EDITORIALS

River of sorrow
Harness the potential of Himalayan rivers

IT is not for no reason that the Kosi is known as Bihar’s river of sorrow. Every year it inundates vast areas of land in north Bihar when the river is in spate. The river has the dangerous habit of shifting its course every now and then. But what happened this time is unprecedented. Its embankment, a little ahead of the barrage on the Indo-Nepal border, caved in flooding thousands of villages in both India and Nepal. It has displaced lakhs of people who have moved out to safer areas where facilities for living are minimal, if not non-existent. Fear of epidemics breaking out in such areas is too real to be ignored. Though the Prime Minister has called it a “natural calamity”, those in the know of things know that it was more man-made than natural. Under the Indo-Nepal agreement that governs maintenance of the barrage and the embankments, it was India’s responsibility to maintain both.

It is easy to indulge in a blame game involving the governments of India, Nepal and Bihar. What is indisputable is that the authorities concerned had been lax in maintaining the embankment on which the government has been spending large sums of money every year. Had they been monitoring the structure’s condition, they would have known about the disaster waiting to happen. They deserve no leniency. Reports suggest that the condition of the barrage, too, is precarious. While relief and rehabilitation of the displaced should get precedence, there is also need to bring the river back on its regular course, which means strengthening the embankments and the barrage on a war footing.

As veteran journalist B.G. Verghese, who has done pioneering studies on river water issues has argued in Monday’s The Tribune, the disaster can also be seen as an opportunity to have a relook at India’s river water policy. Many of the large Indian rivers like the Kosi and the Gandak have their origin in Nepal. Some others like the Brahmaputra originate in China and Bhutan. The issue is about harnessing their energy for the common good of the people of the region where one-fifth of humanity lives. If properly harnessed, they can also transform the economies of these countries. If the disaster prompts the governments of the region to think on these lines, it would have mitigated the havoc the Kosi has caused.

Conviction, at last!
Law catches up with Nanda

The wheels of justice have begun to move as it appears from Tuesday’s conviction of Sanjeev Nanda for mowing down six persons in the nine-year-old BMW hit-and-run case at Delhi’s Lodhi Road. Sanjeev is the son of Suresh Nanda, an international arms dealer, and grandson of former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral S.M. Nanda. It has taken several years and some vigilance by the media for the conviction. Clearly, despite his powerful connections, Sanjeev Nanda could not escape from the law. Three others have also been convicted for destroying evidence. Though Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar will pronounce the quantum of punishment on September 3, Sanjeev deserves the maximum punishment under the law. Moreover, the court has found him guilty under Section 304-II IPC. This provision is applied in a case where an accused commits an act with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death but without any intention to cause death. It prescribes a maximum sentence of 10 years or fine or both as punishment.

The trial in the case saw many twists and turns. As witnesses turned hostile, the lone survivor of the horrendous incident, Manoj Malik, even claimed in the court that it was not really a car but a truck that had caused the accident! The weaker the case became in the court because of the witnesses’ flip-flop, the more it became a talking point in the country. When Sunil Kulkarni, a key eyewitness, claimed he had not seen the incident, he was condemned as “won-over” and dropped as prosecution witness. When he was again summoned last year as a court witness, he named Sanjeev Nanda as one of the occupants who alighted from the car after the incident but said he was not in the driver’s seat!

The high point during the trial was the sting operation carried out by the NDTV channel and the conviction of senior defence counsel R.K. Anand and public prosecutor I.U. Khan by the Delhi High Court. The High Court took them to task for obstructing the administration of justice and barred them from appearing in the courts for four months. Obviously, the High Court was shocked at the unholy nexus between the prosecution and the defence lawyers. Sanjeev’s conviction is particularly welcome because it will send a strong message to the country against drunken driving and the dire need to check road accidents. It should also wake up the judiciary against attempts to sabotage trials by influential people, hostile witnesses and unscrupulous lawyers - prosecution or defence.

U-turn on PU
Education should get priority in Punjab

The Punjab government’s going back on the issue of Central status for Panjab University because of the fear of criticism is unfortunate. That the Congress has opposed the Central university status for Panjab University is also shocking. A casualty of Akali-Congress electoral polemics, the sufferer will be Panjab University, which would have more money for development. The Akali government need not have succumbed to the pressure. The reasons given by the Congress and some radical outfits for opposing the Central status to PU are unconvincing. The grant of Central status to PU, they say, “will dilute Punjab’s rightful claim over Chandigarh and is full of dangerous political implications”. This is actually not so.

By this logic, Punjab is also going to lose its control over Amritsar and Bathinda, where two Central universities are expected to come up. More money from the Centre for the improvement of PU would have raised its standards. Given the Punjab government’s declining funding, PU, like other state universities, is in dire financial straits. Self-financing professional courses are increasingly getting beyond the reach of even middle-class students, leave aside those from the lower strata of society. The denial of Central status means further cuts in grants for research and benefits to teachers, and higher fees for students. Can the state government meet the bill?

A narrow, parochial approach does not go well with Punjab’s efforts to emerge as an education hub. Only a day before the Chief Minister had laid the foundation stone of an SGPC-run university, which will focus on nanotechnology, biotechnology, IT, management and life sciences. More institutions of higher learning are expected after the Punjab Private Universities Bill 2008 is passed. Given the dismal condition of the treasury, the state is unable to spend enough on education. Government colleges are in bad shape. Have the critics ever given a thought to such issues or asked the government to raise its education budget? The neglect of education is costing the people of Punjab dear.

Thought for the Day

Give me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire,/That’s a’ the learning I desire. — Robert Burns

ARTICLE

Excessive liberalism
Valley cannot be given away
by Amulya Ganguli

As the only open society which has been surrounded for prolonged periods by military juntas, monarchies, communist and feudal regimes, India’s uniqueness was reflected not only by its democracy, but also by its constant engagement with concepts of autonomy to reduce tension in its more restive regions. New Delhi’s negotiations with the Naga rebels, for instance, dealt with the assertion of the Nagas that they represented a separate nation while the ULFA militants continue to emphasise Assam’s “sovereignty”. Not long ago, the question of distinctive emblems for Kashmir, such as a separate flag and a more grandiose designation for the Chief Minister, was considered.

The Indian liberal intelligentsia is used, therefore, to discussing the possibility of separatism for the country’s various parts unlike, say, what their counterparts in Pakistan and China can say - if they dare to air independent views -- on Balochistan or Tibet. The only condition that is usually mentioned in India when such delicate issues are considered is that any conferment of autonomy must be within the parameters of the Constitution. Yet, when this question came up during a discussion on the future of one of India’s most sensitive regions - Kashmir - none other than Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the right-wing BJP said that all matters could be discussed within the parameters of insaniyat (humaneness), underlining a rare breadth of vision.

It wasn’t surprising, therefore, when a small section of liberals spoke of relinquishing India’s hold on Kashmir against the background of the latest disturbances in the valley. Leading the pack was the Booker Prize winner and social activist, Arundhati Roy, who had once declared her own personal secession from India by announcing her status as an “independent, mobile republic”. If she is in a category of her own, this cannot be said of the columnists associated with mainstream newspapers who voiced similar views.

If their suggestions to let Kashmiris decide on their own future seemed hasty and unwarranted, the reason was that a concession to self-determination to the state should have at least been accompanied, if not preceded, by a similar gesture to some in the Northeast - Nagaland and Mizoram, for instance - which have seen insurgencies for a much longer period. The Kashmir crisis, after all, began only in 1989. It might even be logical in this context to have started the process by giving “azadi” to Tamil Nadu, whose leader C.N.Annadurai, the DMK’s founder, told the Rajya Sabha in early 1962: “Dravidians want the right of self-determination … we want a separate country for southern India.”

Later, referring to an observation of S. Radhakrishnan, the DMK leader commented: “You say India is one country because Raman and Krishnan are worshipped from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas. Jesus is worshipped throughout Europe, yet there are many countries in Europe”. The call for Dravida Nadu, which was given up during the Chinese invasion, was followed by an anti-Hindi movement, which reached a climax in 1964 when six young men immolated themselves while three others consumed poison. Three years later, the Congress lost power and has never regained it on its own. It is also worth remembering that the DMK boycotted the return of the IPKF from Sri Lanka because the Indian soldiers fought the Tamil separatists whose aim is to set up a Tamil Eelam stretching across the Palk Straits to Tamil Nadu. Clearly, there is no dearth of independent, mobile republics in India.

It might be asked, however: why did the liberals support Kashmir’s secession seemingly without much forethought ? Would any of them have advanced the same argument in a summary fashion in favour of a Khalistan when militancy was raging in Punjab? If not, is it because the valley is predominantly Muslim while Punjab has mostly Sikhs and Hindus? Is it believed that India can survive the loss of Kashmir, but the loss of Punjab is unthinkable? In any event, as these on-and-off trouble spots show, the country has faced the outbreaks of separatism for many years. If it has still remained in one piece, the reason is its vibrant democracy, which gives every malcontent a chance to blow off steam.

The only occasion when the strains of divisiveness proved uncontrollable was in the pre-independence period when the Muslim League had its way with its secessionist demand. Arguably, the rupture could have been avoided if India was then a free democratic country. But even the 1947 split might not have taken place if the Congress’s and the League’s acceptance of the Cabinet Mission’s plan was total, as it initially was, and not later sought to be modified by conditions, notably by Jawaharlal Nehru, thereby creating mistrust.

However, the outcome of the 1947 Partition holds a lesson for today’s secessionists, for Pakistan did not survive for long as the putative homeland of the subcontinent’s Muslims. Instead, it suffered its own partition a quarter of a century later. Not only that, Pakistan’s degeneration into a virtual failed state, which is now seen as the epicentre of Islamic terrorism, shows that such sudden, artificial creations based on the emotions of the moment can become a burden on the new country itself and on the rest of the world. While India’s multicultural democracy is widely hailed as a success story, made all the more remarkable by its buoyant economy, both Pakistan and Bangladesh have been unable to get their acts together, alternating between democracy and dictatorship to make a sorry spectacle of themselves.

There is little chance of either country becoming a stable entity in the foreseeable future. They will remain textbook examples of what can happen when self-determination is hastily won on insufficient grounds - in this case, the glue of religion which could not withstand the fissiparous tendencies induced by language and ethnicity. Since nationhood comprises many elements, it cannot be conjured out of thin air by highlighting only one factor. Israel also is a similar artificial creation, which is why it has had to convert itself into a garrison state, forever scared of being attacked.

The fate of Pakistan and Afghanistan should warn the separatists of Kashmir and their intellectual supporters in New Delhi as to what might happen if India lets Kashmir go its own way. Even if, for argument’s sake, terrorism was not the most dominant feature of life in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as at present, there still would not have been an independent Kashmir since the Pakistan Army, which is that country’s only durable institution, would not allow it. A “free” Kashmir would soon be a colony of Pakistan with the ISI-backed fundamentalists making the region resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban. Those who believe, therefore, that the departure of “oppressive” India would enable the Kashmiris to at last live their cherished life of freedom are sadly mistaken. No one will be greater losers than the
Kashmiris themselves.

For India, a Talibanised Kashmir would bring the terror camps of the Islamists a step closer. It wouldn’t mean the end of democracy, but only more terrorist strikes and a consequent strengthening of the BJP and the weakening of the secularists. Even for Pakistan, the acquisition of Kashmir will not mean the completion of the unfinished business of Partition. Instead, the coveted prize will make the ISI, a state within a state, even more powerful, thereby posing a threat to the non-military ruling establishment, if there is any, and to the minuscule group of liberals in the country.

MIDDLE

Three women and Lovely MLA
by Shailaja Chandra

Three women, a Chief Minister, a Chief Secretary, the CM’s Secretary and an MLA set out on a foreign tour. On arrival at Paris they awaited departure of their flight to Copenhagen. The Chief Secretary hungry for her daily diet of files looked for something new to challenge her legendary efficiency. She strode up to the Air France first class lounge receptionist and asked her to re-check whether all four pieces of baggage had been loaded on the flight to Copenhagen. “Oui Madame” she confirmed with a click of the computer.

The foursome boarded the flight to Copenhagen and settled down to a hearty Danish breakfast. On arrival India’s Ambassador to Denmark and a retinue of minions met them. The Ambassador surveyed the three women and decided here were charm, competence and courtesy. The Hon. MLA’s name was Mr Lovely Singh.

Just as the Ambassador finished telling a story from his well-rehearsed repertoire, an anxious looking underling walked into the VIP lounge. “Excellency” he said, “there is a problem.” He whispered into the plenipotentiary’s ear looking at each of the three women by turn. The Chief Secretary’s well-organised mind shot back to a story about her predecessor who had accompanied the same Chief Minister the previous year to Chicago. He had hardly set foot at O’Hare airport before he was bundled back because of news of a security scare nearer home.

The news this time was a calamity of a different kind. The female trio’s luggage had been misplaced on the way. Protests had been promptly lodged demanding that the bags be unearthed and responsibility fixed. That done, there was nothing else to do except proceed to the hotel.

An hour later a dispirited Indian Ambassador entered the hotel carrying an airbag on his shoulder. It contained several saris, blouses and petticoats belonging to his wife. Anyone who knows the first thing about wearing saris knows that the finest sari can look like a curtain unless the sari blouse matches and fits. The collection was politely declined and the three women stayed swathed in their travelling saris for the rest of the day. Meanwhile befitting the welcome luncheon and the evening reception the MLA named Lovely Singh changed his safari suits and turbans twice.

The next day the foursome watched giant grinders pulverising mountains of concrete rubble into fine dust. They wondered whether the fact that First World rubble looked so clean had anything to do with the efficiency of the recycling process. Still wearing the same outfits the three women observed how Danish windmills generated Copenhagen’s electricity. Secretly they were grateful that the itinerary did not include a walk around the wind farm in the same clothes. Meanwhile Lovely’s turban harmonised beautifully with the Danish flag.

On the third day of the visit, the good and bad news came. The baggage had indeed been found would reach Coperhagen in reverse order of protocol. The CM’s bags came last of all when it was time to depart.

The three women and the Sardarji returned to India much wiser about reclaiming concrete waste but completely uneducated about reclaiming lost baggage. The most widely read newspaper in India described the visit as a concrete example of Women at Work. It overlooked the fourth member of the delegation Mr Lovely Singh MLA who lost neither his baggage nor his colourful safas.

OPED

Attack on Lebanon
Why let politicians get away with lies?
by Robert Fisk

How on earth do they get away with it? Let’s start with war between Hizbollah and Israel – past and future war, that is. Back in 2006, Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers from their side of the Lebanese frontier and dragged them, mortally wounded, into Lebanon.

The Israelis immediately launched a massive air bombardment against all of Lebanon, publicly declaring Beirut’s democratically-elected and US-backed – but extremely weak – government must be held to account for what Hizbollah does.

Taking the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese, almost all civilians, Israel unleashed its air power against the entire infrastructure of the rebuilt Lebanon, smashing highways, viaducts, electric grids, factories, lighthouses, totally erasing dozens of villages and half-destroying hundreds more before bathing the south of the country in three million cluster bomblets.

After firing thousands of old but nonetheless lethal rockets into Israel – where the total death toll was less than 200, more than half of them soldiers – Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s leader, told a lie: if he had known what Israel would do in revenge for the capture of two soldiers, he announced, he would never have agreed to Hizbollah’s operation.

But now here comes Israel’s environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again.

“During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon’s infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit.”

This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty.

Yet why should they when George Bush and Condoleezza Rice announced that there would be peace between Israelis and Palestinians by the end of 2007 – then rolled back the moment Israel decided it didn’t like the timetable.

Take this week’s charade in Jerusalem. The moment Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni announced that “premature” efforts to bridge gaps in the “peace process” could lead to “clashes” (Palestinians, it should be remembered, die in “clashes”, Israelis are always “murdered”), my friends in Beirut and I – along with a Jewish friend in London – took bets on when Condi would fall into line.

Bingo, this was Her Holiness in Jerusalem last week: “It’s extremely important just to keep making forward progress rather than trying prematurely to come to some set of conclusions.” “Some set”, of course, means “peace”’. Once more, US foreign policy was dictated by Israel. And again, the world remained silent.

So when the world’s press announced that Barack Obama’s new running mate, the silver-haired Joe Biden, was “an expert in foreign policy”, we all waited to be told what this meant.

But all we got was a reminder that he had voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion but thought better about it later and was now against the war. Well, Goddam blow me down, that certainly shows experience.

But “expertise”? No doubt in government he’ll be teemed up with those old pro-Israeli has-beens, Madeleine Albright and Martin Indyk, whose new boss, Obama, virtually elected himself to the Israeli Knesset with his supine performance in Israel during his famous “international” tour.

As one of the Arab world’s most prominent commentators put it to me this week, “Biden’s being set up to protect Israel while Obama looks after the transportation system in Chicago.” It was a cruel remark with just enough bitter reality to make it bite.

Not that we’ll pay attention. And why should we when the Canadian department of national defence – in an effort to staunch the flow of Canadian blood in the sands of Afghanistan (93 servicemen and women “fallen” so far in their hopeless Nato war against the Taliban) – has brought in a Virginia-based US company called the Terrorism Research Centre to help.

According to the DND, these “terrorism experts” are going, among other subjects, to teach Canadian troops “the history of Islam”! And yes, these “anti-terrorism” heroes are also going to lecture the lads on “radical (sic) Islam”, “sensitivities” and “cultural and ideological issues that influence insurgent decision-making”.

It is a mystery to me why the Canadian brass should turn to the US for assistance – at a cost of almost a million dollars, I should add – when America is currently losing two huge wars in the Muslim world.

So Canada’s soldiers are now going to be contaminated by these mercenary killers before they head off to the Muslim world with their unique understanding of “the history of Islam”. How do they get away with it?

By arrangement with The Independent

Leader of an old type
by Harihar Swarup

Time moves fast. There was a time when leaders like Kamlapati Tripathi strode the political scene in Uttar Pradesh like a colossus. The Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi era saw the last of Congress stalwarts, who had participated in the freedom movement and had a deep sense of public service.

Unlike the present-day Congressmen, they kept party interest above self-interest. This breed of Congressmen was almost extinct by the time Sonia Gandhi took over the reign of the party.

Access to leaders like Kamlapatiji was absolutely easy. Every evening he would hold his “darbar” in the front courtyard of his sprawling bungalow at 9 Janpath, opposite to 10, Janpath, where now Sonia Gandhi resides.

Hordes of journalists would visit the “darbar” everyday as a routine . They would touch Kamlapatiji’s feet. He was reverently called “Panditji” or “Babu”. He would put forward both his feet to attract the attention of a visitor until he touched his feet.

A scribe visited Lucknow when Panditji was the Chief Minister to interview him. And the headline of the interview was “Charan chhuo Chief Minister of UP”.

The scribe noticed that everyone who came to meet Panditji would first touch his feet, seek his blessings and then state the purpose of his visit. “Babu” did not like persons who refrained from touching his feet and considered it as disrespect.

This type of impromptu interaction kept old-time leaders abreast of the latest developments. This is because of lack of this type of interaction that the present-day Congressmen are so ill-informed. Kamlapatiji too adhered to this practice.

Babu’s entire life was a story of struggle. He began his political life at the age of 15. He enrolled himself as a volunteer in the non-cooperation movement and was imprisoned.

During the freedom movement, he spent six years in jail. The literary streak in him proliferated at an early age and he penned as many as ten books.

His last book—”Bandi ki Chetna” ( musings of a prisoner), written to his elder son, Lokpati, in the form of letters from his prison cell, makes a moving reading.

The last letter written from the prison cell to Lokpati, whom he called “Lalji”, was moving indeed. He wrote: “ Eight years ago at mid-day, your mother passed away. I cannot, in any circumstance, forget her. Her memory has been a treasure for me”.

During the last years of his life Babu suffered from throat cancer and was advised to go abroad for treatment. But he refrained from undertaking an overseas journey saying that he had taken a vow by Mahatma Gandhi that he would not go abroad and get his treatment in India.

True to his belief, Pandiji was cured of the cancer but had become very weak due to the prolonged treatment. He got a stroke and passed away.

When Indira Gandhi was thrown out of power following the 1977 elections, Kamlapatiji visited her house every morning and carried a flower from his morning “puja” which he presented to her.

He also performed a “ yagna” at his residence, 9 Janpath, to ward off evil spirits. Indiraji sat crossed-legged in front of the yagna and prayed. Panditji stopped the practice to go to her house in the mornings after she came back to power in 1980.

Babu never allowed the main gate of his bungalow locked despite repeated requests by securitymen, who had orders to bolt the door. They locked the gates when Babu retired and opened them before he got up.

It was common knowledge that Panditji did not get on well with Rajiv Gandhi. A noted columnist, the late Behram Contractor, popularly known as Busybee, once wrote a satirical piece on a Kamlapati-Rajiv Gandhi meeting. Panditji went to Rajiv Gandhi’s residence to be sacked by him.

Babu was later quoted as saying: “ I can suffer humiliation but cannot leave the Congress. The Congress is as sacred to me as the Hindu religion. A weak Congress means a weak nation”.

McCain’s surprise choice
Dateline Washington
by Ashish Kumar Sen

The confetti had barely settled on the Democratic National Convention in Denver when Sen. John McCain unveiled what may be the biggest surprise of the 2008 campaign season: his choice of running mate.

McCain, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, on Friday announced that he had picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to join him on the ticket. But the selection of this little-known political neophyte is bound to undercut his main criticism of his Democratic opponent.

For months now the McCain camp has been hammering away at Sen. Barack Obama, painting him as lacking the experience to be president. Palin, 44, who is in her first term as Governor, previously served as the Mayor of Wasilla, a tiny Alaska town.  As Vice President, she would be just a heart beat away from the presidency.

Obama’s campaign spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh promptly pounced on Palin’s skimpy resume. “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” Marsh said.

Palin’s lack of foreign policy credentials is perhaps her biggest weakness, one that Democrats hope to exploit in the sole vice-presidential debate with their candidate: Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. Biden is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has met leaders around the world on his many trips abroad.

McCain introduced Palin at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday afternoon saying she was “exactly who I need. She’s exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of ‘Me first and country second.’” For McCain, who turned 72 on Friday, the choice of a younger woman was an obvious point in his favour.

Palin’s selection is seen by many political pundits as a desperate attempt by McCain to win the support of disgruntled supporters of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost out her party’s nomination to Obama. On Friday the wooing began.

Palin, a conservative who opposes abortion, paid tribute to Clinton’s recent presidential campaign and noted: “Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”

But her selection and what some describe as the thinly veiled motive behind it could backfire on McCain. Analysts say the liberal female bloc that McCain is trying desperately to woo may be put off by Palin’s anti-abortion credentials. Palin is also an avid hunter and a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association.

However, Palin won support from a predictable source: President George W. Bush. “Governor Palin is a proven reformer who is a wise steward of taxpayer dollars and champion for accountability in government,” a presidential statement said. “By selecting a working mother with a track record of getting things done, Senator McCain has once again demonstrated his commitment to reforming Washington.”

Inside Pakistan
by Syed Nooruzzaman

Waiting for new President

By the end of the week Pakistan will have got its new President. Going by the party position, the result of the September 6 presidential election is a foregone conclusion. Mr Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP is only waiting to be sworn in. But will the new head of state help ensure stability in Pakistan?

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is reported to have said that Pakistan will have a stable government with both the President and the Prime Minister belonging to the same party. However, few will agree with him in view of what has been happening in the past.

As Dawn says, “Unfortunately, Pakistan has a long tradition of the President/Governor- General playing an assertive role in politics — the examples of Ghulam Mohammad, Iskander Mirza, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and (Farooq) Leghari immediately come to mind.

“The man to be elected President later this week has an excellent chance to make a break with the past.” He should ensure that “58-2(b) and other articles which have altered the constitution’s parliamentary character must be done away with so that the President truly becomes a titular head of state.”

People are raising many questions. According to The News, “Does he (Mr Zardari) possess the qualities that would mark him out as different to the dictator who preceded him — who never stood before parliament, who favoured his own party above all others…? Will he reach out across the political divide that cleaves the country from Karachi to Khunjerab? Is he a man beyond reproach, who has a background that has prepared him for statesmanship — for the presidency is a job for statesmen…?”

Sectarian clashes

While the ruling coalition constituents have been busy strengthening their individual position after the February elections in Pakistan, the situation in the tribal areas has been getting worse day by day. The total lack of focus on governance provided an ideal opportunity to the Shia and Sunni tribes in the Kurram Agency to settle their old scores without fear. On Sunday alone 95 people lost their lives in sectarian violence.

 Taliban activists have playing a major role in the sporadic fight among the Turi (Shia) and Bangash (Sunni) tribals continuing for over three weeks. The Taliban reportedly prevailed upon the Bangash youngsters to ignore the unilateral Ramzan truce and launch surprise attacks against the Turis, leading to large-scale bloodbath. The situation is refusing to come under control also because tribal elders are not as effective as they used to be in the past.  

According to The News, the “Kurram Agency, the only one among the tribal agencies to have a significant Shia population, has seen sporadic sectarian clashes over the decades. There have also been bombings at mosques and other places. But never before has the orgy of violence continued quite so long or assumed such terrifying proportions…There is now far too much hatred and distrust in the air.”

 As The Nation pointed out, “A major cause for concern for the local residents is the shortage of food and medicines caused by the closure of the central highway leading to the area.” Reports say the trouble can lead to starvation deaths if the government is unable to play its role effectively.

Price rise in Ramazan

The devout and businessmen wait for the Islamic month of fasting (Ramazan) for different reasons. People are prepared to spend more in this month because they prefer to enjoy all kinds of dishes after breaking the day’s fast. Their enthusiasm is, however, dampened when they notice an abnormal increase in the prices of items of daily use.

 According to Dawn, “Prices of food items have increased by 15 to 20 per cent despite the government’s claims of ensuring price stability. Much to the public’s dismay, hoarding and profiteering have become synonymous with the month of Ramazan. The exploitation of consumers is widespread.”

The unending scarcity of atta is more worrying. At certain places people have to stand in long queues for buying this essential commodity.

The Nation says, “The price of a 20-kg bag (of atta) fixed by the government at Rs 300 for the month of Ramazan, as announced by the District Coordination Officer, is welcome. But making that possible would surely be a big challenge for the government as the millers have registered their protest at the new formula.”

The millers are also upset because the Punjab government has taken over the control of over 400 private mills with a view to improving the supply of atta.