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An open letter
to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari Canal
politics Yeh
Woh scandal Vicious
circle Extraordinary
law
First things first.
First of all congratulations for formally launching your campaign to becoming
active as chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party. This is a seminal moment
in the party’s never boring, always noisy, usually turbulent and often
tragic evolution. Because the party seems ready to turn a new leaf, even if
reluctantly. It’s also poignant for
you personally as you commit yourself to a life of rigmarole and
rough-and-tumble that takes courage to embrace in Pakistan’s chequered
polity. Working at the helm of the
PPP means opening oneself to the risk of some of the worst political and
social dangers one can face in Pakistan – heartbreak, defeat, intimidation,
physical attacks and even death. Your grandfather, grandmother, mother and
father faced most or all of these in the line of duty as the supreme leaders
of the PPP. Surely this must have
weighed heavy on your mind as you convinced yourself destined to a public
life without certainties. The tone and tenor of your
speech last week aside, the fact that you chose to launch yourself lock,
stock and barrel out into the streets, stepping out of the false comforts of
Bilawal House’s drawing room, the occasion was pregnant with so much
symbolism. For the first time in two decades the party not only knows where
it stands, its work is cut out for it, and hence yours as well. For the 2008 elections, as
the country transitioned from Musharraf’s Faustian rule to a representative
dispensation, Benazir Bhutto led PPP into choppy waters, paid a price no one
should have to do. For this ultimate sacrifice even her detractors deservedly
call her a Shaheed now. For the young, death is a distant irritant but for
someone who saw live on television his mother being shot to death, it is
understandable that you don’t take an awami life lightly. Thanks to Benazir
but in her absence, the party won a comprehensive mandate unprecedented since
its first ride into power in the 1970s. However, over the next five
turbulent years as the ruling party, the PPP failed on key fronts despite
some remarkable achievements and contributions, including sanitising the
Constitution, empowering the provinces and facilitating a smooth transfer of
power. These are bigger milestones than they’re given credit for. The party’s biggest
failures – despite the admittedly tough conditions and obstacles – were
not being able to energise the economy, tackle terrorism and manage some good
governance. And, of course, failing to come back to power. From the
country’s biggest party PPP has effectively reduced itself to running the
show in ‘mere’ Sindh. It lost the confidence of a staggering 7m voters
between the 2008 and 2013 elections – intriguingly the same margin of votes
that Imran Khan’s PTI has bagged. This was the worst PPP electoral
performance in 40 years except for the 1997 elections. But all that is over. No
more excuses, no more posturing and no more self-deception. The party can
continue clinging to the status quo of tight-fisted, non-democratic in-house
management style that has seen some of the best politicians the country knows
sidelined for the last six years and be content with lording aimlessly over
Sindh. Or it can reinvent itself and make itself relevant for a changing
Pakistan. It was good to see you
setting both a goal and a timeline. Elections 2018, you declared. That’s
good but you did not spell out a mission. All parties aim to win power in
elections. So just in themselves what good are a goal and a timeline? Surely
a party’s work doesn’t stop at winning elections. What’s the
longer-term mission of PPP, and how will it be defined in the rapidly
changing, increasingly cynical and eminently exhausted Pakistan, is what I as
a voter would like to know. Sure, there’s no party
more experienced than PPP – it has won five of the eight general elections
held. It has won and lost both elections and leaders, the triumphs and
tribulations – the works. But surely it is not the font of all wisdom. So why cling to an old
hodge-podge ideology of socialism, Islam and the market as the party
tenaciously trundled through the 80s, 90s and the 00s but arguably
sacrificing adaptability and reinvention in favour of survival? If you want to just lead
the party as the latest Bhutto occupying the hot seat, it’s already yours
– you don’t have to work for it. In fact it just fell in your lap 5 years
ago although admittedly not because you wanted it but, like your mother and
father before you, it was forced upon you by cruel happenstance. If you also
want to lead the people and the country then I’m afraid your pedigree alone
won’t get you far. This leadership and the trust that it runs on you’ll
have to earn. Politics is about keeping
hopes and dreams alive and adding value to people’s lives. After four
decades of trying out different kinds of democracies, autocracies and
theocracies – all resulting in more or less the same outcomes – the
people are fed up. All these ideologies and isms have failed to improve
governance, run the economy well and bring long-term stability. Roti, kapra
aur makan? Four decades after your grandfather promised them, a big chunk of
your potential voters don’t have it or those of other parties. What people are looking for
are not the politics of Right, Left and Centre but simply that a new compact
between the state and the citizens puts the latter at the centre of the
former’s service. So, in a country growing
weary of politics that doesn’t deliver not just roti, kapra aur makan but
neither sehat, taleem aur dukan, what do you, dear Bilawal, have that can
harken us to the ballot boxes to beef up your leadership? Will you, in a
departure from how the party was run in your name over the past five years,
change tack by admitting that PPP needs to engage with and induct
representatives of the professional classes, the intelligentsia and civil
society to both get a pulse on what the people are thinking and what they
want? You and the party you lead
can get votes but how can you – and all the parties out there — make
policies and run the country without inducting in your ranks real people who
are not merely waderas and karobaris? Imran Khan has taken away all the youth
and the women, Nawaz Sharif all the businessmen, MQM all the berozgar (by
giving them party rozgars), the religious parties all the moulvis. Do you think PPP can make
do with just kisans and haris and waderas and the also-rans from other
parties? PPP is supposed to reflect the multifarious political, religious,
ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, social and class pluralisms of Pakistan that
other parties have stolen away from the PPP. Have you wondered how did
it lose them along the way? Dear Bilawal, the biggest
mistake you will make is thinking PPP is your party. But it’s not. It’s
the people’s and they will make it or break it, just like they’ve always
done. There are five years to
elections but five lifetimes before that in getting your mission sorted out,
earning your stripes, rekindling people’s shattered trust in politics that
work their favour and readying for Elections 2018. If you won’t do it
without us, you won’t get far. Good luck! Best regards, Adnan Rehmat
Farmers at the tail-end of Badin are denied access to water as influentials use far more than their share By Aoun Sahi At a time of the
year when Qazi Faizullah would like to prepare his land for wheat crop, he
sits on the greenbelt outside the Islamabad press club along with dozens of
other farmers from his area — protesting against the non-availability of
irrigation water for their land in Badin, Sindh. “I could only cultivate
64 acres of land last season. I chopped off mango trees spread across 100
acres of land last year because of unavailability of irrigation water. Ground
water in our area is saline,” says Faizullah, who owns 900 acres of land in
Badin district of Sindh province. The shortage of water is
mainly because of unequal distribution of canal water in Sindh where big and
powerful landlords use the water share of farmers belonging to the tail-end
of Badin district, situated at the tail-end of Rohri canal system. “The situation has become
worse in the last five years as hundreds of powerful people in our area are
‘gifted’ with direct outlets (DOs) from canals to irrigate their lands.
DO is like giving road access to a single home from the motorway,” he says. Badin is one of the most
water scarce districts of the country, where farmers are allowed to cultivate
only 28 per cent of their land in kharif (summer) season and 56 per cent in
rabbi (winter) season. Cultivation of high water consuming crops like rice
and sugarcane are not allowed in the district but “influentials” of the
area, according to Faizullah, have been violating both the rules. “They
have not only been cultivating 100 per cent of their land but banned crops as
well,” he tells TNS, showing pictures of rice and sugarcane crops which he
claims are taken from his area. Fayyaz Hussain Shah,
another farmer from the area who owns 430 acres of land, says he could
cultivate 1.5 acre only in the last season. “I could not pay tuition fee of
my children. Several people in the area either have sold their land to
influentials in the area or have given it on lease with the promise to get it
back after 10 years with a direct water outlet,” he says, adding more than
90,000 acres of land and over 200 villages (over 80,000 people) have been
badly affected due to the DOs. “Ten branches of Naseer
Canal which consist of 164 water courses to irrigate 98,563 acres are worst
hit. Many people in the area have migrated to other areas due to shortage of
water,” he says, holding corrupt officials of the Irrigation Department
responsible for the mess — “CM Sindh Qaim Ali Shah allowed 15 new DOs on
Naseer Branch in the last five years. Now there are 64 DOs on the same
branch. Further, he adds, de-silting of Rohri Canal and Naseer Branch has not
been done for many years. Hussain’s assertion is
substantiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) report in 2010 on Sindh
water resources. Prepared by Roger A. Collier, a water resources economist
and independent consultant, the report states DOs are against the law and
provide the owners more than the sanctioned water. “The 107 DOs surveyed
showed that the water taken in total was 382 per cent more than the
sanctioned discharge. In extreme case one DO was taking over 30 times its
design discharge and the average DO takes more than 5 times its sanctioned
discharge,” it reads. The ADB report lists as
many as 147 landlords who benefit from DOs only in Naseer Division of Rohri
Canal, including Asif Zardari and Nisar Khuhro. “DO farmers have abundant
water at zero marginal cost. DO and illegal outlets is not only inequitable
but also economically damaging as water is transferred from uses with returns
over Rs 6.0/m3 to uses with returns of Rs 2.2/m3 to 3.7/m3”, it reads. The report points out that
DO of Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur has been taking 10.146 cusec water instead of
designed discharge of 2.27 cusec while Asif Ali Zardari’s DO has been
taking 17.88 cusec water instead of originally allowed to get 12.93 cusec
water (the largest DO on Naseer Canal). “It has changed the
cropping patterns on large landholdings to higher water demand crops with
lower economic returns to water (but higher financial returns on land),”
states the report. Professor Ejaz Qureshi,
ex-General Manager of Sindh Irrigation Development Authority (SIDA) and an
irrigation water expert from Hyderabad, says the report is based on facts.
“The situation in Badin for poor farmers is bad. You would be surprised to
know that they cultivate 100 per cent of their lands. In Badin, they have
made huge fish ponds which use canal water through these DOs or water theft
from the canals,” he says. Irrigation officials of the
province are aware of the issue but pose to be helpless. “Only a CM can
issue orders for a DO. He can approve the DO wherever he wants in the
province. Those who have been getting these DOs are influential, we cannot do
anything,” says Muhammad Aslam Ansari, Additional Secretary Technical of
Sindh Irrigation and Power Department.
Love shove By Masud Alam It is incredible
how much time, effort and passion we put into thinking, talking, hearing and
seeing ‘love’ and not getting any. We keep filling our minds with the
idea of love, all our lives, without actually loving, or being loved. Eric
Fromm, psychologist, social scientist and the author of ‘The Art of
Loving’ explains this riddle thus: ‘There is hardly any activity, any
enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations and
yet, which fails as regularly, as love. ‘If this were the case
with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the
failure, and to learn how one could do better, or they would give up the
activity.’ Aah! But how can you give
up this activity that has been lighting up your lamps of hope for half your
life and giving you pleasure in your last half like an old and dear wound
that scabs but never heals. We may as well continue to fail at love but no,
we cannot give up the passive pleasures and pains of a love that only lives
in our body, our thoughts. Never gets us anywhere, but that’s how it is;
we’ll shrug, we’ll drug, we’ll weep and we’ll kill but we won’t
examine the possibility of love being an ‘active’ pursuit; something that
can be learned and practised and improved upon. There are two popular ways
we are conditioned to view love. One is the doomed view of love as a sickness
and an essential ingredient of pain — a sickness and a pain though that
makes the lovers poets, artists, writers et al and gives them the licence to
have enough alcohol to drown all their sorrows in. This type is best
described in Pankaj Udhas’ ghazals and Neil Gaiman’s writings: ‘You
build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that
nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other
stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you.
They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or
smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes
hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the
darkness …’ The other is the happy
channel. Love is Margallas in the late afternoon, maple leaves in autumn,
warm sunshine in winters, a burst of mint and lemon in summer. Love will make
you happy, love will complete you, and love will sort you out for life. This
is the kind of romantic love beautiful women and handsome men in Hollywood
and Bollywood play at. It’s usually love at first sight or a series of
coincidences and events that direct and drive the affair of love to fruition.
We devour fictionalised love packaged in film, drama, music, literature,
painting, gossip … and that’s all the love in our lives. Both channels have limited
scope of success as both rely on the principle so well articulated in this
song that it should be regarded as the lover’s anthem: Pyar kia nahin jaata
ho jaata hai, Love is not something to do, it is something that is done to
you, by a super natural power, a god, fate, coincidence, a random act …
love is anything but something to work towards. Erich Fromm puts his
reputation as an academician and practitioner of psychology at stake by
arguing that love is indeed something to work towards. The Art of Loving is a
pocket-sized 112 page book that challenges the prevailing myths (that
haven’t changed in more than half a century that has elapsed since it was
first published), discusses the evolutionary influences on how we view love,
prescribes ‘things’ to practice and motivates the reader to make the
effort. As motivational books go,
this one is too dry, to-the-point, and coldly rational to be a bestseller for
years that it has been, and is still in print. If nothing else the millions
of copies sold all over the world is a testament of the pull the subject of
‘love’ has on human beings. Pyar k liye, they’ll kuch bhi karey ga.
It’s a book you’d want to read even if you haven’t opened a book since
high school. But as the author clarifies in the first few pages, there is no
point in reading it if you believe love to be a thing that ‘happens’ by
itself. This book is useful only
for those who believe in making things happen. Love is one of those things. masudalam@yahoo.com
Double standards The case of Irfan Qadir, the British-Pakistani banker, is a classic example of how media and the blue-chip companies via private investigators treat their targets and lay into them, By Murtaza Ali Shah Irfan Qadir is a
top British Pakistani banker who at one stage was hailed by the Financial
Times and other mainstream UK papers as a leading star of the banking sector
in Britain. He was also regarded as one of the top 50 most powerful Asians in
the UK, a recipient of the Finance Excellence award and the House of Lords
Asian Guild award. But things changed
dramatically for Irfan Qadir in 2011 after he became a whistle-blower and
raised his head above the pulpit to expose corruption at the heart of the
banking industry. He ended up paying a heavy
price, was hounded and victimised but has emerged victorious, defying all
odds. His case in Britain has become a classic example of how media and the
blue-chip companies treat their targets via private investigators and lay
into them mercilessly. It appears that the reality
of media in a country where the media has a suave image is not different from
what it is in countries such as Pakistan where private details of citizens
are routinely leaked to public. After a successful 20 years
in banking, the events of 2011 turned Qadir’s world upside down after he
became a whistle-blower. Qadir made allegations against UK Chancellor George
Osborne regarding Bank of Ireland’s alleged exploitation of £10billion of
deposits from more than 2 million customers of the post office. Various
attacks were made on his credibility and there were attempts to silence him
but the Pakistani banker refused to budge. Qadir’s employer Bank of
Ireland instructed a top UK law firm, Mishcon de Reya, which in turn
instructed Diligence, private investigators, with the task of digging
Qadir’s private details to counter him. It is pertinent to mention
here that after the News of the World shut down amidst allegations of
‘phone hacking’ by journalists and corrupt private investigators, the UK
government ordered the ‘Leveson Inquiry’. The inquiry, amongst other
things, looked at the use of corrupt private investigators by the UK press. Several months after the
inquiry concluded, it was revealed there was a new larger scandal nicknamed
‘Blue-Chip Hacking’. This involved the use of corrupt private
investigators by ‘Blue-Chip’ (listed on the stock exchange) companies and
potentially accounted for as much as 80 per cent of private investigators’
instructions. UK based Daily Mail
reported Mishcon de Reya as the “biggest meanest sons of bit**es who walk
the legal landscape,” claiming they fought so dirty, it took one’s breath
away. The UK press also reported Mishcon de Reya as a law firm who openly
admit to use of private investigators. This included previous dealings with
private investigation firm Caratu, whose investigator was jailed for using
illegal methods, and private investigation firm RISC, whose chief executive
is currently on bail having been arrested on suspicion of bribing police
officers. The private investigators
who went all out on Qadir were Diligence who also have a record of illegal
activity and have been caught and prosecuted for infiltrating the systems of
accounting giants, KPMG. Diligence was formed by
former members of the CIA and MI5. Their chairperson is the former UK Home
Secretary Michael Howard MP and the current UK CEO is a former MI5 agent,
Nick Day, who is also an adviser to the BBC ’Spooks’ drama series in
which many high tech surveillance techniques are displayed. Nick Day has been
quoted as saying “a spy thinks the same way as a criminal” and that
“spying is professional blagging”. As part of the strategy to
discredit Qadir, Diligence’s Alex Blair, a former Serious Organised Crime
Agency (SOCA) police officer, planted a false story in a leading UK
newspaper, the Mail on Sunday that published defamatory allegations against
Qadir. These allegations were later proven to be untrue; the newspaper
subsequently admitted to their falsehood, paid substantial damages to Qadir,
and issued a public apology. A lawsuit is estimated to have cost the Mail on
Sunday owners, Associated Press Ltd, £750,000. Qadir, whilst still an
employee of the Bank of Ireland, made an application to the UK courts for
whistle blowing protection. At a pre-hearing review in November 2011, he
accused the Bank of Ireland of employing Diligence to put him under
surveillance. It would be no surprise if
the surveillance on Qadir by Diligence involved phone hacking and computer
hacking or that “professional blagging” had taken place to get
confidential information on Qadir. And in only what can be described as an
act of desperation, Diligence resorted to the oldest spy trick by trespassing
onto Qadir’s property to steal rubbish from his bins. Qadir was vigilant
enough to catch them in the act and reported the illegal acts to the police. The News on Sunday has been
told by a credible source that the intimidation also involved Qadir allegedly
being warned not to attend a separate trial involving a Bank of Ireland
colleague where Mishcon de Reya were also acting. And in a further alleged
act of intimidation, in the same trial, Mishcon de Reya divulged sensitive
information regarding Qadir’s dependents. Both of these serious acts of
intimidation, this reporter understands, were reported to the trial judge. It has been reported that
eventually the Bank of Ireland entered into an out of court settlement with
Qadir — a settlement which is rumoured to be in millions. In relation to similar
conduct of Mishcon de Reya, it has been alleged that they may have had a role
to play in funding other private investigators whose undeclared practices may
have included blagging and privacy data infringing. TNS has been told by a
credible source who has had access to various witness statements in a
separate case, again involving Bank of Ireland, that Mishcon de Reya employed
a private investigator named Micheal O’Leary of Forensic Pathways.
Allegations are made that O’Leary had blagged — made false
representations on behalf of Mishcon de Reya to Southwark Crown Court in
order to obtain confidential information. Our source advises us that
in his witness statement, O’Leary admits to obtaining the information but
denies he had blagged in order to do so. In fact O’Leary states that he was
acting on information given to him by “Mishcon de Reya who had received it
from HMP Wandsworth”. Given that the information would have been governed
by data protection, it is not surprising that a further allegation in a
witness statement is that Gary Miller or someone else in Mishcon de Reya must
have bribed someone in the police for the information — an allegation which
Gary Miller in his own witness statement states as ludicrous and false. This month the UK
Information Commissioners’ Office announced that law firms and financial
organisations are to be probed for unlawfully obtaining personal information
and breaches of the ‘Data Protection Act’ and the newly formed NCA
(National Crime Agency — dubbed Britain’s FBI) has now been given the
task to investigate. The UK’s blue-chip
companies are violating ethics in an even more shameless manner than
Pakistan’s companies. In Pakistan, information is not properly protected
and has a price tag. In the UK, persons holding positions of trust — i.e.
police, intelligence officers etc. — have a duty by law to protect
confidential data. However, we now know that
upon leaving their service, these very same people are employed by private
investigation firms to obtain confidential information they were once paid to
protect. The reputation of the UK
being a fair playing field of law abiding organisations is in question and
the findings in the coming months will be viewed with interest worldwide. The writer reports for GEO
TV and Jang Group of Newspapers from London. He tweets at:@MurtazaGeoNews
The government needs to revamp the current legislative setup to address the issues of poverty, literacy and child labour By Rasheed Ali Muhammad Asim works
as a shop-cleaning boy at a cloth shop at Chowk Yateem Khana Market, Lahore.
He will turn 13 this December, and has been working in the same shop for the
last three years. He is the fourth of six siblings. His two elder brothers are
also working: the eldest works at a motorcycle repair workshop and the
younger helps his father to run a roadside chhabari (makeshift) hotel in an
industrial area. Only his elder sister, who is number three among the
siblings, and his two younger brothers go to school. However, keeping with
the family tradition, these two boys will also be withdrawn from their school
and sent to some shop as soon as they reach 10 or 11 years of age. His father, Muhammad Anwar
Khwaja, firmly believes education is a ‘luxury’ that can be enjoyed only
by the wealthy people. The poor can only think about making a living from the
beginning, he says. That’s why he never sent his eldest son to school and
attached him to a motorcycle mechanic in his locality when he was only six
years old. And he has no regrets at all, because now this 17-year-old boy
brings home more than five thousands rupees every month. “Had I made the mistake
of sending him to school, I would have been spending my hard-earned money on
his education until now,” he says bluntly. “And who can guarantee a job
even if my son passes the 12th class examination,” he asks. Anwar Khwaja is also happy
with the performance of his second son. “I cannot run my ‘hotel’ alone.
And, by the way, there should be someone who would take over my business when
I get older,” he says. “We both make four to five hundred rupees daily
from this business. What can education give to me and my sons?” However, he has a different
viewpoint about the education of his daughter. He wants her to get educated
to the highest level as “she will have to go to another family and she must
be equipped enough to do a better job if the need arises at any stage in her
life.” But there is no change of
mind regarding the education of his younger sons. He will stop them from
going to school in two or three years and put them in some shop or a workshop
to make them earning hands, at the earliest. Anwar is not the sole
example of his kind. There are hundreds of thousands of such parents who do
not want to send their children to schools and want them to start earning
money as early as possible. A campaign, ‘Zara Sochiye’
(Just Think), being run currently by Jang Group’s Geo News television
channel for promotion of education in the country, reveals that 2.5 crore (25
million) children in Pakistan do not go to school, though education is free
in the public sector schools and students are provided all books free of
cost. The campaign with an
attractive slogan ‘Agar Aagey Barhna Hay To Alif Bay Pay Yaqeen Rakhna
Hay’ (If you want to make progress, you will have to make education a
priority) further discloses that 1.2 crore (12 million) of the out-of-school
children work as labourers or domestic workers. Data collected by various
private organisations also attest to these facts. The Society for the
Protection of the Rights of the Child recently published a report noting that
Pakistan has the world’s second-largest number of children out of school. The report discloses that
there are at least 12 million child labourers in Pakistan — a country
amongst the list of 46 nations that do not have effective legislation to
protect children from hazardous work, despite being a signatory to the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Findings of the
organisations, working for children’s rights the world over, show that
child labour mostly stems from poverty. Which is why, as per estimates, of
the 215 million child labourers around the globe, approximately 114 million
(53 per cent) are in Asia-Pacific, 14 million (7 per cent) in Latin America,
and 65 million (30 per cent) in Sub-Saharan Africa. As far as Pakistan is
concerned, at least 60 to 70 per cent population live below the poverty line.
The economic conditions force people to send their children to work to make
ends meet. This means that as long as the reasons for making children work
exist, the issues of compulsory education and child labour cannot be
resolved. In such a situation, the viewpoint of Muhammad Anwar Khwaja appears
rational. Employment of children in
work activities, ranging from light to hazardous forms of labour, exists in a
number of sectors with varying degrees of prevalence. According to the
Federal Bureau of Statistics estimates, about 3.8 million children between
5-14 are involved in economic activities — both in the formal and informal
sectors, including factories, auto-workshops, hotels and roadside eateries,
shops, football industry, printing industry, and agriculture, not to speak of
beggary. In rural areas of the
country, about half of school-age girls do not go to schools. The statistics
show that 50 per cent of these economically active children are in the age
group of 5 to 9 years. Out of them, 2.7 million are claimed to be working in
the agricultural sector. There is a dire need for
the incumbent government to revamp the current legislative setup to address
the issues of poverty, literacy and child labour in the light of various
international commitments, including the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and ILO Conventions 138 and 182, related to
minimum age of employment and worst forms of child labour. It should be noted
with concern that the Employment of Children Act 1991 is not being enforced
comprehensively, owing to an inadequate administrative structure. Though no concrete data on
child labour is available in the country, we must recognise that behind each
number there is the face of a child. Until and unless reasons for poverty are
not removed, parents are not convinced of the importance of education, and
students are not provided with safe, accessible and high quality education
opportunities, the problems of illiteracy and child labour cannot be solved.
Extraordinary law An Ordinance to
provide for protection against waging of war against Pakistan and the
prevention of acts threatening the security of Pakistan was promulgated all
of a sudden by the newly-elected president of the country, last week. The law is well-timed;
right when the PM was off to the US, where he was supposed to highlight his
government’s legal commitments to terrorism. However, the law
contradicts with the PML-N’s political thought and the election manifesto
that disowns the ‘war on terror’, believing the US has unnecessarily
dragged Pakistan into it. The Protection of Pakistan
Ordinance 2013 (PPO) issued by the Presidency states that the “writ of the
state shall be restored with full might; those to pursue terror and fear,
regardless of nationality, colour, creed or religion, shall be treated as
enemy and dealt with strictly without any compunction”. It adds the state will not
allow Afghan immigrants or other foreign nationals to be used for terrorism
purposes. Also, the Ordinance says,
Special Federal Courts will be designated to render speedy justice and joint
investigation teams of security agencies and police will be constituted to
investigate all heinous crimes committed in areas where civil armed forces
are invited to aid civil power. The PPO 2013 deals with
“enemy aliens” engaged in waging a war against Pakistan, who will face
unlimited detention, unlike Pakistani nationals who can be held in custody
for a maximum of 90 days. This concept of “enemy
aliens” is worth discussing in the parliament, says former caretaker law
minister of Pakistan and lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi. “It is not a draconian
law and it cannot be implemented without a specific notification by the
federal government,” he says, adding, “There are laws in Pakistan
relating to peace but this is a law which aims to regulate conflict with the
basic prerequisite that it will not be used in normal situation.” Legally, he maintains,
“this law seems like a good additional tool available with the government
to use in extraordinary situation. At least, its preamble admits a war-like
situation in the country, a situation which the government seems hesitant to
admit.” For Soofi, it is a
switch-off, switch-on law, and has been drafted hurriedly. The PPO 2013 is the second
addition to the list of anti-terrorism laws, the first was the Anti-terrorism
Amendment Ordinance that proposes longer detention of suspects and accepts
electronic evidences as well as trials by video links. These amendments add
new witness protection measures and instruct provincial governments to ensure
prisoners do not have access to mobile phones. This law gives
shoot-at-site power to civil armed forces for maintenance of peace in the
country. Also, electronic evidences will be acceptable while the judges,
public prosecutors and witnesses will be given protection under the law.
Basically, the amendment is aimed at strengthening the hands of the
law-enforcement agencies against terrorists and ensuring speedy trial. After the All Parties
Conference (APC) convened earlier this year, there was wide criticism on the
government that it is submitting to the terrorists instead of strengthening
its counterterrorism strategy and interdicting strict policies and laws. Under the PPO 2013, any
police officer or member of the armed forces or civil armed forces deployed
in any area may on reasonable apprehension,
warn or use the necessary force to prevent crime, and in so doing will
exercise all the defined powers of a police officer. It will be lawful for any
such officer to fire or order firing on any person or persons against whom he
is authorised to use force. Also, anyone found guilty of resisting
enforcement of any law or legal process will have to spend 10 years behind
bars, while personnel of law-enforcement agencies will be able to enter and
search any premises without warrants and the arrested suspects will not be
entitled to bail. The PPP has rejected the
Ordinance, saying it gives extraordinary powers to the law-enforcement
agencies which may overstep — and in the process violate fundamental
rights. The party’s parliamentary leader, Senator Raza Rabbani says the
Ordinance in its present form is not acceptable and the party will oppose it
when brought to the parliament. But for Lt Gen (R)
Moinuddin Haider, former governor of Sindh and ex-interior minister of
Pakistan, this piece of legislation is “need of the hour”. He thinks
Pakistan’s situation is complex at the moment — “We have stopped
respecting the rule of law and the existing laws to curb terrorism are
misused.” So, he adds, these new laws
will expedite the justice system and will improve investigation and
prosecution methodologies — “In the past five years, few efforts were
made to strengthen anti-terror laws.” New law is there to check
terrorism; however its success will depend on how, when and where this
time-barred law is applied. vaqargillani@gmail.com |
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