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Exercise good sense King unwanted Intel outside |
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Left on the wrong
side
Homeward-bound
A nation still at
crossroads Swiss party gets
tough against immigrants Inside
Pakistan
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King unwanted ANY vestigial hope about the survival of constitutional monarchy, which Nepal’s King Gyanendra and the royalists may have entertained, has been dashed to the ground. The grand old party of the Himalayan country — the Nepali Congress (NC) — has fallen in step with the popular mood by ending its support for the monarchy and calling for a federal democratic republic. Historically the NC has favoured a constitutional monarchy, although it has never compromised in striving to establish multiparty democracy. The fact that successive monarchs suppressed the NC-led movements for democracy did not deter it from its avowed adherence to the twin pillars of constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy. Given this background, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala taking the plunge to formally cast his party’s lot with a republic is a historic break with its 60-year policy. The NC has been divided on the issue with a vocal section of dissidents insisting that the Maoists should not be allowed to run away with the republican agenda. Pitted against this faction was a larger section that wanted to retain a king at least as a figurehead. In the event, Mr Koirala, who has ably steered the eight-party coalition which includes the Maoists, has enhanced the leverage of the NC as Nepal prepares for the November 22 general election. The Maoists can no longer make a grievance of the NC’s position on constitutional monarchy as a stumbling block to their participation in the November election. In fact, the Maoist rebels who have in the past collaborated covertly with the monarchy, appear to be apprehensive about facing the election. Their threat to quit the coalition if Nepal is not declared a republic by September 18 is of a piece with their characteristic distrust of democratic elections. While the NC and other parties, which are no less committed to a republic, want the new parliament to make this declaration, the Maoists insist that this should be done before the elections. It remains to be seen how this obstructive ploy unravels in the weeks preceding the election. |
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Intel outside MOST computers worldwide have the “Intel inside” tag on them. Intel’s plan to set up a chip manufacturing plant in India was widely known. Now, it has dropped the plan to invest in India. Why? It was not the lack of infrastructure, power, workforce or any such consideration that forced the company to take this decision. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett did not hedge when he said the company took the decision because India had been tardy in introducing an investment policy on semiconductors. It is not that the government did not have enough time or warning. Intel had announced in November that it was waiting for the introduction of the semiconductor policy but its wait has been in vain. The winners are China and Vietnam by as much as and $2.5 billion $1 billion respectively. Since Intel has the largest non-manufacturing base in India, Barrett was diplomatic in stating that India would be considered as a manufacturing destination in future, provided the company required additional capacity. A billion-dollar investment from one of the most honoured marques in IT was stalled because of lack of clear policy. What could be a more telling comment on the state of affairs in India than this particular situation? Instead of setting standards that would be the envy of the world, the bureaucrats and the politicians seem to excel in holding up projects, often leading to suspicions that they do so in search of favours and kickbacks. There is a need for a clear, well-articulated policy and its prompt implementation. Corruption, inefficiency and procrastination in decision-making have managed to eclipse the nation’s place in the sun. Progress and development depend on the transparency of the decision-making process and promptness in delivering the promised results. International investors always seek the best place to do business. It is in India’s interest to make itself such a destination. |
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A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
— Walter Winchell |
Left on the wrong side The
Left’s opposition to the nuclear deal may prove to be a bigger mistake than its earlier tactical blunders. The most serious of the previous missteps were in 1942, 1948-49 and 1962. On all these occasions, the undivided communist party not only demonstrated a strange insensitiveness to the national mood, but in two of the three cases, its doctrinaire approach was so rigid that it was even criticised by its foreign mentors in Moscow. This time, too, the comrades are seemingly guided more by inflexible dogmatic considerations than by an appreciation of the changed national and international scene in the post-cold war period. To understand the Left’s present flawed stance, it may be necessary to look at its earlier mistakes to understand the closed world in which the comrades operate. For instance, in 1942, the commissars opposed the Quit India Movement because their categorisation of World War II as an “anti-imperialist” conflict had been rejected by the Communist International in favour of the new label of “people’s war” when the Soviet Union joined Britain and America to fight Nazi Germany. As is obvious, the Indian communists were being guided solely by the words and deeds of their socialist patron with little reference to local conditions, where Britain was still the No.1 enemy. Yet, their servility earned little appreciation in Moscow as the following passage from Mohit Sen’s autobiography, A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist makes clear. “As for the Soviet Union needing the CPI’s support”, wrote Sen, “Stalin is reported to have told a CPI delegation in 1950 that his country could have done without it and the CPI should have looked after itself. There is no doubt, however, that the CPI did what it did because of its belief that priority had to be given to support to the Soviet Union for the sake of communism and Indian freedom (from bourgeois rule) even if it meant swimming against the national current. This instinctive loyalty, first to the class and only then to the nation, the CPI shared with most other communist parties, except the Chinese and the Yugoslavs”. Only six years later, the communists were again swimming against the national current when they rejected India’s independence with the declaration “yeh azadi jhooti hai” and launched a people’s war of their own in Telengana. It was again Stalin who punctured this balloon when he ordered a CPI delegation comprising Ajoy Ghosh, S.A.Dange, Rajeshwara Rao and M.Basavapunnaiah to call off their adventurism and contest elections instead. The four stalwarts had gone to Moscow from Calcutta disguised as manual workers in a Soviet ship. The third blunder of the communists was their ambiguous stand during the Chinese invasion, which led to a split in their party when the extremist section walked out to form the CPM. According to Sen, many in the CPM “believed that the Chinese communists had done nothing wrong in attacking India. They thought that this was not an attack but a defensive action and that in the not so long run, the Chinese action would help the advance of the revolution by weakening the power of the ruling alliance, especially by pulling down the prestige of the Congress and its leader Pandit Nehru”. Arguably, since none of these actions in 1942, 1948-49 and 1962 seriously undermined communist influence (although the Left parties couldn’t expand beyond West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala), the comrades probably believe that their present stance against American “imperialism” will not hurt them either. However, there is a vital difference between the earlier occasions and the present one. In 1942, the communists were so weak that their collaboration with the British might have perturbed intellectuals, but not the common people, who were mostly unaware of the Left’s somersaults. Similarly, the armed struggle in the late forties evoked little interest outside Telengana. No one believed, perhaps not even the communists themselves, that their exertions marked the beginning of a revolution. In 1962, too, the Left was still too weak for its ideological exercises to make an impact outside political circles. Besides, the communists became even weaker with their division, first, into the CPI and the CPM and, then, when the CPM split with the departure of the Naxalites. What is more, India’s main concern then was the lack of development rather than the antics of a weak Left. Today, it is different. From a Third World power feeling its way uncertainly in a world which was largely indifferent towards it, India is now emerging as a major economic power which is admired by the international community for its successful democracy and multicultural society. On the earlier occasions, the Left could only harm itself with its revolutionary frolics. But if it succeeds in derailing the N-deal because of its “instinctive loyalty, first to the class and only then to the nation”, the damage to India’s reputation will be enormous. It will not be possible in that eventuality to gloss over the unpatriotic tag, which the commissars have worn as their badge of dishonour since 1942, because the setback suffered by India will be incalculable. The loss will be nearly irretrievable because opportunities like the present one come rarely. India is unlikely to be given another chance to break out of the sanctions regime which has been in force since the first nuclear blast of 1974. But the Left will also deliver a fatal blow to itself. If its earlier adventures of befriending the British and the Chinese had a touch of infantile foolishness about them and could be ignored because it didn’t matter much any way, such an indulgent explanation will not be applicable to the present scene because the stakes involved are much higher. Apart from pulling India down to the level of Cuba or Venezuela - the two favourites of the commissars - the Left will be seen to have strengthened the hands of India’s two inveterate adversaries - China and Pakistan. Both will be delighted if India is hobbled by its cynical and unscrupulous internal politicking. Before
L.K. Advani rewrote the BJP’s stance on the N-deal in order to placate the middle class which, it felt, would go over to the Congress if the deal was clinched, its protestations were evidently the petty-minded action of a typical Indian opposition party which opposes what it would have implemented if it had been in power. The Left’s efforts to scuttle the deal, however, are nothing but an obdurate dogmatic response which regards, as in 1948-49 and 1962, the “bourgeois-landlord” Indian ruling class as an adversary, which is hand-in-glove with the “neo-colonialists”. The Left’s attitude, therefore, is more than political. It is an ideological posture which, whether by design or accident, provides solace to the country’s external enemies. Little wonder that People’s Daily of Beijing has said that since the US is helping another country with nuclear technology, “other nuclear suppliers also have their own partners of interest as well as good reasons to copy what the US does”. There have already been reports about Pakistan and its all-weather partner of interest planning to counter the N-deal with a “copy” of what India and America are doing. The impact on the Left’s electoral fortunes of the favourable reactions in Beijing and Islamabad to its stonewalling in Delhi cannot be
helpful.
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Homeward-bound I am out of India to the US on a nine-week sojourn. The seventh week itch has just begun and I have started thinking of home. When my plane lands in Delhi, I will enter into an India that has the first ever Lady President and there would be a different personality crowning the chair of the Vice-President. The ring tones of the Bala-Bali episode will be heard and Vijay Singh Mankotia’s honeymooning with the BSP be felt in my home state. I am told that the monkey who used to jump on the roof of my house from the tall Deodar tree is in the net of the sterilisation unit of the Forest Department and I may have to stop thinking about all the hippety-hop-hop he used to do. When I told this to my democrat American neighbour, he suggested to me to wait till elections of the President here when I could take their present President to India because then he would have no more of jumping to do here. These Americans and their sense of humour! I was in Niagara Falls past weekend. There is a boat “Maid of the Mist” that takes you close to the Horseshoe Fall that throws six million cubic meter of water every minute. When I was almost on the foot of the Fall, I yelled at the guide, “What is the height of the Fall?” Amidst thunder, rumble, uproar, splash and splatter, he shouted, “It is 53 metres, Sir.” I said I am not much impressed. Our Chadwick falls from 67 metres. What I said was audible to me only but that reflected the pride that I had in that drip-drop, called Chadwick Falls, of my hometown. The Niagara Falls City is dotted with Indian and Punjabi dhabas and one of these had a tricolour fluttering. I liked it and had the dinner of chhole-roti and dal-bhat there not worth the dime that I spent. How homelike! I am told that the aqua-milk that I used to buy from a villager in Shimla had revised the ratio of aqua and milk from 25:75 to 30:70 and had also increased the price by Re 1 per litre. I am told that the housemaid who used to provide little domestic help and more interesting accounts of what our neighbours did, how they lived and what was their private life and other spicy affairs of theirs had taken up a job as aanganwadi worker in the public sector. I know that I will have to do a Herculean task of searching a new one with the same “properties” after reaching home so that our key-hole peep into the neighbours continues. I am also told that the rains this year were heavy and the water had seeped into the walls of my kitchen and the walls not only looked like but also threw the same odour that their counterparts in the bathrooms did. Still, I have enthusiastically started packing my luggage,
homeward-bound. |
A nation still at
crossroads GIVE me a new cliché to describe the situation in Pakistan. The old one that “the country is at the crossroads” has worn out. But strange as it may sound, this phrase is the closest to the reality. Pakistan can return to democracy; it can go fundamentalist or it can be pure military’s rule all over again. A few days ago when I was at Lahore, I saw all the three possibilities and people discussed them endlessly. It is understandable why Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of the largest organization, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has repeatedly warned that Pakistan can go to religious parties if democracy is not revived without further loss of time. The bomb blasts – the recent ones at Rawalpindi are by the jehadis – indicates that religious terrorists are more determined and more committed than Islamabad imagined them to be. When the Taliban and the Al-Qaida forces are strong enough to “rule” over Waziristan in the NWFP and kidnap the Pakistani soldiers at will, the situation should evoke serious concern. This may well be the reason why the deal between President General Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to facilitate her return is “80 per cent through.” She may have agreed to Musharraf’s continuance because of terrorism. The hitch, as I found at Lahore, was the opposition of Musharraf’s supporters, the Muslim League (Qaide-e-Azam) headed by Choudhry Shujjat Hussain. He wanted Musharraf’s re-election as President straightaway by the existing National Assembly and the state assemblies which constitute the presidential electoral collage. Shujjat did not want Musharraf to shed the uniform before his re-election and was not keen on getting Benazir back. However, Musharraf’s understanding to Benazir is said to be that he would give up the uniform if re-elected. I think Shujjat’s real fear is the judiciary’s verdict on Musharraf’s re-election. The President cannot wear a uniform under the constitution, although Musharraf has overcome this limitation by an amendment. Shujjat has, therefore, asked Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury to “behave like a judge,” a veiled warning. [Musharraf’s lawyer told the Supreme Court on Friday that he would be President till November 15 and will remain Army Chief till a new one is appointed - Ed.] Since the Supreme Court has come to acquire so much respect after the successful agitation of lawyers, its verdict cannot be flouted without imposing martial law in the country. This can have its own repercussions. And is it possible for Musharraf to impose martial law at this late hour? It is said the real ruler in Pakistan is not Musharraf but the judiciary. At one time Musharraf had agreed to make necessary changes in the constitution to enable Benazir to become the Prime Minister for the third time. So far, the constitutional amendment pegs the tenure at a maximum of two terms. Benazir, in turn, is said to have agreed that Musharraf could retain his uniform till the end of the year as the amended constitution allowed him. She has been even willing to ensure his re-election provided he sticks to the promise to give up the uniform by the end of the year. This has upset some radical members in the PPP. They want the military out of Pakistan’s politics completely. Here they are on the side of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a contender for power. He says categorically that the military has no place in the constitution and that it must get to the same practice as prevails in India. The PPP radicals feel at home with Nawaz Sharif on this point but their regret is that he would make a joint front with religious elements at the time of elections. Benazir’s liberalism continues to be her best asset. Against this background, the return of both the leaders is awaited anxiously in Pakistan. Benazir has fixed no date while Nawaz Sharif says he will arrive in Islamabad on September 12. My hunch is that Musharraf would send him back to Saudi Arabia if and when he lands. According to official sources in Pakistan, the Saudis have assured Musharraf that they will force the Sharifs to complete the 10-year-exile term, an undertaking he had given for release from prison. King Abdullah has reportedly told Islamabad that if Sharifs are sent to Jeddah, they will enter a “different Saudi Arabia.” On the other hand, Benazir does not feel handicapped by any restrictions on her return, deal or no deal. Musharraf is keeping his cards close to the chest. He knows that his options to impose the emergency or the martial law are exhausted. People may come on to the streets. America which is within the nudging distance of
Musharraf and Benazir would never allow that eventuality to take place. Therefore, Musharraf has no option other than making up with Benazir who does not rule out a role for the military in the affairs of Pakistan. Musharraf has sent feelers to Nawaz Sharif but was rebuffed. That Benazir is coming through a deal has added to the stature of Nawaz Sharif. His entry is through the court. Despite this, he may be surprised that his support has not grown much. His drawback is his alliance with religious elements which the common man does not fancy. But then Nawaz Sharif is not alone in the market to hawk for the support of fundamentalists. Sujjat Hussain, once his ally in the original Muslim League, is in the midst of talks with the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal), the combination of six religious parties. They are also looking towards Musharraf, whatever their rhetoric, for importance. The military got them a substantial number of seats in the last election. They were able to form the governments in the NWFP and Baluchistan as well. Will Musharraf, if and when his deal with Benazir does not come through, join hands with them? His predicament is that in the present situation, how does he pacify fundamentalists on the one hand and assure the Americans on the other that he is fighting against them? He has managed this in the past but cannot do so now because many in Pakistan and Washington have seen through him. This scenario aggravates the problems of Pakistan. What road the country should take to overcome them is its concern. In a way, Pakistan still remains at the crossroads.
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Swiss party gets tough against immigrants AT first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children’s cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking its black fellow off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs. The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world’s oldest independent democracies. In the benign country which the rest of the world associates with cuckoo clocks, chocolate and safe banking, a worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster which bears the slogan “For More Security” is not the work of a minority fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot by the Swiss People’s Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country’s coalition government. Ahead of a general election next month it has launched a two-fold campaign which has caused the UN’s special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence. But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentenced. It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of “Sippenhaft” or kin liability whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally. The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included. Swiss trains being the acme of punctuality, the appointment was very precise. I was to meet Dr Ulrich Schlüer one of the men behind the draconian proposal in the restaurant at the main railway station in Zürich at 7.10pm. A quarter of Switzerland’s workers one in four, like the black sheep in the poster are now foreign immigrants to this peaceful, prosperous and stable modern market economy with low unemployment and a per capita GDP larger than that of other Western economies. Zürich has, for the past two years, been named as the city with the best quality of life in the world. Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The official statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. “In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between the ages of 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl,” he said. “It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: ‘That’s not acceptable. It’s your job to control them and if you can’t do that you’ll have to leave’. It’s a punishment everyone understands.” It is far from the party’s only controversial idea. Dr Schlüer has launched a campaign for a referendum to ban the building of Muslim minarets. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tighter immigration laws using the image of black hands reaching into a pot filled with Swiss passports. And its leading figure, the Justice Minister, Christoph Blocher, has said he wants to soften anti-racism laws because they prevent freedom of speech. Political opponents say it is all posturing ahead of next month’s general election. Though deportation has been dropped from the penal code, it is still in force in administrative law, says Daniel Jositsch, professor of penal law at Zurich University. “At the end of the day, nothing has changed, the criminal is still at the airport and on the plane.” With astute tactics, the SVP referendum restricts itself to symbolic restitution. Its plan to deport entire families has been put forward in parliament where it has little chance of being passed. Still the publicity dividend is the same. And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene earlier this year warned that a “racist and xenophobic dynamic” which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland. What is at stake here in Switzerland is not merely a dislike of foreigners or a distrust of Islam but something far more fundamental. It is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis which is there throughout Europe and the US. By arrangement with The Independent |
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Inside Pakistan With
self-exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother ex-Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif remaining determined to return to Pakistan on September 10 (coming Monday), one can notice an unusual political activity in Islamabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi and other cities and towns where their party, the PML (N), has its base. PML (N) activists are working overtime to give their leader a hero’s welcome. The Pakistan Muslims Students Federation affiliated to the PML (N) seems to be in the forefront of the party’s efforts to organise a massive show of support for Nawaz Sharif. Student-activists of the party appear to be overenthusiastic and ready for a confrontation with the government if it creates roadblocks in their way. According to media reports, Nawaz Sharif is not bothered about the government’s move to put him and his brother behind bars. The PML (N) leader is also not attaching any importance to the report that the Saudi mediators are against his plan for going back home at this stage. As quoted by The News (September 6), he told Geo TV from London: “On September 10, God willing, I will land at Islamabad Airport. The soil of my country is calling me, and my countrymen are calling me. The conditions in my country are calling me…. No dictator can now stop our way. Now no one will make a joke of the court’s decision.” “There is no authenticity in the statement of an unnamed spokesman of Saudi rulers (opposing their homecoming); it is a part of the government’s campaign to create hurdles in the return of the PML(N) Quaid,” party chairman Raja Zafarul Haq asserts. Even otherwise, as Dawn of September 6 said in an editorial, “…any agreement he made with the Saudi government or General Musharraf can at best be described as a gentleman’s agreement; so it has no legal ramifications.” “Mr Sharif is aware of the surge in his popularity and how he is being seen, perhaps for the first time, as the only leader standing up to a military dictator…. The government has clearly exhausted all options of trying to keep Mr Sharif out”, Dawn added. Musharraf’s options Though General Pervez Musharraf has been forced by the Pakistan Supreme Court to declare that he will relinquish the office of President on November 15, no one is certain what course he will adopt to remain in power. He does not seem to be as perturbed as he ought to have been because he will continue to be the army chief “till a successor is found”. In the view of Business Recorder, “…the option to seek re-election from the next parliament would come to the fore if the parleys with Benazir Bhutto fail to produce concrete results. The game plan was to remove ambiguity about Musharraf’s electoral eligibility, likely to be contested in the Supreme Court, by amending the Constitution. Since the government does not have the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment for removing this ambiguity, the PPP votes would help, and that’s all. “Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s recent remark that the government finds itself confronted by the apex court everywhere stems from the same fear of the eligibility question going to the court. The decision of the lawyers National Actions Committee to launch a country-wide agitation against the President’s re-election bid further accentuates the primacy of the option of dissolving the National Assembly. At present the President is left with only two options: to go ahead and present himself for election by the existing electoral college, or seek dissolution of the Assembly.” Whatever the options, the General may surprise everybody and take an unexpected course. “The government is considering holding presidential elections between September 15 and October 15 while the political scenario will be clear within the next four months”, The Nation said, quoting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Frontier drama A Wana-datelined report in The Pakistan Times of Friday says that “after negotiations with a jirga, local Taliban handed over six security officials to the jirga members.” These security personnel were kidnapped from various areas of South Waziristan eight days ago. This is the latest proof of the Taliban still being active in the tribal areas of Pakistan. But what is surprising is that the Taliban and jirga members had “dinner and enjoyed jokes, sitting side by side”, according to a write-up by Wali Khan Mandokhel carried in The Frontier Post on Friday. Perhaps, the same drama will be enacted to get freed another group of 270 Pakistani soldiers abducted by the Taliban. “It seems like we are watching on YouTube the shooting of a Pakistani film…. Pakistan is playing the same drama and same shooting scene in the tribal belt”, Mandokhel says in a telling commentary.
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