Flawed planning is responsible for Pakistan’s current crisis
Nasim Zehra

TO SAY that these are difficult times for us in Pakistan would be like stating the very obvious. Yet the one dimension of the current situation that deserves repetition is the non-security dimension of our present difficulties. Specifically, it is the almost sudden and extreme shortage of flour, electricity, water and gas that has left Pakistanis truly perplexed. While the shortage of these commodities is always disconcerting, it is the suddenness, rapidity and scale of these shortages that have left people shocked. End December onwards, the price of flour shot up and in many areas the commodity actually disappeared from the market. Suddenly the entire country is in the grip of endless load shedding. If the major urban centres are going through ‘an hour on and an hour off’ hourly load shedding, the smaller towns will remain without electricity for a greater part of the 24 hours.
Commercial, industrial and domestic life is under tremendous pressure throughout Pakistan. Besides hitting the industry and the trading classes, daily wage earners are losing their jobs, people’s domestic routines are being drastically curtailed. Electric gadgets are fast becoming a casualty of the half hourly and hourly load shedding schedules. With the crisis now unfolding rather belated remedial and what must be routine measures for improving efficiency are being recommended. For example at high level meetings chaired early January onwards by the care-taker prime minister, relevant ministries have been directed to take remedial measures. The prime minister stressed the need for better coordination among concerned organisations of power to overcome the crisis.
The water and power ministry and PEPCO have been ordered by the PM to “develop a system of regular inspections of generation plants in order to assess the capabilities of the sources of electricity supply and accordingly plan the load management.” Steps in collaboration with provincial governments, law enforcement agencies and public support, will be taken to avert sabotage activities. The earlier claim made for example during early January was that sabotage activities post Benazir Bhutto’s assassination had affected electricity supplies. Officials in a briefing to the prime minister, as reported in the January 7 online edition of the Pakistan Times, had assured him that “the restoration of electricity generation would improve till January 31, 2008”. According to this estimate load shedding should have decreased. Instead, the reverse is happening. The government has already announced that this level of load shedding is likely to continue for another 18 months.
The positive scenario sketched for this debilitating load shedding is a fast growing industrial base. The only pertinent question would be that then every expanding economy should then face the similar problems of electricity and gas shortages. They don’t because their governments and their relevant state institutions plan better. Industrial expansion does not occur suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue.
Unprecedented load shedding of gas has also begun. Those people, who had over the years become dependant on gas for cooking, heating and driving purposes, are now faced with a stark and bitter reality. Those dependants on gas as cooking and vehicle fuel may have to think of alternatives. Thousands if not millions of Pakistanis who have switched their cars to the economical and environment-friendly CNG system may perhaps soon be regretting their decision. There is no clear word on what the future of CNG supply stations will be. Some Press reports indicate that because of gas shortages the government maybe forced to review its earlier policy of encouraging car owners to switch to environment friendly CNG. Water shortage is also on the rise. At present domestic users are the biggest sufferers. In some areas water can be purchased while others have to just live with sharp cuts in water supply. Water shortage will also adversely affect agriculture in the coming season. The shortage of irrigation water will make people turn to use of tubewells, further increasing pressure on electricity.
This scale and suddenness of shortages of so many basic commodities is unprecedented for Pakistan. People mostly find the current state incomprehensible. The tall claims of a prospering economy and an efficiently managed system are hard to take seriously. The incomprehensible is often explained lightly. Mythical explanations abound. It is an American conspiracy to destabilise Pakistan. The objective for this destabilisation is to create an opening for the Americans to come in and take control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Such explanations defy facts, logic and ground realities. Another explanation is that this crisis was created by this government to scare off the opposition parties from wanting to contest for a truly thorny throne! Yet another is that there are individuals within the bureaucracy that are seeking to sabotage the president. All these are no more than products of a mere ‘gup shup’ approach. None stand the test of fact and reason. Our sense of desperation keeps forcing us to look outside for understanding the most obvious about ourselves. For example the Business Recorder on February 2 published an interview conducted with the world famous linguistic and political commentator Naom Chomsky. Naturally an anguished Pakistan asked Chomsky “What solutions do you propose for Pakistan in order for it to become a true democracy rather than a failed state?” Chomsky’s response was what by now an average Pakistani citizen would have given. He said “by developing political and social arrangements in which the population can actually determine effective policy. That is what democracy is.”
We need to look inwards to take remedial steps on the internal front. We need to clearly understand what has triggered our present non-security crisis. Only flawed planning, with no reference to short-term and long term adverse scenarios, is responsible for our current non-security crisis. This truly perplexing situation cannot be explained away simply as a symptom of bad politics or a fall-out of the growing problem of terrorism. The objective analysis presented by independent informed people that has been published in the media does indicate absence of bad planning. Time and again we Pakistanis are confronted with the stark reality that unless the management of our country, its resources and people, is not undertaken along professional, accountable and institutionalised lines, the business of statecraft will remain substandard. Substandard statecraft will continue to prevent Pakistan from being a great Asian power by virtue of its dedicated people, its rich resources and its strategic location. What is remarkable about Pakistanis is to never give up in the face of sustained odds, their determination to ‘never say die.’

—Khaleej Times




Pakistan Peoples Party at the crossroads?
Dr Moeed Pirzada

THE internal power schisms of ‘Pakistan People Party’ are finally coming to the fore. This gives credence to the dark prophecies of all those pundits who had predicted, immediately after Benazir’s assassination, that Pakistan’s most popular political formation will find it difficult to survive as ‘one’ beyond the immediate needs of the coming elections. The rot may have been brewing for a while. The natural thought, “what will I get?” must have dominated many minds from the moment they descended upon Naudero and Gari Khuda Baksh to bury the last of the ‘real Bhuttos’. But in recent days the first shot was fired by PPP Senator Dr Babar Awan who issued a statement that no one but the party co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, was the right person to be nominated as PPP candidate for prime ministerial slot after the elections.
The good senator was obviously testing the waters for Zardari. It then transpired, from newspapers, that party’s top most leadership has rebuked Awan for giving such a statement in violation of the party’s considered position that such a decision will be taken after the elections. Many wondered: “who is this top leadership?” Fortunately the confusion did not last long. PPP senior vice chairman, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, emerged on the scene terming Senator Awan’s statements his personal opinions and clarified that only party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) has the authority to decide upon the matter — and that too after the elections. Perhaps to add authority to his voice he claimed that he and Asif Ali Zardari were in complete cohesion over the issue.
Makhdoom of Hala might have regretted his words. For soon afterwards Zardari, while talking to the US publication Newsweek, made it clear that he is seriously considering himself for the prime ministerial slot, for he has the “widest name recognition in the party” and “no senior leader apart from him spent eleven years in jail”. Under his directions a copy of the will of Benazir Bhutto was made public to prove, once again, that she had nominated him, and no one else but him, as the acting chairman of the party.
This is now the third time that PPP under Zardari changed its position on the subject: First on 30th December, three days after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari had clearly indicated that Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who always lead PPP, in Benazir’s absence, would be the party’s candidate for the prime ministerial slot. A few days later this position was reversed announcing that CEC will decide this after the elections. This in itself was an indication of the growing fault lines. However, now with Senator Awan’s premonitions, Zardari’s interview in Newsweek followed with the dramatic release of the Bhutto’s ‘political will’ it is abundantly clear that Benazir’s widower is making his moves towards the top slot-albeit cautiously, inch by inch, to make it more palatable. Even in the Newsweek interview he said that he might or might not be the prime ministerial candidate. And since then he has again tried distancing his person from the idea- he has planted himself.
Since Benazir’s assassination, Zardari has not only benefited from a natural wave of sympathy inside Sindh but several of his actions have generated a national goodwill and expanded his political space: his voice of reason and restraint at a time of great commotion in Sindh; his ability to defend the federation; his better command on the use and nuance of Urdu language and his indicating that Makhdoom Amin will be the party’s nominee for the prime ministerial slot all contributed to that. Yet his, all too visible, desire to become the prime ministerial candidate is something he should better stay away from, in the best interests of his party, country and his family. And there are certain good reasons for that.
Zardari may not be that villainous character many in the media and the government agencies paint him into. Some of those who have interacted with him on an intimate level vouch that he is as normal or unprincipled as any other in Pakistan’s power structure. Yet someone, like him, rooted in reality might be painfully aware of the negative baggage, rightly or wrongly, he carries in Pakistan’s collective consciousness. The attempts of his lawyers and lobbyists to either defend him on the grounds that nothing has been proved or by drawing parallels with the misdeeds of other politicians, bureaucrats and generals will fail to make any significant dent in the overall collective perception, at least not in the short run. Whatever he may do, in immediate future he will continue to be a divisive figure, especially outside Sindh. And both People’s Party and Pakistan, at this hour, need a less polarised, and a uniting figure.





Love conquers all
Ameen Izzadeen

THE shock was in the advertisement. A five-star hotel in Colombo has advertised a US$2,000 package targeting lovers on Valentine’s Day. Isn’t it atrocious? My civic-minded friends asked me as we sat down for a conversation over a cup of tea. The Valentine’s Day price tag spoke of the widening gap in society. Occupying a place somewhere in the middle of the income spectrum, I see, at one extreme, people for whom busting up US$ 2,000 in a single night on a stupid commercialised concept is a pretty simple thing. On the other hand, I see people struggling to make ends meet. While the rich drive around in their gas-guzzling SUVs, the poor walk to the neighbourhood grocer to buy milk powder and sugar not in packets but in small scoops.
How can we tolerate Valentine’s Day extravagance when more than 90 per cent of Sri Lanka’s population is reeling under the heavy burden of the rapidly rising cost of living? The suffering of the poor is no business of the rich who make no effort to realise that they are trapped in the vileness of commercialism. But shouldn’t they at least be sensitive to the tragedy that has befallen the country? Celebrating Valentine’s Day on grand scale while hundreds of civilians, including schoolchildren, die in daily violence is as cowardly an act as terrorism itself. What is happening in the name of St Valentine today will make the third century priest turn in his grave, with every business firm trying to make quick bucks by announcing special Valentine’s Day packages. Banks offer special discounts for credit card holders while jewellers say they have come up with new designs. Rub a-dub, the butcher, the baker and the candle-stick maker, all glorify romance for profit.
The American brand of commercialism which has made Valentine’s Day a multi-billion-dollar business has not even spared soldiers on the war front. FM radio channels have special Valentine’s Day programmes lined up for soldiers fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They will carry messages to and from soldiers and their loved ones as requests for romantic songs choke up radio channels. After all, soldiers are also made of flesh and bones. They also have feelings, emotions and a craving to love and to be loved.
But the Roman Emperor Claudius II who jailed and killed St Valentine, did not think so. He saw love and marriage as factors that take away men’s ability to fight. So he is said to have imposed a ban on priests performing marriage ceremonies. St Valentine, in whose memory Valentine’s Day is marked, defied this ban and he was sent to prison where he is said to have fallen in love with a jailor’s daughter before he was finally executed. I often wonder what love and romance meant to people in Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north. Do they fall in love? Do thousands of men and women who have joined the Tamil Tigers’ fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils have the luxury to pen love poems?
Tamil literature is rich in love poetry. Tradition says Tamil literature has a history of more than 12 millennia. Love and romance have been enriching Tamil literature since the ‘Sangam’ days some two thousand years ago and throughout. Kavi Chakravarti (emperor of poets) Kamban (12th century), who gave the Tamils the Ramayana, and Kavi Arasu (king of poets) Kannadasan (20th century) are giants or the Tamil equivalents of Shakespeare or Shelly. Surely, every Tamil youth must have heard Kamban’s son Ambikapathi who was executed for falling in love with Amaravathi, the Chola king’s daughter. When Ambikapathi’s matter came up in the king’s court, Kamban defended his son’s right to fall in love and describe the beauty of Amarawathi and express his love for her in poetry. But the king insisted that Ambikapathi was inspired by lust, not by love and got him killed. The story of Ambikapathi-Amarawathi is the Tamil equivalent of the doomed romance of Romeo and Juliet, Laila and Majnu or Salim and Anarkali. To assume that love does not blossom in people who live in war-hit areas is as stupid as assuming that weeds do not grow in marshes. But the difference is that in the war zone, love blossoms as a necessity rather than a commodity.

—Khaleej Times