July 2018 witnessed an unprecedented euphoria amongst the masses in Karachi. With utmost certainty and assurance, folks were found rallying around the green and red banners of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).
A casual conversation with many on the street would turn into a passionate debate with hope and optimism at the centre.
“Yes, the captain will win and shall be our new prime minister. He shall end all our miseries, especially poor governance, dilapidated urban services, lack of representation in the main echelons of power, lawlessness and insecurity, rampant corruption and all the ills that exist in Karachi,” a young lady in a university department beamingly remarked.
She was surrounded by many young girls who had affectionately painted the PTI flag on their faces a day before the elections.
The sentiments of the middle-aged and elderly were also not different:
“You will see. He will reform this city like no one else had done before….like the way he led his team to lift the Cricket World cup in 1992,” an elderly gentleman at a newspaper stall replied to my question as to whether he believed in Imran Khan’s leadership with special reference to Karachi.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Supporters of the PTI chant slogans during a sit-in demonstration at the Teen Talwar roundabout in Clifton in 2014.—Online
I tried to start an argument by laying down some of the stark realities related to the structure of our administrative system, allocation of powers and resources amongst the various tiers of government, and more serious and factual stuff.
No one was interested to go into details. When he will win, he will find a way!
And indeed, the sentiments translated into electoral reality. Out of a total of 21 national assembly seats, the PTI won 14.
It has also emerged as the second-largest party in the Sindh assembly with 23 seats.
But the present reality of our administration and governance is such that most matters related to everyday life of common citizens are managed by the provincial government.
Some residual services and tasks are also dealt by local government institutions.
For instance, water supply and sewerage in Karachi is under the control of Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) — which is directly placed under the Local Government Minister of Sindh. The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board is also under the same provincial minister.
Construction activity, development of residences and other physical facilities are regulated by the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA).
Development works are done by Karachi, Lyari and Malir Development Authorities, all under government of Sindh.
Healthcare, management of environment, police, schools, colleges and public universities, fisheries, housing and women welfare, social development and population welfare, heritage and culture, labour and livelihood, land allocation and control, and many other sectors of performance are under the control of Sindh government.
Interestingly, the elected local governments bodies in Karachi function under the close tutelage of the provincial government. And the provincial government in Sindh is where no change has appeared.
With 77 seats from a total tally of 130 general seats, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is all set to continue its third consecutive term since 2008.
Two questions arise: how will the Karachi voters — who overwhelmingly voted the PTI into an effective position to form government at the centre — benefit from their choice?
And how the much needed development, governance and representation needs of the metropolis shall be addressed, given the fact the Sindh administration may continue with its water-tight control on decision making and financial allocation prerogatives?
Karachi’s many woes
Let us first look at some of the most pressing needs of the city. A comprehensive road repair and maintenance project is a foremost priority.
Daily experience of commuting shows that various categories of roads have been damaged to a serious extent.
Whether Nishtar Road, Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Shahrah-i-Noor Jehan or major roads in Orangi, Baldia and Qasba colony, the destruction is to the extent where even stronger vehicles get damaged to a non-functional level.
Lack of periodic maintenance, poor design and quality of construction, frequent road cutting and adjustments for other forms of buried infrastructure, overlapping of new development schemes such as ongoing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project and frequent spills of fresh and sewage water have been some causes that led to the present dilapidated conditions.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
—Zofeen T. Ibrahim
Despite the Supreme Court-mandated judicial commission on water and sanitation issues in Sindh, the status of trash collection in the city is far from satisfactory.
Physicians and health care professionals inform that the scale and intensity of infectious diseases has increased manifolds during the past few years.
Karachi produces more than 12,000 tonnes of solid waste every day. The weight and volume is rising due to growing consumerism.
A tiny fraction of this waste is lifted and disposed away in an unscientific manner. The remaining portion of this vast volume is either left unattended or burnt from time to time — causing more health hazards.
Sindh Solid Waste Management Board, the provincial body for this task under Sindh government, has been severely criticised for its less than desirable performance.
Karachi requires many simple but firm strategic interventions. The increase in the number of CNG-fuelled green buses on city arterial roads can facilitate commuters to a great extent.
About 450 million gallons of untreated sewage per day is discharged into the sea. Development of small and medium-scale sewage treatment plants at the discharging ends of city nallahs can safeguard marine environment.
This enterprise shall also help produce recycled water for horticulture and irrigating public landscape.
The drains are unable to carry to water as they are choked and their size capacity reduced.—Amar Guriro
Water management must be improved to enhance efficiency and control theft and wastage. A water loss reduction project is desperately needed by city dwellers.
It is common knowledge that many of our water mains have completed their designed life and are impacted by water leakage and organised theft.
Proper fixing of the leaks shall help Karachiites benefit more from the already available water.
Rehabilitation of footpaths all along the major thoroughfares is a key intervention that must be done without delay.
Education and health care facilities, especially in the public sector, need complete overhaul.
The list can go on and on.
But almost all the tasks mentioned above fall under the control of the Sindh government, which shall act on its own accord, not at the behest of PTI legislators.
Healing the rift between Karachi and Sindh government
Will it mean that the entire frenzy and enthusiasm of PTI buffs shall go to waste?
A lot shall depend upon the political equation that evolves between the incoming federal government under Imran Khan, his affiliates and cronies and the Sindh government, aka the PPP leadership.
Many possibilities remain open to the PTI legislators from Karachi to make their presence felt in Sindh and Karachi affairs.
It may be worthwhile to study what their predecessors in the federal government — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz administration — did in Karachi.
The spearheading of the Karachi operation in 2013 with political consensus of all the parties in the province was perhaps the most important initiative by the Nawaz administration.
Ably supported by the armed forces and the provincial government, the operation was able to efface extortionists, terror outfits and a hoard of criminal gangs — within and outside the ranks of many a political party.
While law and order was the top problem of Karachi in 2013, water supply and urban transportation are two significant woes faced by all and sundry in the metropolis.
A construction site for Green Line in Karachi.—White Star
The PTI will do well if it negotiates the timely operation and management of ongoing initiatives such as the BRT along with all its connecting and feeder services, the Circular Railway with extensions to designated neighbourhoods and construction of intercity bus terminals on the Super and National Highways.
But if the PTI legislators and their party are sincere to resolve Karachi’s issues, they must bear in mind that it cannot be done without a strong working relationship with the incoming Sindh government.
If these politicians are able to articulate their own bargaining points, it shall prove to be useful to establish this bond.
As the PTI is perceived to enjoy better links with the establishment and its leader is on a high horse through this cumulative advantage, it can serve as a useful bargaining asset when they sit down to crease their relations with the PPP-led Sindh government.
While a mutually beneficial, cooperative spirit could serve everyone well, including Karachi, any condescending attempt to preponderate the PPP leadership in Sindh may prove futile and ineffective.
Besides, the presently muted Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan mayor and his local government tier must also be kept on board in all such interventions.
Khan has been talking about directly-elected mayors for large cities during his political discourse.
Whereas some of the more drastic measures may prove difficult, the PTI can consider becoming a bridge between the Sindh and local government.
The metropolis and its hapless citizens cannot afford any further divisive politics for sure.
Are you researching Karachi's politics? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
At first blush, it’s easy to dismiss any notion of a struggling US-Pakistan relationship improving under a government led by Imran Khan.
This is, after all, a figure who has resorted to relentless anti-American messaging. He has threatened to shoot down American drones, and he has lambasted Pakistan for using “American money” to fight “America’s war” against terrorism.
He has opposed the idea of targeting terrorists with force, and he has expressed sympathy for the Taliban insurgency that America is fighting in Afghanistan.
A populist politician in Pakistan, once in power, can’t be expected to eliminate this rhetoric, which plays well on the Pakistani street but not in the corridors of power in Washington.
And yet, amid these obstacles, there lies an opportunity for US-Pakistan relations. And Khan is well qualified — perhaps even uniquely qualified — to capitalise on it.
For the US, relations with Pakistan are always seen through the lens of Afghanistan. One reason the US government hasn’t walked away from Islamabad despite all the tensions and frustrations of recent years is that it desperately wants Pakistan to help it pursue its goals in Afghanistan.
From Washington’s perspective, Pakistan hasn’t been terribly helpful, mainly because it has not addressed America's concerns about Afghan insurgents allegedly based in Pakistan. And for years, American troops have tried but failed to tame the militants that Washington accuses Pakistan of harbouring.
But now, a dramatic shift in US policy is underway. After nearly 17 years, US officials are finally realising that the war cannot be won militarily, and that seeking a negotiated outcome is the only viable Plan B.
America’s new Plan B for Afghanistan has always been Pakistan’s Plan A — or at least Islamabad has stated as much publicly. Until now, the two countries’ plans had never been in alignment.
Washington has now agreed to pursue direct, bilateral talks with the Taliban. A round of exploratory negotiations reportedly took place in recent days, when a US government delegation led by America’s top South Asia diplomat, Alice Wells, met with Taliban representatives in Qatar.
America’s top ask of Pakistan is now something on which Islamabad — and Khan in particular — can not only deliver, but will presumably be keen to deliver on. And that ask is to convince the Taliban that now is the time to formally commit to peace talks to end the war.
Khan would not support any action that could be construed as doing America’s bidding. And yet cooperation with Washington on Taliban reconciliation talks should be an easy sell for him, and for two reasons.
First, such a move serves Pakistan’s interests. It would represent a step toward ending a war that has destabilising spillover effects in Pakistan (from cross-border terror to refugee flows and drug trafficking).
And it could get Pakistan closer to one of its desired endgames in Afghanistan: a post-war arrangement under which the Taliban enjoy a degree of political influence.
Second, helping push for Taliban reconciliation talks would be in line with Khan’s own personal preferences. One of his consistent positions in recent years is that militants — in both Pakistan and Afghanistan — should be targeted with negotiations, not force.
Additionally, Khan has infamously telegraphed his sympathies for the Afghan Taliban by praising their fight as a “holy war” justified by Islamic law.
All of this should give Khan good standing among the Taliban, increasing the possibility that the insurgents would listen to his government.
In effect, Khan’s perceived soft side for militants, rightly considered by many to be a liability, can also be an advantage. The qualities that inspire the moniker “Taliban Khan” could actually help serve US and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan — and, in the process, help boost US-Pakistan ties.
None of this is to say that a Khan-led government cooperating with Washington on Taliban reconciliation issues would magically make the bilateral relationship warm and fuzzy.
Washington’s “do-more” drumbeat, its fixation on the Haqqani network, its unhappiness about the alleged presence in Pakistan of India-focused terror groups — and above all its allegations against Pakistan of sponsoring various US-designated terrorists — these will all remain major irritants in the US-Pakistan relationship.
But for now at least, the Trump administration has set aside those tension points. The Taliban peace talks issue —something on which both the US and Pakistan now see eye to eye — has been placed on the policy front burner.
And herein lies the opportunity for Khan: he can capitalise on one of the few shared goals in the US-Pakistan relationship and help reinvigorate a sputtering partnership.
To be sure, this could all come crashing down. The Taliban could well shrug off Pakistan’s requests. Yes, there’s reason to believe Pakistan’s outreach to the insurgents has already worked to an extent; the Taliban’s recent decision to declare and honour a brief ceasefire can be attributed in part to Islamabad’s efforts.
Still, at the end of the day, the insurgents have little incentive to seriously commit to peace talks to end a war that they firmly believe they’re winning. That incentive structure remains in place no matter who may try to convince them to step off the battlefield.
But, at this moment at least, Pakistan’s incoming prime minister has a golden opportunity to cooperate with America to help bring a bloody and interminable war in Afghanistan to a merciful end.
Time will tell whether he chooses to seize it, and, if he does, if such a decision will pay off — and bring some badly needed relief to a region where peace and stability have long been elusive.
Are you researching Pakistan-US relations ? Share your expertise with us at blog@dawn.com
Now that the much-awaited elections have finally happened, it is crucial that we look beyond them and consider the kind of challenges the next government faces.
First and foremost, the economic crisis we are grappling with is staggering. Pakistan has never really faced this scale of economic problems, so the leadership coming to power is being dealt an unfair hand.
They are forced to refer to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as September this year to seek a bailout to the tune of upwards of $15 billion.
This would be nearly double the amount of the last bailout package the country was on a few years ago.
The reason we are going on an IMF programme again is because our economy is not doing well enough due to our last finance minister bungling Pakistan’s fiscal and monetary policies.
So, even though the mess was created by the last government, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) — along with its coalition partners — will be expected to address it immediately.
It will not be easy; going on the programme will require cutting subsidies on power and petroleum products, inadvertently increasing inflation.
Add to that the predicted rupee devaluation to at least Rs150 to $1, and the common person will be bearing the brunt of it all.
Factually speaking, it is not the fault of the new administration that these things will have to be done but, unfortunately, the public will perceive it as such anyway.
Secondly, the PTI must come up with a detailed economic plan, while also figuring out what to do with the federal budget and supplement the increased costs.
The economy is not growing as fast as assumed, lowering Pakistan’s competitiveness in the global market.
Any new government needs to start with seriously rethinking the approach of the last many regimes and concentrate on diversifying Pakistan’s exports, while cutting down on our unnecessary imports.
The diversification must look beyond textiles and cultivate industries with decent margins and without prohibitive start-up costs.
The IT industry is an option but seeing how far behind Pakistan is compared to its regional competitors, it won’t be easy. On top of this, the PTI also needs to enhance the tax base and increase foreign reserves quickly.
Essentially, the incoming leadership would need to hit the ground running with a comprehensive economic plan it has yet to create.
Thirdly, the law and order situation in Pakistan has improved significantly, but the PTI would still have to do a lot more to maintain progress.
Part of this will involve determining a way to deal with the rising tide of extremism, courtesy of the mainstreaming of fringe fanatical parties, as well as the silent rise of extremist views in the more educated and economically well-off segments of the society.
People tend to ignore the penetration of the fringe religious parties, but the ground level threat is real, the magnitude of which is evident with the Tehreek-i-Labbaik finishing third in many constituencies in Punjab.
Lastly, the successor government will have its hands full undoing the 18th Amendment if it is ever coerced into it.
The provinces will not give up easily; Sindh will put up a fight even if the other three provinces side with the government.
The PTI should instead focus on creating a framework where debt servicing is a communal process so provincial governments also contribute, instead of only the federal government.
It is unfair for the latter to be conducting debt servicing alone, when they only get 48% of the national kitty and must pay for the military as well as the functioning of all ministries at the federal level.
The provinces need to do more which is where the negotiations need to take place.
I hope the next government would also take up the issue of bureaucratic reforms seriously by introducing the kind of changes we need. But that seems to be wishful thinking.
For now, I truly hope the successors pull through on the economic challenges. At this stage, all we can do is wish the chosen well and hope things work out for the best because we have no other choice.
Are you researching Pakistan's economy and politics? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
As election fervour morphs slowly into a nervous anticipation for Naya Pakistan, commentators are now shifting their attention away from the events of July 25 and looking to the future.
What has Pakistan’s experience with the IMF looked like? Why do we keep going back and who precisely is being ‘bailed out’? What are the lessons to be learned?
While the corruption motif could certainly find a place in the explanation, perhaps we should be looking beyond the apparent and instead towards the historical and structural imperatives that keep us going back for more.
Though Pakistan began its borrowing history with the IMF under Ayub Khan, its first Structural Adjustment Package (loans disbursed with added conditions of macroeconomic policy changes to ensure repayment) was accepted by Ziaul Haq in 1982.
Since then, various governments have accepted 12 conditional loan packages from the Fund, all of which have sung quite similar policy tunes: privatisation of state assets, liberalisation of the terms of trade, indirect taxation, subsidy cuts and an almost singular focus on reducing budget deficits.
Socioeconomic casualties at the hands of the IMF conditions have included social sector spending (most notably, health and education), employment and accessibility to essential items like oil and electricity.
The Fund’s macroeconomic prescriptions have been so consistent over the past three decades that, whether it be 1988 or 2018, it seems one can fairly confidently predict the contents of any loan package, without a single document in hand.
And though there are now claims emerging from both within and outside the IMF that it has moved away from any dogmatic adherence to the Washington Consensus, there is very little evidence to show for it.
In a March 2018 IMF Country Report on Pakistan, the Fund’s diagnosis of the country’s economic woes sounds familiar: insufficient exchange-rate flexibility, too many burdensome public-sector enterprises, not enough “growth-supporting structural reforms”.
Indeed, such an approach is not unique to Pakistan — Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist at the World Bank, has criticised the Fund for its ‘cookie-cutter’ approach to conditional lending and structural reform, with countries as diverse as Argentina, Nigeria and Pakistan receiving virtually identical loan packages over the years.
This is important because if the government-elect does follow through on its intentions to approach the IMF, it is fairly clear what deal it will leave with. The question then is — will it work?
And again, there is little evidence to suggest that it will. A number of scholars and commentators have conducted empirical surveys of Pakistan’s macroeconomic experience under the IMF structural adjustment and the conclusions are worrying.
Tilat Anwar and Haroon Jamal have commented on the exacerbation of inequality levels and poverty during the 1988-1999 adjustment period.
Akbar Zaidi looks at the decade between 1992 and 2002 and highlights decreases in per capita income and per capita GDP, worsening the gap between rich and poor.
Professor of business policy and political economy Imran Ali has commented on rising inflationary pressures on the economy in the mid-to-late 2000s, highlighting oil and gas price rises and a decline in Pakistani manufacturing.
One study that analyses adjustment data between 1981-2001 confirms many of the observations made above. This includes an unemployment rate that “…increased from an average of 3.5 per cent in the 1980s to 5.7pc in the 1990s further to 6.7pc in 2000-01” due to an obsession with budget deficit reduction and dangerous increases in inflation and the prices of oil, gas and electricity.
In terms of per capita income, something the authors call “the most frequently used indicator of economic welfare”, the study finds an overall deterioration, linking it to the IMF-mandated increases in indirect taxes and subsidy reductions.
Overall, the study concludes that the Fund’s primary aim during this period — the stabilisation of the Pakistani economy — remained woefully unmet.
And so, we go back again, empty coffers in hand.
Who is responsible?
The many damning studies aside, it is that clear that the Fund’s formula is failing when, after 12 loan packages, macroeconomic stability remains a pipe dream and we are considering signing our 13th deal.
And as loosely as the dollars are disbursed, so too is the blame. Reactions ranging from anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracy-theory characterisations of the IMF to hand-wavy arguments about purely local incompetence and corruption dominate the discourse in Pakistan.
As is necessarily the case with false dichotomies, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
There is, of course, the fundamental problem of cherry-picked implementation of the Fund’s programmes and a number of excellent pieces detail just that.
One such piece explores this in detail, arguing that “the government often complies with some conditions and ignores others, using the leverage of international political environment and the IMF to push through only policies that benefit domestic elites and lobbies”.
That same piece, however, goes a step further — as we all should when analysing complex realities created through the interplay of a multitude of actors, institutions and motivations. It highlights the Fund’s own tendency to turn the other cheek — a noble act in many contexts, criminal in this one.
This includes the continual recalibration of benchmark deadlines, discretionary leeway as long as creditors are temporarily satisfied and the exaggeration of potential success with the concurrent downplaying of risk.
Nadeem ul Haq’s recent comment on the same tells a story of hastily re-negotiated mini-budgets, a resultant uncertain investment climate, the imposition of unanticipated (and coercive) spending cuts on the finance ministry, and much more.
The Fund is flexible — as long as some cuts are made, any reductions are chased, a bit of compliance shown. Haq’s conclusion is clear: “Pakistan has been the subject of a long-running experiment in austerity”.
Yet another factor blurs the boundaries of the dichotomy — the revolving door between the Fund and many former Pakistani state officials:
Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, finance minister from 2010 to 2013, served as director of economic operations of the World Bank (the Fund’s structural adjustment official partner) in Saudi Arabia throughout the 1990s; Mahbubul Haq, finance minister in 1998, was former director of the World Bank; Shahid Javed Burki, vice-president of the World Bank who implemented a number of structural adjustment initiatives during his tenure as de-facto finance minister in 1996. Former prime minister Raja Ashraf arbitrarily appointed his son-in-law World Bank alternative executive director in 2013 with little to no fanfare.
The point is this: the financial movers and shakers in Pakistan are either well-acquainted with or have more or less internalised the programmatic gist of IMF-lending and the logics of austerity economics that go along with it.
These are the same technocrats who are responsible for drawing up budgets, cutting or saving subsidies, jobs, welfare expenditures and more.
An awareness of this makes the trope of ‘us versus the Fund’ a tired one, the assignment of blame a complex process, and any attempt at a holistic understanding of the ideas and policies that underpin Pakistan’s perpetual debt crisis all the more urgent.
But…Asad Umar
So here is what we know so far — the Fund’s structural adjustment experiment in Pakistan has overwhelmingly failed, we are stuck in a loop of incurring new debts to pay off old debts, and if we go back, we will be served another dose of the same old medicine.
More optimistic (naïve?) observers will point out what they think will be a crucial difference: Naya Pakistan.
Surely Asad Umar’s business savvy, corporate know-how and real world experience will make him a more competent finance minister? Surely the negotiations with the IMF this time will be different?
Putting aside the fact that Pakistan’s former finance ministers have had equally impressive profiles, let us assume for the sake of argument that Asad Umar will approach talks with the Fund in a qualitatively different and fundamentally new way. What hope does the Pakistani economy have of securing a better deal for itself?
It becomes necessary here to examine the internal structure of the IMF itself and how that shapes any terrain of negotiation. Two elements are key: voting and drawing rights and the Fund’s internal chain of command.
Voting and drawing rights
The Executive Board of the IMF is responsible for the day-to-day administration of IMF country missions and it comprises 24 members.
Eight countries get to appoint their chosen director — the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia. Every other member nation can collectivise in groups and nominate the remaining 16 directors.
When a country joins the IMF, it contributes a certain quantum of money — a ‘quota subscription’ — which forms the basis of the following: how much a country can borrow in times of need and their voting power. As McQuillan and Montogmery put it, “the richer the country, the larger its quota”.
A couple of interesting observations can be gleaned from the above. First, it is (at best) slightly odd that the Fund’s criteria for determining each country’s drawing rights (and in turn, each nation’s capacity to employ the Fund for domestic macroeconomic stabilisation) is contingent on that country’s wealth and economic performance.
This circular logic of capital accumulation permits stronger financial players a more meaningful say in deciding the rules of the game and might suggest that the Fund’s responsibility first and foremost is to the robustness of the global financial system instead of the health of individual economies. Asad Umar against the World.
Second, the fact that a majority of the world’s borrowing nations have little effective say in the number and terms of the loans disbursed is troubling to say the least.
Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, in Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank emphasise this inequity through the following example: “the group led by Rwanda, including 24 Sub-Saharan African countries and representing 225 million people, has only 1.39pc of voting rights”.
The equation between drawing rights and voting rights means that the majority of the developing world — the IMF’s most loyal customers — has an almost negligible role in shaping its own recovery.
As of right now, Pakistan votes with Afghanistan, Algeria, Ghana, Iran, Morocco and Tunisia, representing 2.2pc of the vote share. Asad Umar (plus seven countries with very little economic clout) against the World.
The chain of command
The IMF is a massive organisation, and therefore, houses a vast bureaucracy consisting of staff members that act as ‘international civil servants’ rather than national representatives.
How does this impact the dynamics of forging loan agreements between the Fund and member states? Again, two key elements will be analysed: the space for dissent within the IMF and the space for dissent between the IMF and Pakistan.
On the issue of internal disagreement within the Fund’s ranks as to loan prescriptions and conditions for member states, Paul Blustein’s 2003 book on the international debt crises of the 1990s, offers unique insights.
In it, he quotes a number of IMF employees and their experiences working at the Fund. One former IMF staffer, Michael Dooley, says:
“I can tell you for sure there are heated arguments. But they are resolved internally…you don’t want an institution like the Fund changing its mind every week about how to do things. Financial markets are watching. While you negotiate, Rome is burning”.
As far as staff missions to specific countries are concerned, Laura Papi (another former IMF staffer) says: “…there is a very clear hierarchy…(even when disagreements surface within a mission team) they will disappear…because the mission chief will say ‘I think X, even if you think Y…then he goes to the Front Office and says, ‘We believe X’”.
The result is an almost militaristic internal chain of command between staffers and their superiors at the Fund, one that not only narrows the parameters of critical inquiry but limits any possibility for creative re-imagination of what an economy can look like and who it should serve. We are left with societies carved out of cookie-cutters.
The rigidness in this chain of command trickles down to negotiations between IMF Mission Teams and member countries as well.
Though the Fund insists it seeks to uphold the spirit of freedom to contract with all lending nations, experience tells us otherwise.
Ben Thirkell-White, in his book The IMF and the Politics of Financial Globalization, writes: “for poorer, less politically significant countries with limited expertise…negotiations may be highly one-sided”.
“…the Fund often came to negotiations with fixed positions so that agreement was usually only possible through compromises in which the country negotiating teams moved to the Fund’s positions…the Fund too often simply imposed its will, was generally insensitive to genuine constraints in policy-making…and was too quick to dismiss policy options favoured by the government”.
This rigid, militaristic chain of command not only makes internal dissent a distant possibility but flexibility in negotiation an institutional anomaly.
And even though Asad Umar's infatuation with ideas of mass privatisation might mean negotiations go more smoothly than the Pakistani citizenry would hope, any and all points of contention that may be raised in order to preserve some semblance of fiscal sovereignty will be shrouded in the shadow of the Fund’s institutional coherence, rigidity and sheer power.
Repoliticising the Pakistani economy
Three decades and very little to show for it — it is clear that the Pakistani economy is far from stable after structural adjustment.
And yet, as this next government gears up for another go, there is nothing but the slow simmering of protest in a few think-pieces and opportunistic political challenges.
There is something alienating about economics. At its core, it is merely a framework through which a society decides how to divvy up the goods. These decisions should be socially-deliberated, stemming from a value-led, justice-driven consensus.
Instead, when the flurry of dizzying demand curves, maddening models and indecipherable equations are thrown at us in the hopes we will defer to the ‘experts’, we capitulate.
In recent times, Pakistan has seen lively debate on a number of difficult issues — civil-military relations, religious freedom, ethnic minority rights, and women’s protection to name a few. And though these debates may not always go as one hopes, there is still a conversation.
To quote Timothy Mitchell, Pakistan’s economy today is under the ‘rule of experts’ — sealed off from popular debate and couched in a vernacular so technical that we find ourselves accepting certain practices or arrangements unknowingly, deferring to authorities to act in our interest when we would otherwise prefer to act by ourselves.
Perhaps this is why government after government finds it so easy to knock on the Fund’s door.
It should not be this easy. Pakistan today faces a housing shortage of over ten million units and only 1pc of housing currently available is affordable for the poorest 68pc.
According to the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, the country may run out of water in 2025 — seven years from now — if things do not drastically change.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, almost 76pc of Pakistan’s youth drop out of formal education due to financial stress.
Those who do complete their education and enter the job market are unlikely to find decent jobs, with our youth unemployment rated estimated to be as high as 40pc.
A public health crisis weighs heavily on the population’s most underprivileged, with infant mortality, maternal mortality and life expectancy rates at some of the lowest in all of South and South-East Asia.
IMF-mandated austerity has meant that we have long been prioritising abstract, perhaps even unattainable goals of economic growth over genuine human development.
If the next government truly wishes to create a new Pakistan, it will have to come to terms with a financial relationship with the IMF that has, at least in part, contributed to the mess we find ourselves in.
Are you researching Pakistan's politics or economy? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
Meesha Shafi’s sexual harassment complaint against Ali Zafar was dismissed a week ago by the provincial ombudsperson and the Punjab governor on the basis that Shafi does not have an 'employment relationship' with the entity against whom the complaint was filed i.e. JS Events.
Shafi and her team will now take their appeal to the Lahore High Court (LHC).
What does the ombudsperson and the governor's rejection mean? Is it a wrong decision that should be set aside by the LHC?
The law under which the complaint was filed — Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act of 2010 — covers all forms of harassment in a workplace setting and imposes certain responsibilities on the employer to prevent, investigate and penalise instances of sexual harassment even if the person complaining of harassment is not an employee.
'Workplace' is defined very broadly under the harassment law to include “the place of work or the premises where an organisation or employer operates” and includes any place “where the activities of the organisation or of employer are carried out.”
The definition of the workplace is expanded even further to include “any situation that is linked to official work or official activity outside the office.”
While the 'accused' is defined to specifically mean an 'employee' or an 'employer' of an organisation against whom a complaint has been made, the definition of 'complainant' is not similarly restricted.
A person complaining of sexual harassment may be any “woman or man who has made a complaint to the Ombudsman or the Inquiry Committee on being aggrieved by an act of harassment.”
Further, the definition of 'harassment' does not limit the offence to actions taking place within the scope of employment.
It is defined as “any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favours or other verbal or written communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature” that interferes with “work performance” or creates an “intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.”
As stated earlier, the preamble of the law which sets forth the purpose of the legislation broadens the scope of the law to cover harassment that occurs in workplace settings without limiting it to harassment faced by employees.
It states that “it is expedient to make this provision for the protection of women from harassment at the workplace”.
The federal ombudsperson has used this line of reasoning when deciding a harassment complaint made by a student of Quaid-i-Azam University who was sexually harassed in 2012.
In that decision, the federal ombudsperson found that the harassment law is not limited to the employees of an organisation, and therefore even students in a university are protected by the law.
Even otherwise, the reasoning used by the ombudsperson and the Punjab governor to conclude that Shafi is not in an 'employment relationship' with JS Events is flawed.
They relied entirely on the literal terms of the contract itself to reach that conclusion, even though the harassment law should prevail over the contract in order to decide whether the harassment complained about is legally prohibited.
Neither an employer nor employee can relinquish their legal responsibilities under the harassment law through a contract.
If Shafi is found to be an employee as defined by the harassment law, her complaint would fall within the scope of the law in spite of a contractual clause disavowing an employment relationship.
In any case, whether or not she is an employee is not determinative, since the harassment law is not limited to harassment faced by employees only.
On a number of occasions, Pakistan’s courts have rejected employers’ claims that their contractual arrangements with employees absolve them from responsibilities under the law.
For example, in Enmay Zed Publications v. Sindh Appellate Tribunal (2001 SCMR 565), the Supreme Court held that a newspaper could not terminate its employee without good cause simply because its contract with the employee allowed it to do so.
Instead, the Court found that the requirements of the Newspaper Employees Act of 1973, which provides that an employee could be terminated only for good cause, prevailed over the terms of the contract.
The Sindh High Court has also held that “there is no concept of execution of agreement between workman and the employer by which the statutory rights of a workman could be diminished or taken away …” (Samiullah Sharif v. Fauji Oil Terminal and Distribution Company, 2007 PLC 464).
Legal precedent is clear that an employer cannot stand behind an agreement to deny employees rights guaranteed under the law.
The broad range of protections and remedies provided under the harassment law shows that it was intended to impose certain duties on employers to prevent sexual harassment in workplace settings.
Employers should not be permitted to circumvent their duties under the law by entering into agreements with employees who typically have much weaker bargaining power when negotiating such agreements.
Shafi claims that she was sexually harassed by Zafar while both of them were working for JS Events. If the alleged act of harassment took place in a setting where official work or activity was taking place in the course of a business run by JS Events, it falls within the scope of the harassment law.
As the employer, JS Events has the responsibility to investigate allegations of sexual harassment in such a setting, issue appropriate penalties to any of its employees who are found guilty of harassment and also take measures to prevent instances of harassment.
The LHC should find that the complaint falls under the scope of the harassment law and remand the case to the ombudsperson to examine the facts and decide the case on the merits.
On June 19, an Instagram blogger posted a picture of the Karachi United (KU) women’s football team on his account. Subsequently, the picture was shared by another account with access to a larger audience, Diva Magazine Pakistan.
Unsurprisingly, the comments section was a cesspool of negativity and hatred. Instead of recognising what an accomplishment it is for women to play football in a society knee-deep in patriarchy, people chose to focus on the girls’ attire.
The fact that the girls were wearing shorts, a universally-worn football uniform, drew much ire from commenters; the moral brigade deemed their uniform 'un-Islamic', while a few others concluded that the girls were porn stars.
Apparently, that’s all that it takes to become a porn star nowadays — donning on a pair of football shorts.
Though most people might marvel at the absurd nature of these comments, for me, sadly, they were not surprising.
A few years ago, I had the privilege to play as the goalkeeper on the KU women’s football team and hearing such comments was commonplace for me and my teammates.
During the time I played for the team, my family's primary concern was that I would tan in the sun. To them, it did not matter that I had an outlet for the pressure I faced during five stressful years of medical school. For them, the colour of my skin took precedence over my mental health.
When I fractured my ring finger, I was told that no one would want to marry a girl with a broken ring finger since the groom would not have a finger to put a ring on, as if my nine other fingers ceased to exist.
A recurring theme I faced during my time on the team was being minimised to one silly stereotype after another by society. I was either too dark or too masculine for liking football. Not a porn star though, since I chose to play in track pants.
Though, on a serious note, it’s frustrating to see my former teammates, all of whom are very talented athletes, being defined by their choice of clothing.
Yes, choice of clothing.
You see, while playing, we do not see ourselves as the sole example of how women should dress. We just choose what’s most comfortable for us to play in. That can be anything — a pair of shorts, track pants or even a burqa.
Furthermore, we do not choose to play football to draw attention to our bodies or seem more appealing to men who might look past our dark complexions and broken limbs. No, we play because of our genuine love for the game.
A lot of the girls who play for KU venture from different corners of the city on any mode of transport available to them, be it rickshaws, bicycles or motorbikes, to come to practice, and that too despite opposition from their families.
Like me, some of the women play to let off steam and release the pressures of work or studies. Others play simply to keep healthy, a chance afforded to them by the grueling bi-weekly practices and weekly football games against the men's side.
But for many, the drive to play comes from the qualities the game instills in us, be it the discipline that comes from rigorous practice, the confidence that comes from being a valuable member of the team or the social skills we acquire by working together as a group.
For a lot of my former teammates, football has evolved from just a hobby to better career and academic prospects.
Two of them have gone on to be accepted into masters programmes at Harvard based on their participation in the KU women’s football team.
The co-founder of the team recently became the first female footballer in Pakistan to earn a spot in the prestigious FIFA Masters Course, an exclusive programme that allows its graduates to study sport in three major cities.
Most of them have accepted these opportunities with their primary aim being to return to Pakistan to further expand the scope of women’s football, and to create a better environment for current and future female football players.
So, if the next time you see girls playing football and your first instinct is to criticise their 'morals' and 'values', here is a cheatsheet of things you can think of instead:
how hard those girls work
the uphill battle they have to fight just to play
how playing football allows them to become better functioning members
of society
how they can avail better career or academic opportunities through
football
If you’re still intent on criticising, then look past their clothing and see them as what they simply are — football players, and maybe discuss their game instead.
By doing so, together, we might be able to break the barriers that prevent women from progressing in our society, and maybe young girls in the future might be able to play football without worrying about what their uncles, classmates, parents or random people on the internet will say.
Have you ever faced discrimination in your profession? Share your experience with us at blog@dawn.com
It is early evening and Sally’s* beauty parlour in Rawalpindi is teeming with women undergoing their weekly or monthly beauty regimen.
Switching between Hakka and Urdu, with occasional interjections in Pothwari, the owner of the salon refers to herself as 'local Chinese' or Pakistani-Chinese.
These terms point to the profound ambivalence of Chinese ethnic identity shaped by the political, economic and historical contexts of South Asia.
Being Chinese is understood on multiple levels in Pakistan. Since the advent of projects introduced by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2013, the visibility of the Chinese in public spaces has not gone unnoticed in the main cities of the country.
Migrants, engineers and entrepreneurs arriving from diverse provinces in China are often thought of as a monolithic group related to CPEC and have come to dominate – numerically as well as in perception – other endogamous ethnic Chinese communities already present in Pakistan.
What is often missing is a more nuanced understanding of the long established community grouped under the term 'Chinese' or 'chini', as well as their unique trajectories that have accompanied Pakistan’s formation.
As a Taiwanese anthropologist who has spent a significant portion of her life outside of the Sinosphere, I am interested in comparative cultural issues related to migration and identity, particularly that of the most extensive and complex one of our modern world: the Chinese diaspora.
Thus began a research project that took me across various cities in Pakistan, where a declining minority of ethnic Chinese families shared with me their lives and experiences that were intimately linked to the development of modern Pakistan.
It is not popularly known that some of the earliest Chinese in South Asia emigrated to Kolkata (then Calcutta) during the British era; in fact, as early as the 18th century.
While successive waves of migration from the provinces of Guangdong, Hubei and Shandong have been traced by contemporary historians, the subsequent trajectories of these migrants in Pakistani territories are rarely examined.
In the wake of the partitioning of India in 1947, the India-China War in 1962 and later the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, ethnic Chinese families found themselves dispersed in different parts of South Asia, gaining recognition and contributing to the economies of each of their localities through restaurants, dentist clinics and beauty parlours.
Moving with Pakistan
The events that unfolded after Partition were a constant home-making project for the ethnic Chinese of Pakistan. While doing field research, I befriend a small Pakistani-Chinese family that has grown up in Rawalpindi and specialises in manufacturing and selling leather shoes.
Much like the majority of Chinese migrant communities in India and Pakistan, they are Hakka – also known as Kejia in Mandarin Chinese – a distinct ethnic and linguistic group dispersed throughout southeastern China, and through their diasporas to Southeast Asia, South Asia and other parts of the world.
Considered to be members of the majority Han Chinese rather than members of an ethnic minority, they speak a Hakka dialect rather than Mandarin Chinese, the lingua franca of the Sinosphere.
For many other Chinese born in India-Pakistan, 'home' has several meanings within this family. Jason’s grandfather, for example, lived in Kolkata in the 1940s, moving to Lahore at the time of Partition.
After opening his first shoe store in Rawalpindi, the indomitable Indian-Chinese entrepreneur proceeded to opening another shop in Murree in 1949. More shops soon branched out through the growing family.
His grandson, whom I’ll call Jason, is part of a generation of young Pakistani-Chinese with a heterogeneous sense of belonging and distant ties to the Indian-Chinese in Kolkata.
Their family members are geographically mobile, sometimes to the extent of traversing across Indo-Pakistani borders in pursuit of marriage with Indian-Chinese, or joining the second and third generation of Pakistani-Chinese in Canada.
When I ask about 'home', individuals within the same family refer to different cities, but always within South Asia.
In Karachi, a dentist of Hubeinese descent narrates leaving his birthplace of Kolkata shortly after the India-China War in 1963. “Like many others [Chinese] who came after, we moved from India out of fear”, he says.
It was a time when persecutions of ethnic Chinese by the Indian state were authorised and many were deported or sent to internment camps.
After graduating in dentistry from Liaquat College of Medicine and Dentistry, he opened his own dental practice in Saddar, where his clinic stands alongside other formerly Chinese-owned clinics.
“Despite how others outside might view Pakistan as a result of instability and bombings, we are very happily settled here. This is our home”, he tells me.
In Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, a similar migration story and business acumen is echoed amongst restaurant owners of a distinct type of Chinese (Hakka) cuisine best typified by the term 'desi chini khana' that caters largely to South Asian tastes.
Several other of my interlocutors were born in East Pakistan to families that commonly ran tanneries and restaurants in both Dhaka (then Dacca) and Chittagong.
Many were witness to the armed conflict in the former Pakistani province. Stories of brutal repression are recounted solemnly to me by those seemingly at the fringes of South Asian history.
One individual born in Dhaka recalls the bombing of his restaurant by 'freedom fighters' and the fleeing of family members and friends en masse from East to West Pakistan.
The major events that led to the contemporary formation of Pakistan as lived by Pakistani-Chinese involve leaving their home and losing their businesses, properties and communities, to begin their lives anew in West Pakistan.
A Pakistani-Chinese born in Abbottabad, however, has a more optimistic take on the conflict. “It took us [Pakistan] to lose East Pakistan for me to find my wife”, he says to me.
As a result of the mass migration of Chinese from East Pakistan, he met his wife, also a Pakistani-Hakka, of 45 years, in Rawalpindi.
For a long period of time, a mixture of Urdu, English and Hakka was spoken in their Pakistani-Chinese household.
Preserving the Hakka language is not only useful for daily interactions between majority of the local Chinese, it also reflects their intimacy and identity with a particular place: Meixian, the ancestral village of their parents or grandparents in Guangdong province in China.
The influx of Chinese migrants after CPEC, however, has meant that the local Chinese have had to address what many see as a handicap — the inability to speak Mandarin Chinese.
The grandchildren of my Abbottabad-born interlocutor are now learning Mandarin Chinese in an effort to salvage what is deemed an important part of their identity other than being Pakistani.
This phenomenon, taking place among the Chinese diaspora in other parts of the world as well, is also related to the rise of China as a leading economic power.
Older Pakistani-Chinese families are now but a dwindling fraction of the larger Chinese population that has been ushered in by the increasing economic cooperation between Pakistan and China.
When I ask whether the Pakistani-Chinese feel Chinese, the answer is often conflicting. On one hand, some say that they called themselves Chinese as that was what Pakistanis explicitly refer to them as. On the other, a more Pakistani identity is embraced amid the younger generations.
In one incident, my interlocutor in Rawalpindi was driving his scooter back home one afternoon when confronted by two Pakistanis asking, “yeh Chinese idhar kyun goom raha hai?” (“Why is this Chinese roaming around here?”), to which his jocular response was, “kahan hai Chinese? Yahan par toh sab Pakistani hain” (“Where’s the Chinese? There are only Pakistanis here”).
These interactions, in fact, express the paradox of being ethnic Chinese in Pakistan, against the backdrop of CPEC and the rise in expatriates, migrants and labourers from China.
Reflecting on practices, heritage and understandings of 'home' amongst minorities opens to redefining what counts as 'Chinese' but also 'Pakistani' today.
And even if it doesn’t, knowing these communities broadens an understanding of China-Pakistan relations, as one not only subsumed under CPEC and its developments, but revealing a much more connected history.
All interlocutors have been given pseudonyms to protect their identity
Do you belong to a diaspora community in Pakistan? Share your experiences with us at blog@dawn.com
When I was a child, during every monsoon, the Chenab — the river of love — would break free from its banks and flood agricultural fields around it.
While crossing a bridge spanning the river in Punjab, I remember feeling a strange sense of helplessness to see water as far as the eye could see. It was hard to tell where the river ended and the flooding began.
The floodwater used to be spread over kilometres, destroying everything in its wake, but also leaving behind it seeds of life — fertile soil — as the water receded.
Now as I pass over the same bridge, the mighty river of the past flows meekly under the bridge. Its banks are at least a couple of kilometres wide. Long gone are the days when it would break out of its confines and occupy a greater expanse of land.
With ample rain, the river just about manages to fill its banks.
Pakistan’s river cities
Environmentalists have been talking about Pakistan’s shrinking rivers for many years now. All of Pakistan’s major rivers, including the Indus, enter the country from India.
Many nationalists claim dam building projects across the border limits the flow of water into Pakistan. This narrative gained further credibility when in November 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi threatened to cut the supply of water flowing into Pakistan from India.
The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 divided the shared river network between India and Pakistan. While India was given rights over water from the Beas, Sutle, and Ravi rivers, Pakistan gained rights over the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus.
Soon after this treaty was signed, the Beas and Sutlej, which once flowed into Pakistan, disappeared. Their dried beds, which survived for a few years, were taken over by the ever-increasing population.
The Sutlej has given birth to several cities that have survived decades, centuries and even millennia in some cases.
For example, just where the Sutlej enters Pakistan is the historical city of Kasur, the city of the Mughal-era Punjabi Islamic philosopher and Sufi poet Bulleh Shah.
According to legend, the city was founded by Kush, the twin brother of Lav, who founded the city of Lahore. In Hindu mythology, they are the children of Ram and Sita.
Historical records suggest that Kasur was established in the 16th century by Afghan migrants who came with the forces of Babur the Mughal.
A little further south is the city of Kanganpur, named after a mythological Hindu princess, Kangna. Her father, the king of this region, was defeated by the forces of Arab general Muhammad Bin Qasim.
According to legend, Kangna’s brother, Maha Chawar, was taken back to Arabia by Qasim when the defeated king could not pay a war indemnity. The young man converted to Islam there.
When Maha Chawar returned home, his new religion was unacceptable to his father. The king and his advisors subsequently planned to murder him.
But Kangna found out about the plan, warned her brother and fled with him along the flow of the river. The king’s men intercepted the princess and the prince close to a village called Mandi Borewala, where they were murdered. A shrine to commemorate the early martyrs of Islam came up here later.
Along the way, on the disappeared bed of the Sutlej river is the city of Pakpattan, which sprung up around the shrine of Baba Farid Shakarganj.
The city’s name — meaning a “sacred ford” — is derived from the river. Born out of this lost river of Punjab, the city continues to grow as the shrine of the 12th century Sufi saint is a major attraction.
The Ravi and Lahore
West of the Sutlej is the Ravi, which enters Pakistan close to Kartarpur Sahib, the final resting place of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.
Here, Guru Nanak tended to his agricultural fields for 17 years. Locals still believe that the Ravi floods its banks every few years to pay homage to the shrine of Guru Nanak.
Ravi also gave birth to Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan. Once known as the city of gardens — laid out by numerous Mughal kings, queens, princes and princesses — Lahore became the centre of power for Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839) as he laid the foundation of the Khalsa Empire.
Under the colonial regime it became the symbol of the empire. It still is Pakistan’s most important political centre.
About 200km from Lahore are the remains of Harappa, one of the most important cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation. While another city, Mohenjodaro, came up around the fertile lands of the Indus river, it was Ravi that gave birth to Harappa.
Without these rivers, there never would have been an Indus Valley Civilisation.
Rivers of life
A quick glance at the map of Punjab shows that all the province’s major cities exist in the shadow of one of the five mighty rivers that flow through the plain.
A little further south from Harappa, is Multan, the city of saints, the city of Hiranyakashipu and Prahlad. It is located on the banks of the Chenab river. Many local historians conjecture that Multan, along with Peshawar, might be the oldest living city of Pakistan.
Also on the banks of the Chenab is Sialkot, the city of Raja Salwan and his son Puran Bhagat.
Gujrat, the Mughal city that became the gateway to Jammu, lies on the other side of the river.
Further south is the village of Takht-Hazara, from where it is believed Ranjha — of the Heer-Ranjha legend — originated. Traveling along the river, Ranjha reached Jhang, the city of Heer, where today both of them rest in one grave, their shrine visited by hundreds every day.
River Jhelum divides Potohar region from Punjab. It is on the banks of this river that Alexander of Macedonia fought with King Porus in 326 BC.
Over 1,800 years later, the Pashtun king, Sher Shah Suri, constructed his strategic Rohtas Fort west of the Jhelum river. There is also a Sher Shah Masjid in the ancient city of Bhera downstream of the Jhelum.
This city was once the hub of Buddhist learning in the region and continued to be a major political centre for long until it was overshadowed by other cities in Punjab.
Further west, all these rivers merge with the Indus one by one, as if paying homage. Indus is what gives India its name. It is the grandest river that leaves several cities in its wake — Mianwali, Dera Ismail Khan, Sukkur, Larkana, Sehwan, Hyderabad.
Thus, several cities in Pakistan owe their existence to the mighty rivers of Punjab. These rivers are the reason this civilisation exists and has existed for thousands of years.
What then would happen if one day these rivers cease to exist, as is being predicted? Pakistan is a water scarce country. Its rivers are drying up.
How long would these cities survive if their very source of origin dries out?
The article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.
The year was 1796. Punjab was fragmented among the 12 sovereign clans of the Sikh Confederacy called misl and two Pathan fiefdoms.
Across the Indus on Punjab’s western border, Shah Zaman was threatening to invade again. After acquiring the Afghan throne, he had vowed to regain the lost empire of his grandfather, Ahmad Shah Abdali.
In two previous incursions into the region, Zaman had captured several cities from the Sikh chieftains without much resistance, only to lose them as soon as he returned to Kabul, his capital. These cities were far in the west, though.
This time, Zaman was threatening to march deep into Punjab, and possibly onto Delhi.
The majority of the Sikh chieftains who assembled to assess the lurking threat were of the opinion that they should abandon their people and flee to the mountains, to return when the Afghan tide receded.
Observing the situation from the east, the British felt that Punjab was too divided to be able to ward off the Afghan army.
One Sikh chieftain disagreed. Sada Kaur had become the leader of the Kanahaya misl after her husband, Gurbaksh Singh, died fighting the rival Sukerchakia misl, headed by Maha Singh.
Since Gurbaksh Singh was the clan’s only male heir, his father thought it best to wed his son’s daughter, Mehtab Kaur, to his killer’s son, a boy named Ranjit Singh.
The marriage served to unite the two most powerful misl. After Maha Singh’s death, Ranjit Singh became the head of the Sukerchakia misl. He was all of 10 years.
Sada Kaur, with help from Ranjit Singh’s uncle Dal Singh, soon started exerting considerable influence over her young son-in-law. In time, her guidance played a pivotal role in transforming Ranjit Singh from the chief of a fiefdom to the Maharaja of Punjab.
So when, at the meeting of the chieftains, she argued for confronting Zaman, she was supported by her son-in-law. Inspired by their courage, the other chiefs decided to stand and fight. They mustered a combined force and made Ranjit Singh its leader.
The force promptly launched raids to harass the Afghan army. Zaman was soon forced to return to Kabul as his brother attempted to usurp his throne. He was to return a year later.
Again, the Sikh chiefs felt it was prudent to take refuge in the mountains. But Sada Kaur, supported by her son-in-law, insisted that she would fight and not run away.
Again, her resolve swayed the chiefs and they assembled a force and appointed Ranjit Singh its commander. The force’s guerrilla war denied Zaman a victory until his brother’s renewed attempt on the throne forced him to withdraw.
Ranjit Singh’s reputation soared.
Making of an empire
The young chieftain now nursed a new dream: to create a pan-Punjab empire. However, the unity among the Sikh misl created by Zaman’s invasion was history.
So, he went to his chief patron, his mother-in-law. He combined her forces with his own and marched triumphantly into Lahore, which was to become the capital of his empire, with Sada Kaur by his side.
She was with him also when he took Amritsar from the Bhangi misl a few years later, and supported him fully when he declared himself the Maharaja of Punjab.
During the complicated negotiations with the British that resulted in the Treaty of Amritsar in 1809, Sada Kaur, going against popular opinion, suggested making peace with the colonial power, advice that Ranjit Singh eventually heeded.
While the treaty severely limited Ranjit Singh’s ability to expand his empire, it also ensured its longevity. It is likely that the fate of the Khalsa Empire would have been similar to that of the Marathas had they engaged in an open conflict with the British.
Perhaps, the talented Ranjit Singh would have established the Punjab empire without Sada Kaur’s support, but it cannot be denied that her military support and tactical advice expedited the process.
At the age of 18, Ranjit Singh conquered Lahore. At 20, he was anointed the Maharaja of Punjab.
The marriage of convenience did not last long, however. Ironically, what eventually ended it was another marriage. While Ranjit Singh was close to his mother-in-law, his relationship with his wife, Mehtab Kaur, was far from perfect.
In 1798, two years after his first marriage, he had married Raj Kaur, the sister of the chief of the Nakkai misl. It was Raj Kaur and not Mehtab who bore Ranjit his first son and, thus, successor to the throne, Kharrak Singh.
Mehtab Kaur did eventually bear Ranjit Singh sons, one of whom, Sher Singh, briefly became the Maharaja after the death of Kharrak Singh and his son Nau Nihal Singh.
Ranjit Singh’s relationship with Sada Kaur eventually soured when she began to complain that the Maharaja was bestowing all his wealth on his eldest son and leaving nothing to her grandchildren. Agitated by her constant protests, Ranjit Singh took away her property and gave it to Sher Singh.
Sada Kaur, knowing there was no turning back, decided to make a run to the British territory, to garner their support against her former ally, but she was caught and thrown in prison, where she remained until her death in 1832.
Ranjit Singh died seven years later, on June 27, 1839. His empire soon disintegrated.
The article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.
While working at the forefront of the opioid epidemic in the United States, I did not realise that Pakistan had its own opioid problem — the lack of one.
I learned this the hard way; my mother direly needed pain medication to manage her cancer pain but couldn’t find it.
It was hard for me to believe when her oncologist told me that no potent opioid pain relievers were available in Pakistan.
The only readily available options were Tramadol and Codeine, both of which are extremely weak opioids and usually ineffective for the treatment of cancer pain.
Morphine is available, but only at select places in Lahore where she lives, and then only in injectable form.
My family was able to arrange for a few ampoules of morphine for my mother, but finding an intravenous line in her arm was a problem.
Since morphine has a short half-life, it requires multiple doses a day to relieve pain and having to endure needle pricks so frequently made her very uncomfortable.
I was so shocked by this information that I did not believe it. To see if it was really true, I called my friend, an oncologist at a hospital in Lahore, and asked him about the availability of pain medications in Pakistan for cancer patients.
He could only add another weak opioid, pethidine, to the list of medications.
He said, “I see patients suffering from cancer pain in front of me every day, but I cannot do much about it. There are no medications. The ones that are available are not easily accessible. There is a lot of unnecessary misery, suffering and pain. We can treat it effectively only if we can get pain medications.”
“Is there any way we can get any medications for my mother?“ I asked him.
He replied, “Unfortunately, no. And the irony is that I see people using heroin right outside the hospital, an illicit but potent opioid pain killer.”
Next, I reached out to a palliative care and end-of-life care physician working in New York to ask him for advice about my mother’s illness.
He calmly replied, “The most you can do is try to keep her pain under control and keep her comfortable.”
The medications he mentioned were oral opioids for pain relief, all of which were several times more potent than morphine.
They were the medications that are the standard-of-care for cancer pain management in the United States and the rest of the world.
Once again I felt helpless: I knew that not even oral morphine was available in Pakistan, let alone stronger pain medications.
Fortunately, my mother has a cancer whose pain could be controlled by a nerve block injection. She underwent this treatment, called celiac plexus block, which reduced her pain tremendously.
She has received three such treatments, and her pain is mostly under control.
At times, she has breakthrough pain, which my family tries to manage by using different pain medications. When it gets severe and constant, it is the indication for them to take her for the next nerve block procedure.
While my mother is fortunate that the pain from her type of cancer can be effectively treated in this way, this is not true for most types of cancer.
Consequently, thousands of people in Pakistan with other cancers are suffering from pain every day and unable to find any effective treatment medications.
Seeing this situation in my own family led me to reflect on my education and training in Pakistan as a medical student and as an intern.
I had seen several cases of cancer and end-of-life care in the course of my training and work, but at the time I did not think about the treatment of retractable pain, nor did I notice that pain management was missing from a medical student’s curriculum and training.
Pain management should be an essential part of medical education and every young doctor in Pakistan should learn the best practices available to manage their patients’ pain.
It is still baffling to me that potent pain medications are not available in pharmacies in Pakistan. Maybe the government and regulatory agencies are worried about the diversion of these medications for other purposes.
But Pakistan must come up with a plan to regulate and monitor these medications and make them available to those who are suffering from severe cancer pain or are in an end-of-life care situation.
Every person should have the right to live in dignity without tormenting physical and mental pain, especially those with a terminal illness.
Pain may be universal, but suffering does not have to be.
Are you working in Pakistan's healthcare industry? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
The international watchdog against money laundering and financing of terrorism, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has put Pakistan on a list of “jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies”, also known as the grey list.
FATF’s reasoning is Pakistan’s “structural deficiencies” in anti-money laundering (AML) and combating financing of terrorism (CFT).
The other countries on the list, in alphabetical order, are Ethiopia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and Yemen.
This is not the first time Pakistan has found itself on one of FATF’s list of not-so-good guys; the country was there in 2008 and from 2012 to 2015.
But Pakistan stands out as the most significant name on the list with the largest population and the largest economy, not to forget the largest military.
Pakistan now has 15 months to implement an action plan to be able to negotiate an exit from the grey list.
Entry and exit from FATF’s grey list is an ongoing exercise. In the past, some countries perceived to be particularly weak in money laundering and financing of terrorism, such as Panama, Kenya and Nigeria, have been able to find an exit from the grey list.
Here we break down Pakistan’s placement on FATF’s grey list by answering a set of questions.
What does FATF mean by money laundering and financing of terrorism?
Both are financial crimes. In simple terms, money laundering pertains to disguising money earned from a crime as money earned through legitimate sources.
The crime could be corruption, drug trafficking, fraud or tax evasion. Terrorist financing involves collection of funds to support acts of terror or terrorist organisations.
A key difference between the two is that, in money laundering, the source of funds has to be a crime.
In the financing of terrorism, funds may come from perfectly legitimate sources, such as donations from ordinary citizens, but the purpose has to be a crime.
What is FATF looking for in AML and CFT?
FATF has formulated a set of 40 recommendations which have become international standards on AML and CFT
Over time, these recommendations have been and will continue to be updated. The recommendations list out the essential measures that countries should have in place to:
identify the risks, and develop policies and domestic coordination;
pursue money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation;
apply preventive measures for the financial sector and other designated sectors;
establish powers and responsibilities for the competent authorities (e.g., investigative, law enforcement and supervisory authorities) and other institutional measures;
enhance the transparency and availability of beneficial ownership information of legal persons and arrangements; and
facilitate international cooperation.
technical compliance, which is about legal and institutional framework and the powers and procedures of the competent authorities, and
effectiveness assessment, which is about the extent to which the legal and institutional framework is producing the expected results.
A lot of these recommendations and methodology are nothing but the dry financial jargon that is characteristic of multilateral bodies and compliance professionals, such as a “risk based approach”, “structural deficiencies”, “materiality”, “customer due diligence”, “suspicious transaction report” etc.
Is Pakistan really one of the worst performers on money laundering and financing of terrorism?
Money launderers and terrorists do not report their crimes. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to measure these crimes directly.
FATF and others try to take an indirect route to measure the vulnerability of a country to these crimes by evaluating laws and their implementation.
Pakistan’s assessment by different entities is not going to be the same.
Take for instance the ranking of Pakistan by the Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index. This index seeks to measure the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing.
It uses 14 indicators dealing with regulations, corruption, financial standards, political disclosure and the rule of law, which are aggregated into one overall risk score.
This index currently ranks Pakistan 46 out of 146 countries in 2017, better than Tajikistan (4), Mali (7), Kenya (11), Sierra Leone (26), and Panama (30) — all of which are currently not on FATF’s monitoring list.
This index is developed by the Basel Institute on Governance that describes itself as “an independent not-for-profit competence centre” that is associated with Basel University.
Chances are that it is far less political in nature than FATF. However, this index is also partially based on FATF. Now that FATF has placed Pakistan on the grey list, it would affect Pakistan’s ranking on this index as well.
Regarding terrorism, many in Pakistan disagree with FATF and see the country as a victim of terrorism that has already suffered and sacrificed much.
FATF uses peer pressure through the age-old technique of name-and-shame. There are many factors at play and it remains unclear how negative Pakistan’s placement on the grey list will eventually turn out to be.
There is, however, no debate that it is indeed a negative. Here are some of the ways in which grey listing could affect Pakistan.
Pakistan’s banking channel could be adversely affected as it is inevitably linked with the international financial system.
The impact on Pakistan’s economy could be relatively wide, touching imports, exports, remittances and access to international lending.
Foreign financial institutions may carry out enhanced checking of transactions with Pakistan to avoid risk of violations pertaining to money laundering and financing of terrorism.
They may ask more questions and apply more checks. Some such institutions may also avoid dealing with Pakistan’s financial system altogether.
Another affectee is the sentiment of foreign investors. That Pakistan has been placed on the grey list has been covered in international news media and the fact will not go unnoticed by potential investors. Stock prices at Pakistan Stock Exchange appear to have already felt this impact.
Perhaps the biggest threat from being placed on the grey list is Pakistan could be pushed further down to the black list.
This black list comprises Iran and North Korea, the two countries West loves to hate. But placing Pakistan on the black list is probably a step too far to be on the cards at this stage.
These potential implications of grey listing need to be balanced against past experience.
Pakistan was on FATF grey list from 2012 to 2015, when it completed an IMF programme and also raised funds from international bond markets.
The country has also survived far graver financial challenges, such as those posed by nuclear explosions in 1998.
Are FATF’s concerns regarding Pakistan about money laundering or financing of terrorism?
It seems FATF’s concerns are mainly regarding financing of terrorism.
The FATF’s public statement issued on 29 June, 2018 begins by saying, “In June 2018, Pakistan made a high-level political commitment” to “strengthen its AML/CFT regime and to address its strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies [emphasis added].”
This is also made clear when we look at the actions Pakistan is being asked to take to exit the list:
terrorism financing risks are properly identified, assessed, and supervised;
remedial actions and sanctions are applied in cases of money laundering and financing of terrorism violations;
competent authorities are coordinating to identify and take enforcement action against illegal money or value transfer services;
authorities are identifying cash couriers and enforcing controls on illicit movement of currency and understanding the risk of cash couriers being used for financing of terrorism;
improving inter-agency coordination including between provincial and federal authorities on combating financing of terrorism risks;
law enforcement agencies are identifying and investigating financing of terrorism and prosecuting related designated persons and entities;
financing of terrorism prosecutions result in applicable sanctions and enhancing the capacity and support for prosecutors and the judiciary;
effective implementation of targeted financial sanction against all designated terrorists;
enforcement against financing of terrorism violations including administrative and criminal penalties and authorities cooperating on enforcement cases; and
facilities and services owned or controlled by designated persons are deprived of their resources.
Is this a financial or a political issue?
If the commentary by international news media is any indicator, Pakistan’s placement on FATF’s grey list is far more political than financial in nature.
It is being seen as one of the several ways the US is attempting to pressure Pakistan to “do more” on issues related to terrorism.
The long-winded, jargon-filled recommendations and methodology used by FATF leave plenty of flexibility for the team of assessors to exercise their “informed judgement”.
That is, based on the same information, assessors could reach more than one judgement, including the one sought by the politically powerful.
By placing Pakistan on FATF’s grey list, US has indeed demonstrated its intent to turn up the pressure on Pakistan.
US is also a major financier of FATF and the current president of FATF is an Assistant Secretary from the US Department of the Treasury who heads the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes.
If US can have Pakistan placed on the grey list, it may also make it difficult for Pakistan to exit the list.
Bottom line is that FATF’s grey listing of Pakistan should not be looked at in isolation but placed in the larger picture of US-Pakistan relations that have had many ups and downs.
Last month, speaking in Nawabshah, former president Asif Ali Zardari pledged that, if the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won the upcoming elections, every household in Pakistan that doesn't already have a member in government services, would get the chance to have at least one member in a government job.
Zardari may have been blunter than other politicians, but it is no secret that politicians across Pakistan woo voters with government posts.
These are jobs that are not performance based — they come with security of tenure, access to power, pensions and other perks and privileges. They are, therefore, the top demand that people make of their representatives.
It is no surprise then that it is considered necessary that the caretaker government reshuffle the bureaucracy prior to an election.
The widely held perception is that the bureaucracy is politicised — bureaucrats are loyal to particular parties and politicians, and that they will act to favour them at election time.
There is no doubt that Pakistan’s bureaucracy is politicised from the street-level bureaucrats (teachers, patwaris) all the way up to the elite, Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) bureaucrats.
At the street-level and mid-tier level, it is common for bureaucrats to leave their offices in the evening and join a gathering at a politician’s dera.
Amongst the elite bureaucracy, both politicians and bureaucrats have their favourites. Just as in the 1990s, lists are still made by political party leaders to identify bureaucrats who they trust and want to work with when they are in government.
And many bureaucrats make obvious moves (going out of the country, taking leave to work in other organisations or to study, moving from one province to another or to the federation) to avoid working with those they do not get along with.
How can bureaucrats favour a politician or a party at election time?
There are two ways: the first is in the run-up to election day, and the second is on election day itself.
In the run-up to the election, senior and mid-tier bureaucrats can play a crucial role in favouring some politicians over others.
In the districts, the police can be deployed to harass and intimidate opposition candidates, and bureaucrats can use regulations to create roadblocks (literally and figuratively) for less favoured parties and politicians, for instance by refusing or delaying permission for rallies.
Islamabad’s CDA’s recent decision to ban rallies, gatherings of more than five people, and pamphleteering in the month leading up to the election seems to be an example of such a strategy.
Such a move disadvantages small parties like the Awami Workers Party, who rely on public gatherings to win votes, and lack the connections and resources to cut through bureaucratic red tape (as their candidate for NA-53, Ammar Rashid, pointed out).
Senior and mid-tier bureaucrats in departments and districts (secretaries, commissioners, deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners, and district police officers) are also the ones responsible for the appointment of street-level bureaucrats (teachers, patwaris, station house officers, etc).
This can be done according to the wishes of a prominent politician who wants his voters and supporters to be accommodated with a government job (the way Zardari has claimed) or in posts of their choice.
Though the practice has become much less blatant since National Accountability Bureau investigations into illegal recruitments by Riaz Fatyana while he was Punjab Education minister, Anwar Saifullah Khan when he was minister for Petroleum, and more recently into Faisal Saleh Hayat while he was managing director of the Pakistan Housing Authority, it is still not uncommon for ministers to hand bureaucrats a list of names with the demand that they be accommodated with a government job.
The jobs can range from Class IV appointments such as guards and peons, to street-level posts such as patwaris, teachers, and health workers.
Bureaucratic appointments can also be made with the express intent of influencing voters on election day by ensuring that bureaucrats, and particularly police officers, who will be appointed as polling agents and security staff in a specific area, are friendly to a particular party or politician.
It is impossible to keep track of and check these appointments — there are simply too many in each province — and the majority of them will technically be legal, and therefore difficult to challenge.
Meanwhile, incumbent governments can take measures to win the loyalty of bureaucrats as well, mainly through regularisation schemes.
These schemes involve regularising contract employees so that they can enjoy the same perks and privileges as permanent employees of the government. These schemes are approved by
chief ministers as elections draw nearer and are a clear sign of bolstering the ruling party’s popularity and winning bureaucrats’ loyalty for the upcoming election.
Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif regularised thousands of employees in April 2018, and Chief Minister Pervez Khattak did the same in February 2018 — and the timing of these decisions is not accidental.
How much good can a reshuffle of the bureaucracy by the caretaker government do?
While the caretaker government might be well-intentioned, seeking to transfer bureaucrats within and between provinces to ensure that the state machinery be as neutral as possible come election day, there are problems with these reshuffles.
The first problem is one of imperfect information on bureaucrats’ political loyalties. The caretaker government may know of the political loyalties of major bureaucratic players, but it can not possibly make an educated decision for the thousands of bureaucrats it reshuffles at various tiers of the administrative hierarchy.
Therefore, moving a bureaucrat from A to B may not actually reduce their influence over the electoral process, such as it may be.
In effect, caretaker reshuffles and the reshuffles carried out by the departing government, and by the new government when it takes office following elections, mean that the state machinery is in a state of turmoil for six months, effectively slowing down any actual work of government departments.
Furthermore, the way reshuffles work is that the caretaker government, with the approval of the Election Commission of Pakistan, transfers the top tier of bureaucrats. These bureaucrats then transfer the mid-tier bureaucrats under their purview, who can then transfer street-level bureaucrats.
However, in the short time available to the district bureaucracy, it is unlikely that a major reshuffle of mid-tier and street-level bureaucrats will take place.
Effectively, the bureaucrats staffing posts in the run-up to the election and polling stations are likely to be those appointed by the outgoing government, allowing opposition parties to cry foul on election day.
Even if we assume that a neutral bureaucrat has been found, they have very little time to become familiar with what may be an entirely new district or department.
This means that they must rely on bureaucrats already present in the department for information, potentially compromising the neutrality of the office despite the transferred officer’s best intentions.
A similar problem arises when bureaucrats are moved between provinces. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the PPP are deeply entrenched in Punjab and Sindh respectively, and it is difficult to staff the province with officers who have never dealt with these parties and the bureaucrats favoured by them in some manner.
This leads to the charge that the caretaker government is itself biased. But bringing in bureaucrats from other provinces might leave the officers with very little time to adjust to political realities that they are unused to, again making them completely reliant on bureaucrats working under them.
Finally, it is worth asking if bureaucrats’ loyalties to parties and politicians take precedence over their loyalty to themselves, their careers and even their cadre.
Any number of lobbies, groupings, and factions exist within the bureaucracy — political loyalties are but a part of bureaucratic identities.
Opposition parties continue to flag these loyalties and demand reshuffles but this is no substitute for a professional bureaucracy that is loyal to the state first. Such a bureaucracy is only possible through civil service reform.
There is no lack of proposals for reform. What is required is the will to implement them, not just of the politicians, but of the bureaucrats themselves.
Illustration by Mushba Said
Are you a researcher or policy advocate working on government reforms? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
Maryam Nawaz on Saturday told reporters that she and her father, Nawaz Sharif (Sharifs), would return to Pakistan this coming Friday to file an appeal against the accountability court's decision in the Avenfield properties case.
A day earlier, the Sharif family had been sentenced in the Avenfield properties' corruption reference, with Nawaz getting 10 years’ imprisonment and £8 million in fine and Maryam, seven years’ imprisonment and £2 million in fine.
The Sharifs do have the right to appeal under Section 32 of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Ordinance before two judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The IHC has inherent powers to accept the appeal, suspend the sentence(s) pending appeal and/or overrule the authorities’ sentence.
Convicts who do not surrender after their conviction generally cannot file an appeal.1 This is based on the sound principle that a convict can only seek protection of the law if he/she surrenders before the court of law.2
The Lahore High Court (LHC) dealt with a similar matter in 2002, whereby the (late) Begum Nusrat Bhutto was tried and convicted under the NAB Ordinance (she was overseas throughout the trial due to old-age incapacities).
After Nusrat Bhutto’s conviction, her daughter filed an appeal on Nusrat Bhutto’s behalf, which was rejected by the LHC. Begum Nusrat was deemed a fugitive under the law and therefore was not entitled to invoke provisions of the appeal till she had surrendered.3
A 2012 Supreme Court (SC) judgment4 might, however, leave some room for interpretation. The Sharifs could file their petition for suspension of sentence (pending appeal) under Section 426 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
Section 426 (1) of the CrPC relates to a situation when a convict has filed for the suspension of sentence, has not yet surrendered before the police, but appears before the court instead.
In the aforementioned SC judgment, the Court found that a convict appearing before the High Court amounted to surrender, notwithstanding the fact that he had remained an absconder for more than a month after conviction, without surrendering to the police.
Consequently, the Sharifs could “surrender” under Section 426 (1) CrPC by appearing before the court without surrendering before the police. However, sources have stated that NAB authorities will be waiting to take the Sharifs into custody as soon as they arrive in Lahore. Furthermore, Maryam has stated that her father will be offering his arrest upon arrival.
Moving on, as aforementioned, the IHC does have inherent powers (Section 561-CrPC) to suspend the sentence pending appeal and/or grant bail to convicts. The rhetoric for this law is that there is no compensation for a conviction that may later be set aside, and that a conviction can always stand resumed from where it parted.5
An Appellate Court examining suspension of sentence (pending appeal) is only required to tentatively assess the evidence, as the court is not deciding the innocence or guilt of the convict.
High Courts have granted bail and suspension of sentences after conviction in certain NAB cases (e.g. appeal had been pending indefinitely without fault of convict, the convicts had previously been allowed bail during trial and were imposed a shorter sentence).
However, there exists little precedent for suspension of sentence and/or release on bail for convictions of seven years and more. This is in part due to the Section 497 CrPC prohibitory clause, whereby convictions of more than seven years are more are generally not granted bail exemption.
Therefore, the only real remedy for grant of bail and suspension of sentence for the Sharifs can be if the IHC finds that there are glaring errors apparent on the surface of the judgment.
Grave errors on mere appraisal of the evidence of NAB trial cases have been found in certain fact-patterns: prosecution witnesses who were relied upon to show collusion amongst convicts did not depose a single word connecting as such6; prosecution failed to cite towards particular provision of law to show illegality of convict’s action7; Trial Court’s assessment was based on conjectures and not established facts.8
Consequently, the Sharifs will have to establish a high threshold to show illegality within the authorities’ judgment based on a bare perusal of it to obtain suspension of sentence.
The Trial Court found that the prosecution successfully proved its burden under Section 9 (a) (v) of the Ordinance, as the properties found in possession of accused/Sharifs (i.e., London flats) were disproportionate to their known source(s) of income, and that the Sharifs did not satisfactorily account for possession of such property.
Consequently, the Sharifs were found guilty within Section 14 (c) of the NAB Ordinance for corrupt practices.
Critics have relied heavily on a 2011 SC judgment9 to assert that in order to convict under Section 9 (a) (v) of the NAB Ordinance, the prosecution must bring on record the misuse of authority of a public servant to show that the assets built by him is disproportionate to the known source of income.
However, in the aforementioned 2011 judgment, the apex court was critical of the fact that the authorities had filed a reference and claimed a non-existent nexus between misuse of a public official’s authority and accumulation of assets beyond known sources of income.
No such nexus was claimed by the prosecutors in this case. The Trial Court’s judgment was based entirely on the presence of disproportionality without sufficient explanation, which is enough to convict.
In fact, the SC’s Panama verdict briefly cited towards the 2011 judgment, and did not mention any requirement of nexus between misuse of public authority and ownership of benami property for the purposes of conviction.
Consequently, the Sharifs’ best bet would be to tackle the Trial Court’s handling of the evidence.
In appeal, it will have to be determined by the High Court whether the prosecution fulfilled its burden of proof (prima facie) that the Avenfield apartments were not purchased from the sources of incomes shown by the accused.
The Trial Court found that the prosecution fulfilled its burden of proof based on circumstantial/secondary evidence such as:
Documents showing Maryam’s connections with the holding company of the company that owned the Avenfield apartments; digital media such as video clips purporting to show various members of the Sharif family uttering words of possession and/or association with the Avenfield apartments at various times; the Sharif family living in the apartments since the year 1993; the British Virgin Islands' attorney general verifying Maryam’s beneficial ownership of the offshore companies and Nawaz being chairman of a Dubai offshore company owned by his son.
The culmination of all the circumstantial/secondary evidence led the Trial Court to determine that “the entire family…are one and the same monolith” in terms of culpability.
The Trial Court deemed credible the prosecution’s use of Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT) chart of the Sharif family’s assets and liabilities as their “known sources of income,” which was contrasted with the Avenfield properties to show disproportionate source(s) of income.
The Trial Court found that the Sharif family’s explanation(s) did not reasonably account for possession of such properties.
The infamous trust deed document purporting to show Maryam as a trustee and Hussain Nawaz as the beneficiary owner was dismissed by the Trial Court for the same reasons as the JIT Report (Calibri font).
The narration of investment with the Qatari royal family was deemed insufficient due to lack of corroboration.
The lack of production of documents of incorporation and articles of association of the offshore companies was impugned against the Sharif family as lack of sufficient explanation.
The lack of production of witnesses and presentation of additional documents also contributed to the lack of satisfactory explanation in the eyes of the Trial Court.
Finally, the Trial Court came to a conclusion that it was Nawaz’s unaccounted for money that purchased the apartment in 1993, and not the children, as they were held too young to have tangible assets.
It is settled law that circumstantial evidence should be of a conclusive nature. It should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proven, and there must be a chance of evidence complete to the extent that it does not leave reasonable ground for conclusion consistent with the innocence of the violators.
This principle will hold the key in the adjudication of the appeal and suspension of sentence (pending appeal).
Illustration by Mushba Said
12005 YLR 1283, Sindh High Court.
22010 PLD 353, Lahore High Court
32002 PLD 74, Lahore High Court.
42012 SCMR 997, Supreme Court
52018 Pcr. LJ 610, Sindh High Court
62002 YLR 3996, Lahore
7Ibid.
8Ibid.
9PLD 2011 Supreme Court 1144
Are you a lawyer or public policy expert working on issues related to justice reform? Share your expertise with us at blog@dawn.com
The media is the lifeblood of an election. In Pakistan’s context, even at the best of times, both elections and the media is widely believed to be adversely manipulated and influenced not just by corporate interests but also by powerful lobbies with political objectives.
This year, this month, with elections barely a fortnight away, is an alarming case in point for the country.
The very quality of elections and the project of democratic consolidation is at stake considering that some political parties are screaming murder at being arm-twisted within the electoral process and some media groups are crying foul at being intimidated.
Some of the largest political parties are finding it hard to do politics and some of the finest media is also finding it hard to conduct journalism at a time when both the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are needed the most.
This is especially alarming considering that the role of the media in an election time is central to the purpose of the elections to produce renewed political mandates to pursue national priorities for the medium term.
Considering that media perceptions are critical in influencing public opinion, an intimidated media cannot help the electorate navigate the minefield of competing narratives amidst rising political temperatures by snipping away misinformation and conspiracy theories and providing the necessary information and analysis that helps people form informed opinions to make meaningful electoral choices.
Consider: the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), the representative association of the country’s 20,000 working journalists, is on a countrywide strike protesting attacks on journalists and media houses.
The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE), the professional guild of the country’s print media editors, and the Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA), which represents the country’s about 50 independent current affairs TV channels and more than 150 private FM radio stations, have in recent days issued statements voicing concern and anger against what they describe is unprecedented intimidation of the media houses and working journalists that is putting journalists at risk and hurting their capacities to compete professionally within the industry.
This concern and alarm has also been shared vociferously by international media watchdogs such as Reporters Sans Frontieres, Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists through special statements in recent days.
Also, global news media brands such as BBC, New York Times and The Guardian have in recent days run stories detailing the wanton and persistent intimidation of the media in Pakistan as well as hounding of and violence against freelance journalists and online information practitioners that is impacting the quality of election coverage.
In a hostile environment like this, how should the media in Pakistan perform its professional remit of being the guardian of public interest in the thick of an election?
In the information and social media age, everyone is a journalist as sharing, processing and dissemination of information is an act of journalism.
Professional journalism, however, is an organised act — as opposed to being personal and random — and governed by the same set of principles it always has been: focused on public interest and advantageous for the citizens in terms of being informative and educative to the point where its current affairs version becomes ‘news you can use’.
This is why we need free and fearless media — in other words, professional media — especially in times of elections.
The news media industry needs to strike a balance between the media’s imperative of seeking profits (because it is primarily a corporate entity) and optimising the media consumer interest.
It is not the easiest trick in the world but focusing on professionalism can offer a solution that respects both the opposing strands. And yet, in the absence of strong self-regulation within the industry, most of the media in Pakistan finds it easy to skirt professionalism.
Ironically what this engenders is a growing vulnerability to pressure from powerful sources, including errant state actors. While it compromises public interest, it also makes it difficult for the few media houses that want to stay professional, hence becoming vulnerable to be targeted.
The general disregard for professionalism — including downright wanton bias — by most of the media houses is troubling.
Most of the talk shows on TV being offered nowadays, in lieu of election coverage, for instance, are a poisonous menu of bias, hate speech and general intolerance for pluralist perspectives. Personal views are presented as facts and opinions masqueraded as analysis.
With very few exceptions, most media houses, including TV and newspapers, have resigned, for profit or under pressure, to compromising the interests of their audiences and prefer to provide maximum, but unfair, coverage to some parties than others.
Imran Khan gets the lion’s share of coverage — everything he does in public is beamed live. Whereas even the heads of other major parties — such as Bilawal Bhutto, Shahbaz Sharif, Asfandyar Wali, Hasil Bizenjo and Mahmood Achakzai — struggle to get similar time live on air.
It is remarkable that Bilawal’s multi-day election rallies and mammoth turnouts in Sindh in recent days have been all but blacked out by some of the media.
And yet others, like the often bile-spewing Sheikh Rasheed, get more air time than most party chiefs combined.
Other promising alternative platforms such as the Awami Workers Party, Barabari Party Pakistan and strong independent voices like Jibran Nasir stand no chance.
People have a right to hear these alternative voices; the media has no right to black them out.
The supposed benchmark for election coverage by the media, the Media Code of Conduct issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan, is a non-starter.
It directs the media to implement an idealist framework that is impossible to enforce, least of all by the media regulator Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, which simply does not have the capacity, clout or credibility to nudge the TV channels into a broadly professional direction.
State regulation is never preferable anyway because it engenders censorship. But self-regulation is not working either.
News bulletins, for example, on most channels are out to deliberately caricature news items with a discernibly infotainment bent complete with film songs and cartoon jingles.
While talk shows in prime time — there are 147 daily talk shows on 49 channels — are mostly stuffed with the usual suspects comprising either third-tier political party representatives with the habit of only criticising their political opponents, or an army of retired military officials who unfailingly focus on caricaturing politics and politicians — none of them has a nice thing to say about Nawaz Sharif, for instance — while the hosts are, with a few exceptions, often remarkably shallow with their thematic contexts.
The Press and the Nation rise and fall together, they say. This adage rings strongly true because the inability of the media to self-regulate professionalism is matched only by the inability of the average journalist to resist self- or imposed partisanship, sensation and hysteria — resulting in the media becoming part of election-related confusion rather than the purveyor of clarity.
That the media influences public behaviour is amply clear — what happens on the talk shows in the evenings daily is an ample reflection of how the election is being conducted across the pulpits and the streets and at homes.
In general, reporting responsibly has never been the forte of Pakistani media, especially private TV channels.
But without self-regulatory bodies like PBA, CPNE, APNS and PFUJ agreeing on a joint mechanism to implement the various codes of ethics and conduct they already have, and a self-accountability on this implementation — like those in the US and most western European states — the media in Pakistan will persist in compromising public interest and continue being manipulated by the vested interests into vulnerability, even blackmail.
In the meanwhile, the quality of Pakistan’s elections will be directly proportional to the professionalism of the media.
Are you involved in media reform? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
Since my last article about the role of members of the national assembly (MNAs) and members of the provincial assemblies (MPAs), the number one retort that I read was, 'why do these elected officials have development funds?'
Irrespective of the details that I laid out in that piece, the question seemed to be about development funds. The critical part that pushed me to write this piece was the sweeping assumption by many that, somehow, every single MNA or MPA gets development funds which they use for corruption.
Here I am again to tell you that is not the case. This also is a myth generated by the electronic media mostly to oversimplify the notion of what legislators are supposed to really do.
So, what is the development fund and how does it get allocated?
To start with, development funds are not issued to all MNAs or MPAs. There is a process for the allocation of these funds.
The first point is to understand where the development fund comes from. The answer to that is the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP), a very small portion of the federal budget.
Out of the PSDP comes the development fund. Now you may ask well, if it is coming through the PSDP, how can it go to the individual MNA or MPA?
Here is the next kicker: development funds do not get issued to the individual MNA or MPA; they get assigned to a project.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
—Mushba Said
Most MNAs start their term by coming up with projects aimed at uplifting their constituency. Such projects may include the establishment of a college, university or skill training institute, or infrastructure-related initiatives.
They take this project to the Planning Commission to fill out a PC-1 form. This form is essentially a proposal for a project with details of how and why a project needs to be done and the resources needed.
Half the battle is to get the PC-1 form approved by the Planning Commission. The process can take anywhere between a year to three years: once it gets the Commission’s approval, it is then sent to the Ministry of Finance that must sign off on it since they must approve if the money is there for it or not.
Upon approval, it is sent to the Cabinet Division that sends it to the Cabinet meeting, who then must approve it to send it to the Prime Minister.
When the Prime Minister finally signs off on it, only then the money comes out of the PSDP to finance a project for the said constituency.
A similar process happens at the provincial level too.
The key thing to remember here is that, while people tend to look at MNAs and assume they must be minting money, they forget that, after the 18th Amendment, the federal government basically only has 48 percent of the total money while provinces get 52 percent of it.
Out of the 48 percent at the federal level, most of the money is channeled towards debt servicing and the military. Whatever money is left at the end, after all these expenditures, is for the PSDP.
So, in reality, a large number of MNAs never even get their projects approved to get some development funds. MPAs have a better shot at getting some money for their constituencies.
That is why, if you notice, the provincial governments have recently shelled out huge amounts of money on districts before the elections in an attempt to increase their chances of retaining or winning power because they have a lot more finances than the federal government for this.
At this point, many of you must be demanding to know how the elected officials earn money from all of this.
The short answer is — they do not.
That legislators make money from all of this is a myth. What normally happens is that elected officials use the perception of bringing projects to their constituencies to gain favours from local businesses.
They try to create a system of patronage for themselves where they can benefit through the perception of being influential enough to land projects in their districts.
The perception of power helps the legislators to make phone calls that can help out with smaller things like transfers or even recruitment at lower levels of government, but nothing huge.
That being said, senior leaders have more sway in landing projects.
For instance, the chances for Gujranwala or Narowal to get a piece of a mega-project is much higher than, say, Muzaffargarh.
The key to remember is that such instances are limited to senior leaders and not your average MNA or MPA.
In a province like Punjab, with over 300 ruling party MPAs, the chances that an average MPA will be able to get anything done, i.e. get a project for their constituency, is very low.
In essence, as a myth, the development funds are a powerful tool for MPAs and MNAs to yield power locally but, in reality, that is not the case.
Most MNAs and MPAs spend their tenure trying to get the PC-1 filled out and sent to the Ministry of Finance rather than raking in money through illicit means.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz returned to Pakistan Friday evening, following their conviction last week by an accountability court in the Avenfield reference case, in which the judge ruled that Nawaz, Maryam and her husband Captain Safdar owned assets beyond known income.
They were respectively handed jail sentences of 10, seven and one year each.
What does the Sharifs' decision to come back mean for their and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's political futures? How has the state handled the duo's return? Our analysts weigh in.
'The PML–N today is no longer the docile PML–N of 1999' — Adnan Rasool
Did the government go overboard in its reaction to the Sharifs' return?
The caretaker government went all out with its preparations to arrest two people who willingly came back to get arrested unlike a commando who is still refusing to come back to face treason charges.
And this is what will stick with the people going into the last 10 days of the election season: the state chose to go after the Sharifs rather than focus on other things.
The over-reaction by the caretaker Punjab government, highlighted by analysts like Nusrat Javed in the last few days, was not necessary. All this has done is to give the victimhood story line the PML–N has been pushing, more credence.
In short, a smarter caretaker government would have simply cordoned off the airport instead of shutting the city down, arrested both Maryam and Nawaz in the lounge and shuttled them to Rawalpindi.
It could have been a simple and clean arrest but instead, the state always somehow manage to muck up their best plans and turn the same people they want to vilify into heroes.
What do you make of the Sharifs' decision to come back?
For Nawaz and Maryam, the decision to return was important. Ever since 1999, Nawaz has been scarred by the taunts that he fled the first chance he got. So, this time around, he needed to do this to wash away that black mark.
For Maryam, this is the tipping point where she can legitimately play herself to be like the person she has modeled her career on i.e. Benazir Bhutto.
Whether they spend the whole jail time they have been given is up for debate, but what this whole thing has shown is that this PML–N is no longer the docile PML–N of 1999/2000.
Another factor being ignored right now is that the party is now crafting a social identity for itself beyond just a political party.
The party may have been founded by the patronage of a dictator, but it has essentially built the perception now as the only one to stand up to the iron-fisted interventions of the powers-that-be.
'Coming back was a political necessity' — Arifa Noor
How has the government handled Nawaz and Maryam's return? Was such a reaction necessary?
The administration's reaction was an overkill; they could have done without it.
Unfortunately, this is how the state in Pakistan is structured and this how it functions each time there is any kind of a protest.
Whoever is in power — or whoever controls the state — will do something like this. So, for example, if Nawaz Sharif is leading the long march to Islamabad and the PPP is in power, they would do something similar — as they did back in 2009.
When the PTI wanted to hold the second dharna in Islamabad, this is how the PML-N reacted.
Now when the PML-N wanted to collect a crowd, the caretaker setup reacted this way.
It is partly because of our colonial legacy that you have these laws in place, like Section 144, and the how the police functions — it is basically to control the public rather than to provide a service.
The moment they feel a political threat, they put that entire infrastructure in motion. So, the only thing that changes is who the victim is and who is the enforcer.
What do you think of the Sharifs' decision to even come back?
Well, I think it was a political necessity. They have been in power for the past five years. They have stakes in Pakistan.
This is no longer a military dictatorship, so if they had stayed away, they would have created too many legal and political problems.
Nawaz wants to pass his political legacy to his daughter, so if they hadn’t returned, they would have lost all of this.
In 1999, Nawaz went in exile. Can you compare and contrast that moment with today?
1999 was very different because they were imprisoned under the military dictatorship. It was life imprisonment.
Obviously they were kept in Attock jail, so they thought it was safer to leave. Perhaps that experience has shaped their decision because they realised that, once they left, their party was weakened completely.
'Nawaz did not have any choice' — Zahid Hussain
What do you make of the government's handling of the situation today?
I think the government seems to have reacted in panic initially, and I don’t think there was any need for that, even if the crowd was surging.
This is typical and has not happened for the first time. Each time this kind of thing happens, they take what they call ‘preventive measures’: bringing in containers, blocking roads.
So I think, probably, the caretaker government also resorted to the same thing, and later on, when they realised, they removed the containers and allowed people passage, and it was all peaceful and nothing happened.
So, I think it was unnecessary to take this kind of immediate action.
What's your take on Nawaz's decision to come back?
I think he did not have any choice. He had only 10 days left for the appeal and so he had to come. I think probably he is hoping that, when he goes to appeal, the sentence may be suspended.
That’s his best option.
Compare this to 1999?
I think it was a very different situation then. There was a military government and they were convicted under that, so they basically decided to make a deal and leave the country.
But this time, it was different — an accountability court convicted them and they were already out of the country when it happened. It’s not like they were arrested here and then convicted. So that was a completely different situation.
Elsewhere...
Meanwhile, Shahzaib Khanzada emphasised the political significance of optics and the visualisation of Maryam and Nawaz Sharif's return.
"It is vital to notice Maryam and Nawaz’s body language which is important in politics. It seems they are aware that they need to appear confident, because this optic is necessary."
"Every expression on their faces will make headlines and be analysed."
Geo News' Mazhar Abbas made an important point that "despite road blocks, protesters arrived in some way to show their presence. Nawaz has corrected a historic mistake of leaving for Saudi Arabia in 1999."
"Today they have returned and sent a message to the people that they have come back to face the sentences against them."
After almost a decade, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), which emerged as the third-biggest political force in the 2002 general elections, is back as a five-member religio-political alliance to contest the polls in 2018, comprising the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Jamaat-i- Islami (JI), Jamiat Ahle Hadith and the Islami Tehreek (IT).
It was back in early 2000, after the toppling of Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, that the General Pervez Musharraf-led military government, which had vowed to never allow the return of the exiled leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), was desperate to find an alternative political force.
The JI was on good terms with the military government. Then-JI chief, the late Qazi Hussain Ahmed, even went on a tour of the United States, where he spoke to think-tanks in a bid to portray his image as a moderate religio-political leader.
In the 2001 local bodies elections, the JI also managed to get hold of Karachi’s city government. The MQM had boycotted the polls.
However, in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the lead-up to the US invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan was being pressured by the US to take action against hostile religious elements within its borders.
General Musharraf had no choice but to crack down on militant organisations and cooperate with the American-led coalition.
Tracing the origins of the MMA
This created a furor within domestic religious circles, resulting in several religious parties (including some non-Muslim ones) uniting for the formation of the Difa-i-Afghanistan Pakistan Council (DAPC).
The alliance agitated against the toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; with Pakistan allying itself with the US in the War on Terror, the country’s participation was turned into an electoral issue.
Yet, at the same time, the DAPC members had conflicting views on the Afghan Taliban. The JUI-F and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Sami (JUI-S) supported the Taliban, but the JI was opposed because they were backing the Gulbadin Hikmatyar faction that was ousted from their strongholds by the Taliban.
The Tehreek-i-Jaferia Pakistan (TJP), an organisation of Shia clergy led by Allama Sajid Naqvi, became part of the DAPC as well. Even though Shias were strongly against the Taliban given their involvement in the killing of Shias in Bamyan and other parts of Afghanistan, the single-point agenda of opposing the US in the region and General Musharraf’s compliance brought everyone together.
But the DAPC had a precedent. In 1995, the major religio-political parties and smaller groups from other sects had joined hands to form the Milli Yakjehti Council (MYC).
This non-political organisation was headed by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan-Noorani (JUP-N) chief, Shah Ahmed Noorani, and had the JUI-F, JUI-S, JI, TJP, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Sawad Azam Ahl-i-Sunnat and Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) as its members.
Its aim was to bring religious parties together to end sectarian violence. The MYC was initially successful in easing tensions, but radical elements in both Sunni and Shia organisations resorted to violence soon after, rendering the MYC ineffective.
Later, in August 2001, militant sectarian groups such as the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and SMP were banned; in January 2002, their mother organisations, the SSP and TJP, were also proscribed.
Other members of the MYC, including the TJP which was rechristened as the IT after being banned, joined the DAPC.
They held country-wide protests, organising rallies, and issuing strike calls. A couple of months before the 2002 general elections, the DAPC turned into an electoral alliance: the MMA.
The rise of the MMA
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
From right to left: Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, current MMA Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president; Fazlur Rehman, MMA chief; Akram Khan Durrani, former chief minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The move was unprecedented. Religious parties, who normally couldn’t even pray together with their religious rivals, displayed exemplary unity.
This brought them votes in urban centres, while in rural parts, they relied on their traditional support base. This explains how they managed to win constituencies in all the provincial capitals and a constituency in the federal capital.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), they clean sweeped the major cities, winning all the national assembly (NA) constituencies in Peshawar, Mardan and Swat, along with the JUI-F’s traditional strongholds in southern district of Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Lakki Marwat and Hangu, and the JI strongholds of Upper and Lower Dir.
Along with those, they bagged Quetta’s only NA constituency, three in Lahore and five in Karachi.
Not disregarding other factors, what favoured the MMA was the absence of leadership among the mainstream political parties (many stalwarts were not contesting), the charged environment against General Musharraf, as well as the change in graduation degree demands from candidates (madrassah degrees were made equivalent to university degrees).
The MMA formed government in KP, had a coalition government with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) in Balochistan, and had representation in Punjab and Sindh assemblies. In the NA, Fazal ur Rehman got the opposition leader slot.
Fazal and the alliance worked with the PML-Q-led government to approve the 17th Amendment, allowing General Musharraf to get elected as president of Pakistan while in military uniform, as well as taming the agitating partner, Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his party, the JI.
The coalition disintegrates
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Lawyers protesting in Karachi for the restoration of judiciary. —Tanveer Shahzad, White Star
The alliance fell apart in the assemblies’ last year in 2007 due to the JUI-F’s lack of enthusiasm for the movement for the restoration of the judiciary.
The JI boycotted the 2008 general elections, doubting the integrity of the polling process, but the JUI-F and other parties decided to keep intact whatever remained of the alliance and went into the elections under the MMA name, flag and election symbol.
The alliance faced a major defeat except for in those constituencies in KP and Balochistan where the JUI-F was strong. The MMA was no more and the JUI-F joined the PPP-led coalition government at the centre and in Balochistan under its own name.
It was during these years that the JI leadership changed. Munawwar Hasan became party chief; he had expressed his disapproval of the JUI-F chief and his political antics on several occasions, which ended any chance of reviving the MMA. In 2013, religious parties contested polls independently.
The MMA redux
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan chief Shah Ovais Noorani addressing a press conference at Bait-ul-Rizwan in Clifton after the decision to revive the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. Other leaders of the five-party alliance are also seen.—Online
The 2013 elections marked the entry of another political force: Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which became the third-largest party at the centre and won all the constituencies previously dominated by the MMA and the Awami National Party in KP (except for the southern districts of Bannu, Tank, Lakki Marwat, and Dera Ismail Khan).
For the JUI-F, the fear of losing its traditional support base in the southern districts of KP and the tribal belt integrated recently with the province, coupled with the desire for a few constituencies in the Peshawar valley and the adjacent districts where there is anti-incumbency sentiment, made the party express willingness to rejoin hands with the JI, reviving the MMA for the upcoming elections.
In the absence of the stalwarts like the late Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani, late Qazi Hussain Ahmed — both former presidents of the MMA — and his adversary Sami ul Haq of the JUI-S, Fazal ur Rehman is at the helm of the affairs at the MMA now.
He has shown his maneuvering skills in bagging most of the seats allotted to his party by the reborn alliance.
For Siraj ul Haq, the JI chief, the MMA’s revival comes with the hope of keeping hold of his home district of Lower Dir and the party stronghold of both Upper and Lower Dir. He needs additional backup from the JUI-F, as the PTI has made inroads in these constituencies.
The JI also hopes that the MMA could help the party win a few constituencies in other districts where the sum of the total vote for the JUI-F and the JI was more than the PTI’s in 2013.
A possible seat adjustment with the PML-N in Swat, Shangla, Buner, Swabi and numerous other areas would also help the JI in their electoral contest against Imran Khan’s party.
In Karachi, the JI eyes an opening after the weakening of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the expected split in the Mohajir vote bank due to the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) factions.
But an anti-MQM narrative is not a reliable option to win votes, especially since the PSP and PTI are also vying to win the Mohajir vote along the same lines.
That is why, during the last two years, the JI has focused on issues such as K-Electric and the problem of overbilling. The party has been at the forefront in pursuing the electricity company in public hearings, court proceedings and public agitation against it.
The provision of computerised national identity cards (CNIC) to those inhabitants of Karachi who face unnecessary delays and suspicions from the National Database Regulatory Authority (NADRA) in getting their CNICs is another issue the JI has prioritised.
The JI ran a city-wide campaign demanding NADRA to facilitate people and stop creating unnecessary hurdles. The party’s Karachi chief, Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman, has managed to bring civic issues forward on its agenda and is hopeful that the JI would benefit as a result in the upcoming elections. He is contesting from NA-250, a constituency with a Pakhtun majority.
Stumbling blocks
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Participants of TLP's rally march down the Islamabad Expressway on Thursday. —Photo by Tanveer Shahzad
Today, a major hurdle for the MMA in Karachi comes in the shape of resurgent sectarian outfits like the Pakistan Sunni Tehrik (PST) and the ASWJ-affiliated Pakistan Rah-i-Haq Party; the entry of radical Barelvi group, Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP); and the Allah-O-Akbar Tehreek, an offshoot of the Jamaat ud Dawa.
In 2013, ASWJ, contesting elections as part of the Muttahida Deeni Mahaz — a coalition that included the JUI-S and Rah-i-Haq — posed a challenge to the JUI-F as it secured more votes than the latter in PS-128 (but lost to the MQM by a small margin).
For the JUI-F and the JI, their MMA allies would win them little support from the Barelvi and Shia voters. The Barelvi vote has too many contenders this time as both the PST and the TLP have also fielded their candidates in Karachi.
In Balochistan, the JI has no presence, which is why all the MMA candidates have come from the JUI-F which strong in the province's Pashtun belt and has managed to build support in some Baloch districts.
The JUI-F has been part of the coalition governments in 2002 and 2008, and the party’s pragmatic politics has earned them the name ‘da thekeydaro dalaa’ (the party of contractors), based off its lawmakers’ reputations for striking partnerships with the contractors of development projects.
The party has to compete against strong electables and tribal chieftains, Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties and a breakaway faction, the JUI-Nazriati. But still, it’s quite possible that the future Balochistan government can’t be formed without the JUI-F (the MMA).
Shifting sands
What is different today from 2002 is that the MMA no longer has on its side the international and local narrative and political realities.
The war in Afghanistan cannot mobilise Pakistani voters, while the emergence of forces like the PTI, TLP and others has added to the competition, which might hamper its chances in Karachi, for example.
Nor is the MMA in a position to promise sectarian harmony as its earlier incarnations had tried.
Last but not the least, the MMA's performance when in government was not praiseworthy either, making it difficult for voters to take the party seriously this time.
At best, the alliance can only hope for marginal gains in the 2018 elections.
The weeks leading up to the 2018 general elections have involved violent terrorist attacks on political meetings, arrests of party workers, curtailments on press freedom and reasonable skepticism among political parties and observers about the existence of a fair playing field.
Taken together, it is more than enough to fuel a general sense of cynicism about the democratic process and a loss of faith in the legitimacy of the upcoming election.
As a political scientist working on a project on women’s voter participation, the news from Peshawar, Bannu and Mastung made me wonder whether designing interventions to encourage women to turn out to vote was a disingenuous exercise under the circumstances.
Political scientists have a name for this phenomenon: deliberate disengagement. On the one hand, evidence from advanced democracies suggests that more educated citizens are more likely to participate in politics.
However, a study from the electoral authoritarian context of Zimbabwe shows that educated voters tend to participate at lower rates.
The authors of the study argue that this may be because “education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy” and in a situation where freedoms are curbed, “educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats.”
Indeed, it is challenging to study the very behaviour in which you are participating. Good science demands some level of objectivity and distance; civic engagement requires commitment and personal investment. Studying Pakistani politics means staying up-to-date on political developments.
But being informed about the repressive environment and acutely aware of its dangers makes it especially difficult to remain optimistic about the prospects of political participation. I could sense a similar tension plaguing many others I interacted with in Pakistan.
How do we begin to reconcile this tension with the impetus to go out and cast our votes on 25 July? The notion that voting is a civic duty is well and good, but it does little to help adjudicate whether voting can really have any positive consequences.
Luckily, we live in a research-rich world when it comes to Pakistani politics to help adjudicate exactly this question.
More and more scholars in Pakistan and around the world are testing theories of democratic politics using evidence from Pakistan, developing new theoretical models, and helping us understand the nuances of the political landscape like never before (for a review of recent research on the political economy of Pakistan see here).
What some of this research provides us is evidence-based reasons to be cautiously optimistic that the continued democratic process in Pakistan — hurdles, hiccups, and fatal threats aside — is yielding some positive outcomes.
Electoral competition matters for legislators’ financial behaviour
Analysis of recently released tax payment data of 2018 electoral candidates indicates that average tax payments are on the rise.
Importantly, among incumbent legislators who are running for re-election, this growth in tax payments is concentrated in competitive electoral constituencies.
This is in line with previous findings from a study of legislators’ tax payments for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 fiscal years, which finds that tax payments of competitively-elected legislators increased at a significantly higher rate than those of other legislators.
Electoral competition matters for service delivery and spending
Research on municipal service provision in the Lahore district shows that urban citizens’ access to services improves when there is greater competition at the provincial and national constituency level and politicians have a greater incentive to respond to local demands.
This mirrors findings from other countries; for instance, research from Mexico shows that greater electoral competition was associated with higher spending on primary education between 1999-2004.
This is especially salient given that one of the key issue raised by civil society around the upcoming election has been that of education reform in Pakistan.
Who gets elected matters for security
One reason for disillusionment from the electoral process is the perception that all parties are essentially the same and it does not really matter who ends up in power.
A new study using data on elections and violence from 1988-2011 suggests that levels of violence depend on which party gets elected, and the electoral pressures they face from their support bases.
The evidence points a common direction: competition matters. Competition can incentivise elected legislators to behave better and deliver more; and it can push opposing candidates and parties to try just a little harder.
So how do we increase electoral competition? One side of this are political parties and candidates. Competition is greater when more parties and candidates are vying for office.
The emergence of strong new parties at the national and provincial levels is a rare event due to high barriers to entry: successfully entering national level politics requires significant resources.
However, it is somewhat easier at the local level where barriers to entry are lower — recent research from village-level elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shows that a simple conversation can be effective in convincing citizens, who wouldn’t otherwise consider it, to stand in elections.
The very real and present threat to the health of Pakistan’s democracy is the purposive dampening of electoral competition through practices that essentially constitute pre-poll rigging.
A week from elections, the mood in Pakistan seems sombre. Call it what you want, the elections are not whipping up the kind of excitement they did in 2013 or 2008.
This time around there are accusations, resentment and disdain for the whole process.
In such circumstances, one is faced with questions like, is this whole thing worth it? Why are we even doing this again if the same set of people will get elected again on different party platforms? What is the point of this? Why should I even vote?
To the last question, Sarah Khan makes a compelling argument about voting. For the rest of the questions and general disillusionment with democracy, I am putting forward a case for proportional representation.
In a federation like Pakistan, we are stuck with a parliamentary system even though majority of the governance is now with the provincial governments.
As I have explained in my earlier articles, the role of our elected officials and our expectations from them are at complete odds.
This creates a disillusionment with the system that most people cannot articulate and simply call the system broken or corrupt.
I am here to tell you that it is not that our system is broken or corrupt; we just have the wrong system in place.
What Pakistan needs is a proportional representation system, at least at the National Assembly level.
What would this entail?
In simplest terms, people will not vote for a candidate, they will only vote for a party. A party will produce a list of candidates that it wishes to send to the NA and based on the national vote share of each party, it will get that percentage of seats in the NA.
For instance, if the NA was just 200 seats, a party securing 25 percent of the national vote would get 50 seats in the parliament.
The party makes a list of 200 candidates based on priority and the top 50 get sent to the parliament based on the vote share.
The advantage of this is that the voices of even the smaller parties get heard.
There are limitations to this system. For instance, a party needs to secure at least five percent of the national vote to have representation in parliament. But even with that, it gives a wider representation to different ideas and beliefs in the country.
Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway and Denmark are just some of the countries that rely on the proportional representation system for elections.
In all these cases, parties come up with a candidate list specifically designed for the job of legislation.
However, in Pakistan we have more potential advantages than those enjoyed by the Europeans.
No more electables
The most significant advantage we can reap from the system of proportional representation would be getting rid of electables.
Because there is no longer constituency politics for the national level and there are not even the limited development funds at play anymore, political parties can talk policy and long-term planning to the electorate and put forth genuine experts and newer faces without the fear of being beaten out by electables.
This also helps get rid of the party-hoppers who simply keep moving parties and coming back into government.
For a country like Pakistan, where electables are by default assumed to be corrupt, this change could give an aura of change to the system that a small, yet loud segment of our society believes is the end all evil in Pakistan.
All in all, this could end up providing significantly better legislators for us all.
More diverse voices
Consider an issue every party deals with — losing a seat by 1,000 or 2,000 votes. Thousands of your supporters voted and yet you lost a seat. Does that mean that the voices of those thousands should be silenced?
Maybe not. If we do have the proportional representation system, then those votes do not go to waste.
Instead, they help give a political party a chance to send one more person from their list to the national assembly.
This would be extremely effective to get voices like the Awami Workers Party into parliament or other smaller, specialised regional parties.
This helps with the diversity of the legislative process for a federation like ours.
Serious policy making & party professionalisation
Because parties no longer need to deal with electables or having uneven development across the country, they can nominate candidates that can do real work they are supposed to do: legislate laws and work on policies for the long run.
Because parties would be more likely to nominate people with professional credentials as opposed to those who can wrangle up votes in a very specific geographic area, the parties would then have the chance to professionalise and build structures that could attract genuine technocrats and field experts into the fold.
What we can potentially have in Pakistan is an overall improvement in the kind of politics we are undertaking at the national level, rather than cribbing about electables being necessary to win and questioning each other’s faith in the process.
Dampening polarisation
Polarisation online and in mass media has been on the rise recently.
In an election cycle, we can see voters getting angry and practically hating those who do not fall in line with their views.
We have a minimised space for dissent and disagreement. But if our system did not pit us against one another on a constituency by constituency basis, and our arguments remained at the policy level, the chances for this kind of rabid polarisation to prevail will diminish.
If voting on the national level is based on proportion, everyone’s voice gets heard. We can have substantial discussions and, in most cases, will be forced to create coalition governments.
The overall state of our democracy could be stronger because we are not obsessed with constituency level politics any more.
I want to lay out this idea as we walk into another election on the first-past-the-post system.
This system has not delivered at the federal level and expecting it to deliver is dishonest about democracy and its potential in a place like Pakistan.
A proportional representation system with certain conditions, like a minimum required voting percentage to get entry into parliament could do better for us.
We need our voters to believe again in democracy and one way to do that is to operate on a system where everyone gets heard and everyone has a say.
Our system is not broken, it is just simply the wrong system.
Are you a researcher working on political reform? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com
It is midnight in Balochistan. A WhatsApp group called the Baloch Journalist Circle remains abuzz. There are around a hundred notifications.
These are messages from reporters from across the province. Some are filled with bragging claims from print and television reporters how they have inside information about which candidates will be winning the national and provincial assembly seats on July 25.
Others reveal how much money candidates were allegedly willing to offer influential tribal leaders in return for votes. They speculate which clan would vote for a particular candidate and often pilloried the ‘futile efforts’ of individual candidates to win over a community that had already committed to voting for a contender of their choice.
The group has more silent members than active participants. They only read messages but do not comment. The hushed members are curious about the discussions, but seem too scared to jump into these sensitive political conversations. They suspect that “big brother” is monitoring their WhatsApp group.
So, they prefer to stay quiet in order to remain safe.
As the discussion gets intense and opposing views pop up, one journalist immediately shares a screenshot from an Urdu newspaper to support his argument. Others share photos of candidates attending corner meetings, supposedly discussing seat-to-seat adjustment.
The discussion is not always so sober. Members crack up with laughter as someone forwards a video clip showing a cow (a political party’s election symbol) literally eating up a rival candidate’s poster. The group never sleeps as election season gains momentum in Balochistan.
The next day, the Balochistan News Chanel (sic), a Facebook page also known as BNC, continues its indefatigable posting of live videos, photos and schedules of political gatherings from all over Balochistan.
The latest BNC Facebook Live is from Sarawan House, the residence of Nawabzada Siraj Raisani, a leader of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), who was killed in a suicide attack along with 149 other people on July 13, 2018 in Mastung.
Prominent national and local leaders, from Shahbaz Sharif to Imran Khan, are seen meeting with Nawab Aslam Raisani, Balochistan’s former chief minister and the slain leader’s elder brother, who is receiving condolences from the visitors.
Tweeting from the trail
On a sizzling summer day in Dera Bugti, once considered one of Pakistan’s most volatile districts, former home minister and BAP leader Sarfaraz Bugti unlocks his phone, captures a 26-second video from his election trail and posts it on Twitter.
The footage shows Bugti moving in an impressive convoy of expensive white vehicles. Most of his voters probably can’t imagine ever being able to afford these cars in their lifetime.
“InshAllah,” Bugti tweets, “we will win #PB10,” referring to the provincial assembly constituency from where he will be contesting elections.
He wants to win to “continue our ongoing efforts for the betterment and uplifting of #DeraBugti & #Balochistan.”
Day by day, Bugti is consolidating his grip over the gas-rich territory as his archrivals, Brahamdagh Bugti and family members of the late Nawab Akbar Bugti, live in exile, finding it nearly impossible to return home as a deadlock between the government and the Baloch nationalists and separatists persists.
Bugti, an intrepid Twitter user, takes his nationalism to the next level: he takes an Indian flag and stands on it to demonstrate his profound hatred for India.
Once the photo is ready, he posts it on Twitter. Within a few hours, he is flattered to see around 10,000 “likes” and more than 1,000 comments on his provocative photo.
In Quetta, Hasil Bizenjo, former federal minister and senior leader of the NP, tweeted his outrage at the Election Commission of Pakistan’s selection of Alauddin Marri as interim chief minister.
“After the choice of caretaker CM of Balochitan [sic], the people of Balochistan cannot trust this election commission,” he tweets, and tweets again sarcastically, “Thank you election commission for this joke.”
A new rapport with voters
Never before in Balochistan’s history has an election had such a robust social media component.
Instant messaging services and live streaming platforms such as Facebook Live and Youtube have completely changed the dynamics and the landscape of the election campaign.
When the last general elections took place in May 2013, most politicians and activists in Balochistan did not even have a Twitter account. Today, they spend a reasonable amount of time on Twitter and prioritise communicating with their followers and also monitor the activities and strategies of their opponents.
Political parties and politicians have migrated to cyberspace and the world of social media with unprecedented preparation and sophistication.
Most parties have dedicated social media teams comprised of educated professionals with excellent command of English and graphic design skills who engage party supporters with an unending cycle of colourful illustrations and fresh promotional content.
Parties have invested enormously to ensure that all their campaign meetings, rallies and press conferences are aired live on social media.
Reliance on traditional media has significantly decreased as followers remain glued to their parties’ social media feeds instead of scanning the papers for fresh stories.
These days, a party’s press secretary holds the key to all the social media accounts. They maintain a busy calendar to make sure activities are aired live, tweets are sent out and all social media pages are updated on time.
The press secretary’s role has evolved. They were once only responsible for writing press releases and dispatching them to newspaper offices. Now, they are expected to be all-rounders.
Never before have politicians and their voters in Balochistan have had such an intimate and uninterrupted connection.
* * *
When Abdul Quddus Bizenjo was elected as a member of the Balochistan Assembly in 2013 by winning only 544 votes out of the total registered votes of 57,666 in PB-41(Awaran), his victory was described as a “miracle.”
Political parties alleged that the election of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) legislator had become a textbook example of guaranteed victory if a candidate enjoyed the support of certain elements of the state.
Bizenjo had made history by obtaining the lowest number of votes ever in Pakistan’s history to be elected to a legislative chamber.
Bizenjo’s father, Majeed Bizenjo, had also served as a member of the Balochistan Assembly in the past, while the junior Bizenjo had himself obtained more graceful numbers of the vote in the 2002 and 2008 elections. The elections five years ago were indeed his most disgraceful electoral performance.
Widely viewed as an underdog, Bizenjo was surprisingly appointed as the deputy speaker of the provincial assembly in June 2013. He eventually resigned from the position in December 2015 after the speaker of the house, Jan Mohammad Jamali, resigned in the wake of a no-confidence motion.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Abdul Quddus Bizenjo (R) submits no-confidence motion against Zehri. —Online/File
As time passed, Bizenjo stunned everyone, emerging as a kingmaker and master strategist, playing a decisive role in the rebellion that led to the ouster of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Chief Minister Sardar Sanaullah Zehri in January 2018.
Analysts believed Zehri was punished for his loyalty to the ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Bizenjo, whose party had only six seats in the Balochistan Assembly against the PML-N’s 21, dumbfounded everyone when he, with the support of dissidents from the PML-N, replaced Zehri as Balochistan’s new chief minister.
Meanwhile, another development that marked the increasing influence of the ‘establishment’ on Balochistan’s politics was the election of an entirely unknown figure, Mir Sadiq Sanjrani, as the new Senate chairman .
Bizenjo, while capitalising on Balochistan’s backwardness and underrepresentation card, played a pivotal role in garnering support from the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) for Sanjrani's election as the Senate chairman. This was the harbinger of a major political storm in the province.
Enter Balochistan Awami Party
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Two weeks later, Bizenjo went on to take several defectors from the PML-N and some from the PML-Q to form a new pro-state political party called the BAP.
The awkward acronym BAP in Urdu translates as ‘father’, drawing tremendous ridicule from opposition parties and on social media saying that the state had not only created a new king’s party ahead of the next general elections, but had also given it a suggestive name that highlights the consequences a disobedient child might face from a strict father.
Founded in March 2018, the BAP looks less like a political party and more a conglomerate of pro-Islamabad tribal notables and self-identified electable leaders who have historically remained affiliated with every party that has ruled at the centre.
While overtly supportive of the military’s policies in Balochistan and critical of the Baloch nationalists, the BAP has generated déjà vu in the province — it is reminiscent of PML-Q’s formation under General Musharraf ahead of the 2002 general elections.
With the BAP in the running, others see limited chances of a victory.
The BAP leaders deny the involvement of any covert hand behind its creation. In plain words, they say they have united to create a new front because they are fed up with the manipulation of the province and its mandate by the country’s two biggest political parties, the PPP and the PML-N.
The BAP’s most apparent weakness is this: it is not the result of a mass public movement.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Former Balochistan chief minister Mir Abdul Quddus Bizenjo hoists a party flag during a ceremony on Sunday.—PPI
It is only a movement of electables who would still have a strong chance of winning their respective seats regardless of the party that awards them a ticket. These powerful tribal chiefs have won elections from their strongholds for generations.
Thus, the BAP, in an effort not to irk the state, does not touch upon topics that could annoy Islamabad.
For example, the party does not raise the issue of enforced disappearances, torture and killings of political activists and it does not promise to hold talks with the Baloch insurgents after coming into power, which is extremely critical for any government in Balochistan to restore peace in the province.
In the wake of the BAP’s formation, political analyst Jalal Noorzai described it as an “unnatural party” that pretends to be speaking for the rights of the people of Balochistan.
“There is a long history of these people [leaders in the BAP] changing their political direction based on the dictations they get from the powerful quarters,” he wrote. “There is no dearth of such figures in Balochistan whose eyes are fixated on power and personal interests.”
Noorzai traced the history of Jam Kamal Khan, the president of the BAP, whose grandfather Jam Ghulam Qadir served twice as Balochistan’s chief minister while Kamal’s father, the late Jam Mohammad Yousaf, served as a staunch pro-Musharraf chief minister of Balochistan.
Notwithstanding the criticism of its origins and connections, the BAP is positioned to win the bulk of seats in the upcoming elections, paving the way for a pro-federation narrative and further isolating the Baloch nationalists.
The emergence BAP has worried all established political parties, particularly the Baloch nationalists because it is poised to grab more seats from Baloch areas as compared to Pashtun districts.
Consequently, the established political parties, such as the Balochistan National Party (BNP), are seen making desperate alliances with completely strange bedfellows, such as the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam.
With less than a week to go until polling day, last Friday’s terrorist attack that killed BAP leader Nawabzada Siraj Raisani will further turn the electoral tide in the party’s favour.
After the Mastung tragedy, the BAP’s legitimacy will get a boost as it will rise as the party that sacrificed a key leader and more activists and supporters than any other during the election campaign.
While the BAP is destined to get more sympathy votes, the Mastung carnage has made campaigning extremely difficult for the rest of the political parties because of the fear of another similar attack on a political rally.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
A victim of the bomb blast being shifted to a stretcher after being brought to a hospital in Quetta. —AFP
The Mastung attack has dimmed political activity, but it has provided a glimpse of the challenges a future government in Quetta will have to grapple with, mostly concerning fighting and eliminating violent extremist groups.
Barring the unprecedented Mastung tragedy and a few other small violent incidents, the election campaign this year has, by and large, been filled with enthusiasm and higher public participation.
Unlike 2013, when political parties campaigned in the Baloch-majority districts, with the absolute fear of threats from Baloch armed nationalist groups, conditions for peaceful elections have relatively improved this time.
For the previous polls, the Baloch insurgents had urged the public to boycott the ballots. They warned public employees, such as school teachers and police officers, not to staff election booths and threatened voters to stay indoors.
Insurgents even went on to carry out attacks on several election campaigns. In one such attack on April 17, 2013, the son, brother, and nephew of the future chief minister and the provincial head of the PML-N Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, were killed.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a banned underground organisation, accepted responsibility for the attack.
On May 6, 2013, the president of the NP and the future chief minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch also escaped unhurt in a hand grenade attack in his native Turbat district. The abysmal law and order situation led to a poor voter turnout in most Baloch areas.
* * *
When Abdul Malik Baloch was elected as Balochistan’s first-ever chief minister from the province’s middle class following the 2013 elections, his rise to power generated unrealistic expectations in the troubled region.
Emerging as the head of the provincial government from a coalition between the PML-N, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) and the NP, Abdul Malik promised to end the prolonged insurgency in Balochistan and initiate dialogue with disillusioned Baloch leaders, including those currently living in exile.
Despite some meetings with the Baloch leaders living abroad, Abdul Malik failed to achieve a breakthrough in his peace efforts because of a lackluster response both from the exiled Baloch leadership as well as the powerful elements of the state.
Instead, Abdul Malik’s credibility at the local level was tarnished so severely for the following three reasons that he is not running for reelection this year.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
In this file photo Dr Abdul Malik Baloch (left) and former chief minister of Balochistan Sanaullah Zehri shake hands after the former resigned as head of the province.
First, to protect his position as the chief minister, he went overboard in rewarding his coalition partners in the PkMAP, particularly from Mahmood Khan Achakzai’s family, by giving them a free hand.
Hence, Achakzai appointed several family members on top government positions, including nominating his elder brother, Mohammad Khan Achakzai, as provincial governor.
Abdul Malik’s allies in the PML-N accused him of being too generous and soft on the PkMAP only in an effort to guard his own interests. He was also accused of nepotism and mismanagement during his term as the chief minister.
Second, Abdul Malik’s rivals accused his party members of “spying” for security services and allegedly sponsoring death squads that targeted activists of the Baloch nationalist movement.
Despite repeated rebuttals, Abdul Malik could not entirely dispel the public perception that his party was allegedly helping security forces commit extrajudicial killings of Baloch activists.
Once widely respected as a Baloch nationalist, Abdul Malik gained the reputation of a puppet and a collaborator.
Third, Abdul Malik came under fire for not adequately speaking up for Balochistan’s rights when the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was unveiled.
Although he insisted he had not been consulted on the multi-billion dollar project, opponents criticised him for not doing enough to ensure transparency on CPEC.
Another area where Abdul Malik’s government failed miserably was the recovery of missing persons.
While the aftermath of the 2013 elections initially saw the rise of a stable democratic alliance between self-proclaimed progressive Baloch and Pashtun nationalists, the end of the government after five years marked the beginning of severe differences between the two ethnic groups on issues of representation, allocation of development funds and control over the province's resources.
These differences escalated to an alarming and ugly level. Verbal fights between the Baloch and Pashtun leaders broke out inside the Balochistan Assembly and disputes over naming critical projects after Baloch or Pashtun figures led to a frequent exchange of abusive words.
The Pashtuns threatened to create their own province; the Balochs accused them of blackmailing the government. Hence, the Baloch and Pashtuns parties are no longer actively reaching out to each other for seat-to-seat adjustment and electoral alliances.
* * *
On June 1, 2018, Dr Allah Nazar Baloch, leader of the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), an underground separatist group, asked Baloch voters to boycott the general elections.
Citing the low turnout in the 2013 elections as a “victory” of his stance, Allah Nazar said the Baloch people had voted against the polls in what he described as a “referendum”.
But the influence of the BLF and other Baloch armed groups has gradually dwindled in the past five years.
The “hard” things left unsaid
The public participation in election rallies and corner meetings across the province is indicative of the fact that people are less afraid this time and not inclined toward another boycott. However, that does not mean that the political parties are also free to say whatever they want.
The space created for these parties seems to have come in return for an unwritten understanding between the Baloch nationalists and certain elements of the state that the former shall not cross specific policy red lines in their election speeches.
While an election year is an excellent opportunity to reflect on past performance and work for a better future, Balochistan is entering an election season where politicians are free to assemble, use social media and speak on “soft issues”, such as health and education, but are not allowed to discuss “hard issues” that pertain to the ongoing insurgency, counterinsurgency operations, human rights abuses, the recent political engineering of the Senate elections and reservations over CPEC.
Discussing the hard issues in election campaigns has become taboo because it may offend people in influential quarters. This fear of being punished and ostracised has compelled even the Baloch nationalists to soften their stance on critical issues.
For instance, the BNP, which once based its electoral agenda on the subject of military operations and enforced disappearances, has kept the demand for the release of missing persons as a very low priority in its election manifesto.
There is evident anxiety among the voters and their leaders on a host of issues, including on Balochistan’s share in CPEC, but not everyone feels safe to assert their reservations.
“The people of Gwadar must be the top beneficiaries of the CPEC project,” says Aslam Bhootani, once the Speaker of the Balochistan Assembly who is now running for the National Assembly seat in NA 272 Lasbela-cum-Gwadar.
Bhootani has said he is not a nationalist but would raise his voice for the legitimate rights of the people at all forums and would not mind if his views and struggle annoyed some people.
Only someone as politically powerful and loyal to Islamabad as Bhootani, formerly a staunch supporter of General Musharraf, could make such bold remarks.
Everyone running for office does not seem to enjoy the same level of freedom to openly speak up on Balochistan’s past, present and the future.
* * *
An election campaign without sufficient space to debate on the actual political, economic and security issues, and a promise of justice does not seem to guarantee a happier and a more stable future to the country’s persistently unstable province.
However, it appears despite the unfulfilled promises of the past, Balochistan is still willing to give a new democratic government the chance to take the province to the promised age of development and prosperity that has been promised to its people for the past seven decades.
