Politics
The Quaid Goes Electronic
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the man responsible for the awakening of the muslims of British India and for carving out a nation out of an exploited and subjugated minority so that they could live in a country of their own and have their own cultural, religious and national identity. Never has one single man had such an impact on the course of events in history, he gave the muslims of India the reason, coherence, expression and then the direction for the creation of a separate muslim nationhood and a separate muslim state out of nothing but hopes and aspirations. Indeed the Quaid was a man of a great stature, blessed with a vision and a dynamism that saw the ultimate realization of the dreams of millions of muslims. Initially he was an advocate of unity between hindus and muslims but ultimately the machinations of the hindu leaders (and the British) and the sorry plight of the muslims convinced him that such a unity was not possible as they were two distinct nations having their own religion, ideology and culture.
It is indeed strange and sad that in this era of computer technology there is very little content available on the Internet on the Quaid and whatever little there is, it certainly is not enough. No official site exists. It is imperative that all aspects of the Quaid’s life and his never-ending struggle for the creation of Pakistan be made available in such a manner that easy access can be possible and maximum benefit can be derived. With this in view the Jinnah Society launched the first ever CD Rom and Website on the Quaid in an impressive function at the Governor House, Karachi on 12th August 2002. The CD Rom has been designed and developed by Enabling Technologies, Karachi who have also developed CD Roms on Faiz Ahmed Faiz and the 50 Years of Art in Pakistan. The Sindh Governor, Mohammadmian Soomro was the Chief Guest and Mr. Sharifuddin Pirzada was the Guest Speaker. The CD Rom has been based upon the Jinnah Anthology which was also compiled and edited by Mr. Liaquat Merchant who is the Quaid’s grand nephew and President of the Jinnah Society. The CD Rom, although based on the Jinnah Anthology has more content to offer as it also contains additional material such as articles and speeches of the Quaid and impressions and personal recollections of the Quaid’s contemporaries and a superb photo gallery which give it a more special flair. Begum Shaista Ikramullah, Yousuf Haroon, Justice J.A. Channa, Princess Abida Sultaan of Bhopal, Sahabzada Yaqub Ali Khan, Ata Rabbani and Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada dwell on their personal memories of the Quaid while impressions are given by Beverly Nichols, Lady Wavell, Aga Khan III and a host of others. Stanley Wolpert has presented a new tribute to the Quaid, Akbar S. Ahmad writes about what he calls Jinnah’s “Gettysburg Address”, Liaquat Merchant presents a study while S.M. Burke presents a historian’s perspective on Jinnah but there is much more. Some of the material contained in the CD Rom has never been published before and whatever was published was not easily accessible to the readers.
There is no doubt that this CD will be a source of great utility specially for students and for the younger generation who do not have access to such information at the present time other than books or whatever little information that exists on the Internet. Mr. Liaquat Merchant rightly said that it is imperative that the younger generation be made aware of the struggle that went into the creation of Pakistan and about the Quaid. In order for the CD to be available to everyone 10000 CDs are to be produced initially for sale in Pakistan and abroad. This is a most welcome step and will certainly be beneficial to many.
Crunch Time
That this military regime has been able to manage good governance as much as a basically corrupt system will allow without the formal declaration of martial law is no mean achievement. Yet in not being able to bring the Bhutto-Zardari combine and the Sharifs to justice as promised at the beginning of their tenure, the Musharraf government have managed to resurrect the fortunes of those who should have been politically dead and gone. The eloquent official waxing about our present rosy situation notwithstanding, what we have today is a political morass without great future for the country. Economically, we are far better off than on Oct 12, 1999, sound reforms and Sep 11 combining with really good monetary policies of the State Bank of Pakistan to provide a good base for economic resurgence.
Living in a glass house, the Choudhry Shujaats of this world do need the discretion of a front man, relatively clean (but nevertheless a nonentity outside of Lahore) Azhar is custom-built to take the heat, and if the electoral manipulation being blatantly done by the civil administration succeeds, odds – on favorite to be our next PM. Is this what Pakistan deserves? All the print and electronic media (barring PTV) have confirmed that the Choudhrys of Gujrat have Tariq Aziz as a friend, obviously he carries greater clout than Lt Gen Hamid Javed, the other Principal Staff Officer (PSO) to the Chief Executive. It is no secret that Tariq Aziz kept National Accountability Bureau (NAB) cynosure away from the Choudhrys. If Tariq Aziz was a corrupt, inefficient person, this would have been logical, but he is essentially a good man with misplaced loyalty to his friends superceding what should be responsibility and commitment to the people of Pakistan. That unfortunately happens to be Pakistan’s major problem in every level and strata of society, whether one is in politics, judiciary, the Armed Forces, civil administration, business, etc. nepotism and favouritism is always far more important than what one owes to the nation.
Benazir Blinks!
The Bhutto family functions on the premise that most Pakistanis have very short memories, unfortunately they are quite right. Ms Benazir was the first major politician to welcome the military regime’s dispatching of Mian Nawaz Sharif on Oct 12, 1999, the “honeymoon” went on for sometime. The PPP Chairperson finally realized that the one-sided “love affair” was going nowhere, the military regime being in no mood to drop corruption charges against her or her husband, Asif Zardari. Frustrated in the hope that on the basis of “an enemy of an enemy is a friend”, the military regime’s animosity towards Mian Nawaz Sharif would force political compromise with her. Ms Benazir did a smart U-turn, transforming her politics into virulent opposition. A consummate political animal, she gave the appearance of keeping back channels open to the COAS, mainly to shore up the morale of her increasingly demoralized supporters who were expecting some relief in Nawaz’s ouster. When the military regime denied any such contact, she declared “war” on the Pakistan Army.
For the past eight months Ms Benazir has been assailing the defenders of this country, synchronizing her attacks on our men in uniform in line with India’s contention, i.e. Pakistan Army is to blame for cross-border terrorism across the LOC, the attack on Indian Parliament, harbouring and sponsoring terrorism of all kind, etc. To retain the loyalty of her party workers while in self-imposed exile, she has kept a barrage of misleading propaganda going, the latest being that she would return to Pakistan by special aircraft on August 14 and fight the elections despite the election laws. This brinkmanship may be brilliant politically, the fact remains that other than being forced to knuckle down to the existing reality of the military regime’s ground rules for politics in Pakistan, she has succumbed to internal pressure within PPP forcing her to nominate Makhdoom Amin Fahim as the head of a newly created Parliamentary entity of the PPP. Her choice as rubber-stamp was Aftab Shahban Mirani. Winking at the military regime for sometime, she then tried international pressure to stare them out, Ms Benazir has now blinked.
Righting Wrongs
Every government that comes to power, elected or otherwise, unfolds a platform to right wrongs, mostly of its predecessors. Military regimes are into righting wrongs far more than their civilian counterparts, declaring accountability as their major plank. For the civilian governments, in supercession to lip-service about food, water and shelter, etc for the citizens, restoration of democracy and democratic mores is the priority. The hapless public, alternately buffeted by subjective governance by both, are usually left to pray that their rulers practice what they preach. Musharraf’s reign has been by far the best of the military regimes to rule Pakistan. In the matter of accountability they have excelled themselves, but ironically because they did not exercise absolute self-accountability, they will be subjected to far more critical appraisal than their predecessor military regimes. While the President himself is way above reproach, the public perception will hold him accountable for a handful whose misdeeds he is not directly responsible for but by not severing ties with them he assumes liability on the “love me, love my dog” syndrome. The irony also is that some of the accountability may have little to do with corruption but feeding of motivated or misleading information certainly affected critical issues involving governance calling into question the President’s decision-making, which is Pervez Musharraf’s strongest suit. When the measure of this regime is taken, the tragedy will be that a far better than average governance will be tainted by the misdemeanors of a handful. History is as unforgiving to talented cousins as it is to errant aides with their hands in the government till, but does history remember these rascals or the person on whose broad shoulders the rascals went about their corrupt business?
The President has very little time left as an absolute decision-maker, he needs to make every day of the next 75 upto Oct 10 count. Pervez Musharraf is a keen student of history and a decisive man of action, he must conduct a quick appraisal of the situation that exists in the land, taking urgent and concrete steps to right wrongs that he must prioritize to set right. And above all, he must closely maintain the “aim” annunciated by him when the Army took over.
General Selections
Very few leaders have faced the series of crises that Pervez Musharraf has in his nearly three years of governance. As absolute military leaders in Pakistan go, he has been a cut above the rest and given that he took the ultimate risk of allowing a free print media, till several weeks ago he has had very good Press. Even the electronic media, Pakistan TV being within strict government control, ARY Digital being patriotically supportive and even though Shaheen Foundation pulled out its money and material support of Indus Vision, it was immediately replaced by frontmen of vested interest, has been very very supportive. Before the Referendum Gen Musharraf was a very popular man, and even though he was clearly the winner by far, a suddenly hostile media “took the laurels from his brow and cast it into the dust”, with apologies for paraphrasing Churchill describing Lord Wavell after Rommel had delivered to the victor of Abyssinia and Eritria a series of stinging defeats in the Desert in the Second World War. As we wound down the 90 days to the October elections and the “natives become restless”, the rhetoric will get rougher. The President will have to have a very tough skin to bear this verbal and written onslaught, particularly when it is only partly deserved. He deserves to have aides who will deflect the attacks rather than pursue their own crass commercial interests.
Lt Gen Tanvir Naqvi is presently the subject of intense political and media vituperation for his proposals concerning the constitutional amendments. While one holds no brief for this theoretical genius with a gift of the gab, one must give him his due, in the circumstances availing in Pakistan over the past 50 years, a major part of the proposed charges are relevant and necessary. Gen Naqvi is not street smart otherwise he would have realized that framing the amendments was only a part of his job, his major task was to sell the package wholly or in parts to a very skeptical public stoked with misinformation by vested politicians determined to maintain the status quo. Because of tactical mistakes made in the run-up to the Referendum the print media became suddenly hostile, assuming for itself the cause of the masses. It is no use doing the right thing, one must be seen to be the right thing. Selling the government’s viewpoint is now Nisar Memon’s domain and he has taken up cudgels quite effectively, supported efficiently by Federal Secretary Anwar Mahmood, a consummate bureaucrat who has been close, as every bureaucrat should be, to every regime that he has served. There is a duality of responsibility here because of the role of Rashid Qureshi who as the military Cardinal really runs the government media and manipulated Javed Jabbar’s ouster. This weakness for being a prima donna lies at the very heart of the military regime, the penchant for self-projection even at the cost of the person he serves. Leaving aside self-interest through proxies, if Qureshi is really loyal to his boss he should ask for another appointment.
The Advani Identity
For once ISI is off the hook! By assuming the appointment of India’s Deputy PM, Advani has discarded the charade of who is the real power in the country. The source of the defamatory article in TIME magazine recently about Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee should not have been a mystery, who else stood to benefit other than Lal Krishan Advani? In conducting a pre-mortem of Vajpayee (the whole anatomy was laid bare), TIME reporter Alex Perry had an impeccable source, for good measure his interrogation by Indian immigration authorities shored up his credibility. That Advani’s warped muslim-hunting personality should have his finger (aided and abetted by madcap Defence Minister George Fernandes) as the final authority on the nuclear trigger is scary. Compare the Advani “virility” to the doddering TIME portrayal of “senile” Vajpayee and the thought becomes scarier, this man not only has the penchant but the necessary venom and ruthlessness to initiate a nuclear holocaust in South Asia at the slightest pretext without any inhibitions or qualms whatsoever. His former daughter-in-law, who also served as his confidential secretary for many years, has chronicled his devious, vicious ways in a signed affidavit in a court of law.
India’s democracy prides itself in never have lived under the tutelage of the uniform, as if this is somehow different to being under absolute authoritarian rule under civilian garb, were Hitler and Mussolini army generals? And when Indira Gandhi declared emergency, what happened to India’s democracy? Germany’s Nazis could never be as virulent as India’s Rashtria Sevak Sangh (RSS), incidentally both have Swastikas as their cult’s symbol. Eminent Indian columnist Kuldip Nayar says that Advani, to quote, “is an RSS hardliner and a vociferous exponent of Hindutva Doctrine”, unquote. In layman’s terms, Advani is a charter member of a extreme right wing socio-political religious grouping that not only believes in the Hindu religion’s absolute supremacy over all other religions, it does not permit other religions to even co-exist. And they say fundamentalism exists in Islam! Despite being in numbers many times less than the Hindus they ruled, Islam’s millennium supremacy period is particularly galling for the RSS. When it came to the matter of sacking Gujerat’s muslim-killer Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Vajpayee, supposedly very secular, not only succumbed to RSS pressure within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but labelled most muslims in India as “potential terrorists”.
Constitutional Proposals
The military regime last Wednesday solicited public opinion for the first batch of 29 constitutional amendments proposed by the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) to improve the performance of political and democratic institutions of the country. The National Security Council (NSC) and the Federal Cabinet will meet after a month to finalize the amendments in the light of suggestions received.
Nobody should have any problems with (1) reducing the term of the National Assembly (NA) and the Senate from five and six years respectively to four (2) increasing the existing 207 NA muslim seats to 357 and (3) reducing the voting age from 21 years to 18 years. It is better for the Assemblies to finish their natural terms (even though reduced) rather than having them artificially shortened by arbitrary authority. The population growth necessitated the increase in seats and the precocious nature of modern youth the decrease in age. The Provinces should be happy with the relative increases in seats, both in the NA and the Provincial Assemblies.
Arrogance and Corruption
Despite the dire predictions of his many detractors, Pervez Musharraf will be credited by posterity with a number of positive initiatives/actions, a few more than others, viz (1) having called the Indian bluff despite having the whole Indian Armed Forces camped for six months on our borders, remaining calm and cool in not blinking under the most hostile external environment in the history of the nation and (2) carrying out accountability, if not fully at least nearly across the board. Apropos of the President’s comment about nuclear potential giving Pakistan strategic balance with India the main reason for avoiding war, the Indians fell over themselves in calling it as “nuclear blackmail”. There was an embarrassed silence a day later, when the consensus candidate for the Indian Presidency Mr Abdul Kalam, soon after filing his nomination flanked by BJP’s Vajpayee and Congress” Sonia Gandhi, said that the reason why Pakistan and India did not go to war was because of “nuclear detente”. Already proving to be a bit of an unguided missile, how long before this muslim is labeled as an ISI operative?
The military regime’s calm under a flurry of ultimatums and outright threats avoided panic in our own population. My touchstone was the many up-scale farmhouses in Bedian adjacent to the border near Lahore, no one evacuated. Conversely India had built up such a war hysteria that when the Pakistan missiles were test-fired in early May, sheer panic swept through the Indian population at the belated realization that no Indian city was safe from a Pakistan counter-attack. The bulk of foreigners in India voted their confidence in India with their feet, clogging the airports in a rush to exit. Over the past few months, investment into India has dried up. For Pakistan where investment is confined to burgers, shakes, french fries and ice creams, not good for health in any case, it hardly matters. The Indians finally got their sums right, calculating that their commercial losses far outweighed their political and diplomatic profit in browbeating Pakistan and trying to label us a “terrorist State”. Before any sensor could be put on the LOC, Chief Monitor Fernandes surmised that infiltration cross-border had almost ceased! Thank you, George, for providing the comic relief during a period of extreme tension!
Media Strategy Failure
If one can orchestrate a barrage of lies to the media long enough, it will eventually be broadcast to the world as the truth. Take for example, the theory that India will do a limited strike in Kashmir as punitive action and hard-pressed Pakistan will be forced to react across the international border in an all-out war. The surmise is that since India has greater numbers in conventional forces and Pakistan has no strategic/tactical depth, Pakistan will eventually be forced into first use of nuclear weapons at the tactical level and such an exchange may well escalate very quickly into all-out nuclear war. This makes out Pakistan to be an irresponsible “rogue” State whose nuclear weapons are a menace to the world at large. This is far from the truth. In 1965 Operation Gibraltar was a brilliant plan but it had one major flaw, the conditions within Occupied Kashmir were not conducive to guerrilla warfare. Today, that situation is totally reversed, a full fledged guerrilla war mostly indigenously nurtured has been a fact of life for a dozen years even though they are badly outnumbered and outgunned by better trained and equipped Indian forces, the Kashmiris are hardened guerillas and can tie up the operations and logistics of Indian forces on the frontline. What will happen if a few thousand well armed totally motivated commandos infiltrate a number of locations across the “Line of Control” (LOC) to bolster their strength? This time motivation is at its height, and the Indians have created the right conditions by their inhuman behaviour, surrounded by a hostile population up in arms anything can happen. Remember what happened to the Indians when the Chinese got behind them in 1962 in NEFA. Who will then be ready to resort to nuclear weapons? This very likely scenario is ignored by the media.
Our media strategy failures started with the Kargil crisis when a brilliantly executed tactical military plan having strategic dimensions became a diplomatic disaster because of lack of strategic media harmony duly orchestrated by the government of the day. Despite the fact that on the ground a terrible toll was taken from the Indians sent to dislodge those occupying the mountain-tops, our credibility took a sustained pounding in the international media and the Indians had a field day. While taking at least 4 to 5 times the number of casualties we had, the Indians went on a media blitz to claim victory on the one hand, while successfully tarring and feathering whatever official line we dished out. The domestic reward for the BJP government was electoral success, enough for them to head a credible coalition.
Tidal Wave 2002
A few days before Referendum 2002 a crude poll conducted by Research & Collection Services revealed that, viz (1) the turnout would be less than 30% and (2) 65% of those responding to the queries would support the President. This poll was conducted over 93 cities/towns and adjacent rural constituencies, there was plus/minus 5% margin for error in this poll. By 12:30 pm on Referendum Day the feedback from the staff in the field concluded that the poll was spectacularly wrong on both counts. Except for Quetta, some parts of interior Sindh and a few places in Karachi, the polling throughout the country was brisk, the turnout already crossing the 30% mark. In exit polls, slightly more than 90% were openly favouring the President, only 2-3% demurred. Between 2 pm and 4 pm voting slowed considerably because of the intense mid-afternoon heat, by 5 pm there was a rush to meet the 7 pm deadline. The 60% plus turnout claimed by the government is therefore credible.
Where and why did the pre-Referendum forecast go wrong? First and foremost the voters were well motivated towards the President. Even while complaining that the present governance was far from satisfactory, many did not want Ms Bhutto or Mian Nawaz Sharif misgoverning them again. Third, almost 15 million voters are under the age of 21, voting age being reduced to 18. Owing no allegiance to any political party and brought up on political horror stories, they cast their vote en bloc for the President. His hard stance towards the militancy of the religious parties was another factor. Lastly the increased number of polling stations, 164000 in all, almost 6 times the normal electoral day average, increased the voter turnout manifold as it allowed easy voting throughout the day. As someone remarked, everyone and his mother-in-law went out to vote, many had never voted before. The same refrain remained throughout the country. There were certainly voter irregularities, mainly, viz (1) voters not having their identities properly checked (2) the indelible ink coming off and (3) repeated voting. These did not have official sanction much and were not in such large numbers as to affect the voting turnout, which hovered around 60%. Of the 40% who stayed away, at least half were hard-core supporters of the opposition political parties.