March 22nd, 2016
By Riaz Missen.
WHAT will be the course of international politics in the decades to come? The president of America drew clear lines in his annual State of the Union address. Mr. Obama said that instability will affect most parts of the Middle East and Afghanistan for decades, affecting Pakistan as well. American strategy vis-a-vis issues of global concerns is to help the concerned countries ensuring that they pull their own weight.
The factors of instability in Middle East are many and numerous. The region is not at peace since 2010, the year when Arab Spring begun and people rose against the authoritarian regimes. A lot has changed but enough has survived the upheaval as well. It is not clear who is behind the whole ‘democratic’ project, but the move, benefiting from social media networks, did create strong ripples in the Middle East shaking some autocratic regimes to their bones and unsettling the foreign policies of others. The resulting power vacuum has to be filled by the regional powers — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Israel.
The situation in Middle East is fluid and, to the most extent, uncertain. While ISIS (Daesh) is preying on Syria and Iraq to enlarge its size, Turkey confronts the challenge of independence posed by Kurdish part of its population. Saudi Arabia worrying growing indifference of its long-term ally, the US, is playing threat of the Arab Peninsula being encircled by Iran-supported regimes. Understandably, it has got aligned with itself the rich monarchies under the banner of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
After years of hibernation Russia has made a dashing comeback in international politics. In its reactionary phase it has absorbed some countries while injected turbulence in others to put a full stop on European Union /NATO enlargement bombing out the opponents of Assad regime in Syria. After the fall of Soviet Union, the era of ideological politics is over. Geopolitical considerations are taking precedent instead.
The US, too, has changed a lot. Its War on Terror is over. Barack Obama says America will not be dragged into the sectarian terrain of Middle East. What are Pakistan’s stakes in Middle East? Like any country of the world, Pakistan is putting its own interest first than the others. Be its allies in the Arab world or the neighbours, its efforts are focused on not only keeping anarchy away from its borders but also clear its own soil off forces allied to parochial interests, at home and abroad. Military operation, Zarb-e-Azb, in FATA is about to complete while National Action Plan (NAP) is in the full swing to remove infrastructure of militancy from across the country.
Pakistan has found itself lucky to be strategically located on the crossroads of Asia. China as a gesture of friendliness has taken up the task of developing trade/energy corridor through Pakistan linking its eastern regions with Gawadar Port through rail and road networks. It has already helped Islamabad secure a permanent seat in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The new found opportunity is certainly going to tap vast energy resources of Central Asia and serving as gateway to this region for India.
Middle East, which Pakistan was welded to during the Cold War era, has emerged as the first major testing ground for Pakistan’s new found strategic vision, whereby it has projected itself as a regional player. Given the complexity of situation, whereby the vacuum of power resulted from Arab Spring has forced regional powers to realign their interests and even form odd partnerships, Pakistan’s best priority seems to rethink, pause and reflect rather than jump straight into the pit.
Despite its long and deep defence ties with Saudi kingdom refused to be part of its war to reinstall a deposed regime in Yemen. The same policy reflects in Islamabad’s approach towards Assad regime, which Riyadh takes as an eyesore. It is noteworthy that only few days before Pakistan participated in the Kingdom’s sponsored ‘North Thunder’, its foreign minister, Adel Al Jubeir, visited Delhi to declare India as the kingdom’s strategic partner.
Comments Off on Pakistan’s Evolving Strategic Vision
February 21st, 2016
By Riaz Missen.
While appreciating the government for bringing back economy from brink, the World Bank Group (WBG) President Jim Yong Kim, who recently visited Pakistan, has urged on the need to create more space for the private sector.
During his tow-day visit, Mr. Yong insisted on accelerating energy reforms, make improvements at the community level for health and education, and ensure that anti-poverty measures are effective at reaching poor people.
The World Bank has 26 investment lending projects under implementation in Pakistan committing $4.99 billion other than $5.6 billion, including $1.2 billion during the 2015 fiscal year. It wants the government to focus on quickly lifting the people out of poverty and make economic growth widely shared.
What Mr. Yong has suggested is what the spirit of democracy call for. The civilian regimes need to take care of consumers and let the businesses take care of themselves. The development agenda is meaningless if it is not guided by the spirit to advance human rights.
While Pakistan is geared to become a ‘genuine’ democracy and the political parties have to serve its backbone, the focus of economic development has to be the uplift of the teeming millions, who have been left out and marginalized as the country has gone through the process of structural reforms undertaken by the Musharraf regime.
Human indices are falling and incidents of extreme poverty are growing. The newly-born babies and mothers are dying of malnutrition but governments have no idea other than increasing the number of hospitals and enhancing supply of medicines. Thar in lower Sindh is the case in point.
The other issue worth mentioning is the heavy industry contributing to GDP with higher ratio by every passing year but not fulfilling environmental obligations and showing least respect for labour laws.
The Musharraf-led political set up had relied heavily on the international financial institutions (IFIs) to carry out structural reforms. While the fiscal deficit was taken care of, the economic managers undertook the course of economic liberalization, whereby the private sector had to take a leading role.
Alternatively, the government disposed off many public-run entities and its success yielded results with the energy, telecom and banking sector attracting huge foreign direct investment. But the job of privatization has been half-done.
Pakistan annually pumps $ 5 billion into the loss earning public enterprises. The burden is definitely shifted to the consumers. The process of privatization remained virtually stopped during the PPP’s tenure. The PML-N in 2013, when it came into power, undertook to revive process and complete it in three years against $ 6.6 billion loan from IMF.
In the post- structural reforms scenario, the government is not meant to run businesses but to hand over the job to the private sector. Keeping in mind this ‘rule of game’, implementation of environmental regulations and labour laws becomes the major responsibility of the government. The government has to facilitate consumers with the availability of cheap and quality goods; quality controls and regional trade is the key to this end other than bringing down the cost of doing business.
Instead of expanding the tax net and overcoming the losses incurred by the state-run enterprises (SOEs), the civilian regimes have been extracting more and more from kitchen items, energy and telecom products. That the indirect taxes remain the major source of its revenues signifies a criminal assault both on democracy and economy.
Since 2008, there is tendency among the governments to respond the pressure of the IFIs to cut down public expenditure by removing subsidies and enhancing revenues through taxes on goods with non-elastic demands. There should have been introduced austerity measures but look at the number of ministries and the budgetary allocations for presidency and the PM house.
That the GST stands as higher as 17% and the government is taxing petroleum products to the limit of 50% while the tax-to-GDP ratio is merely 10%, it is enough to put democracy and economy into peril. It is definitely not what IFIs like World Bank mean when they emphasize on inclusive and sustainable growth.
The alternative course certainly passes through privatization, expanding the tax net, spending more on social sector development (health and education) and most importantly widening the tax net through registering the unregistered businesses. Whatever the whole exercise yields, it must be kept in the mind that it is the consumer who will judge the performance of the government on the polling day.
For more information on Riaz Rissen: http://missen.blogspot.com
Comments Off on Why democracy fails to deliver in Pakistan?
February 6th, 2016
By Miaz Missen.
NAP is a big blow to the vested interests that block pro-people legislation and raise hurdle to devolution of power to the grassroots level as per the spirit of the Constitution.
While in Maldives, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif vowed to extend every kind of cooperation to neighbors to curb and eliminate the menace of terror. The policy statement duly reflects Pakistan’s determination to project an independent course of foreign policy, something it has aspired for since the end of Cold War.
After Pakistan is no more part of global ideological politics, it has simply refused to be a battle ground of divisive ideologies as well. The neighbors may take time to understand its urge for peace but the dictates of geography and the nature of times have made the country to claim its due place under the sun.
No neighbor of Pakistan, except China, actually wants to believe change of hearts and minds in Islamabad. They may consult history and their imperial past may accord Pakistan merely a role of buffer state. Their sublime ambitions may ignore the fact that Pakistan occupies approximately the same region where a unique civilization has grown which continues to thrive with a dynamic society embracing pluralist cultural tradition. A fertile land fed by five mighty rivers and scores of streams gushing down the Himalayas and Hindu Kush continue to make a wonderful landscape marked with valleys, plains and deserts. Four seasons just add to its dignified livelihood absent in many remarkable neighbors, no matter how ancient and historical they are.
Pakistan has passed through thick and thins of times but has become a reality, which only fools will have the courage to deny. Its moderate size, growing economy and the sixth largest army of the world equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry, do matter. The enemy can’t think of occupying it by force; the ongoing spate of terrorism is simply an enemy’s attempt to carry out its evil designs through unleashing on it the forces of instability, benefiting more from the structural weakness of political system and administrative weaknesses than the fragility of defense apparatus.
Actually, Pakistan is in no position to raise its accusing finger at neighborhood due to its particular composition of society. Having its racial stocks cut across by international boundaries and sectarianism having taken firm roots in the society, blaming neighbors of stoking such fires will weaken its position further. The alternative course, which it is certainly taking, is to remove the reasons which urge its own people to get attracted to the divisive ideologies.
Take the case of sweeping constitutional reforms of 2010, which besides paving the country’s way towards a genuine democracy, also deprived ethno-nationalists of the reason to indulge in any activity undermining the integrity of Pakistan by granting provinces the autonomy, which no federal unit in the entire region can claim to have ever enjoyed. To extinguish sectarian fires, there is lot in National Action Plan (NAP) of 2014.
Of course, ethno-nationalism remains a problem and military means are not, actually they have never been, its solution. The reason is that the demands of its adherents are not satiable. That they continue to strain the nerves of the Centre, owes much to the mindset of the mainstream political parties originating in smaller province; they are not quick to adjust with the changed centre-province relations, which they had administered themselves, and continue to be locked in old ways of politics.
The PPP’ which had actually spearheaded the move for provincial autonomy, has stuck to ethnic politics. While it rules over Sindh, the second largest province of the county, ethnic tensions have simply flared up pushing the largest city and the country’s business hub into anarchy. The solution definitely lies in meeting democratic demands of the MQM, the party that dominates the city, of ending urban-rural job quotas and autonomous local government system, but doing the same will deprive the PPP of the rural vote bank, which sustains it in power in Sindh; it has dominated Senate by playing the fear of Punjab’s dominance in Parliament.
PPP’s ethnic mode of politic is also visible in its bonhomie with ANP, an ethno-national party which it uses as a balancing factor in Karachi, the provincial capital where the PPP has only a thin presence. It is this partnership that made possible giving NWFP an ethnic nomenclature. The PPP also plays to the gallery of ethno-nationalists in Punjab; it lost its bastion of ‘Saraiki’ belt only due to the reason that Sindhi nationalists opposed the division of the largest province on ethno-linguistic grounds lest the required constitutional amendments pose threat to the integrity of multi-ethnic smaller provinces as well.
Pakistan can no more stay divided against itself for long; it has to overcome, preferably resolve, itself ethnic dilemma to occupy its due place under the sun. The problem is constitutional, for the ethnics, have only saw a solution through sweeping reforms of 2010 in rendering Pakistan an ethnic federation. Beyond that narrow and skewed vision of ethno-nationalist forces, which PPP happens to lead, lies a pluralist Pakistan, which Quaid-e-Azam advocated in his 11th August address to the 1st Constituent Assembly: a state where people are treated as equal citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religion.
The NAP is directed at eradicating menace terrorism from Pakistan’s soil; its spirit calls for removing the causes that breed it. The linkage between corruption and terror-financing has been duly established but that between huge inequalities and violence have yet to be realized. The problem of crime and violence are structural and need Constitutional reforms, not necessarily to the likings of status-quo powers, which hold hostage the mainstream political parties.
NAP is a big blow to the vested interests that block pro-people legislation and raise hurdle to devolution of power to the grassroots level as per the spirit of the Constitution. But Center has to move fast to outmaneuver the ethno-national forces, which have developed nexus with religious right, to avail the space the strategic scenario is offering it, both in terms of foreign investment and regional trade.
Before the next general elections are in sight and the country is in the electoral fuss as usual, Pakistan needs to upgrade the NAP to addresses structural anomalies of the federation as well. It essentially means modeling the Constitution on the ideals of the founder of Pakistan as well as seeing off the Westminster model of government, which restricts democracy’s benefits only to ‘imagined’ communities, not the real people, the ‘citizens’ of Pakistan.
Comments Off on Pakistan’s quest for regional stability
October 17th, 2015
By Riaz Missen.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has become under strong impression, and is inclined to believe, that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $50 billion infrastructure development project, is under serious threat by the forces that don’t want to see the people of this country prosper. These include both the home-grown militancy and the eastern neighbor, India.
Nisar, who is the central leader of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), knows well the dynamics of domestic and regional politics. He knows well as to how the people, divided in brotherhoods and tribes, articulate and manipulate their collective interests with the state of Pakistan.
The racial groups and tribes, having stakes in bureaucracy, both civil and military, have been on the move since before the creation of Pakistan to enhance their space in the polity. Those not yet seen the dawn of prosperity have searched for proper place under the sun. The modern era has seen the birth of yet another phenomenon, ethnicity, which with the passage of time has given a particular direction to the country — the 18th Constitutional amendment has transformed Pakistan latterly into an ethnic federation.
Of course, India has the reason and the ability to pose the most serious threat to the integrity of
Pakistan due to the reason that it occupies the regions where from Indus River and its tributaries flow out. India occupies Kashmir and this fact defies both the reason and logic of partition of British India, which served as the basis of Pakistan movement.
The fact of the matter is that Pakistan is subject to pressures from both the eastern and western sides. After all, Iran is not that a simple country, merely managing its affairs in the Middle East. Its diplomacy has opened a window on its traditional foe, America and, consequently, brought Saudi Arabia to its knees.
Afghans have always been depending for their bread and butter on the planes of Punjab. They have been integral part of the Central Asian move to cross and occupy the other side of the Indus River. That Ahmad Shah Abdali could carve a state out of Iran was due to the fact that Mughal Empire had declined and there was none to keep him away from the Indus Valley.
Our security agencies may not be able to exactly locate the enemy but the reality is there. If Pakistan is in state of turmoil and lawlessness has become a major threat to the peace and prosperity of the country, it is clearly known that the state of affairs certainly goes advantage to one or the other neighbour around. Whether the nature of militancy is sectarian or ethnic, the gist of the matter is that it defies the writ of Pakistan over a swath of territory between the Durand Line and the banks of the Indus River.
In this backdrop, the wiser course for the decision-makers of Pakistan should have been to take the whole question of Pakistan’s survival against the fact that international boundaries divide its ethnic groups among the surrounding counties. The case of Kashmiris, in this sense, is not that different from Pukhtoons and Balochs, which share tribal links inside Afghanistan and Iran.
The first and the most urgent task of the decision-makers, after the creation of Pakistan, should have been to link the existence of the country with history. After all there are traces of a state, greater than what we have right now, before the Arab invasion opened the door at Central Asian kings for invasion and occupation of the Indus Valley.
In the presence of enough natural resources, the most important one being the five mighty rivers, a varying landscape and the four seasons and the fertility to sustain robust agriculture, a strong and vibrant territorial nationalism was needed to defend the nascent state — something that the Quaid indicated to in his 11 August address to the 1st Constituent Assembly. But, quite unfortunately, communal /religious interpretation of Pakistan’s existence was adopted, giving ‘fair’ chance to ethnonationalism.
Why Pakistan did not move away from religious nationalism after the Fall of Dhaka? Now one may regard the conduct of the decision-makers as mysterious. The framers of the first ‘consensus’ constitution of the country assigned a vast space to the religious parties in the affairs of the state, which going by constitution is geared to be theocracy. Note the fact that the whole political scenario was dominated by the parties with their origins in the regions outside Punjab.
While the fact of religious militancy now stands exposed with loudspeakers turned off and the fiery hate-speakers finding difficult to meet their two ends, it is the extra-ordinary leniency towards ethno-nationalism that poses serious threat to the integrity of Pakistan.
The situation has becomes quite embarrassing after the devolution of power, which has rendered the ethnic provinces autonomous to the extent that the Centre can neither question their commitment to the socio-economic development process nor it can independently undertake mega projects (big water reservoirs) on its own.
While the Constitutional reforms (read 18th Amendment) have rendered Pakistan as an ethnic federation, it is hard to achieve the objective of national solidarity for the simple reason that the final goal of any ethnonationalism is not autonomy but independence for the associated group.
The constitutional reforms, which on the one side granted unprecedented autonomy to provinces and, on the other, killed the prospects of the new provinces, which a federation needs to create for effective delivery of public goods (health, education and justice), speaks louder about the mindset that once framed the Constitution and later reformed it.
Chaudhry Nisar, who has recently claimed the privilege directly interacting with the General Headquarters (GHQ), rather than through the Ministry of Defence, can be instrumental in drawing the fine line which nobody should cross. Militancy against state and its people, on whatever pretext, has no justification; it is the job only traitors do and glorify.
Chaudhry Nisar is exclusively right in believing and asserting that CPEC is under threat; so is the prosperity of Pakistan. What would certainly save this project, and the country from ultimate default, hinges on the ability of the decision-makers to check the growth of parallel nationalism, which the tribal mindset has spun to justify racial and tribal prejudices.
A strong nationalism, based on sovereign past of the region comprising Pakistan, is the only answer to the woes of Pakistan. A paradigm shift, whereby Pakistan, is taken as heir to a great civilisation of Indus Valley, will open the door of new politics. There is no dearth of forces acting to the benefit of the neighbours, even without being in league with them. It is basically the narrative, which glorifies racial prejudices in the garb of religion to undermine the logic of a vibrant and viable state.
Pakistan needs an ideology to infuse unity in a diverse society like Pakistan. Sect, race and ethnicity are divisive in their nature and, hence, can’t serve the basis of nationalism. Pakistan needs to explore its past for the way out. And guidance for the common citizens and the decision-makers as to how to manage affairs of the society and the state is so abundantly available in the works of sages, right from Baba Farid to Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, who dominated public discourse between 12th to 20th centuries in the Land of the Pure.
For more on Riaz Missen please go to missen.blogspot.com
Comments Off on Why democracy can’t resolve Pakistan’s security dilemma
September 28th, 2015
By Riaz Missen.
The way out of the problem that Westminster Model has posed to the peaceful and dignified survival of Pakistan, is to see it off and try the presidential system instead. How to do it?
Political parties of Pakistan are really at crossroads. The PPP is a spent force. The case of regional parties is not that much different. None knows about the future of the PML-N after it retires, willingly or otherwise, from the corridors of power.
Politics of the old parties has reached a dead end, for they have achieved what they have been campaigning for since long. Take the case of the ANP. After it succeeded in giving NWFP an ethnic identity, it has evaporated into the air.
The MQM had a better chance to survive if it had not struck too much compromises with the PPP over autonomous local governments and job quotas. What its politics yielded to Karachi was only anarchy.
Though some sections of the society are attaching high hopes with the PTI and or terming it a new force but seeing its politics so far one is bound to wonder aloud whether it will ever take some steady and socially approved course to achieve the goal of New Pakistan.
The most interesting case is that of the JUI-F, leaving aside the JI, which has set new traditions of opportunism while guarding its core interest of not compromising over the religious credentials of the state.
What the politically have yielded through their bid to amend the constitution, is an ethnic federation where the question of socio-economic development have been left to the federal units. The Centre has to calm and neutral if provinces failure to deliver, the necessary public goods — most importantly the security of life and property.
The political parties seem to be fanatically concerned with democracy as a goal, not as a means to peace and growth. Despite their tall claims, these were not they, or to say their struggle, that had won democracy for Pakistan but the very forces that had brought its end cleared its way as well.
While political parties have retained authoritarian decision-making structures and majority of them are not organized and, hence, depend on the street power of fanatical religious and ethnic groups, blame ‘enemies of democracy’ every time they confront accountability.
Of the course, the way forward for the political parties to reorient themselves strictly believing that democracy is the future of the country. To be an effective stakeholder of Pakistan, they have to restructure themselves, reorient their policies and answer some mindboggling questions they have themselves posed while undertaking the parawise revision of the Constitution (18th Amendment).
See how the political parties acted opportunistically as for as amending the Constitution was concerned. The leading political parties cunningly put into effect two-party system as per their understanding of 2006 (Charter of Democracy). The PPP championed the cause of smaller provinces on the question of autonomy and distribution of fiscal resources while PML-N remained contended with the third term of Nawaz Sharif and shelving the issue of new province.
PML-N did not object to the 7th NFC Award or the deletion of concurrent list as Punjab, which it was lording over, did not lose much in new arrangements. That the question of water reservoirs over Indus River has to be decided in the Council of Common Interest (CCI) also did not bother it very much.
The case of ANP was simple: it wanted the renaming of NWFP vis-a-vis the fact that a particular linguistic group had got majority there in the course of time. Unmindful of the consequences of the ripples, most importantly the sense of alienation, the move would create in such a multi-linguistic province, the PPP and the PML-N agreed.
Come to devolution, its spirit seems to be lost. Power and resources have been devolved to Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar but there is no arrangement to pass the same on to the grassroots level. Not a single province can claim it has given a local bodies system, which empowers the people at grassroots level to decide their fate vis-à-vis the provisions of the basic necessities of life.
The naive stratagem of the leading parties has ended up in the phenomenal rise of the PTI, which has tried to articulate the frustration of the masses over their apathy towards their genuine problems.
What is mysterious about the PTI is that it is short of any clear plan to execute the agenda of devolution up to the grassroots level. The party has no prospects to matter outside KP except in some constituencies of Punjab. So the story of hung Parliament will go on.
Pakistan’s governance structure needs overhaul. It is something which the political parties have failed to do due the reason that they have been hijacked by vested interests. It is extraordinary wealth and the authoritarian decision-making structure which keeps PML-N rolling; it is the ethnic card which PPP is always willing to show for good share in political system. The street power of religious and ethnonationalism groups keep their gains intact.
Those willing to restructure Pakistan as per the requirements of global age are bound to concentrate on the unholy nexus between militancy and politics, which the parliamentary democracy is that ready to accommodate. It is what that happened in 1973, when the Constitution was framed, and it is the case as it has become subject to amendment.
While agreed on the point that there is no need of new federal units at all, the smaller provinces have struck arrangement to neutralize the dominance of Punjab in the Lower House of the Parliament by dominating the Senate. While they have secured provincial autonomy, it does not concern them who dominate the Centre.
Of course, the Constitution has to be revised to accommodate the vision of the Quaid-e-Azam, which he spelled in his address to the 1st Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
Ethnicity and religiously inspired nationalism has pushed the politics to dead end. Even general elections seem to be no remedy. If such a democratic exercise ends up in a hung Parliament this time too, the country will move nowhere. There will be no end of regressive taxation; ecology and environment will remain neglected; and the standards of life will not improve. The powerlessness of the people will keep translating into chaos and anarchy of the kind we have right now.
The way out of the problem that Westminster Model has posed to the peaceful and dignified survival of Pakistan, whereby it has fuelled ethnic and sectarian militancy, is to see it off and try the presidential system instead. How to do it? Let’s not forget something that has bothered us a lot: the doctrine of necessity. Who should preside over the transition period, is something serious. The best course in this regard should be the one which led to the formation of military courts whereby some legislators sobbed, cried and felt ashamed but voted for them.
Comments Off on Political parties at crossroads