of course even stronger across the rest of the world. Last week’s summit meeting of the Group of 20 demonstrated that the weight of opinion among this grouping of developed and developing countries was firmly against any military solution to the Syrian issue. Around the grand table at the palatial venue in St Petersburg, more world leaders were opposed to military action than in favour of Washington’s position.
This made President Obama look diplomatically isolated and he left the summit with his hand weakened, not strengthened. If he was hoping to win endorsement for his plan to bomb Syria this wasn't forthcoming – except from France, Canada, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. To drive home this point at his press conference, President Vladimir Putin named the countries that, like Russia, rejected military action.
Hours of informal discussion at the summit failed to shift the balance of opinion on Syria and proved a setback for the advocates of war. In his message to the conference the Pope joined the international chorus of warnings that a “military solution” would be a “futile pursuit”. The UN secretary general reiterated his call for a ‘political’ solution. As did the EU representative, who also emphasised the importance of the UN process.
Where the G-20 summit proved a lost opportunity was in its failure to bridge the divide and slow the momentum for military action by providing impetus to the stalled diplomatic process for a UN-sponsored peace conference in Geneva. Any expectation that energy could be injected to that process to encourage the US to desist from the military option did not materalise. This of course was not surprising against the background of longstanding complaints voiced by UN officials about the lack of will shown by the warring sides and their patrons to pursue a negotiated settlement – an attitude that has prevented the peace conference from convening.
The predominant international sentiment against the use of military force rests on the illegality of such action without UN authorisation and concerns about a repeat of the Iraq blunder that was undertaken on the basis of false intelligence about Saddam Hussain’s never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction. What has also weighed in with countries that oppose military action is that military strikes would be the prelude and trigger for escalation into a wider conflict that could engulf an already unsettled region.
The argument of US officials that “narrow and limited” airstrikes will be carefully calibrated has few takers among the international community. “Precision strikes” to “degrade” Syria’s military capabilities will not make them legal any more than they will obviate the risk of a wider conflagration. The dubious assumption that underpins confidence about managing the highly uncertain aftermath is that those bombed will silently suffer the ‘punishment’, not retaliate and will also not be helped by their neighbouring allies through reprisal attacks.
The fallout could go beyond these destabilising strategic consequences. As China’s deputy finance minister, Zhu Guangyao, warned at a briefing on the eve of the G-20 summit: “military action could have a negative impact on the global economy” by pushing up oil prices and fuelling an economic downturn. Therefore, economic repercussions could be as consequential for global stability as political ones.
But these considerations were brushed aside or played down by America’s national security team when they presented the case for punitive military action to members of Congress. Faced with a grilling from those senators wanting answers to what-after-the-airstrike questions, administration officials were hard pressed to offer a convincing response. What really mattered, they argued, was action to “enforce the norm” on the use of chemical weapons, banned under international conventions.
The issue of US credibility was placed at the centre of this argument: if the US did not act after their president said it should, American credibility would suffer a grievous blow. This seemed to suggest that ‘preserving credibility’ was a good enough reason to bomb another country and justify the bloodshed and violence that would inescapably be caused by any airstrike.
In fact US leaders have ended up presenting themselves and others with a false choice: that the only option to military action was to wring hands and do nothing. They have argued in other words that the only response is a military one. This is far from true. The choice is not between paralysis and war. There is a range of non-military options available to press the norm on chemical weapons, once it has been conclusively proven that Bashar al-Assad’s government did in fact use them. Tough economic and diplomatic sanctions, an arms embargo, Security Council condemnation, setting up a special tribunal for Syria, referring the violation to the International Criminal Court and a travel ban on the Syrian regime’s top figures are among several punitive measures that can be considered. To take such actions it is, however, necessary to work through the UN, where mechanisms for accountability are available provided incontrovertible evidence is forthcoming. So the choice that has to be made is between force and diplomacy.
Regrettably the Obama administration already seems to have made that choice and is just waiting for Congressional approval to implement its decision to resort to force. But the majority of the international community has preferred to stick to the principles of international law and the UN charter that commit countries to abjure the use of military force except when authorised by the Security Council or in self-defence. As the G-20 summit demonstrated, the majority of its member nations, like the rest of the global community, are unwilling to endorse the violation of international law, which unilateral US military action would constitute.
An American analyst recently wrote that the Syria debate has forced into focus “a new distance between Washington and America”. The rest of this week and the next will see President Obama strive to close this gap. Whether or not he succeeds in that effort, it is apparent that the distance between Washington and much of the rest of the world will widen even more if President Obama takes the grave step of ordering a military attack on another Muslim country.
The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.
One year after Baldia fire - ARIF AZAD
OVER the last year, accidents in garment factories in Pakistan and Bangladesh have exposed not only the hazardous conditions in which garment industry workers toil, but also the human price of cheap clothes sold in Western capitals.
The list begins with the fatal accident at Ali Enterprises, situated in Karachi’s Baldia Town. On Sept 11 last year, a fire swept through the factory, killing over 250 workers. In November 2012 in Bangladesh, a fire at Tazreen Fashion killed over 100 people.
In April this year, also in Bangladesh, more than 1,000 workers perished when Rana Plaza, housing several garment factories, collapsed. This is reckoned as the worst industrial accident since 1984’s Bhopal tragedy in India.
Together, these headline-grabbing tragedies highlight the wretched, slave-like conditions in which employees are forced to work to feed the insatiable demand for global clothing brands.
From the rubble of the Baldia factory were found, among others, labels of German clothes retailer KiK, which has admitted it was a major bulk buyer of Ali Enterprises’ products since 2007. In Bangladesh, given its large garment industry, labels of various major high street retailers were found.
These tragedies also highlight a number of emerging trends in the growing global garments industry in relation to working conditions, workplace safety, labour rights and transparency of supply chains.
For example, in recent years the global apparel industry has begun to source its supply from South and Southeast Asian countries, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Vietnam and Cambodia due to rising Chinese labour and export costs.
The Bangladeshi labour cost — 32 cents per hour — is one-fifth of China’s hourly labour cost. The Pakistani hourly labour cost stands at 50 cents while the labour cost in Cambodia is less than that in Bangladesh. These figures have helped make Bangladesh by far the largest exporter in the region.
Bangladesh’s garment exports hover around $18-20 billion, making up 78pc of the country’s exports and contributing 17pc to GDP. Comparative figures for Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, are 59pc of total exports, adding 8.5pc to the country’s GDP.
In most cases the global clothing industry has been ignoring safety standards in a bid to maximise profits on the back of abundant and cheap labour.
Even the current audit-focused social responsibility model has been found to be too inadequate to address the complex issues of health and safety as seen in Walmart’s audit of Bangladesh factories. Similar concerns have been raised about German textile retailer KiK’s audit of Ali Enterprises.
In some cases, even global clothing brands are unaware of the identity of the factories that supply them given the widespread practice of further outsourcing down the supply chains.
The woeful working conditions in the international garments industry exposed by these tragedies, have been made worse by global chains’ inadequate inspection regime and lax government oversight of labour laws and health and safety regulations applicable to factories in their jurisdiction.
However, as well as exposing the flaws in the global supply chain and lax oversight mechanism at both the governmental and global level, the tragedies have also laid bare different responses to the Bangladeshi and Pakistani cases.
While global clothing giants have got together to redress the flaws in the supply chain in the case of Bangladesh, no comparable concerted action has been initiated in relation to Pakistan (though KiK has set aside money by way of compensation as a result of aggressive lobbying by labour rights groups).
Part of the reason for increased focus on Bangladesh is its relatively bigger garments’ export sector. Two alliances of global clothing giants have been formed to address structural and rights issues in Bangladesh.
At the national level in Bangladesh, the owner of Rana Plaza is being actively proceeded against according to the law of the land despite being very close to the ruling party.
In contrast, the charge of murder against the owner of Ali Enterprises is yet to be framed. Unlike Bangladesh, there seems to be no concerted follow-up of the case where the Baldia factory fire is concerned.
As the first anniversary of the Baldia Town incident approaches, it is worth revisiting some of the lessons thrown up by the event, brilliantly analysed in a report titled Fatal Fashion jointly compiled by the Clean Clothes Campaign and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations published in March 2013.
Here are some of the lessons which, if imbibed wholly, could prevent the recurrence of such a tragedy.
The Pakistani government should immediately ratify International Labour Organisation conventions relevant to freedom of association, the right to a safe and healthy work environment and the right to employment injury benefits.
This would pave the way for worker unionisation and better working conditions and structured compensation packages in case of industrial accidents.
The government should also put in place stringent labour inspection regimes. Discontinued labour inspections should be reinstituted in order to prevent tragedies resulting from structural flaws, blocked exits and overcrowded workplaces as seen in the aforementioned industrial tragedy.
There is a need to implement the minimum wage in all industries. In this regard, the PML-N’s electoral pledge to increase minimum wage to Rs15,000 should be immediately translated into reality. Workers were reportedly paid as little as Rs7,000 per month at the Baldia factory for longer than stipulated hours.
Lastly, all businesses in Pakistan need to be made aware of UN guiding principles and the protect, respect and remedy framework. This should be followed up with stringent oversight of the businesses’ adherence to the UN framework.
The writer is an Islamabad-based development consultant and policy analyst.
drarifazad@gmail.com
Being Asif Zardari -ZAHID HUSSAIN
“ISLAMABAD is already jolted and now let’s wait for the aftershocks.” That was my first reaction at a TV talk show on Sept 7 when the anchor asked for my views on Asif Zardari as president. A strong tremor had in fact hit parts of the country the previous night.
Like many political analysts I too had been sceptical about Mr Zardari’s survival in power for long given his highly controversial baggage from the past. But I must admit the master crafter, as he was to become, proved us all wrong.
Not only did Mr Zardari become the first democratically elected president in the country to have completed his full term, he also left the office with a guard of honour. He had the distinction of presiding over an unprecedented transition to another elected government; a remarkable accomplishment indeed for one often described as an accidental leader.
He is also rightly credited for strengthening the democratic process and making changes in the Constitution by granting greater autonomy to the provinces. But these may not be the reasons alone for which Mr Zardari will be long remembered.
Ironically, these were also years of waste for the country’s economy and governance, pushing the country towards financial meltdown.
Though his constitutional powers were clipped under the 18th Amendment, Mr Zardari remained the most powerful political leader in the country. Drawing his power as the chairman of the ruling party, he virtually ran the government from the confines of President House where he was mostly surrounded by his former jail mates and schoolmates.
There is indeed a ring of truth to the widespread perception of his government being one of the most incompetent and corrupt in Pakistan’s recent history. As a result, the country has descended into chaos. It is also a fact that Mr Zardari was, perhaps, the most unpopular and controversial civilian leader to have occupied the country’s highest political position.
For sure it had not been smooth sailing for the former president. Several times in the past five years he had to pull himself back from the brink.
Being Zardari has its own perils. Despite rising to the zenith of power he could never get away from his past reputation and old corruption cases continued to haunt him. His stand-off with the Supreme Court on the issue of the reopening of the Swiss money-laundering case claimed the scalp of one prime minister and kept the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. But to give the devil his due, he never seemed to lose his cool and never panicked.
His relations with the military may not have been smooth, but he had learnt to coexist with the generals, sometimes conceding ground or making compromises. His political dexterity and art of outwitting his opponents were not, however, the only reasons for his longevity in power.
He benefited hugely from the military taking a back seat and the changed domestic political dynamics that had no appetite for any kind of extra-constitutional intervention. Mr Zardari’s non-confrontationist ways also suited the generals.
There was, however, one occasion in early 2012 when his government openly clashed with the generals, raising fears that the president might be forced to step down.
The confrontation was precipitated when Mr Zardari tried to protect Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s then ambassador to Washington. Mr Haqqani was accused of conspiring with the US against the military. Mr Zardari sacked him, but would not agree to his trial on sedition charges. As the tension mounted, Mr Zardari was flown to Dubai for ‘urgent medical treatment’.
It was perhaps at that time that the president was at his most vulnerable point. A report in Foreign Policy quoted US State Department officials on a telephonic conversation with President Obama in which Mr Zardari appeared completely incoherent, which further fuelled conjecture about his health and political future. But weeks later, he was back in the saddle, defying all speculation.
During his tenure Mr Zardari seldom ventured out of the presidency or the high-walled Bilawal House in Karachi, ostensibly because of security concerns. That insulated him from the reality outside. He has never been a popular mass politician, but his government’s appalling performance and charges of rampant corruption involving key members of his government further eroded his credibility. He, however, remained delusional about his party’s chances of success at the polls.
With his political wheeling and dealing he thought the elections were all sewn up in favour of the PPP and its allies. He was extremely confident about winning a second term in office.
That was not to happen. He seemed to have completely underestimated the rising anti-government public sentiment. Mr Zardari may have succeeded against all odds in completing his five-year term, but his party paid a heavy price at the polls for its gross misrule and ineptitude.
Once the country’s most powerful political force with nationwide support, the PPP suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections, with its influence now restricted to rural Sindh and that too seems to be on shaky ground. It was not really a vote for the party on the basis of its provincial government’s performance; it was one driven largely by sub-nationalist slogans.
Mr Zardari may be out of power, but certainly not out of politics. He plans to lead the PPP from his mansion worth billions in Lahore and reportedly gifted to him by Riaz Malik of Bahria Town fame.
The former president finds himself facing the much tougher job of mass politics, which he has very little experience of. He neither has the Bhutto charisma nor the popular appeal that is required to revive the PPP’s political fortunes.
It will take much more than political wheeling and dealing to revitalise a highly demoralised party. Also, with the lifting of presidential immunity, Mr Zardari may once again find himself entangled in renewed legal battles inside and outside Pakistan. Testing times are ahead for the former president.
The writer is an author and journalist.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
Twitter: @hidhussain
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Small step down a long road - ABBAS NASIR
HAVE you ever wondered why there is so little balance in so many of our views? Things can’t always be all good or all bad. But that is how we see them.
Consider Thursday’s lunch hosted by the prime minister at his official residence to say farewell to the president who completes his term of office in another day or two. Everybody, well not quite everyone as the PTI decided to stay away, thought it was a good idea.
Till here the consensus-seeking prime minister got a consensus. Onwards, the views as gathered from electronic and social media were divergent and polarised. Some people were gushing at how Nawaz Sharif spoke of Asif Zardari and how the latter reciprocated.
Others expressed utter and total disdain at the jhoot (lie), the farce being played out and used language like “one chor (thief) telling the other we left you free to plunder now you return the compliment”.
So, where do you stand? Was it the beginning of a grand political tradition in the country or was it a mere farce, yet another muk mukaa (give and take), as Imran Khan calls it, by politicians many of whom wish to seek and/or afford space to each other for loot and plunder?
Let me share my two bits’ worth. I think it was the start of a nice tradition but it was also an object lesson to politicians to say whatever they like during their public appearances (election-related or otherwise) but to keep the discourse civilised; not least because TV is a cruel, unforgiving medium.
Some smart producers juxtaposed the prime minister’s tributes to the president’s “sagacity, political accommodation and personal warmth” with Mr Sharif’s campaign speeches where his criticism of Mr Zardari was in terms most unkind. Hence, some decried what they called hypocrisy.
If you add the language used by the prime minister’s brother and the Punjab supremo Shahbaz Sharif to the argument you could take the debate anywhere you wished. Was this the reason that all through the lunch whenever the camera cut to him the Punjab chief minister seemed to be in a sulk?
Whether Shahbaz Sharif was sulking because of what he seemed to be reading or he didn’t agree with what the elder brother was saying and was simply embarrassed to be part of a day to honour a man he had pledged to string up from the nearest tree barely a few months earlier we’ll never know.
What we do know is that as the day (to me at least) represented some form of a milestone, a (mini) coming of age of our politicians, they will have to watch what they say, what they promise in public. For there can be no greater discomfort to them than their words being played in a loop by the media.
Although some commentators have given credit to the PML-N’s media management for the lack of discussion on stories such as that of the exit of party stalwart in Sindh Syed Ghous Ali Shah, it is equally true sometimes the governing party’s media handling is shambolic.
One need look no further than the ‘leaked story’ earlier this week as the cabinet met to decide how to restore peace to Karachi. The story said that an officer said to be close to the PML-N had been posted to replace the PPP-appointed Sindh police chief.
When PPP leaders and the Sindh cabinet spokesman reacted angrily to the news, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan not only denied it but also criticised the media for airing a story which wasn’t based on facts. It has to be the province’s decision not ours, he added.
A few hours later PML-N MNA Dr Tariq Chaudhry, who often speaks for the party, claimed credit for political accommodation saying the decision was reversed after the Sindh government expressed unhappiness with it. We’re not likely to ever know what actually happened. Regardless of these blips and bumps, the PML-N has got its optics more or less correct inasmuch as its interaction with the provinces is concerned. Soon after the polls, for the leadership to say they respected the verdict in provinces where, despite not being the biggest party, there was a numerical possibility for the PML-N to form governments was a welcome move.
What few commentators have so far acknowledged is that it was an astute move too. Sindh’s mandate was unambiguous. But there was no outright majority winner in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The PML-N left the dire challenges there for other parties, even as it looked good and democratic.
The coming months will put its avowed belief in political accommodation and provincial autonomy to serious test. For instance, how long does one expect a nationalist-led Balochistan government to look the other way as the state pursues its kidnap, kill and dump policy with gusto?
Why does a PML-N government committed to a ‘dialogue first’ policy with the TTP think differently about Baloch separatists particularly when the state is clearly culpable in pushing the Baloch to the wall? (And no I don’t condone but condemn the murder of innocent non-Baloch in the province too.)
Also, one earnestly hopes the Karachi operation is conducted sensibly and even-handedly so that it doesn’t trigger unnecessary controversy. Otherwise, the moment the ‘team captain’ is made to feel like the 12th man, the exercise can potentially descend into a province-centre row.
The prime minister’s farewell for the president was not a dramatic development but a small step towards celebrating democratic order in the country. Such an environment will only acquire permanence when each one of us acquires the ability to be tolerant of and appreciate diversity.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Shuddh Desi Romance - Movie Reviews
Story: One loverboy and two lovely ladies. Live-in, walk out, make-up, makeout. In turns. Not necessarily in that order. Confused about love and marriage, they follow their heart (at times) and all that lies in between (pun!).
Review: So there, Bollywood breaks the stereotype. It steps out from behind the bloomin' trees in tulip fields and comfortably 'shacks-up' with the times. Here 'smooch-at-first-sight' happens in a bus-full with baaratis. Coffee dates are sipped in bed (Happy Endings? Huh!). Commitment is not the criteria. Marriage is not on the cards. And sexual compatibility is high priority. Yes, welcome to a modern day shuddh romance in desiland. Plenty 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang', tucked in with some emotion and drama too.
Raghu-(Sushant)-the-Romeo is a tourist guide in Jaipur, who also doubles up as rental baraati for Goyal (Rishi), a shaadi planner. He meets the rebellious Gayatri (Parineeti) and feels a "tezwala" attraction towards her. They waste no time in moving in, and making out. Soon, they're love-addicts, but commitment-phobic. The third character in this threesome (don't expect any of that) is Tara (Vaani), who was supposed to wed Raghu, until he fled on his wedding day. She makes a re-entry for revenge, but ends up with a complicated status, really.
Sushant swings between the Patiala-clad women and makes for the perfectly confused, charming and lovable Romeo. His hair perfectly styled at all times (though he should have had the 'out-of-bed' look more often), his clothes are more designer than dehati, but he more than makes up for it with his desicool performance.
Parineeti is a phataka, firing dialogues (smoking up too) and living it up. She makes the character her own, complementing Sushant with a casualness that's commendable. Newbie Vaani is impressive, pretty and commands a good screen-presence. Rishi Kapoor, blows you away yet again with his incredible histrionics.
Maneesh Sharma's 'SDR' has a 'Band Bajaa Baraat' blend, but the essence lies in the conversational chemistry between the characters, some beautifully captured moments and slice-of-life scenes. He doesn't play safe, which is good, but the second half seems repetitive. The concept is engaging, but the plot is little shudd, little desi and quite confused.
Review: So there, Bollywood breaks the stereotype. It steps out from behind the bloomin' trees in tulip fields and comfortably 'shacks-up' with the times. Here 'smooch-at-first-sight' happens in a bus-full with baaratis. Coffee dates are sipped in bed (Happy Endings? Huh!). Commitment is not the criteria. Marriage is not on the cards. And sexual compatibility is high priority. Yes, welcome to a modern day shuddh romance in desiland. Plenty 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang', tucked in with some emotion and drama too.
Raghu-(Sushant)-the-Romeo is a tourist guide in Jaipur, who also doubles up as rental baraati for Goyal (Rishi), a shaadi planner. He meets the rebellious Gayatri (Parineeti) and feels a "tezwala" attraction towards her. They waste no time in moving in, and making out. Soon, they're love-addicts, but commitment-phobic. The third character in this threesome (don't expect any of that) is Tara (Vaani), who was supposed to wed Raghu, until he fled on his wedding day. She makes a re-entry for revenge, but ends up with a complicated status, really.
Sushant swings between the Patiala-clad women and makes for the perfectly confused, charming and lovable Romeo. His hair perfectly styled at all times (though he should have had the 'out-of-bed' look more often), his clothes are more designer than dehati, but he more than makes up for it with his desicool performance.
Parineeti is a phataka, firing dialogues (smoking up too) and living it up. She makes the character her own, complementing Sushant with a casualness that's commendable. Newbie Vaani is impressive, pretty and commands a good screen-presence. Rishi Kapoor, blows you away yet again with his incredible histrionics.
Maneesh Sharma's 'SDR' has a 'Band Bajaa Baraat' blend, but the essence lies in the conversational chemistry between the characters, some beautifully captured moments and slice-of-life scenes. He doesn't play safe, which is good, but the second half seems repetitive. The concept is engaging, but the plot is little shudd, little desi and quite confused.
Reviewed by: Madhureeta Mukherjee
Courtesy: www.indiatimes.com
Courtesy: www.indiatimes.com
Asking for the moon -IRFAN HUSAIN
AS the elusive search for peace in Karachi continues, with Nawaz Sharif attempting to forge a consensus, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there are no easy answers, no quick fixes.
And it’s not just Karachi, but most of Sindh that seems to have become dysfunctional. A combination of corruption, criminality and poor governance has made the province an administrative black hole.
A column I wrote about wanting to reclaim the PPP from the mafia that currently controls it (Dude, where’s my party?) drew many responses, as did my piece last week about the stark socio-economic contrast in Sindh.
Here’s an excerpt from one written by Farhana Maoji, a businesswoman friend in Karachi:
“To my beopaari mind it seems so obvious — they [the PPP] have the power and the resources … they just have to do their jobs — nothing more — and they are on to a winner. The fact that we both know that it is probably not going to happen is the tragedy. If they just worked while they were in office instead of looking at everything with a view to trying to work out what they can skim out of it would make a gigantic difference…”
Another old friend who runs an NGO in Sindh puts similar thoughts in a less elegant way:
“You better start looking for another party because your current one will be flushed down the drain in 2018 — along with all the stinking s--- that’s floating around in rural Sindh and Karachi.”
A primary schoolteacher who has asked not be named sent this harrowing description of ground realities in rural Sindh. I am quoting him here without corrections:
“… do you know govt provides course books free of cost, but in every school head master charges 20 rupees from each student and supervisors have also share from that money. In mostly schools teachers pay 1,000 rupees to head masters and in return they are allowed to remain absent. V just got school management fund for maintenance of school but not a single rupee will be spent on school, that will go in the pockets of headmaster and supervisor…
“In our village … govt middle school is occupied by police now it is a police station, even quarters of basic health unit has become the residence of SHO, DSP respectively. In high school, there are 20 teachers, no single teacher is ready to come to school … headmaster gets 3000/5000 rupees from each teacher. Only 4 unqualified matriculate boys teach at high school level. This is the plight of education!”
Clearly, things have not reached such a pass overnight. Decades of poor governance are needed to cause this level of decay and deterioration.
It is common knowledge that politicians fight to get the education portfolio because they can charge huge amounts to appoint schoolteachers; there are additional benefits by way of development funds and foreign aid.
In a way, everybody in the system benefits. Ministers, bureaucrats, headmasters, supervisors and teachers all have their little khanchas, or fiddles. The only ones to get short-changed are the students.
Given this state of affairs, it should hardly surprise us that, according to a British Council report, half of all Pakistani schoolchildren cannot read a single sentence; 25 million children do not get a primary education; and a third of all Pakistanis have spent less than two years at school. Alarmingly, 30,000 school buildings are so poorly maintained that they are dangerous; 21,000 schools have no buildings at all.
If these are national figures, rest assured that the situation is even worse in Sindh where local waderas, or feudals, routinely take over the local school buildings for their own pleasures. And this is the class that fills our national and provincial assemblies with public representatives.
Returning to the PPP and its awful track record in governance, one has to be naïve or hopelessly optimistic to expect the party to get its act together.
Corruption is as deeply ingrained in its ethos as spots are imprinted on a leopard’s skin. And to make matters worse, Sindh, for some reason, seems more prone to institutionalised venality than the other provinces.
I know that Pakistan has a very poor reputation in fiscal probity, but in three decades of government service, my experience was that Sindh is blighted by more corruption than the rest of the country. Politicians and bureaucrats alike seem to feel it’s their right to make hay while they are in office. They live openly beyond their means, and there is absolutely no stigma attached to their lavish lifestyle.
Again, based on my experience, I have often felt that many of our problems are not due to a lack of resources, but a shortage of political will. The fact is that even the pittance that is allocated to education does not get spent due to bureaucratic incompetence. And as unspent funds revert to the exchequer at the end of the fiscal year, it is criminal that we are unable to utilise the money that is earmarked for education.
If the PPP government wishes to actually perform over the next five years, it will need to alter its mindset.
It is necessary to have an education minister with a clean reputation, and he needs to look for a few equally honest and efficient civil servants to head his department. No political interference or sifarish would be accepted under this dispensation.
I realise this is not going to happen in my lifetime. Conditions that exist elsewhere as a matter of routine are viewed as impossibly idealistic in Pakistan — 26 countries poorer than Pakistan manage to have more children in classrooms than we do.
Asking the PPP government in Sindh to just get on and do its job is apparently asking for the moon.
irfan.husain@gmail.com
Parliament’s vote - A.G. NOORANI
BY any standard, the vote in Britain’s House of Commons on Aug 29 was a historic one. Its effects will be felt, and its significance better appreciated, with the passage of time.
By a narrow majority of 285 votes to 272, the house rejected the government’s motion on military intervention in Syria though it was hedged with qualifications.
The motion called for a “strong humanitarian response” from the international community that “may, if necessary, require military action that is legal, proportionate and focused on saving lives by preventing and deterring further use of Syria’s chemical weapons”.
It also said that a UN “process must be followed as far as possible to ensure the maximum legitimacy for any such action,” and further, the secretary-general “should ensure a briefing to the United Nations Security Council immediately upon the completion of the observer team’s initial mission”.
Besides, “before any direct British involvement in such action, a further vote of the House of Commons will take place”. The house remained sceptical, despite all these reservations.
The vote is in the great tradition of British parliamentary practice in which members of the ruling party revolt against the government of the day. The most famous incident was on May 8, 1940 during the Second World War when prime minister Neville Chamberlain had to resign.
The government had a majority of 81; but over 30 Conservatives voted with the Labour and Liberal oppositions and a further 60 abstained. Leopold Amery, a close colleague of Chamberlain, quoted Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
Lloyd George, a former Liberal Prime Minister during the First World War, seized on Chamberlain’s call for sacrifice to wound him. “I say solemnly that the prime minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.” When he sat down the prime minister’s fate was sealed.
Anthony Eden’s bid to capture the Suez Canal in 1956, in complicity with Israel, eventually forced him out of office as prime minister well after the ceasefire. The fiasco convinced Tory grandees as well as the backbenchers that his shelf life had expired.
In 1990 Margaret Thatcher resigned though she beat the challenge to the party leadership easily because as many as 60 MPs refused to vote for her. She had been weakened by deputy prime minister Sir Geoffrey Howe’s brilliant resignation speech in the House a few weeks earlier. The party was convinced that, what with her stand on the poll tax, she would lead them to disaster in the next elections. She had to go.
However, this was preceded by a series of rebuffs in 1988. On Jan 12, the government’s majority of 101 was cut to 47 when several Tories voted against the freeze on child benefits and many more abstained. Three nights later, Tory MPs defied a three-line whip to vote against a private member’s bill on protection of information and the government’s majority fell to 37.
About 19 of them voted in favour of the bill, about 50 more abstained in deliberate defiance of the whip. Some former ministers were among the rebels. On April 18, the government narrowly escaped a humiliating defeat when its majority slumped to 25 on the final reading of the poll tax bill.
Now for the lessons, since South Asia has adopted the parliamentary model. To begin with, such revolts are unthinkable, at least in India. Since the MP gets his party’s ticket for the elections from the party boss, he lacks the very capacity to revolt even if he wished to do so. It would mean political suicide.
In the UK, political parties are organised constituency-wise and it is the constituency association which awards the party ticket after interviews and an internal poll.
On Eden’s resignation from the House of Commons, more than 250 candidates applied. All were rejected. A candidate was selected from a new shortlist — without any reference to the leaders in London. In India, as elsewhere in the developing world, a democratic constitution is worked by undemocratic parties, who are governed by party bosses.
The British parliament was recalled especially for the debate on Syria as it is for any urgent legislation. No democracy outside South Asia empowers its government to make laws by promulgating ordinances; a Raj relic which our leaders merrily adopted.
In the realm of foreign affairs the after-effects of the seismic vote will be felt for long. In March 1955 in the last week of his premiership, Churchill confided to an old friend and confidante, Violet Bonham Carter, “we must never get out of step with the Americans – never” (italics in the original). That doctrine, and the “special relationship” it fostered, is now all but dead.
The ripples are felt even in France, now hailed as America’s “oldest ally”. In 2003, France’s opposition to the attack on Iraq made many Americans shun French fries. But, as the BBC reported from Paris, opinion on a war with Syria is sharply divided — as indeed is public opinion in the US itself. All dissenters are encouraged by the British vote.
Its effect on the future of the British government remains to be seen. Prime Minister David Cameron, though bloodied, was unbowed: “I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons. But I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons.”
As he recognised, the vote simply reflected public opinion. President Barack Obama’s options promise no political gains for him.
The writer is an author and a lawyer.
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