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Monday,
October 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Prime Minister to get full powers, assures Musharraf
Re-entry: C’wealth’s warning to Pakistan Women warned against voting in tribal Pak Only miracle can defeat Musharraf’s design Laden is alive, says spy phone satellite FBI shadowing Muslims |
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Apartheid-hit Indians return USA reiterates support for Kashmir poll
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Prime Minister to get full powers, assures Musharraf Islamabad, October 6 “After the elections, the Prime Minister will be the full in charge and will be empowered to govern the country,’’ said President Musharraf, who was addressing the Federal Cabinet. “I am confident that as a result of the forthcoming elections, a new political culture of tolerance, accommodation and responsibility will emerge, replacing the culture of complete political polarisation and conflict, as witnessed in the past decade,’’ The News quoted him as saying. Talking about the media’s role as monitor and guide to society, the President said the freedom given to the Press during the last three years would also help ensure that no misgovernance took place. President Musharraf also convened a meeting of Corps Commanders tomorrow to discuss the pre-poll and post-poll scenario as well as the security situation along the border with India. General Musharraf would address the Corps Commanders meeting ahead of the general elections, after which the military regime was to hand over power to an elected administration, as per the directive of the Supreme Court, media reports said. Meanwhile, former Premier Benazir Bhutto accused the Musharraf regime of assigning the ISI the task of engineering a hung Parliament and said her party would align with deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to form a government if the two managed to win substantial seats in Parliament. Observing that the October 10 general elections had become “controversial and farcical” as the military regime had tasked the ISI to work to bring in a hung Parliament with the government-backed “King’s Party” playing a leading role, she alleged that the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam) was the creation of the ISI. Asked if the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians would form a coalition government with the PML (N), burying their past differences, Ms Bhutto said, “Yes, if the two parties together get a majority in the 342-member National Assembly.” Asked about her plans to return to Pakistan, Ms Bhutto said if the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy managed to get sufficient seats, “doors would open for her as well as Mr Sharif to return.”
UNI, PTI |
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Re-entry: C’wealth’s warning to Pakistan Islamabad, October 6 The election process is not limited to the polling day alone but would also include campaigning and the electioneering process, the head of the Commonwealth Observers Group Tan Sri Dato Musa bin Hitam said. He, however, declined to comment on the poll process so far. Saying that the “credibility of election” would be compared to the standards set by the Commonwealth’s Harare Declaration of 1991 and the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme on the Harare Declaration, 1995, he said the declaration pledged to work for the protection and promotion of democracy, democratic processes and institutions. States that violate the declaration would be excluded from participating at Commonwealth ministerial-level meetings, suspended from other Commonwealth meetings and deprived of technical support from all Commonwealth states, the former Malaysian Deputy Premier was quoted as saying by Daily Times.
PTI |
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Women warned against voting in tribal Pak Peshawar, October 6 Elders in the tribal region of Khyber Agency, near the border city of Peshawar, said it was un-Islamic and against their traditions for women to vote. They said families that disobeyed the order would be fined about $ 16,650 and have their homes destroyed, and warned candidates that if they attempted to court women voters they would be fined double the amount. A Pashtun tribal elder warned that armed volunteers would be at polling stations in the district for Thursday’s election to make sure women don’t vote. He said just 2 per cent of the women in the area have registered anyway. A local government official said the elders’ ruling had no legal merit, and that the government would take action against anyone trying to tamper with a free vote.
AP |
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Only miracle can defeat Musharraf’s design TEAMS from the European Union and the Commonwealth are in Pakistan to observe an electoral process the results of which were pre-fixed as far back as October, 1999. Remember military coup leader Gen Pervez Musharraf’s very first address to the nation wherein he made it clear that he would not have a Parliament that disapproved of his reforms. He has since worked on a scheme to produce a debilitated Parliament which should be subservient to the wishes of the Pakistani establishment. The draconian powers he gave to the National Bureau of Accountability, his assumption of presidency by means of a controversial referendum and his constitutional changes and election laws which he designed to keep his effective opponents like former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif out of the elections were all aimed at achieving that goal. It would, therefore, appear that only a miracle can defeat Gen Musharraf’s design. The pre-rigging is complete and the Army would have no qualms about cooperating with election observers on the election day on October 10. There are widespread speculation in Pakistan that if Gen Musharraf fears that the miracle is happening, he will cancel the elections on one pretext or the other. Observers say he will not risk having a Parliament that is not subservient. But that miracle may not happen. First of all he has ensured that no heavyweight politician is allowed to take part in the polls. Heavyweight politicians who did not face charges of corruption stood disqualified because they were not graduates. These politicians have fielded their graduate sons or sons-in-law who are totally blank in politics and who have no idea about the problems of the people. Hence that is one reason why there is no popular enthusiasm about the elections. Secondly the low turnout will help-lightweight politicians who enjoy the Army’s and the ISI’s support. There are reports that intelligence agencies and other government departments are giving full support to the Quaid-i-Azam Muslim League which stands by the Army. Many politicians believing this party would form the government are rushing to join it. But the most important reason why this miracle will not happen is that the USA still needs Gen Musharraf in its fight against global terrorism. Democracy in Pakistan has very low priority for Washington when it comes to its global interests. See what Ayub, Zia-ul-Haq and now Musharraf have done to democracy in the country under the patronage of the USA. The military makes no bones about its intentions to use the coming elections to reinforce the institutionalisation of its supremacy over all other institutions in the country by taking full advantage of the American patronage in the wake of the war against terrorism. The Army has always used American global concerns to de-democratise Pakistan, establish dictatorship and deny the people their right of self governance. Ayub Khan denied universal franchise to the people; Yahya Khan allowed it but refused to accept the results of the 1970 elections even if it meant the breakup of the country; Zia-ul-Haq held elections only once (in 1985) and that too on non-party basis and Musharraf is holding elections on party basis but on selective basis. In other words, all these Generals have used different weapons for the same purpose— for cutting at the root of democracy. If the people’s declining interest in elections since 1990, when Pakistan had its first elections on the basis of adult franchise, is any indication the military has achieved considerable success. In dampening people’s interest in democracy. In the 1970 elections the voter turn out was 58 per cent which came down to 20 to 25 per cent in 1997. A Jamaat-i-Islami newspaper, Jasarat, fears it may further drop to 10 per cent. Such predictions are being made although the voting age has been reduced from 21 years to 18 years adding more than five lakh new voters. Visiting Pakistan to observe elections is a highly hypocritical gesture knowing very well what ails democracy in this country and who all are responsible for it. |
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Laden is alive, says spy phone satellite London, October 6 In the conversation, recorded less than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile Thuraya satellite phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed, The Observer weekly reported from Jalalabad. After exchanging a few words, Omar said that ‘the sheikh sends his salaams (greetings)’. Senior Taliban figures usually refer to Bin Laden as ‘the sheikh’. The revelation comes amid growing speculation that Bin Laden is dead. He has looked gaunt and unwell in videos released by Al-Qaida, and appeared unable to use his left arm. There has been no public statement from Bin Laden since early this year. Bin Laden’s current whereabouts are not known, but it is thought he is moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan via the remote border between the Afghan province of Paktia and the Pakistani tribal agencies of Waziristan. Some analysts say this lack of communication indicates that he might be dead, but others say he is biding his time. “He does not want to be rushed into saying something reactive. He wants to make statements on his own terms,” said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds newspaper in London. Other analysts pointed out that Mullah Omar could have been bluffing in the knowledge that he was being tapped by Americans. Three months ago a senior Al-Qaida operative, apparently inadvertently, referred to Bin Laden in the past tense in an interview with an Arab journalist in Karachi.
PTI |
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FBI shadowing Muslims New York, October 6 The surveillance campaign is being carried out by every major FBI office in the country and involves 24-hour monitoring of the suspects’ telephone calls, e-mail messages and internet use, as well as scrutiny of their credit-card charges, travel and visits to neighbourhood gathering places, including mosques. The monitoring campaign, which also involved attempts at recruitment of the suspects’ friends and family members as government informants, has raised the alarm from civil liberties groups and some Arab-American and Muslim leaders. The men are suspected of ties to Al-Qaida or other groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. Law enforcement officials were quoted as saying by the New York Times that the surveillance programme has provided vital evidence to support a string of arrests and indictments around the country since late summer — in west New York, in Detroit, in Seattle and, on Friday, in Portland in Oregon state — of American citizens and others accused of conspiring in terrorist cells to assist Al-Qaida. Still, the paper says, the FBI has acknowledged that it has no evidence of any imminent terrorist threat posed by the socalled sleeper cells connected to Al-Qaida. Federal law enforcement officials said there was no sign of a terrorist cell operating on American soil that, in its level of commitment and training, resembles anything like the team of suicide hijackers who were trained in the USA for several months before carrying out the September 11 attacks. Still, law enforcement officials say they are convinced that at least several dozen people now under FBI surveillance in the USA — with different degrees of terrorist training and with varying degrees of loyalty to Al-Qaida — would take part in a terrorist attack if ordered and that they represent a clear threat.
PTI |
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Apartheid-hit Indians return Durban, October 6 While a group of 29 workers left Johannesburg International Airport today to their homes in North India, another group of 25 will be leaving on Tuesday. According to the workers interviewed by the ‘Mail’ and ‘Guardian’ newspapers in Johannesburg, they were part of an original group of 110 Indians who were recruited more than a year ago to work in a gold jewellery manufacturing plant in the town of Virginia, about 200 km from Johannesburg. The project was part of a move to create jobs by processing gold locally. They were brought to the country between October and February, 2001, by G5 International, a gold retail company based in London. The company had a 51 per cent stake in the Oro-Maska company which owned the plant at Virginia. The other half was held by South African entities, Harmony Gold, the Industrial Development Corporation and the Free State Corporation. In India, the partners were described as Bhagwanji Brothers. The Indian contract workers had been promised salaries of R 5,000 (Rs 20,000) a month, but earned not more than R 650 (Rs 2,600) between October and February. And when the factory became operational in February they were paid R 1,000 (Rs 4,000) a month for May. But in May, all payments were stopped after the factory’s operations came to a halt. The workers were provided with only food. Even this facility was taken away and they had to survive on the foreign exchange they had brought to the country. In August, 2001, 34 workers, fed up with the abuses hurled at them, decided to leave. A group of eight were deported after found having invalid documents.
PTI |
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USA reiterates support for Kashmir poll Washington, October 6 “We condemn very much extremist attempts to disrupt the elections in Kashmir. Therefore, violence is absolutely unacceptable,” US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said. “We are opposed to violence in Kashmir and we reiterate our support for free and fair elections in Kashmir held without outside interference and violence,” he said.
PTI |
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