Our Reluctant Democrats

By Amir Zia
The News
Monday, July 29, 2013


If allowed, both the PML-N and the PPP would prefer to continue running the show without local governments. However, following the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s order that elections for the local governments be held by end-September, these parties have no option other than to comply – albeit reluctantly.



Call it an irony, or the complete absurdity, of Pakistani politics that the local government system always thrives under military rulers and gets squashed by the elected governments. Given a choice, even today some of the traditional mainstream political parties would not like to have local bodies’ elections in their domains.
The bitter aversion to the local bodies system by parties like the PML-N and the PPP is understandable. They see the devolution of power to the grassroots level and empowerment of local representatives as a threat to their political and financial control and dominance. It is no wonder then that during their last stint in power, the two parties successfully managed to prevent local bodies’ elections from taking place in the country.
The parties are okay with the devolution of power and distribution of resources from the federal government to the provincial level. But beyond that it seems to be a firm ‘no’ in their standard operating procedures.
For the military rulers, the local government system remains ‘a necessary evil’ to fill the void they create by banning political parties and dissolving parliament. Therefore, from Field Marshal Ayub Khan in the 1960s to General Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s, military rulers gave the country strong and functioning local governments, which performed better than the way these institutions usually function under democratic rule – when they are mostly run by hand-picked administrators and political appointees.
The support of the military rulers, however, does not mean that the local government system should be seen as undemocratic in its essence or a mere tool to undermine the civilian political forces. In all mature and functioning democracies of the world, local governments – including the powerful city governments – are seen as a main pillar of the democratic order. These institutions help resolve the day-to-day civic, development, health, education and even the routine law and order issues of citizens, leaving the broader policy, legal and constitutional matters for the national and provincial legislatures.
This is not so in Pakistan, where the traditional democratic forces, for their narrow self-interest, see local governments as challengers to their authority and power.
The PPP took one of its key coalition partners, the MQM, for a ride on this issue all through its previous 2008-13 term. The PPP held long negotiations with the MQM and finally managed to reach an agreement on a much diluted local bodies system compared to the one given by former military ruler General Musharraf in 2001 in which the local representatives had tremendous powers, including power over financial matters. The PPP-MQM duo got their Sindh People’s Local Government (SPLG) Act, 2012, passed in the provincial assembly with a thumping majority amidst an uproar by the small Sindhi nationalist and opposition groups opposed to the system.

But ‘insincerity, thy name is politics’ – at least in Pakistan. With the MQM parting ways just ahead of the 2013 elections, the PPP got this bill scrapped in the Sindh Assembly, and replaced it with the General Ziaul Haq era local bodies system. Those PPP leaders who once highlighted the positives of the SPLG and declared it to be the best thing that had happened to Sindh, switched to the opposite extreme.
In the populous Punjab province, the PML-N too showed its preference for the old order of the local bodies system than the Musharraf-era Local Government Ordinance (LGO) of 2001. But even after scrapping the 2001 LGO, the PML-N did not go for local elections. Instead, it kept writing and rewriting the so-called new system which in its spirit and structure remained committed to General Zia’s local bodies order. Come 2013, and the PML-N government continues the process of tinkering with local government laws in an attempt to make it as toothless as possible.
Under the previous PPP rule, the Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial legislatures followed their allies at the centre. Members of the national and provincial assemblies in the country took upon themselves jobs meant for local representatives. The huge development funds at their disposal were good enough reason to do so.
If allowed, both the PML-N and the PPP would prefer to continue running the show without local governments. However, following the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s order that elections for the local governments be held by end-September, these parties have no option other than to comply – albeit reluctantly.
It is not just the Supreme Court order; the political scene has also transformed drastically following the May 2013 general elections. Both the PML-N and the PPP will be facing a much more robust and aggressive opposition in the coming local bodies’ elections, likely to test them to their limit in both Punjab and Sindh.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which had even before the Supreme Court order announced its willingness to hold local elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where it is leading the provincial government, sees these elections as an opportunity to bounce back – especially in Punjab.
Imran Khan’s team would certainly like to make an impact in the PML-N stronghold to justify its allegations that the May 2013 general elections were ‘rigged and manipulated’ to give a landslide to its main rival in Punjab. In Karachi, too, the PTI can hope to get a slice of the seats in the local elections given its unexpectedly good performance in the May elections in which its candidates won one national and two provincial assembly seats and finished on the number two positions on many others.
The PTI seems all set to replace its ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, as the main rival to the MQM on some of its key turfs in Karachi if Imran Khan and his team concentrate on campaigning and reorganising their party in the port city.
The MQM, also a firm supporter of the local government system, will have to go for a more aggressive stance against the PPP if it aims to do well in the local bodies’ elections. The PPP’s continued support to gangsters in Lyari, its slapping of higher taxes on the urban areas in the recent provincial budget, the decision to extend the rural-urban quota for another 20 years, and the plans to impose a diluted local government system have not just made it difficult for the MQM to justify any cooperation with its former coalition partner in the future, but also sharpened polarisation in Karachi, a city already plagued by lawlessness, crime and violence.
The PPP’s current mood regarding local governments was articulated by Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah when he said that his party would request the Supreme Court for six more months so that it could make arrangements for the local elections and make some more changes in the local bodies government law of 1979. He also cited the law and order challenge, which he thinks remains an obstacle in the holding of these elections – although the same challenge could not derail the general elections only a couple of months ago.
Much like the PPP in Sindh, the PML-N in Punjab is also going all out to transform the 1979 local government system according to its wishes. The fondness of both these parties to the bureaucracy-driven and dominated local government system should be disturbing for those who want to see more powers for elected representatives at the grassroots level – as was the case in Musharraf’s 2001 LGO.
However, the country’s two biggest dynastic parties have little appetite for the ‘grassroots kind’ of democracy. They want to keep all power concentrated in the hands of the few at the provincial and federal level. How long will they be able to deprive the people of powerful and functioning local governments? The pressure is building and awareness expanding on this issue at every level that would force the vested interest to bow to the public demand.
Devolution and empowerment at the local level is a cornerstone of democracy. The PML-N and the PPP cannot continue with their anti-people antics for an extended period now.

Can We Bank On The Budget?

By Amir Zia

Monthly Newsline

July, 2013

 

In its latest budget, the PML-N has attempted to tackle the daunting economic challenges facing Pakistan but it does not provide a cure for the major ills of the economy.   

 

The first budget of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) proved an ordinary one for extraordinary and difficult times. Most independent and not-so-independent economic experts rebuffed the efforts of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and his team on grounds that the new government avoided difficult and bold decisions and attempted to keep the country’s battered economy afloat by working in the existing template in the new financial year 2013-14 (July-June).
However, there have been voices of support for the budget coming mainly from business people and industrialists, who declared it pro-growth and investment friendly. They argue that despite many shortcomings, it remains the best budget under the existing circumstances where the government was short of options and fiscal space. They also add that Dar and his team barely got a week to incorporate PML-N’s vision in the budget and that the document was prepared mainly by the caretakers.
The government, nonetheless, has accepted a challenging assignment. On the one hand, it wants to achieve economic stabilisation, trigger growth by greater resource mobilisation and increase development spending in the current fiscal year. On the other hand, it wants to qualify for another loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure that Islamabad does not fail on its foreign debt repayments and maintains the foreign exchange reserves figure to a minimum of at least three months of the country’s import bill. This is also vital to stabilise the rupee, which has remained under pressure since the country’s historic return to democracy in February 2008.
While the new budget aims to do all this through a series of steps that have won support from some and opposition from others, the chronic structural flaws of the economy, by and large, remained unaddressed.
To begin with, rather than expanding the tax-base for the much-needed resource mobilisation, the government banked on the existing pool of tax-payers. It further squeezed the salaried class, which has to pay slightly higher taxes compared to the last fiscal year because of the alterations in the income tax slabs. The oppressive indirect taxation, which hurts the middle and lower classes, has again won favour instead of direct taxation; the unpopular increase in the General Sales Tax (GST) by 1% – from 16% to 17% – underlines this fact. The impact of this decision remains inflationary and hits the common man the hardest.
An increase in the withholding tax on cash withdrawals from banks and slapping of the same on a section of the service industry, including wedding halls and hotels, are among the key measures for resource mobilisation along with increased taxes on a number of items.
But the government has made no attempt to bring more direct tax-payers into the net. The retailers, middlemen and wholesalers – the main support base of the PML-N – continue to remain out of the ambit of direct taxes. So are many other lucrative professions and key sections of the service sector. The agricultural income, barring Punjab, remains untaxed as its imposition falls under the provincial governments.
In Sindh, the tax exemption on the agriculture sector income is further polarising its politics as the provincial government targeted the urban centres to increase revenues by jacking up taxes on property and various services. The Sindh Assembly, dominated by feudal lords and landowners belonging to the PPP, is in no mood to hurt the interests of the ruling class, especially in the rural areas.
Many analysts believe that without bringing two-thirds of the recorded GDP into the tax fold, which comes from the agriculture and service sectors, the government would not be able to improve its tax-to-GDP ratio, which remains stuck at around 9%. To ensure the tax-to-GDP ratio of 15% by the financial year 2015-16, as envisioned by the PML-N’s budget, it is necessary to bring the vast unregulated sector of the economy in the direct tax net as well.
While bold steps on the tax front remain missing in the budget, the government has set itself an ambitious revenue collection target of Rs 3,420 billion, which is more than 20% higher than the revised figures of Rs 2,837 billion in the current financial year. This raises questions whether the government will be able to achieve the fiscal deficit target of 6.3% in the current financial year, given its plans to boost growth by spend Rs 712 billion under the Public Sector Development Programme and ‘other development expenditure.’
Going by the performance record of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which missed its revenue collection target by a wide margin of more than Rs 400 billion in the fiscal year 2012-13, skeptics seem justified in raising eyebrows about FBR’s ability to achieve this fiscal year’s targeted amount of Rs 2,475 billion.
As far as the non-revenue generating resources are concerned, the optimistic PML-N government hopes to recover Rs 79 billion from Etisalat, which remain unpaid because of the unresolved dispute over the ownership of various properties of the Pakistan Telecom Co. Ltd after its privatisation. “This payment has been part of the financing items for the last five budgets, but has yet to be realised,” says Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, a former finance ministry adviser and the dean of the Business School of NUST.
Similarly, the availability of the coalition support fund from the US, amounting to Rs 112 billion, also remains doubtful. From the US point of view, it owes nothing to Islamabad now, said Dr Khan underlining the risk attached to the factoring in of this inflow.
The government is counting on Rs 120 billion from the sale of the 3G cellular services as another source of its non-tax revenues. According to Dr Khan, the sale of 3G licenses also remains doubtful.
On the expenditure side, the government has rightly opted for austerity, but these measures are more of a symbolic nature. The planned 30% reduction in the public sector’s running expenses is unlikely to have a significant impact on the overall government expenditures once we factor in debt servicing, defence and public sector salary expenses.
The availability of funds for the Rs 712 billion development budget, which includes big infrastructure projects, would be doubtful if there are slippages in revenue collection or non-revenue financing. 
But the planned risk of increasing development expenditures, which is unlikely to be welcomed by the IMF and other bilateral donors, is seen as a step in the right direction to pull the country out of the cycle of low growth. Pakistan recorded an annual growth of less than 3% during the previous PPP rule.
Many economists also believe that it remains vital for the country to end its current state of stagflation i.e. the cycle of low economic growth and high inflation.
However, the task is easier said than done, as removing the macroeconomic imbalances remains impossible without taking unpopular and painful decisions.
Achieving this goal becomes even more difficult in an atmosphere where foreign as well as domestic investors remain wary because of the rampant lawlessness, the challenge of terrorism and the soaring crime rate in the country.
The government would have to perform a high-wire act to ensure consistent and long-term policies, beating extremist forces and establishing the rule of law which has eroded not just in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, but also in major cities like Karachi. Without increased investment, the target of putting the country on the path of economic growth would remain a pipe dream.
The government’s capacity to fix the ailing public sector enterprises, which have been draining billions of rupees every month, would also be put to the test as it would require many unpopular steps.
Reforms in the power sector, for which increasing the electricity price is necessary, would also require courage and resolve. The government’s current plan to wipe out the circular debt of energy companies is not enough to fix the power sector woes. Preventing electricity theft is also important, for which the government will have to substantially increase tariffs coupled with cracking down on vested interests
However, the big plus point for the PML-N, as compared to the PPP, remains that it is considered business-friendly and expected to handle the economy in a more efficient manner. But in order to transform this positive sentiment into something concrete, the PML-N has to travel a long and rocky road. It would also need skill, vision, courage and commitment to resolve the multiple, intertwined economic, political and security challenges facing the country, especially since the public’s patience is running out
and many state institutions stand paralysed.

Cry, Lyari, Cry

By Amir Zia
The News
Monday, July 22, 2013

The credit of Lyari’s predicament goes to none other than the Pakistan People’s Party, which allowed gangsters to seize control of a few of its unflinching support bases in the city where its flag had been fluttering high since the days of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the early 1970s

For the past several years now, Lyari has existed as a living tragedy and a festering wound of Karachi – the country’s commercial and financial capital. It is a place where gangsters rule, gun battles rage, and crime and politics often walk hand-in-hand. It is a safe haven for extortionists, gunrunners, drug peddlers, kidnappers and criminals, but a living hell for law-abiding citizens.
As rival gangs fight pitched battles, residents are forced to huddle in their houses for days – sometimes stretching to weeks. Here a child often gets killed by a stray bullet. A man loses his life while returning home from work. A woman out for grocery shopping sustains multiple gunshots and dies on the roadside as armed men indiscriminately spray bullets with automatic weapons in a crowded market, killing several unsuspecting civilians. They all are just faceless numbers in the growing list of victims of the organised criminal violence that has consumed hundreds of lives in this area since 2008 when its steep slide into lawlessness began with the country’s return to democracy.
The real life tales of atrocities and crimes committed here are harrowing. When a group of gangsters finds the ringleader of a rival gang, they cut his body into small pieces and record this barbarity on video, which is then circulated on the internet – perhaps as a warning to all friends and foes. These video clips are not for the faint-hearted.
In the latest twist to the ongoing bloody saga, hundreds of families from the Kutchi community have been forced to abandon their homes where they had lived for decades in harmony with other ethnic groups. They have now become internally displaced persons from the conflict zone of Karachi, waiting for help and justice in places like Thatta and Badin. The bullet-riddled walls and houses damaged by grenades fired from rifles equipped with launchers bear testimony to Lyari’s prevailing lawlessness.
The area, once the hub of Karachi’s democratic, progressive and politically-conscious forces and known for its football crazy youth, budding boxers, tenacious cyclists and tough bodybuilders and weight-trainers, is now only a ghost of its past.
Communities that lived here in harmony for decades are now at loggerheads. One law-abiding Baloch youngster, who once had a shop in a Kutchi-dominated area, cannot operate his business from there because of the ethnic tensions. He is now looking for work. A Makrani physical trainer, whose family has lived here for generations, is now looking to rent a place outside Lyari as his 13-year-old daughter stands traumatised because of the frequent and prolonged gunfire and bouts of violence. She is too afraid to go to school or even step out of her house. These fleeting images are not even the tip of the tragedy that has been unfolding in Lyari. One has to be a Lyari-ite to know the trauma and the ordeal of living there.
And guess who is largely responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Not some military dictator like General Ziaul Haq against whom dwellers of this locality fought for democracy. Not those shadowy ‘state institutions’, which are accused of hatching all the dark conspiracies and committing black deeds against the democratic forces. This time around, the credit of Lyari’s predicament goes to none other than the Pakistan People’s Party, which allowed gangsters to seize control of a few of its unflinching support bases in the city where its party flag had been fluttering high since the days of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the early 1970s.
But sadly this is not the era of the Bhuttos – a signboard the PPP’s current stalwarts continue to cash in on even today. Imagine Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or Benazir Bhutto politically surrendering their support base to some controversial ‘peace committee’. Imagine any one of them abandoning party cadres or local leaders in favour of gangsters in an attempt to counter the muscle power of the MQM that ironically was a coalition partner when this twisted policy was formulated and implemented by the close coterie of President Asif Ali Zardari led by his student-life buddy Zulfikar Mirza.
Who would have thought in their wildest dreams that any of the senior Bhuttos would have allowed Lyari gangsters to nominate candidates for national and provincial assembly seats on PPP tickets? But under the new PPP the slogan ‘democracy is the best revenge’ has practically transformed into something like ‘revenge from democracy’.
Perhaps it would be unjust to blame some of the PPP’s veterans – from Raza Rabbani to Taj Haider and Makhdoom Amin Fahim to Syed Khursheed Shah – for choosing this forbidden path. These gentlemen are perhaps hostage to their circumstances and lack intellectual and moral courage to speak the truth. Their crime remains that of silence and toeing the party line even when criminals were being patronised and allowed to seize control of Lyari under the PPP flag.
All through the 2008-2013 term of the PPP’s rule, its lawmakers from Lyari could not even enter their own constituencies and the party cadre and local leaders were systematically forced to take a backseat. The so-called party hardliners, who wanted to keep their coalition partner – the MQM – on a tight leash banked for this on gangsters, who established a state within the state. This carrot-and-stick policy meant for the MQM played havoc with the city.
Lyari gangsters have become a curse for traders, shopkeepers and businesspeople. They have no choice but to dole out protection money to keep their shutters open, especially in some of the old commercial areas of the city. If anyone refuses to pay, the price is often a whizzing bullet or a hand-grenade attack. There were unprecedented lockout of businesses and shops as traders and shopkeepers protested during the PPP’s last stint in power – to no avail.
Organised networks of criminals, fanning out of Lyari, routinely deprive citizens of their cash, valuables and mobile phones in the main business and commercial districts as well as in the so-called upscale neighbourhoods. The law enforcers just watch.
The demoralised police force lacks resources, including sophisticated weapons, communication equipment and fuel and is in a state of inertia because of political pressures. No wonder, its senior officers, deployed at Lyari’s four police stations, often first take permission from gangsters before moving in their respective localities and try to remain on their right side for fear of their lives. Political expediency and opportunism never allow the other law-enforcement agencies, including the paramilitary rangers, to opt for an even-handed crackdown.
In Pakistan’s largest city, this could be the worst possible publicity statement for the PPP, which instead of giving better health care, education and jobs to the residents of its loyal support base, gave them the rule of mafias, guns, drugs, lawlessness and violence.
It was a mistake to think that the PPP would learn from the electoral thrashing it received in the May 2013 elections and mend its ways and indulge in some serious rethinking and self-criticism. In the only province where the party managed to form government, Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah – soon after taking oath – went straight to a reception hosted by the theoretically banned, but practically operating Aman Committee. It was his public statement on what lay ahead for Karachi.
The PPP’s new term in Sindh has started with a spike in killings and violence in Lyari as authorities continue to blatantly ignore crimes committed by gangsters, many of whom now carry the party tag. In fact they have successfully managed to establish their domain in the locality.
As violence and lawlessness rages in Lyari, the authorities have been holding negotiations and brokering deals between warring groups. Such shameful strategies, which further undermine the law and the writ of the state, can only be applied in Pakistan where – rather than bringing lawbreakers, criminals and terrorists to justice – the authorities negotiate with them.
Is there any hope left for Karachi? I am afraid not – at least not under the current PPP government and its existing mindset, which refuses to learn and unlearn from its mistakes.

The Rural Card

By Amir Zia
The News
Monday, July 15, 2013

Targeting only the urban areas, which directly and indirectly hurts the lower and middle classes the most, is bound to further widen the rural-urban divide. The people in the cities already give their due share through both federal and provincial taxes and duties as well as share the burden of many of the unjustified subsidies that purely benefit landowners.
Let's call a spade a spade. The PPP's Sindh provincial budget for fiscal 2013-14 (July-June) punishes urban taxpayers and protects the interests of the small, but powerful, coterie of feudals and big landowners. By coming up with a controversial budget, the PPP has sharpened the rural-urban divide in one of the country's most ethnically diverse and polarised province where there remains a pressing need for balance and fairness in both the mobilisation and the distribution of resources.
But that is perhaps too much to ask from today's PPP, which has reduced itself to a Sindh rural-based party from the mighty force it once was across the country – inspiring and galvanising urban workers, the lower and middle classes, intellectuals and dreamers along with landless farmers and peasants. Today, the PPP is in a pit and seems to be digging itself deeper into the hole.
After being routed in most parts of the country in the May 2013 general elections, there were expectations that the PPP would go for a serious rethinking process and launch corrective measures in an attempt to bounce back and reclaim its lost turf, which includes the country's urban centres. One expected a desire to change and an urgency to improve that should have been reflected at least in the party's last bastion of power, Sindh, where it single-handedly runs the provincial government. But unfortunately it is the same old wheeling and dealing and the business of protecting the narrow interests of its lawmakers, who overwhelmingly come from the landed aristocracy.
Therefore, it should be of no surprise that the PPP-led Sindh government gave a provincial budget that let agricultural income remain untaxed and continued with heavy subsidies to this sector, which has been making a windfall – thanks to the massive increase in support price of key crops during the party's last stint in power. The provincial government also continued with the nominal tax on irrigated and un-irrigated land and orchards, which barely raise Rs200-300 million annually.
Water charges for agricultural land remained unchanged in the budget. In fact, they are the same since 1994, though they should be revised upward after every five years. The Sindh government gets around Rs400 million under this head, but spends around Rs9.0 billion per annum on the overall maintenance of the water supply system for agricultural land. It is indeed a large subsidy, and one that mainly benefits the big landlords.

Land revenue, which used to be charged since the days of the Great Mughals as land rent and continued though the British rule and well till the days of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has long been abolished. The credit for this goes to the former military dictator General Ziaul Haq, who replaced it with the Islamic tax of Usher, which too has been abolished due to pressure by landowners. Since then, no parliament and no provincial assembly have managed to revive either land revenue or usher because of the dominance of landlords in the assemblies.
This is in stark contrast to Punjab, where recently the PML-N managed to bring agricultural income under the tax net. But Sindh is a different story. Schemes like providing tractors to farmers (read: influential people and landowners in the rural areas) on concessional rates also cost the exchequer billions of rupees at taxpayers' expense.
Arguments that all these subsidies and tax reliefs are meant to benefit landless, poor farmers and keep the agricultural economy afloat have now begun to stink. Our landowners are no paupers. Despite sharing, as they claim, their harvest with farmers, the landowners continue to keep large fancy houses in posh urban and rural areas, maintain lavish lifestyles and fleets of expensive vehicles. But ironically, the tillers of their land remain stuck in abject poverty and deprived of the most basic facilities of life. Even a flying visit to rural Sindh highlights the great divide between the rulers and the ruled there.
The PPP's lawmakers from rural areas are smart at protecting their narrow interests, but remain as callous as they punish the city dwellers, where the party's political stakes have receded due to such anti-urban polices. No wonder that out of the total expected Rs120 billion the provincial government plans to generate on its own in revenues – including the sales and services taxes – 67 percent comes from the urban areas. Even out of the remaining 33 percent, the contribution of the rural areas is not more than 50 percent.
In the current budget, instead of taking corrective measures to remove this lopsidedness in revenue generation and expanding the tax base in an equitable manner, the PPP provincial government focused only on the urban areas to increase revenue.
The property tax in urban areas has been increased to 25 percent (from 20 percent). A 16 percent duty slapped on a wide range of services – from accountants to architects and advertisements and advertising agents to airport ground service providers and aircraft operators. Beauty parlours, cable TV operators, caterers, clubs, marriage halls, courier service providers, health-care centres and gyms, hotels, restaurants and many other services have been brought under this net. The provincial government hopes to raise Rs42 billion under this head alone – all urban-centric.
The rate of cess has also been increased – this again hurts importers operating from Karachi. The Sindh government aims to raise 18.5 billion through the revised cess rates.
While the broadening of the tax base rightly remains the mantra in these difficult economic times, this expansion would have only made sense if the rural rich had also pitched their bit in the national cause. Targeting only the urban areas, which directly and indirectly hurts the lower and middle classes the most, is bound to further widen the rural-urban divide. The people in the cities already give their due share through both federal and provincial taxes and duties as well as share the burden of many of the unjustified subsidies that purely benefit landowners.
The expenditure on development in the provincial budget is again as unbalanced as revenue generation and aims to benefit select rural areas. Urban areas get no more than 25 percent out of the provincial budget. The current arrangement of resource mobilisation and spending by and large reflects the tilt in favour of the big landowners and agriculturists. This remains a recipe for trouble and is the biggest obstacle to rural-urban cohesion and harmony.
Agreed that the PPP's lawmakers mainly come from rural areas, but for a party that, despite being a shadow of its past, still claims to be a federal one, we would expect better judgement from its leadership. President Asif Ali Zardari and many individuals in his close coterie are as much Karachiites as any other city dweller, but it is ironic that they fail to strike a balance, or remain fair, in their party policies or rein in the hawks within its ranks. In the mid to long run, such myopic policies are likely to intensify polarisation in Sindh and give more room to those ethnic and narrow nationalist forces which want to stoke sentiments on issues that could be easily avoided.
The choice for the PPP is whether to continue playing the self-destructive rural card or act as a federal party. Does its leadership of today have the capacity to opt for the correct option?

Kindly Resume Hanging

By Amir Zia
The News
July 8, 2013

The argument that capital punishment remains 'irreversible' and cannot be undone if a person is wrongfully convicted is not very convincing. Flaws in the legal system, investigations, policing and corruption cannot be used as an excuse to abolish the death penalty altogether in developing countries like Pakistan.

Amnesty International has urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government to continue with the moratorium on the death penalty that remained in place all through the PPP's five-year rule during which only one soldier was hanged to death on military court orders. Some of the leading voices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) are also all out on the advocacy campaign to build pressure on the PML-N to stop it from implementing the much-awaited decision of reviving capital punishment.
But should the new rulers take this advice seriously? Are these respected right campaigners taking into account the country's objective conditions while demanding the abolishment of the death penalty? And has this ban helped the country reduce incidences of crime and terrorism or only protected killers, child rapists and terrorists?
The former PPP government – best remembered for its mega corruption, inefficiency and misrule – introduced a distortion in Pakistan's legal and justice system by placing a ban on executions soon after it came to power. The PPP implemented its half-baked idea without consulting various stakeholders and in breach of the constitution of Pakistan.
The former government also did not bother to come up with any alternate plan to fill the vacuum created following the ban on capital punishment in the country, which remains wrecked by lawlessness, soaring crime, extremism and terrorism. It made no attempt to fix the self-created dichotomy in the legal system, which provides the death penalty as punishment on at least 27 counts – from murder to rape and treason and kidnapping to sabotage of the railway system, arms trading, drug smuggling and blasphemy. The PPP's kindness to death row convicts resulted in the increase in their numbers in prisons to hit an all-time high of around 8,000 by early 2013.
This may have pleased the European Union or human rights groups – especially the local ones, but it came at a heavy cost for Pakistan. Many death-row convicts involved in terrorism continued to operate terror cells from prisons. They threatened judges, ordered execution of rivals and planned bomb attacks from the safety of their prison cells. Many managed to escape in various jail breaks to resume their activities of killing soldiers, policemen, and unarmed civilians, including women and children.

In a country where thousands die every year in terrorism and organised political and sectarian violence, it is shocking that the state failed to punish even one person. The number of convictions dropped. According to senior security officials, in a crime-infested city like Karachi, the rate of acquittal of people involved in terrorism and other heinous crimes stands at more than 90 percent.

By showing mercy to mass murderers, killers, rapist and terrorists, the former government and the so-called rights supporters indeed have been brutally unkind to the victims and their families.

This flawed policy of appeasement of western powers and rights groups, coupled with the former government's failure to pursue even those big terrorism cases where there remained hardly any doubt, only emboldened criminals and terrorists. Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by his own security guard, but the former ruling party proved too weak to bring the accused to justice in this open-and-shut case. Unfortunately, Taseer's case is not the only one to meet this fate. There have been countless others in which known terrorists managed to stall justice – and this moratorium on the death penalty played a key role in empowering them.

The Islamic injunctions of Qisas and Diyat are already being misused and exploited by the rich and powerful to escape justice. The moratorium on the death penalty complicated the situation further. Therefore, some of the leading judges of superior courts and lawyers have been demanding that the government should lift the ban on hanging to ensure justice.

The arguments of rights groups in favour of abolishing the death penalty are clichéd, self-defeating and fail to match the Pakistani reality.

To begin with, the movement against the death penalty is a European concept that has its roots in a particular social, political and economic evolution and history. It cannot be 'copy-pasted' to Pakistan or any other Asian and African country that has remained opposed to this concept because they stand at a different level of evolutionary and development cycle.

The 'civilised Europe' of today has had its share of internal bloody conflicts and wars till as recently as the mid and late 20th century. European nations also managed to create a society which by and large ensured a minimum standard of equitable development, living standards and education for its citizens.

Those non-western nations that have abolished the death penalty also managed to match the socio-economic development and political standards of Europe to an extent. None of them face a grave law and order and internal security challenge like Pakistan where bombings, targeted killings, kidnappings for ransom, murders and the general state of lawlessness remain the order of the day. The particular challenges Pakistan faces today call for tougher measures that include bringing perpetrators of heinous crimes to quick justice.

The argument that capital punishment remains 'irreversible' and cannot be undone if a person is wrongfully convicted is not very convincing. Flaws in the legal system, investigations, policing and corruption cannot be used as an excuse to abolish the death penalty altogether in developing countries like Pakistan. Those demanding revival of the capital punishment nowhere say that they want the innocent to be hanged.

The pro-capital punishment voices are not of bloodthirsty lunatics, but of those who stand for rule of law and justice. The government must ensure that the weaknesses and flaws of the legal and investigation system should be removed so that only the guilty get punished and wrong convictions are prevented.
The anti-death penalty campaigners admit that an overwhelming number of Pakistanis want those involved in heinous crimes to be executed as per law and constitution. Their demand is understandable as this majority remains at the mercy of criminals and terrorists, who operate without any fear of the law.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should act fast in consultation with the superior judiciary and the security establishment to ensure the supremacy of the law. And one small step in this direction is to immediately end the moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty which would go a long way to deter crime and terrorism. The government should also ensure that there is no misuse of the blasphemy laws. All the political and religious forces in the country stand on common ground on this issue.

Unfortunately, anti-death penalty activists also ignore the fact that keeping a death row convict in a prison for years and years at a stretch costs much more than his or her execution. This is hardly an option in countries like Pakistan where prisons are over-crowded and are not places from where a person can come out as a reformed and law-abiding individual. The continued ban on the death penalty only breeds crime and stokes passions for private vengeance.
Today's Pakistan desperately needs rule of law. Even a bad law would serve the country better than its current state of lawlessness. The campaign against ending the moratorium on the death sentence is not central to the life and death issues the country faces today. The Sharif government must make the right choice and let the caravan move on.

Misplaced Priorities

By Amir Zia

Monday, July 1, 2013

The News

A Pandora’s box is bound to open if a former army chief is tried for treason. If it is for the good of the country and so vital for its existence – then let it be. If it is to satisfy the ego of some, then we are treading a dangerous course and the new government has opened an unnecessary front that could have been avoided.

For any government or state institution setting the right priorities is the key to success and the basic yardstick of performance. This becomes all the more important if a country is passing through troubled times as today’s Pakistan where the twin challenges of religious extremism and terrorism, coupled with the fast-receding writ of the state and a collapsing economy threaten its very existence. But unfortunately the lords and masters of Pakistan appear to be unable to distinguish the important from the unimportant, the primary from the secondary or the necessary from the unnecessary.

A day after Pakistan hit headlines in the world media for the slaying of 10 foreign climbers by terrorists at their camp in Nanga Parbat, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appeared in the National Assembly to announce plans for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s trial on treason charges.

This is what one calls flogging a dead-horse and ignoring those vital challenges that are draining and sapping the country on a fast-track basis.

Sharif has already had a taste of what Al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban-inspired local terrorists, various sectarian organisations and fringe nationalist groups in Balochistan are capable of doing in less than a month of his rule. There have been more than a dozen major cases of terrorism since Sharif took oath as prime minister on June 5 as lawlessness and ethnic, religious and politically-motivated violence rages from the restive city of Karachi to the lawless mountains of North Waziristan.

Sadly, the new government’s response to all this bloodletting and incidents of terrorism that consumed more than 180 lives and left scores of others wounded, including a senior Sindh High Court Judge Justice Maqbool Baqar in Karachi on June 26, has been nothing more than a whimper. The government seems rudderless and confused in confronting this grave challenge that has pushed the country to the brink of all-out anarchy and collapse.

But the priority for our wise men in Islamabad is to try an individual, who is now an easy punchbag. His trials and tribulations are nothing but a sideshow in the unfurling tragedy of Pakistan. Unfortunately, in our world of mediocrity and intellectual barrenness, it is the sideshow that is grabbing the attention of popular discourse and media hype. Life and death issues remain on the backburner or at best get the usual shallow lip service, which tends to confuse issues rather than help with acknowledging facts and taking difficult decisions.

One example of this is the way we have reduced and linked the issue of terrorism to the US drone attacks, deliberately burying the fact that they are the result of the presence of foreign and local militants on Pakistan’s soil rather than the other way around – the myth of drone attacks triggering terrorism. This state of self-denial is either complete intellectual dishonesty or bankruptcy. In either case, we are hurtling toward our doom as erroneous analysis and self-defeating solutions are being thrust as popular narrative. Our national priorities could not be more misjudged.

And the obsession of some of the high and mighty with Musharraf’s treason case is an example of Pakistani Neros trying to amuse themselves with a farce that long lost its sheen and lustre.

Agreed that the Sharif government has been acting on the insistence of the Supreme Court, which wants the former military ruler tried under Article 6 of the constitution for imposing emergency rule on November 3, 2007, but it is in situations like these where the vision and political acumen of a leadership is judged and tested.

More bizarre is the government’s plan to focus only on an individual in the treason trial rather than taking to task all those who remained part and parcel of the collective decision. One can smell a dead rat just at the start of the opening lines of chorus of the play. The first act has not even started.

Applying only one section of Article 6 is selective justice. Clause 2 of this act clearly says; “Any person aiding or abetting [or collaborating] the acts mentioned in clause (1) shall likewise be guilty of high treason.”

How can other individuals holding top positions in the civilian and military hierarchy at that time be absolved of the November 3 emergency? Is it because many of these individuals – please read abettors – hold important positions even now? They are still in the assemblies; some of them are part of the ruling party, while others still at top positions in the civil and military bureaucracy.

Many opposition stalwarts, from Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Syed Khursheed Shah in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to Shaikh Rasheed Ahmed of his own faction of the pro-Imran Khan League and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, rightly appear concerned at the way the government wants to pursue this case.

If Musharraf’s treason trial is as vital as some want us to believe, the opposition stands justified in questioning why the clock should start from Nov 3, 2007. Why not from October 12, 1999 when the original sin was committed? Why not former military dictators and their cronies of the past? What about General Mohammed Ziaul Haq and his political heirs among whom Sharif’s name once topped the list? Why can’t they be held accountable?

Why is the act of treason punishable on one particular day and why does it remain individual-specific? What about other such days and individuals?

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, whose words and actions now begin to look more and more similar to those of his predecessor Rehman Malik, appears too naïve when he says that the ‘army will not be maligned’ in the Musharraf trial. Either he does not know the way the army operates or is being intellectually dishonest in public statements. It is the institution and the collective leadership that give power to an individual in the army and not the individual who takes all for a ride. The Pakistan Army is too organised and well-knit an institution to fall in the second scenario. 

A Pandora’s box is bound to open if a former army chief is tried for treason. If it is for the good of the country and so vital for its existence – then let it be. If it is to satisfy the ego of some, then we are treading a dangerous course and the new government has opened an unnecessary front that could have been avoided.

The best course for the present rulers would have been to focus on the issues at hand rather than getting themselves engaged in ghosts of the past. Pakistan needs a healing touch rather than new divisions and fresh wounds. 

The whole exercise appears more futile especially when many analysts predict a safe exit in the end for Musharraf, who to-date reportedly remains adamant to face the courts and stay in Pakistan. But the pressure from within and abroad is likely to force him to change his stance – whether he likes it or not. 

Tailpiece: If the government is serious about strengthening democracy and preventing future military adventurers from making unconstitutional moves, the best guarantee would be to provide clean government, which delivers on the key fronts of defeating terrorism, fixing the economy and fighting corruption. Last but not the least, the civilian leadership must help build consensus within institutions rather than taking them on in an attempt to establish control. Who should know this better than Sharif, who suffered the brunt of confrontation during his first two stints in power?