Absolut Justice

By Amir Zia

January 2012

Newsline

Even mighty feudal lords, tyrant tribal chiefs, dishonest businessmen and industrialists, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians and the dreaded men in khaki appear like pygmies and their crimes small, compared with Atiqa Odho’s allegedly serious crime of carrying two bottles of liquor in the country.

On December 10, a magistrate in Rawalpindi framed charges against one of Pakistan’s leading television artistes, Atiqa Odho, for carrying two bottles of liquor in her luggage while travelling on a domestic flight. If proven guilty, Odho can get a maximum punishment of 30 lashes and two years in prison, which many pious people among us feel is too little for this gravest of grave offences.


The long arm of the law moved against Odho on the insistence of none other than the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, whose integrity, impartiality and righteousness remains beyond doubt and is the stuff fit for folklore. He is an honourable and honest man and holds no malice in his heart against anyone. All his actions and intentions are for the greater public good and the country. No wonder Justice Chaudhry – a hero of heroes and a darling of the opposition and media alike – lived up to his reputation when, despite all the pressing work of administering justice on scores of high profile political and not-so-political cases, he initiated a suo moto action against Odho. The artist allegedly got preferential treatment from the customs staff at the Islamabad Airport and was apparently allowed to walk away with the heavy load of two liquor bottles in June 2011.

Now it’s Odho’s responsibility to prove her innocence. Odho’s repeated assertions that she doesn’t drink and was framed in a ‘crime’ she never committed, holds no ground. However, proverbial ‘blind justice’ will take its course. All of Odho’s dreaded powers and influence, which she enjoys as an artist and a woman in Pakistan, won’t work as everyone is equal in the court of law. Even mighty feudal lords, tyrant tribal chiefs, dishonest businessmen and industrialists, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians and the dreaded men in khaki appear like pygmies and their crimes small, compared with Odho’s allegedly serious crime of carrying two bottles of liquor in the country. Just imagine how many people could have got drunk or tipsy from the liquor in these two bottles, and created a law-and-order situation or maybe even a security challenge. Let Odho say whatever she wants in her own defence, including her claim that she was unaware of the illegal package. Her trial – and a probable conviction – will serve as a lesson and a stern warning to all those who violate and trample the law in every city, town and village of Pakistan, all the time. Yes, we should all hail and salute our honourable, honest chief justice and the judiciary for this achievement, which will help establish the rule of law in this land of the pure.

There are some foolish people who say that Odho should have been allowed to walk free following the confiscation of the two bottles, as happens in the case of 99.9% of the passengers, who are caught by our hardworking and vigilant customs staff. Since the Odho example, all those well connected air travellers, who smuggle liquor in their hand luggage upon returning to the motherland from Dubai, Bangkok or other foreign destinations, must have stopped this practice.

The honourable members of the judiciary must be aware of the fact that in the pre-Odho case days, passengers walked away with bags full of liquor – all sorts of Scotch, single malts, whites, reds, golden etc. ‘Unconnected passengers,’ who carried only a couple of bottles escaped from the airport with the sheer force of their confidence. If caught, they would haggle with custom officials and usually get out by sacrificing a bottle or two, or parting with some foreign or local currency. The connected ones often received an official escort at the aircraft door and walked away with trolley-loads of liquor. Following the chief justice’s suo moto – and Odho’s indictment – all this must have stopped.

The fruits of Odho’s case won’t remain confined to airports alone. The parties and evenings of other high and mighty, along with the ordinary ones, in every strata of our society must have gone dry following this case. Even New Year celebrations will be in line with the law and the customs and values of this Islamic Republic, with only hot Indian and western dance numbers to give people a high on a cold December-January night.

The honourable chief justice must also be aware of the fact that many key lawyers, including some veterans who remained at the forefront – and on his right and left – in the famous lawyers’ movement struggling for his reinstatement, are known not just for possessing liquor, but for drinking it too. The chief justice can ask a veteran and knowledgeable lawyer, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, about it under oath. He will learn the truth from Ahsan, and we pray to his Lordship to initiate a suo moto against them as well.

Action against possessing and drinking liquor must take precedence over all the other crimes, including child-rape and murder, religious extremism and terrorism, gun running, drugs, smuggling, graft and corruption etc. All these can wait. Possessing and drinking liquor is the mother of all crimes. It needs to be sorted out first and foremost, and the case against Odho will go a long way in establishing the rule of the law in the country. It will set a precedence and underline the fact that all are equal in our beloved chief justice’s court.

We also hope that with Odho’s indictment, bootleggers will stop selling locally manufactured legal liquor to Muslims. The sales of local liquor manufacturers must have taken a big hit, and in recent days they must be thinking of closing shop.

Ours is a society of hypocrites who cheat by appearance. It is good to know that everyone, from the chief justice down to the magistrate who indicted Odho, is waging a holy war against this hypocrisy. Our numerous poets, writers, artists and journalists, who drink and can’t think of an evening without it, must be in a state of doom and gloom seeing Odho suffer. People like Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib, Sadeqain, Ahmed Faraz, Josh Maleehabadi and host of others should thank their stars – if they can – that they lived and died long before Justice Chaudhry’s court existed and suo motos took place. What General Zia-ul-Haq could not accomplish with his hudood and anti-liquor laws, Justice Chaudhry will accomplish with a suo moto.

Unhappy New Year

By Amir Zia
Money Matters
The News
January 2, 2012

The government’s economic team has yet to come up with any plausible explanation for their criminal inaction. The story-line of blaming natural disasters, the war against terrorism and global recession for the economic troubles won’t sell now. They have certainly had an impact on the economy, but the bigger damage has been done by the government itself as it failed to carry out reforms and ensure good governance.

We do not need a crystal ball to predict that Pakistan's economy is all set to brace another tough year in 2012 – much tougher than the previous four years under this democratic dispensation. The vicious cycle of low growth and double digit inflation will continue to grip the country, bringing more misery to the lives of ordinary Pakistanis, increasing poverty and unemployment and reducing the purchasing power of low and middle income groups in real terms.
In fact, the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP)-led government has ensured that there is no other possible economic scenario for the country in 2012 as it has failed to bring in the crucial reforms aimed at expanding the tax base, introducing fiscal discipline and restructuring the loss-making public sector enterprises.
The PPP’s economic team also miserably failed to inspire confidence among local and foreign investors, who turned their backs on Pakistan at a time when other regional countries continue to lure new investment and businesses, taking advantage of their vast domestic markets, availability of cheap labour and the huge size of an English-speaking pool of educated professionals.
Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh and his team appear without a strategy and plan to pull the country out of its current state of stagflation. Rather than taking tough decisions to trigger growth and put the economy back on the track, they are engaged in a losing exercise of fire-fighting on a day-to-day basis. But trickery seldom works and proves more lethal and disastrous for the country in the long-run. Even if the economic gurus know the prescription for our economic ills, their political bosses remain in no mood to give them a free hand. For the embattled PPP government, setting the right priorities has always been a problem. Narrow political interests supersede the vital national interest as President Asif Ali Zardari and company try to perpetuate their rule.
The foremost failure of the PPP in managing the economy has been its inability to form an economic team of its own. It is ironic that one of the biggest, mass-based parties in the country remains unable to develop a core economic team within its ranks to run the economy. From day one, this government has been running the economy on 'borrowed' people. One should not be surprised if there is a wide gap in the thinking of the economic policy-makers and the ones who approve their policies.
This results in utter confusion at all the policy levels. For example, one finds privatization being promoted and opposed at the same time by the ruling party. Crucial issues such as overstaffing at the loss-making public sector enterprises cannot be addressed because PPP politicians stand opposed to it for political and ideological reasons, though their financial team wants to follow a different course.
So was the case with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed reform programme, which the PPP government failed to implement despite repeated promises. The imposition of the reformed general sales tax (RGST) could never see the light of the day as the government missed one promised deadline after another due to opposition both from within the party and from allies in the ruling coalition as well as the opposition and various interest groups. No wonder, there was no serious push to broaden the tax base and raise the extremely low tax-to-GDP ratio of below 10 percent.
The fiscal management of the PPP government has also been one of its key weaknesses as it is expected to miss the budgetary deficit target for the third year in a row. According to IMF estimates, Pakistan’s fiscal deficit for 2011-12 (July-June) is likely to be at a gnawing 6.5 percent against the targeted 4.2 percent. The widening deficit, which was 5.9 percent in fiscal 2010-11, threatens the economic stability of the country.
There is hardly any possibility of a change in the situation in the coming months as the government has given up efforts to expand the tax base and also appears in no mood to eliminate the stifling subsidies given to the public sector because of political compulsions.
The government’s continued heavy borrowing from the central and commercial banks not just has an inflationary impact but has also crowded out the private sector from the credit chain. All this has compounded the country’s economic woes.
The government’s inability to handle the deepening energy crisis is yet another factor that has been hurting the real economy across the board. On this front, there has been an epic saga of delay, starting from the government’s delayed action in handling the circular debt problem and its failure to launch a comprehensive national energy conservation strategy. Instead of coming up with a strategy to utilize the existing power generation capacity to the optimum and starting new medium to long-term projects, the government came up with the 'miracle cure' of rental power projects which crashed without even taking off at the cost of billions of rupees to the national exchequer.
With small to large factories and industries now being forced to slash production due to the massive energy shortages, there remains hardly a possibility that the manufacturing sector will contribute in pushing the growth rate up. Instead, there will be a further slowdown in its activities, resulting in tens of thousands of job losses.
The government’s economic team has yet to come up with any plausible explanation for their criminal inaction. The story-line of blaming natural disasters, the war against terrorism and global recession for the economic troubles won’t sell now. They have certainly had an impact on the economy, but the bigger damage has been done by the government itself as it failed to carry out reforms and ensure good governance. Instead, its mismanagement and inaction served as a catalyst to worsen the economic situation.
In 2012, there is little hope that things will take a turn for the better. With the opposition demanding early elections and political instability gripping the country, the government will hardly have time to take measures which are required in these challenging times. There is no political will among the PPP central leaders to do so, while their financial managers seem content passing as much time as possible in their plush jobs where achieving results appears to be of no consequence.
The government’s decision prematurely pull out from the IMF programme in September 2011, has further eroded its credibility. The damage is two-folds. One, the country is without the prudent supervision of global lending agencies, which gives room for more slippages and mismanagement. Two, other multilateral and bilateral donors will shy away from Pakistan in the absence of an IMF umbrella.
In the coming months, Pakistan can face a serious balance of payment crisis on the back of soaring domestic and foreign debt, a widening fiscal deficit and the government’s inability to mobilize money from domestic or foreign resources. The scenario of debt trapped and cash-strapped Pakistan is now staring us in our face.
As early as in the second to early third quarter of 2012, the current reserve cover of over four months of imports is likely to drop below two months, exerting more pressure on the rupee, which has lost more than 40 percent of its value against the dollar since early 2008.
The estranged relations with the United States remain yet another factor that will increase our economic troubles. It is not just the absence of US money and aid that should worry Pakistan. Washington also holds the key to loans and aid at all the key multilateral and global forums.
In a nutshell, Pakistan’s battered economy remains on the course of a self-inflicted disaster in 2012 under the stewardship of the current economic team. The economic rot will not be stemmed as crucial reforms are nowhere on the agenda nor are there any efforts to put the economy back on the high growth trajectory. Yes, 2012 will be another gruelling year for Pakistan as the situation is all set to slide from bad to worse.

Fast Deliveries On Hard Pitch

By Amir Zia
The News on Sunday
January 1, 2012

Karachi may not promise Imran Khan a slice of electoral seats in the near future, but many in the city welcome him as a hope for tomorrow

So it is just not Lahore where Imran Khan can be a big crowd puller. He and his team managed to bat with equal ease in Karachi as well, pulling a huge crowd in front of the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah on December 25, 2011. This performance must have raised a few eyebrows in the rank and file of traditional political forces in this teeming port city, where politics, crime and violence often go hand-in-hand.

But does Khan’s successful rally mean that he managed to carve out an electoral niche for his once struggling Tehreek-e-Insaaf in Karachi — the domain of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) since mid-1980s? Besides the MQM, it is only the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) which has a history of maintaining strong electoral pockets and a few guaranteed national and provincial assembly seats in Karachi. The rest of the major political parties are seen as flyweights in the hurly-burly of elections despite their heavy weight leaders and organised force of workers.

While Imran Khan’s rally definitely managed to attract people from all the ethnic groups and economic backgrounds and mobilise even a section of the chattering apolitical middle and upper middles classes, it still does not guarantee electoral success in Karachi or other urban centers of Sindh — at least in the short-term.
There are reasons for this. The foremost is that the MQM remains solidly entrenched in the political and social fabric of this city and is likely to dominate the next elections despite rising ethnic polarisation in which several other rough tough players have emerged on the scene with an aim to create or expand their turf here. However, the MQM vote-bank in the densely populated low and middle-income neighbourhoods is likely to stay intact. In the past, this vote-bank remained glued to the MQM despite several onslaughts of the establishment and attempts to divert voters to other state-sponsored groups and leaders.

The PPP, despite the resentment of many of its workers and supporters in its traditional strongholds, also has the capacity and ability to bounce back at the 11th hour. The ruling party can ward-off attempts aimed to dent its base mainly among the Sindhi and Baloch dwellers of Karachi, where it also has pockets of supporters in other ethnic groups including the Urdu-speaking people.

The inexperience of Imran Khan’s team, which comprises political straw-weights holding key offices of the party at the Karachi and Sindh level, also remains a big minus for Tehreek-e-Insaaf. So far, none of the seasoned politicians from Karachi or interior of Sindh have joined the Tehreek-e-Insaaf — contrary to the recent trend in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

However, Imran Khan’s charisma and the recently found tailwind will help his party to glean support from the small vote-banks of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the Pakhtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) and religious parties. Imran Khan as a new factor in Karachi should be worrying these three forces more rather than the major political parties of Sindh. With a right kind of team and hard work, Tehreek-e-Insaaf can create a small electoral niche for itself at the cost of these secondary political forces. This in itself would be no mean achievement for Tehreek-e-Insaaf, which attracted only a handful of people in May when Imran Khan staged a sit-in against the Nato supplies in Karachi.

Imran Khan’s December 25th rally also marked his departure from the confrontationist stance he used to take against the MQM. While many analysts and even some of Imran Khan’s supporters appear unhappy and critical of his new non-confrontationist posture, which many read as a reconciliatory mood, it indeed is a step in the right direction.

It is always healthy for a political system and a good omen for democracy when political parties bring a kind of equilibrium in their relationship despite political differences and ideological divide. The MQM has also responded positively to the Tehreek-e-Insaaf’s grand entry on its turf. This spirit and goodwill must continue in the larger interest of the city.

What one does not expect from Imran Khan’s party is strong-arm and unlawful tactics. The MQM, despite its controversial past, has also matured over the years and is trying to expand base beyond the urban areas of Sindh. This provides an opportunity that all the major political parties and stakeholders in Karachi, which also include the PPP, the ANP and the PML-N, must redefine rules of engagement in this violence-prone mega-polis and contribute to bring peace and stability here.

Tehreek-e-Insaaf, being an unconventional force, can assist in achieving this end by putting the right issues on the forefront and facilitating the process of dialogue, discussion and reconciliation. The agenda for peace in Karachi must include all political parties closing their doors on criminal elements and desisting from the politics of extortion, encroachment and other unlawful activities.

The focus of debate for the future of Karachi must be on issues that hurt the common people, disrupt peace, and aim at getting rid of mafias which dominate each and every aspect of its life — from transport to provision of water and illegal encroachments to sponsoring all sorts of crimes. In the crime-ridden and corruption-infested world of today’s politics, the desire to play by the book might appear too naïve for pragmatic politicians, but the time for this kind of change has now become inevitable. Political parties can work as a catalyst to hasten the process of change or emerge as obstacles and eventually be thrown out of the way.

Imran Khan, who has been taking a high moral ground against corruption, may find many allies among the traditional urban middle class political forces, who want to change the status quo in a democratic and peaceful manner.

The team Imran Khan is building and the election winners he is wooing — mainly from the past members of former president Pervez Musharraf’s regime to that of PPP and PML-N dissidents — are triggering criticism from various quarters. However, most of these new comers in the Tehreek-e-Insaaf appear to have relatively clean records compared with some of the corruption-tainted and controversial figures in other political parties. Will he be able to attract politician of substance in Sindh as well, particularly Karachi? For this he will have to work hard.

Imran Khan’s political slogans of ensuring justice in the society, installing an efficient and clean government and his yet undefined concept of establishing an Islamic welfare state may appear too simplistic and even contradictory, but they remain music to the ears for many Pakistanis, who feel that they have been repeatedly betrayed by other mainstream parties. There remains a strong desire for peace, development and economic progress among majority of the Pakistanis. For many Pakistanis, Imran Khan is articulating the reform agenda.

One can differ with Imran Khan’s political position on various issues and they definitely remain open for debate and criticism, but the former champion captain has finally started to make waves in the murky waters of Pakistani politics. Karachi may not promise him a slice of electoral seats in the near future, but many in the city welcomed him with open arms and as a hope for tomorrow. And Karachi’s support and goodwill remains critical if one aims to conquer the national electoral battle. Will Imran Khan be able to fulfill the great expectations? This may be too early to predict at the start of his new innings, given the huge target he has to achieve.