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Chautala hits a wall
Pakistan in turmoil |
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Revealing victim’s name
Uncertain Afghan scenario
Cops, crooks and netas
The real challenge in pakistan
The women from Kohistan
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Chautala hits a wall
INLD chief and Leader of the Opposition in Haryana Om Prakash Chautala and 54 others — including his son and MLA Ajay Chautala — have been convicted in the teacher recruitment scam of 1999-2000. There are bound to be accusations of political victimisation from those hit by the Delhi CBI court ruling, and righteous proclamations of being ‘holier than thou’ from their rivals. But the fact is that this is a victory for the justice delivery system. Besides the large number of witnesses and accused examined in the case, there was the additional burden of the prime accused being known for nursing grudges for long. Credit must go to certain witnesses whose brave depositions led to the convictions, unlike other high-profile cases against former chief ministers where all witnesses turned hostile. In the public domain, the foremost interest in the case is going to be for the political implications of the judgment. The INLD, of which Chautala is president and Ajay secretary general, has obviously suffered a major blow just as all parties in Haryana were preparing for the Assembly elections next year. Unless the conviction is stayed on appeal in a higher court — which may be difficult, given the fact that the trial has been based on evidence on record and testimonies of senior officials — they would not be able to contest the elections. Chautala may well go to the polls through people nominated by him, but it will be hard for the INLD to project a credible chief-ministerial candidate. The importance of the ruling, however, lies more in the effect it will have on the political leadership and the bureaucracy at large. It may be the Chautalas that have been convicted, but the system of recruitments and awarding of government contracts has all along been suspect and continues to be. This case will send out a strong message. Even under political pressure, any official would think twice before risking his career. There have been officials in Haryana earlier too who have said no to being party to any wrong, but they were in minority and hounded. The ruling should give them hope.
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Pakistan in turmoil AT a time when the PPP-led Pakistan government was already feeling uneasy after Maulana Tahirul Qadiri’s protest march for dissolving the National Assembly and holding elections in time, it suffered a major setback following the Supreme Court verdict on Tuesday for the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on corruption charges. He was found to have been involved in a graft case relating to Rental Power Projects. Now, it seems, the PPP leadership will have to look for someone else to function as Prime Minister till the elections are held, most probably in May. Though legal experts have expressed the view that Raja Ashraf can continue to discharge his responsibilities as Prime Minister till he is convicted, this course of action may harm the electoral prospects of the PPP. A verdict by the Supreme Court, with Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry as the Chief Justice, earlier had led to Raja Ashraf’s predecessor, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, resigning as Prime Minister. Mr Gilani had been found guilty of not obeying the apex court’s order to reopen graft cases against President Asif Zardari relating to his Swiss bank accounts. Now the situation is more damaging for the government as the Prime Minister has been convicted in a major corruption case. Raja Ashraf has been known for his shady past. President Zardari preferred him to be elevated as the head of government, perhaps, because no better leader was available for the job. The court verdict against Raja Ashraf is being described by the ruling PPP and some other parties as part of a move to derail democracy. It is believed the highest court of Pakistan was giving one shock after another to the government at the behest of the most powerful institution, the army. This may be quite true as the army does not want to allow any kind of advantage to the PPP. However, the army may not venture to take over the civilian administration at this stage because of its poor image among the masses. But it may do all it can to see that the PPP does not come back to power because of Mr Zardari being in the bad books of the army chief, Gen Ashfaq
Kayani.
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Revealing victim’s name
FIRST it was the Noida police, and now the Punjab police that does the act. The way our system works, even the best of the laws can be rendered toothless due to the callousness of those who are to implement the law. When it comes to gender-specific laws, one more dimension is added to the weakening of their implementation — absence of gender sensitisation. Lack of sensitivity for a victimised woman who comes from almost the same social background which throws up the police personnel is a bizarre phenomenon. The very police personnel who would fiercely guard the honour and dignity of their own kith and kin, show complete lack of empathy not only for rape victims but also for her family members. Everyone who comes from the patriarchal social set-up knows the stigma attached to a rape victim and should naturally try to protect the victim. This makes one wonder if the allegations made by the denizens of Faridkot are true. They alleged that the local police was hand in glove with the accused when they had released pictures of the minor girl abducted from her home. In the light of the recent alleged gang rape of a 29-year-old woman, the police went a step further — it gave the name of the victim in the Press note. This is in complete violation of Section 228-A of the IPC that prevents the investigating authorities from naming the victim. Since police personnel themselves continue to violate the gender-related laws, how are the citizens of this country supposed to keep faith in their ability to punish the violators of the law? Unfortunately, the police is not the only culprit when it comes to transgressing gender-sensitive issues. Senior politicians blurt out the names of rape victims in their zeal to run down the ruling party administration on TV channels. An MP from Chhattisgarh is accused of doing the same, and so did an MP from the opposition party of Punjab — he kept on repeating on a TV channel the name of the rape victim from Patiala who had committed suicide.
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Not only strike while the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking. — Oliver Cromwell
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Uncertain Afghan scenario IN a welter uncertainties emerging from the talks in Washington between President Barack Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, there is one clear certainty: The United States will pack up and leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 to bring to a “responsible end” its longest war. The process of reducing the combat role of the American and other NATO troops, and thus accelerating their draw-down is also being speeded up. As Mr Obama said at the joint Press conference, by the spring of this year, which means only a couple of months hence, 90 per cent of the Afghans would live in areas where the Afghan security forces would have the “lead role for security” while the NATO troops would confine themselves to “training”, “assisting” and “advising” the Afghan National Army and police. By the end of this year the Afghan army’s “lead role” would be extended to the entire country, and by the end of next year it would be all over. Of course, the US does not want to cut and run from the war-ravaged Hindu Kush country if that means leaving behind chaos, instability and civil war. Consequently, it would retain enough American troops, bolstered perhaps by some more from other NATO countries, for twin-purposes: to train and advise the Afghan security forces, and to provide them with “essential capabilities that the Afghans still lack”. The Afghan army has practically no air transport for logistics, intelligence and close air support to ground forces. Nor have the Americans ever given them the artillery and other sophisticated weaponry and equipment they badly need. Whether these will be given in future is a moot question. The US troops and special forces themselves would be fully equipped with formidable air power to take care of terrorists, and armed drones to prevent Al-Qaeda leadership from regrouping in Pakistan’s tribal areas or returning to its old hideouts within Afghanistan. Under these circumstances Mr Karzai and his government, to say nothing about other Afghans, know that they have to continue the Afghan-US Strategic Partnership well after December next year. They are also aware that they cannot have the “enduring presence” of American troops without an agreement on the status of forces that gives them immunity from the jurisdiction of any but American courts. Given the delicacy of this issue, Mr Karzai has decided to leave to the Loya Jirga of the elders to settle it. The trouble, however, is that there is absolutely no understanding yet on the number of American troops and special forces personnel to be stationed in the post-2014 Afghanistan. Mr Karzai has been so shrill in his criticism of America’s conduct of the Afghan war that he has strengthened those elements in the Obama administration that argue that Afghanistan is no longer worth spending blood and treasure on. In fact, during the first three months of 2012 that I spent in Washington a startling number of American analysts and commentators told me that the Afghan War was already lost for all practical purposes. At the joint Press conference Mr Karzai stated that the number of residual troops retained in Afghanistan did not matter. What mattered was the nature of the broader relationship. Mr Obama stated that he had asked the commander of the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, and other advisers in the Pentagon for “recommendations” and would make a decision after he had received these. Official positions announced for the record are vastly different from the ground realities. As late as on January 8 — three days before the Obama-Karzai meeting — Ben Rodes, a deputy national security adviser, in reply to a question, confirmed that leaving “no troops behind after 2014 was one of the options under active consideration”. The importance of what he said becomes evident if we recall what Vice-President Joe Biden told an audience during the presidential election about withdrawal from Afghanistan. “We are leaving”, he said, “we are leaving in 2014. Period”. It is in this context that the number of troops to be retained in post-2014 Afghanistan under discussion has dwindled from 20,000 to a mere 3,000. The consensus within America seems to be developing on 6,000. The Americans can surely manage with this number. But the key question is whether the US would transfer the huge capabilities and equipment at their disposal to their Afghan allies at some stage. The prickly nature of this relationship was obvious even in the midst of all the courtesies, smiles and bonhomie during the talks between the two delegations over several days. The Afghan side made no bones about its displeasure with America’s “constant attacks” on Afghanistan’s “sovereignty”. At the joint Press conference, Mr Karzai expressed satisfaction that the US had eventually agreed to transfer to the government in Kabul the control of prisons and prisoners in the villages of the areas where the Taliban are strong. This tug-of-war coexists, interestingly, with the triangular negotiations that are taking place between the Americans, the Afghan government and the Taliban in Qatar, Germany and France to work out an arrangement under which the Taliban rebels of today can be a part of tomorrow’s government in Afghanistan. Despite Mr Obama’s assurance that the Taliban would have to give up violence and start respecting the Afghan constitution that gives women equal rights, imponderables over this issue of “reconciliation” are immense. And this brings me to unquestionably the most difficult nettle that has yet to be grasped: Pakistan’s role in bringing peace, stability and freedom from foreign interference to Afghanistan. The Afghans have never made a secret of their conviction that Pakistan is the root of the problem. It gives sanctuaries to Afghanistan’s enemies, including terrorists like the Haqqani network and Quetta Shura. Moreover, Islamabad has always looked upon Afghanistan as its backyard and “strategic depth”, and is currently eyeing the fresh opportunities the US exit offers. Never before have US-Pakistan relations sunk so low as now, even though America is being very generous with its largesse. How Washington can bring Islamabad-Rawalpindi on board for a viable Afghan settlement remains to be seen. For India the acute problem is to safeguard, as best it can, its vital stakes in the friendly land of
Afghans.
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Cops, crooks and netas
A
cop on the beat is the most visible symbol of the governmental authority. His presence signifies orderliness and control. Gradually, the authority of the cop has got diluted. Recent two incidents of a cop being shot trying to protect the honour of his daughter and the bashing up of a senior police officer by people, "connected" with netas have sent shock waves across civil society. During the British days such incidents would have resulted in the burning of the whole village. Governance have slid into a coma. Events have outstripped the ability of the government to handle them or even learn from them. They are too busy coping with what is urgent to think about what is important. Non-elective power in a democracy lies in influencing the elected machine. The elected machine is lubricated by muscle and money power. Crooks and criminals have become an integral part of the power structure. It is a coalition of the willing wicked who operate on both sides of the law. Money and power are the cementing glue. Truth is economised, convenience replaces conviction and people abandon protests for profit. Changez Khan said long time back, "Everybody is amenable to profit, and before the belly even gods go down. Netas are ruling the roost. Jay Leno, the talk show host, said "I looked the word politics in the dictionary. It is actually a combination of two words, 'poli' which means money, and 'tics', which means blood sucker". It sums up the modern polity. The netas have a love-hate relationship with the police. They like to cultivate a cop and yet try to undermine his authority. Once a minister asked me to put a sub-inspector as in charge of a thana. I told him that he was a dacoit in uniform and I wanted to sack him. He replied, "Maine us se pooja path to karwane nahi" (I don't want him for pooja or path). The police leadership is extremely weak. The force does not trust its leaders and considers them as unreliable. While training Delhi Police personnel for the Commonwealth Games, I talked about leadership in the police. Most of them had nothing but contempt for their bosses. The politicians use, misuse and abuse the police. The policeman gets no protection. The authority of the "thana" has been eroded. Low-level politics and caste considerations matter in thana postings. It has led to a functioning anarchy in the police. The local MLA and his goons like to have their own cronies in the thana, and police stations are being used as their personal fiefdoms. A cop is designed to restrict his behaviour to the known patterns of fight or flight. The relationship of a cop with society is rooted in resentment. A cop dulls his way through life. In his psyche there is moisture of anguish, and the flame of anger. It affects his professional work. His response to a situation is verbal abuse and truncheons. I have seen that there are three characterstics of a politician. When he speaks he lies, when he makes a promise he acts treacherous, when he is trusted he betrays. Now there is rising public disgust and anger against the system. Public anger is like a powder keg ready to explode. Ironically, injustice incites greatest human creativity. The more unjust a situation, the greater the anger. The greater the anger, the greater the passion. The greater the passion, the greater the determination. The time for change has
come.
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The real challenge in pakistan
THE most critical challenge Pakistan faces in 2013 is the test of the 65-year-old Pakistani nation's capacity to ensure a credible general election and a normal transfer of authority to the parties/coalitions commanding majorities in the national and provincial legislatures. That a transfer of power should take place this year is not in doubt; what needs to be guaranteed is that authority will be passed on to those who win the polls. This because two possible developments that could thwart or disrupt the electoral process are being openly discussed among political observers and commentators. The first scenario runs like this: the law and order situation continues to worsen and the people become more restless because of electricity/gas/water shortages and other economic difficulties and the caretaker prime minister petitions the Supreme Court to order the postponement of elections and sanction the creation of a Bangladeshi-type interim regime, and the court obliges him. Result: no election in 2013. This theory has no legs to stand on. It is not impossible that the caretaker prime minister may come under pressure from powerful, anti-democratic forces, whose advice in favour of deferment of elections may not be based on a fair assessment of the situation on the ground. In fact, they may not bother the interim head of government. There are quite a few glorified touts that have made public interest litigation a farce. One of them or any citizen could be persuaded to seek the judiciary's intervention. But the plot runs aground there. Regardless of what the critics of the direction judicial activism has taken may say, the judiciary is unlikely to fall into the anti-democratic forces' trap. The superior courts may have now and then transcended their jurisdiction to take the institutions of state to task but they cannot deprive the people of their most fundamental right to choose their rulers. Whether they choose good rulers or bad ones is nobody's business so long as elections are held in accordance with the law. It is wrong to seek the judiciary's intervention in a political matter that patently lies outside its jurisdiction. Besides, no court will be able in the foreseeable future to renege on the judiciary's commitment to resist any extra-democratic dispensation, be it a military rule of Pakistani brand or the Bangladeshi model, both total failures. The other scenario is that the militant organisations that have finally proclaimed their resolve to destroy Pakistan's democratic experiment, and decimate all political elements committed to its continuance, will create a law and order crisis of so great a magnitude that elections will not be possible at all. This threat cannot be taken lightly. An increase in violent attacks on state institutions, security personnel and individuals suspected of adherence to democracy, from the assassination of Bashir Bilour to the execution of 21 Levies near Peshawar, has already been recorded. Such incidents are likely to increase until election day and may continue even afterwards. No effort to go ahead with the democratic agenda in these circumstances will bear fruit without a broad consensus on the need to hold elections this year. These elections are necessary to complete the task of realising Pakistan's destiny as a modern democratic state. Each time this process has been disrupted the state and the people both have suffered grievous harm. Now Pakistan is much too weak to afford a relapse into authoritarianism. A departure from the democratic system at the present moment in time will be a much bigger disaster than was the case earlier on because today a more conscious citizenry, a largely free media and an assertive judiciary promise democratic governance a much better environment for its sustenance and defence than it ever had. Today it is possible to say that whichever party/coalition comes on top after the polls, it will not be able to do what it may like however corrupt it may be. If the system is undermined at this stage the state will be thrown back many decades and the process of democratisation will have to be started from scratch. The weaknesses of democracy are known, not only in Pakistan or South Asia and the Muslim world, but also in countries where this system has taken root. But the alternative to even an imperfect democracy will be worse because neither military despotism nor a theocracy can meet the demands of the multi-national federation that Pakistan is and it can only survive as such. This formulation must be endorsed by all the parties that are planning to take part in the coming elections. Any party that does not subscribe to democratic ideals has no moral right to demand seats in legislatures. A natural corollary is that the political parties excluded from the hit list announced by the militants should have the decency to declare their faith in democracy. If they remain silent over the killing of leaders and workers of parties targeted by militants or do no more than offer fateha for the deceased, they will invite indictment for hypocrisy. The militants' threat can be met if it is realised that while the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is formally responsible for holding free and fair elections, this task is also the responsibility of political parties and the people at large. Massive public participation in polling alone can deter the extremists from carrying out their nefarious designs. The ECP also will do well to repose more trust in the people than in any state institution. One was not surprised by the army chief's assurance of help in the election process; what did surprise many was the request the Chief Election Commissioner made to him. The army, like any other state institution, is not required to guarantee fair elections; it is only expected to avoid interfering in the electoral process. The army's help can be sought for maintaining order, and that too from a distance. The presence of any troops/Rangers inside polling stations cannot be permitted as it will vitiate freedom of voting. As for security needs, the armed forces are always available to the civil authorities, including the ECP. It is also necessary perhaps to moderate official and public expectations from the coming elections. The objective of a fair poll should be pursued with realistic assumptions. The days of an ideal election are still far away and one should aim no higher than a reasonably fair electoral contest because it is not possible to guarantee a level playing ground to candidates with modest resources. Likewise, those elected this time again are unlikely to match public expectations of competence and integrity, because the condition for that, namely a social revolution, is yet to be met. By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad
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The women from Kohistan FOUR women clapping and two men dancing appeared in a grainy cellphone video from a remote village said to be in Kohistan. The ill-fated gathering was said to have occurred somewhere at the end of May 2012. A few days later, a television channel reported that all four women had been killed, having been sentenced by a jirga for the crime of dancing, clapping and mixing with men of another tribe. No one knows if the incident in the video actually took place. No one knows if the four women in the muted wedding finery of a village celebration were even present in the same room as the men. No one knows if they are alive now. The two men in the video, Bin Yasir and Gul Nazar, who had also been sentenced to death by the jirga, were nominated in a police report for the crime of filming women in a conservative region. They fled from the village but were eventually apprehended and put in prison. In the days immediately after, the video and its sordid aftermath were splashed across television screens all over Pakistan, the women and their naïve claps all underscoring the tragedy that every viewer knew was about to befall. There were many stories about each step of the incident. The men and women in the video belonged to different tribes, the Azadkhel and the Salekhel. It was the Azadkhel tribe, to which the women belonged, that condemned all six to death. Mohammad Afzal, whose younger brothers had appeared in and been accused of having taken the video, alleged that the four women had been killed in May last year according to the writ of the tribal jirga and that he had himself seen their fresh graves in the forest.In June, a commission sent to the village on the orders of the Supreme Court, which took suo motu notice of the issue, found otherwise. Farzana Bari, who headed the fact-finding inquiry team, confirmed that the four women were alive. However, she also said that she had met only two of them and that it was not possible for any of them to be produced in court. Mohammad Afzal continued to insist that the women were in fact dead. The court believed the fact-finding commission and the case of the girls from Kohistan was closed. Rumours of the women being alive or dead were not the only confusion on the issue; reports have also accumulated that assert that the video was fake, with the boys having edited it together as an ill-thought prank. Regardless of the truth of that matter, the video was not done with taking the lives of Kohistani villagers. Just a few days ago, three brothers of the men in the video were also killed and several women of the tribe injured when men seeking to avenge the dishonour of their women being videotaped surrounded the house of the accused men and opened fire. According to one of the survivors, the men who came to kill said that they would not rest until the entire family was eliminated. The day after, the Supreme Court issued a statement saying that it was considering reopening the case of the women from Kohistan. In a country where the murders of prime ministers and presidents go unsolved for decades, it is uncertain whether the truth about the girls from Kohistan will ever be known. To hope for DNA analysis of the buried bodies or any sort of examination of the video itself to see if it is authentic seems, within the given context, a fantastic scheme. It is, however, important to look at the case of the girls from Kohistan as an expression of just how modern technology collides with tribal mores in an explosive and deadly mix. The secret video camera, with its sinister ability to capture unwitting and perhaps unwilling subjects in acts of spying, represents a new tool for moral policing that far outdoes the human eye in surveillance. The case of the women from Kohistan is hardly the first expression of this collision of the never-seen with the always-present. A year before the Kohistan case, a man of the Madakhel tribe in a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was killed allegedly for having a picture of a girl on his cellphone. Mohammad Yasin had fled to Karachi but was apprehended by men of the tribe who killed him. Unsurprisingly, no one knows what happened to the girl but a jirga met a few weeks after his death to ban cellular phones with cameras within their region. In other cases in the past year, blasphemy charges have also been levelled using cellphone text messages as a basis for accusations. The point underscored by all of these cases is the same: in a country where public shame remains the backbone of morality and what is visible is the basis of sin and accusation, the arrival of the cellphone camera poses a big threat. As can be seen in the case of the Kohistan women, the very existence of the video indicts before a trial, shames before analysis and convicts without further evidence. What it represents, however, is the constriction of private space even further and an extension of moral policing into realms that were never before visible and experiments (such as the piecing together of this image with that) suddenly possible. In the coming days, the court might take the case up again. But the real question, likely to go unanswered in the morass of legalities, is the issue of privacy for the woman or the citizen or the wedding guest whose simple, helpless presence can be transformed, taped and broadcast with the cheap, sly surveillance of a
camera on a phone. By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad
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