ON THE VERGE OF A NEW YEAR

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/12/29/on-the-verge-of-a-new-year/

According to research in the USA, the political system– as in democracy– has failed in that country. Results show that the preferences of the average citizen have a ‘near zero’, statistically non-significant impact on public policy. Jennifer Lawrence in her talk says that once they are in office politicians spend 70 per cent of their time raising funds to ensure that they get back into that office.

As 2019 draws to a close and we stand on the verge of a new year, the situation appears to be much the same in Pakistan where the average citizen is nowhere taken into consideration.

Karachi, the capital of Sindh is still the commercial hub of the country with the most industries. It is responsible for a sizeable chunk of the country’s tax collection, over a third of the total. Almost all of Pakistan’s international trade takes off from Karachi’s ports, and most foreign companies are stationed in that city. With its ethnically diverse population Karachi is endlessly vibrant, one of the world’s fastest growing cities. Yet sadly, it is also one of the filthiest cities in the world and ranks high on the crime scale, although that has come down from the highest in the world since the Rangers were brought in a few years ago. It is very obvious that the city of Karachi and the province of Sindh lack governance, much less effective governance.

The governing party of the province, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is holding a rally in Rawalpindi today on the anniversary of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Coinciding with this event is a heightened criticism of the Benazir Income Support Programme. The BISP was set up as a support fund in 2008 for the very poor, women in particular. It has come under fire over the years for various reasons, for instance because of its name since the funds are not taken from Benazir’s personal money. And now the programme has been accused of using the pay-outs as a means of rewarding support for the political party. More than 800,000 beneficiaries have been removed from its list because they were not among the very poor for whom the fund was originally intended.

Politicians have never been honest fighters in the ring, shamelessly using slogans, ideologies and whatever they can lay their hands on to gain support. To its credit the PPP has not hidden behind the religious card like most of the other players and has been a largely secular party. In the past many years, this has been its only plus point.

What started out as a lion has been reduced to a something like a rat with the passing of time and its original leadership. The PPP, once a nationwide movement has completely lost support in the Punjab where it was once powerful. It is now holed up in Sindh at the helm of the most incompetent government that province has ever seen. And yet it finds itself justified in criticising governance in the rest of the country.

If the federal government’s assessment is correct and the Benazir Income Support Programme is being used as it says, then Jennifer Lawrence’s observation regarding politicians in office spending most of their time ensuring that they get back into that office is as valid here. There is also the fact that the PPP leadership has used the Bhutto name in a way that is nothing if not nauseating.

As for Lahore, the capital of Punjab and the country’s second largest city, it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. The atmosphere in this city that all citizens breathe ranks every day at hazardous, yet nothing, but nothing, is being done to stem the pollution at its source. Factories continue to spew out noxious fumes and pour polluting chemicals into the waterways. The PML-N and PTI governments, much as they aim to stem the flow of PPP criticism, have achieved nothing in their turns. And all of them together are unjustified in criticising the Indian government for its new and discriminatory citizenship laws, when nothing is being done to change the condition of minorities in this country, where the blasphemy law remains in effect and Junaid Hafeez remains imprisoned because of it.

At the end of the day, the people of this country are as tired of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s immature rants, the current Prime Minister’s U-turns and fiery bouncers, and the PML-N’s angry retorts. It is a depressing note on which to end the year, and one can only pray for some improvement in 2020. What little one could hope for though appears to have been ground into the earth by the last few lines of Justice Seth’s verdict regarding General Musharraf.

What hope is there for a country where a high court judge can pen such sentiments?

WAS THAT A JUDGE SPEAKING?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/12/21/was-that-a-judge-speaking/

• Genneral Musharraf was guilty of taking over, but dragging his corpse to a public spot was going too far

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on the 11th of August 1947 and said: “…Remember that you are now a sovereign legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the gravest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order… …therefore make sure that the corpses of all convicted person, if found dead are dragged to a public spot in our capital city and hanged there for three days.”

With due apologies to the Quaid. Of course he never ended his speech that way. He had no such monstrous inclinations, he was an intelligent man and a dignified one to boot, so one can respect him and his opinions. Which is more than one can say about whoever added those lines in a grisly injunction at the end of the official verdict against General Musharraf, a verdict which is otherwise fairly good and should not come as a surprise. The idea of pretending Jinnah said that was to make the reader start in surprise since we all knew he was too principled a man to indulge in any such ideas, and also to show up the reality on the ground today.
The other persons who imposed martial law on this hapless country are beyond punishment, but Gen Musharraf is not, so he should suffer the consequences of his actions. The Quaid said it best in the same speech above: “We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.”

Which means that all citizens of the state– even if they breathe the rarified air of the armed forces– are equally answerable for their actions.

When in 1999 an elected government was sent packing the Army took over– as it has done several times in this supposedly democratic country. General Pervez Musharraf then became the Chief Executive, and when the then President of Pakistan left office wheb his tenure expired, he took over as President. Elections were held in 2002 and Pakistan got another Prime Minister, but there was a tacit understanding that decisions would be made by General sahib.

Five years later, General Musharraf declared a state of emergency, which is in effect a martial law. The constitution of Pakistan was suspended as a result of his actions, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the country was fired.

Whoever does such a thing is undermining the country and therefore committing treason, and he or she should then face the consequences. Quite contrary to what Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor says, the judgement contains nothing objectionable, other than the grisly rider. Nor is it, as the inimitable Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, suggests some kind of a sinister conspiracy by “anti-state elements” either internal or external, it is not a conspiracy that must be foiled.

The only thing that must be foiled is whatever it is that produces such a mindset, which allows such sentiments to take root in this country.

What is there about the legal system and education in Pakistan that allows such sentiments to arise among the legal fraternity in particular, sentiments that lead for example to lawyers marching on a hospital treating patients with heart disease, causing the death of three of those patients? Our lawyers and judges appear to be confusing justice with revenge of the most sordid kind. Also, instead of being taught that justice must be blind and dispassionate, our legal fraternity appears to imagine to the contrary. Is hanging the body of a convicted person for three days in a public spot dispassionate? Does it gel with anything we stand for as a country, as Muslims (seeing that this is supposed to be an Islamic Republic), or as human beings? Where in medieval times does the honorable judge imagine us to be?

Politics is rife with instances of diversions and convenient footholds. You cannot help wondering if these bloodthirsty lines were deliberately planted, inserted on purpose to give a handle to those who would like to condemn and overturn the entire judgement. It does not appear to be a commonly possessed skill to separate different aspects from the whole. In this case justice is in danger of being subverted by those who like to set certain segments of the country above the law, those who view this judgement as a dangerous precedent.

A NEW LOW - EVEN FOR THE PBC

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/12/14/a-new-low-even-for-the-pbc/

• The PIC attack was indefensible

Lawyers in Lahore have gone on yet another rampage on 11 November. As a result of the inevitable outcry on the media, their spokesperson has protested that this latest rampage was revenge for an earlier attack by doctors on some lawyers at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology when the lawyers went there with a colleague who was under treatment at the Institute. A video of the doctors making fun of those lawyers is apparently in circulation and that is what apparently provoked this latest event.

This may well be true but there is no doubt that over the years lawyers in Pakistan have been increasingly violent. They have thrashed journalists, attacked the Supreme Court, locked judges out of courtrooms, and physically and verbally attacked them. They have beaten up litigants and the police and attacked government servants on the premises of places they were vandalising. Such incidents occurred all over the country, but they appear to be much more common among the legal fraternity in Punjab and to involve members of the Punjab Bar Council. The reason needs to be investigated.

The situation has now unquestionably gone out of hand. On 11 November, lawyers– persons who are supposed to know and respect the law– broke it with a vengeance when more than 200 of them marched onto Lahore’s Punjab Institute of Cardiology. Many of them were armed and they attacked the hospital and even its patients. According to the news they broke the hospital gate, attacked the guards and members of staff, including a female nurse whose shirt was torn and her locket snatched from around her neck, a case of outright theft. The lawyers forced their way into various sections of the hospital including Radiology, the Operation Theatres, and even the Intensive Care Unit. Here they beat up doctors and other staff and pulled the plug on a patient receiving oxygen. The patient subsequently died, as did two others. None of these three people who died were involved in the incident as a result of which this attack on the PIC took place, so even that frail excuse is not present in their case. This was a despicable event, a new low even for lawyers affiliated with the Punjab Bar Council.

FIRs have been registered against the rampaging hooligans under several sections of the law, including assault – which with the death of the patients becomes outright murder. Particularly named are the General Secretary and Vice President of the Lahore Bar Association, and the person hoping to stand for President of the LBA. These persons are said to have been among those who attacked the PIC. One of them made a statement on a lawyers’ forum regarding the patients who died, saying after all other groups of professionals also protest. Why does no one condemn them too?

Not only the law enforcement agencies, but social media and in this case the Punjab Bar Council also need to take action. It must shame on its platform those who are so far enjoying the contemptible fame their videos have conferred upon them, videos that show them egging on their compatriots to destroy, kill and take revenge. These lawyers and their families need to feel shame at these actions and not elation. These people are not celebrities. They are thugs and murderers

She is wrong, and for a professional whose job it is to argue a case, pathetically lacking in that skill. All decent people condemn such incidents wherever they occur, but there can be no doubt about it, lawyers have committed violence much too often, and the Punjab Bar Council in particular has hit a new low. The depths to which it has now fallen shows its members worthy of nothing but disdain. No professional expertise can be expected of a group that takes the law into its hands and hurts, tortures and kills members of the public in the process.

All persons involved in vandalism, destruction of peace and property and murder should be punished, lawyers, doctors, politicians, anyone, whoever they are. If they are not, if nothing is done about this and other incidents and these louts are not shown exactly where they get off the government will have failed to do its job, yet again. Yet of the more than 200 that marched on the PIC on 11 November, only about 34 or so have been arrested. There is also the usual attempt at politicising the incident, with accusations being made against this party or that as being the instigator or organiser, only because someone spotted a person belonging to that party in the group of vandals. Well, the PM’s nephew was also one of the rampaging lawyers. One doesn’t know what party he belongs to, but does that matter? Should we say the PTI organised it? How about dealing with this as a failure to act as law-abiding persons, and above all a failure to act as decent humans, and putting party politics on the backburner? For a change?

There is clearly a problem with the way student unions, doctor’s and bar associations and other such associations are organised in this country, because they appear to resort to violence too often, and they get away with it. Yet it is important for such organisations to exist, because they represent the professionals who are part of it, like parliaments represent– or are supposed to represent– the citizens of a country. But like parliaments there must be controls in place to prevent these other groups from running amok. If these controls fail, it is up to the law enforcement wings of government to punish the offenders.

Not only the law enforcement agencies, but social media and in this case the Punjab Bar Council also need to take action. It must shame on its platform those who are so far enjoying the contemptible fame their videos have conferred upon them, videos that show them egging on their compatriots to destroy, kill and take revenge. These lawyers and their families need to feel shame at these actions and not elation. These people are not celebrities. They are thugs and murderers.

And the Punjab Bar Council. It needs to get its act together, stop protecting its members and affiliates, and take necessary steps to help bring them to justice.

The PIC has had to be shut down to recover from the damage. The people who died are irreplaceable. The equipment and premises will take a great deal of taxpayers’ money to replace. Such violation of a place of healing is a disgrace for the government and for the lawyers of this city. As for the latter, they are now apparently meeting to work on their future strategy following the incident at the PIC. This information was tweeted by Umair Javed with the question: What next? An Orphanage?

Well? Will it be an orphanage next? Or perhaps a school?

IS IT TIME STUDENTS HAD A PLATFORM?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/12/07/is-it-time-students-had-a-platform/

• Students when they learn the best way to demand their rights translate into citizens who safeguard theirs

The aims, objectives and activities of student unions/guilds/associations vary depending on where they are found. In the USA, student unions mostly take the form of student activity groups with their own governing bodies. In New Zealand they focus primarily on addressing students’ financial issues, such as student debts.

Historically in Pakistan, student unions have been much more involved in the politics of the country starting with the Muslim Students’ Federation, an arm of the Pakistan Muslim League. The MSF was already an established entity when Pakistan came into being in 1947. Subsequently, other student groups came into being as well.

Ten years ago Nadeem Paracha wrote an excellent paper about student unions in Pakistan. One of the (many) things you learn reading this paper is that the Karachi University owes its existence to demands made by the DSF, a student union set up in Karachi’s Dow Medical College. But Karachi University did not come into being until six students lost their lives in processions and riots demanding their rights in the shape of a proper university for the metropolis. The point then is: should student unions exist, and if they do, should there be any perimeters within which they should function?

The primary function of schools and universities is to impart education of course. Whether or not unions exist in educational institutions hinges upon the definition of education. Is learning dates and theorems all there is to education?

Schools and universities can be the cradle where these things are taught and learnt. So long as the authorities stand firm against violence and undisciplined behavior, so long as they insist on academic learning not suffering as a result of these student activities– while remembering that both are important– the country can only benefit from such grounding. Unions can prevent students and citizens from being exploited by universities and later by governments regardless of their gender and religion. This might teach us to tolerate minorities and help us protect the rights of all citizens as already provided for in the Constitution of Pakistan but not practiced. Students, when they learn the best way to demand their rights, translate into citizens who safeguard theirs.

A holistic approach to education would require the student to learn about all aspects of life, social and political, and to acquire the knowledge with which to organise these various aspects. Real education provides students with principles to help him lead a good, decent life, and that definition in turn depends on the defining authorities.

A person who grows up without having learnt about these various aspects of life is left with little option but to allow those with power to govern, and if he manages to get power himself such a person is more likely to use it incorrectly. He is more likely to accept mis-dealings on the part of his government and leaders because he/she does not know any better. That works very well for persons with selfish motivations.

It comes as no surprise then that in Pakistan, student unions are illegal.

It was the DSF that was the first to be banned, in 1954. By the time General Ayub Khan blew in with his Martial Law the National Students’ Federal (NSF) had become powerful. It, and other student unions and all political parties were banned by Ayub Khan. But unions rose again and were a force in bringing Z.A. Bhutto into power.

The late 1970s saw a great increase in the presence of sophisticated arms and ammunition on campuses and powerful student activism. Many violent incidents occurred.

General Zia ul Haq banned student unions in 1984; they were revived again in 1988 and banned again in 1993. The ban was supposed to be subject to review, but a review never materialized, and unions are still for all purposes not allowed to function.

Should this state of affairs continue? Are students justified in their protest against the existence of pressures against reviving student unions?

If there is one thing that sets our culture apart from the West it is the inability to organise. Few people in this country are aware of the due process involved in any organisation. Surprisingly for a culture that prides itself on its tehzeeb (refined manners) few people allow a person to finish speaking before cutting in. Debate and discussion and the ability to reason and infer from available evidence is almost unknown. Instead violence and baseless accusations are resorted to. We are also comparatively new to democracy. It is possible to learn both organisation and the workings of the system on campus by means of student groups.

It has to be a good idea to re-form student unions and insist on them being organised with proper committees and working groups. The committees must run as committees should, with regular meetings conducted in a disciplined manner. The death of students demanding their rights should never happen again.

We have been guaranteed certain rights by the constitution of this country. No one has the right to take them away at any stage. Nor do students shed their Constitutional rights at their university’s gates.

Schools and universities can be the cradle where these things are taught and learnt. So long as the authorities stand firm against violence and undisciplined behavior, so long as they insist on academic learning not suffering as a result of these student activities– while remembering that both are important– the country can only benefit from such grounding. Unions can prevent students and citizens from being exploited by universities and later by governments regardless of their gender and religion. This might teach us to tolerate minorities and help us protect the rights of all citizens as already provided for in the Constitution of Pakistan but not practiced. Students, when they learn the best way to demand their rights, translate into citizens who safeguard theirs.

So, yes, student unions should exist. Subject to certain conditions.