Shattered by the Status Quo

Triumph of corruptocracy

Legal eye

Saturday, October 13, 2007
Babar Sattar

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad. He is a Rhodes Scholar and has an LLM from Harvard Law School

After his coup General Pervez Musharraf declared that Pakistan had hit "rock bottom" and "rise it must." He condemned the-then prevailing culture of corruption and collusion and assured the nation that Pakistan would be cleansed of degenerate political elites and that "true democracy" would be ushered in. The argument seemed logical and encouraging to those incensed by a decade of loot and "dysfunctional democracy." At the time it seemed incomprehensible how our already depleted fortunes could be diminished any further. But the general has really put to the test this nation's faith in its own resilience. Every time there is a near consensus that we have finally hit rock bottom, the rulers show more imagination.

As if the general's re-selection as president for another five-year term from his minions was not enough of an Eid package, we have also been blessed with the National Reconciliation Ordinance, 2007. This would definitely compete for the title of the most sinister law ever introduced in Pakistan. It is conceptually malicious and substantively flawed. While it claims to promote "national reconciliation, foster mutual trust and confidence amongst holders of public office and remove the vestiges of political vendetta and victimisation," it does none of that. By using the concept of reconciliation that was being advocated in the media as the need of the hour to give this nation a healing touch (especially after the Lal Masjid debacle), the spin-doctors of the ruling regime have discredited the concept itself.

What Pakistan needs to reconcile is divergent views on two issues: how to fix the civil-military imbalance and what role should religion be attributed in matters of state. A pluralist, tolerant and inclusive approach to politics was being conceived as the process that would enable competing views on these issues to be amicably exchanged and help leading political actors to agree on certain rules of the game to get Pakistan out of the morass in which it is caught. Who could have imagined that condoning corruption would be the general's preferred approach to reconciliation? If one of Pakistan's foremost problems has been the abuse of state authority by holders of public offices to amass illegitimate wealth, how will allowing the corrupt go scot-free without affixing responsibility for their past deeds and facilitating their return to power help the country?

As a conceptual matter, reconciliation is not an alternative to justice. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, where concepts of reconciliation and amnesty were used together, is often cited as a success story where concepts of reconciliation and amnesty were used together. The paramount objective there was to uncover truth about human-rights abuses during apartheid, and for that purpose grant of amnesty was used as a mechanism to encourage disclosure. First of all, it is debatable whether grant of amnesty is justifiable at all in the context of Pakistan, where the twin problem during the 1990s was that the ruling regimes abused state authority with impunity and the opposition continued to encourage the military to interfere with the political process.

In this backdrop, we don't need to uncover any hidden facts. All we require is an unequivocal resolve by politicians to build representative democracy, strengthen civilian control of the military and not rock the boat when they are in opposition. And, further, an enabling environment for the courts to determine the merits of corruption and other criminal charges against politicians in a non-partisan manner. Even if there is any conceivable rationale for amnesty, such a pardon must be contingent on disclosure and acceptance of wrongdoing. That Pakistan is plagued by one of the highest levels of corruption in the world is an undisputed fact. If the logic of the National Reconciliation Ordinance is to be accepted and corruption cases against all holders of public office pending before the courts are to be quashed for being politically motivated, who has been plundering our national wealth?

The reconciliation law also falls foul of Article 25 of our Constitution. This article promises all citizens equal protection of the law, subject to reasonable distinctions. Holders of public office do not constitute a vulnerable class that needs special protection of the law over and above that afforded to ordinary citizens. The reconciliation law has amended the National Accountability Ordinance in order to terminate all proceedings against holders of public office initiated prior to October 12, 1999, and to declare void any orders of the courts passed in absentia. It also amends the Code of Criminal Procedure to create a review board that can withdraw cases initiated between Jan. 1, 1986, and October 12, 1999, against any accused found by such board "to be falsely involved for political reasons or through political victimisation."

The reconciliation law thus creates whimsical distinctions and arbitrary cuts off dates and is a tailor-made cover for the misdeeds of the PPP and the MQM. Equally importantly, it launches an insidious attack on the jurisdiction of the judicature. Within our constitutional design, determination of the culpability of any accused falls within the judiciary's domain. While the president has been given the extraordinary constitutional power to grant a pardon or remit the sentence of a convict, the distinction between pardon and acquittal is vital. The Constitution allows the president to pardon a convict, but it does not endow him with the ability to erase someone's guilt. Through this unique law, the general has attempted to usurp such authority for the executive to whitewash the past record of a politician willing to play ball.

The Musharraf regime's method of accountability and its approach to reconciliation are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. In the aftermath of his coup, and especially prior to the national election of 2002, the general used the NAB process as a stick to bring politicians with a questionable past within the fold of the King's' party. Now, during the run-up to the 2008 national election, the National Reconciliation Ordinance has been brought in as a carrot to cast a wider net and cobble together another illicit coalition of the susceptible. The casualty in all this is justice and accountability. After all, there are only two fundamental approaches to accountability: political and legal. Lack of a fair electoral process or meaningful self-governance renders accountability through the polls largely ineffectual. And the National Reconciliation Ordinance has attempted to neuter the legal resource to holding the corrupt accountable.

If someone were to script a strategy on how a government can break the spirit of a nation, Pakistan in 2007 would be one useful illustration. Listing a few watershed events is probably explanation enough: dismissal of the chief justice, the massacre of May 12, the tragedy of Lal Masjid, the insurgency in FATA, the suicide bombings, the forced deportation of Nawaz Sharif in which the related Supreme Court ruling was flouted, the general's re-selection as president in uniform and now the reconciliation law.

But more importantly, 2007 has also been a year of missed opportunities. The general could have decided to hold free and fair elections, return the country to its people and walk into the sunset, but he didn't. The nation was up in arms fighting for the independence of judiciary and restoration of the chief justice, but the rewards of that poignant success have been fleeting, at best. The opposition parties could have harnessed the energy of the lawyers' struggle and transformed it into a political movement for restoration of democracy, but it neither had the credibility nor the charisma for that, nor did it exhibit the selflessness needed to fight for something larger than parochial interests. And then the second line of leadership within the PPP, the ruling PML-Q and even the JUI-F could have shown the courage to break ranks and prefer personal integrity over the diktat of expediency and depraved political cunning, but they didn't.

The most promising claim any available candidate for power in Pakistan today can make is that he or she is the lesser evil. And that in a nutshell explains the source of despondency as well as the country's tragedy.



Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu

An eye opening article which got published in the News international of Oct 13, 2007

Saturday, October 13, 2007
Chris Cork

Getting unstuck

Psychologists and psychiatrists when they are describing a person who is in a cycle of behaviour which is either self-destructive or simply futile; say that they are 'stuck'. The individual has neither the means not the will to escape from whatever trap they are in, and revolve -- endlessly 'stuck.' Those who treat them look for strategies to unstick the stalled personality. Thus it is with some countries and few more so than Pakistan. Pakistan has been 'stuck' for a very long time; perhaps for most of its life as a nation, in a grinding cycle of regimes that shuttle between military and civilian -- although even in civilian phases with a strong military hand on the rudder of state.

Getting Pakistan unstuck is never going to be easy. It is also never going to be a process which is transparent, pretty, clean, tidy, ethical or popular with everybody. It will require guile, low cunning, the ruthless wielding of assorted powers, the bending of the law and probably a trample through the field of human rights, shameless compromise and a complete disregard for any model even vaguely resembling democracy. It will be accomplished, if at all, by self-serving and power-hungry individuals and political entities who are determined to protect their own interests and come out of the deal with a profit -- be it kudos, fame, money in the bank or plain old 'respect'. Most of these national saviours (but not all) are tainted with every stain the Global Catalogue of Corruption can identify and a few that it can't. Several have recently been decoupled from criminal cases that would have seen them long-time-dark-hole had they ever been brought to court and proved.

None of which sounds like a recipe for success; but maybe, just maybe, a conjunction of events and individuals have created an environment which could allow the un-sticking of the mess that Pakistan has become. There are no new players on the stage, it is the same old repertory troupe that has toured for a couple of generations, but they are now mulling the possibility of playing to a new script. Rehearsals have been going on since late spring with much backstage squabbling among the cast but at last they are -- mostly -- reading from the same page together even if not yet reading their lines sequentially.

Out there in the darkness beyond the footlights there are The Masses, currently comatose at the thought of elections to the National Assembly. They know that the upcoming election in which they are invited to participate so long as they can be found on the voters list, is unlikely to be any more 'free and fair' than any other election which has preceded it. There is no history of wholly free or fair elections in Pakistan and no reason to believe that the next one will be much different. It may, it is true, be free-er and fair-er, and there will be heightened scrutiny; but the reality is that ballot boxes will be stuffed, voters bought or intimidated and the results massaged to within an inch of their lives.

Nor is the outcome of all this rigging going to be any more democratic than the elections are truly free and fair. Yes, there are going to be shifts in the balance of power in the alphabet soup of Pakistani politics, and some of the current alliances are going to crumble and fall and there will be winners and losers -- though all will claim they have won no matter how big their margin of loss. There will be floor-crossing and horse trading in the jockeying for position and the race to obtain the keys to one of those rather handy apartments in the MNA hostel in Islamabad-- and what is going to emerge after the dust has settled is a creature quite unlike any other to take the stage -- a Democradictacy. It may be something of a Frankensteinian creation, but this hybrid of military and civilian may be the beast that leads Pakistan out of the Circle of Stuckness.

There are a few other things that are not going to change either. Calls on all sides for the military to leave the political arena -- coupled with a naïveté which says they actually will -- have no foundation in the real world. Ideally yes, the soldiers should be back in their barracks. They should also, ideally, leave the banking business, housing and real-estate dealing, cement making and a host of other economic activities and partnerships. It that going to happen? Of course not. You do not switch Military Inc off and on like a light bulb. They are partners in the brokerage business that hatched Democradictacy; they occupy core and key positions in the economic life of the nation and fatuous calls for their summary retreat are just that -- fatuous. They may be forced into a fighting retreat at some far time in the future, but in the here and now they are part-and-parcel of governance and its institutions.

The principal players of this drama are not about to fall in love either. There will be no happy-ever-after, and this pair gritted their teeth as they gingerly sat on a wide sofa. The bride and groom, soon- to-be parents of the fledgling Democradictacy, cordially loathe one another, have done for donkeys years and will continue to do so no matter what their unctuous spokespeople may say to the contrary. Despite which, this mismatched pair is perhaps the best chance that there is for bringing about real change, change that is lasting and for the benefit, at last, of The Masses.

All the other players are now relegated to bit-parts (with an understudy for one of the principals enjoying a period of Arab hospitality but available for a swift return in the event of indisposition or assassination). Beards and aging cricketers will come and go in the background, and the Greek chorus of legal eagles will squawk and beat torts from the wings, but it will be Him and Her, front and centre, for the next couple of years.

A couple of years? Yes…three, perhaps. Because the new production is not going to run forever. Both the principals are essentially transitional figures, neither of them a fixture. Their job, as has doubtless been spelled out to them by angels of an American persuasion, is to manage the space between the mess that is now and the less-of-a-mess there will be later. The mess will be further reduced by their own exit, one to a charming pied-a-terre in Turkey and the other to a lifetime of modeling tasteless diamante spectacle frames.

The space that they will manage is the space that Pakistan has got in which to unstick itself. They do not have long to do the job, and it will be a bloody affair indeed. The best they will be able to accomplish is to damp the fires of extremism (they will not put them out) and consolidate the clear economic gains of the last eight years. Will they reduce poverty? Probably not. Corruption? Perhaps, a little. Bring new faces to the stage? One hopes. It is this last that will mark whether the un-sticking has been successful and there will be a handing of the torch to a new (er) generation; another transition, not an ending of the process.

Why might it work? For no other reason than that there will have never been a dispensation like it before. This really is an opportunity to break the Circle of Stuckness and move into new territory. Nobody is going to like it much, and there will be yet more pain and bloodshed and deception along the way, more nameless graves. Unsticking Pakistan is a job like no other in the world and it behooves all with a stake in the national future to recognise the window of opportunity -- and then use 160 million pairs of hands to turn the latch, open the window and breathe the winds of change as they blow through. The price of failure? Will the last person to leave turn out the lights -- assuming, of course, that there is any power to turn the lights on in the first place.



The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email:manticore73@gmail.com

Dawa behen,

Welcome back. So what is your score going to be on this thread, 70 at least?

Regards

Khawarzimic science Society is a wonderful organization..anyone from any field ..and from any part of the world..can be its member....Pakistan uper brains are its members...it was strted by Dr Sabieh and his father Dr Siddiqui ..in 1997 ..with only 2 or 3 memebers..and alhumdullilah ..now .its the biggest non profit pakistani based society...


When he was studying his D Phil..in Oxford as Rhodes Scholar..in vacation when he used to vist Pakistan...he used to give totally free lectures to pakistan top most educational institutions like ....



* Punjab University...Lahore
*UET..Lahore
*FAST..Lahore
*Government College..Lahore
*Quada-i-Azam University Islamabad
* COMSAT ...Islamabad



about all which he was studying at Oxford....to keep pakistani students up to date with latest developments nano technology..and quantum computing....



All lectures were free...and large amout of young students benifited from them....



The Khawrzimic society also invited great scholars like Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy..and many other to its totally free public lectures....about new developments in science and physics...


after completing his PhD...He was previously teching ...in

*Quada-i-Azam University ...NCP(Natinal Centre of Physics)..Islamabad
* UET ..Lahore
* COMSAT



officaly..and privately gave some lectures ..in

* Government College Chemistry Department

*CASP(Centre for Advandced Studies in Physics) ..Goverment College Lahore...

* FAST NUCES University...

* LUMS...



then after 3 months he went for his post doctoral in Berkeley..under world top NMR(Nuclear Magnetic Resonance..an advanced form of MRI..Magnetic Resonance Imaging used extensively inmedical field) ...Professor Alex Pines..of PINES LABS...



He also worked in LAWRENCE BERKELEY LAB there..a lab ..which is under US energy department mostly..and very few blessed students get a chance to work there...



here is the link of Pines Labs....Profesor Alex Pines and his achievements...his students are wordly known as PINEUTS ...I think he is the only pakistani may be first muslim ..to be PINENUT...

http://waugh.cchem.berkeley.edu/

------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------

Muhammad SabiehAnwar completed his D.Phil. from the Department of Physics, Oxford University (UK) in 2004, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar from Pakistan. His dissertation was titled, "Quantum Information Processing using Para-Hydrogen NMR" and revolved around the preparation of pure quantum states for quantum computing. This work also constituted the first demonstration of quantum entanglement in the liquid state.



His post-doctoral experience at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) involved the demonstration of hyperpolarized NMR using heterogeneous catalytic systems, microfluidic and "lab-on-a-chip" NMR, synthesis of precise magnetic fields for ex-situ NMR, algorithmic cooling, polarization lifetime studies and hypersensitive nanoparticle MRI. Prior to his doctoral studies,



Sabieh received his B.Sc. (Honours) degree in electrical engineering (electronics and communications) from the UET, Lahore.


Sabieh'scurrent research interests include quantum control, spin mechanisms in nanomagnetic materials and nanotechnology. His research has been published in the Physical Review Letters, A and B, Chemical Physics Letters, Analytical Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry, Daltons Transactions and Modern Physics Letters B.



He has also taught at the

* Punjab University,

* UET (Lahore),

* National Centre for Physics ,Quada-i-Azam University (Islamabad)

* COMSATS Department of Physics (Islamabad)

and has been an active speaker at many national and international physics / chemistry forums.




Dr. Sabieh is also the Joint Secretary and one of the founders of the Khwarzimic Science Society

http://www.khwarzimic.org-


a non-profit organization aiming at developing a science culture in Lahore's educational institutions. This Association has organized about 150 events of different kinds with the objective of strengthening the popular image of the scientific content and method.



Awards
Dr. Sabieh is recipient of several awards including the Rhodes Scholarship (Rhodes Trust), G.A. Paul Scholarship (University College, Oxford), Aizaz-e-Sabqat (Government of Pakistan), Nishan-e-Haider Scholarship (GOP), Roll-of-Honour (Government College, Lahore) and gold medals from the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education and Punjab Textbook Board.

There are some people ....who are fully dedicating to this country ..by all the skills which they get ..from higher studies in West.......and using it for ummah and Pakistan.....such genius man....can get millons of pounds and dollars in just few years ..abroad...but ....look at him..his age..only 29 years ..and he has completed his Post Doc from University of California ..Berkeley....under world top most NMR scientist Professor Alex Pines ...completed his PhD at 27 from Oxford Universiy.....got his Electrical Engineering from UET , Lahore....broke the 10 years record in Goverment College,Lahore ..in FSc..by getting 961/1100 and got first position and over all fourth in Matriculations from Crescent Model School getting 779/850 and also passed O Level exams ..in few months ..getting 9 A's...!!!!



Such people ..which are honour of muslim ummah ..honour of pakistan...and whole Pakistan is proud of him and such people..which are serving this country....not for money...not for luxuries..not for this and that...He is now Assistant Professor in SSE(School of science and Engineering) in LUMS, Lahore in Physics....



He can get 9 or 10 lakh Rs / month while researching in US or be a part of any prestigious universty faculty....but ...look...he is serving his mother land..due to which ..he is now ..at thid position ......




God bless such genius patriotics people....We are proud of him..Pakistan is poud of him...Whole isamic ummah is proud of him... and all such dedicated people...

I would just like to make one thing clear here. I do not "expect" the ruling class to relinquish their hold. I fully agree with Urstruly that it takes much more than a decision from supreme court to actually change the entire status quo but every institution has to play a part when it becomes due and especially when the oppurtunity arises. This time judiciary had a better oppurtunity to at least redeem itself but it has faltered again. When I talked about the status quo it was from judical aspect not from every aspect.

Re: # 1 alas,
urstruly, shared his wisdom....!!!!!

I am just surprised at the naivette of many a Pakistani who just thought that the parasitic oppressive class would just reliquish their choke hold on Pakistan out of goodness of their hearts, just because a judge wants them to. As it is evident from the past week of infamy in the history of Pakistan this is not going to happen without much bloodshed.