Pakistan’s long & hard journey back to democracy
Nasim Zehra

IN ITS 61st year, democratic power, informed by values and spirit of participation, representation and accountability, has begun to resurface in Pakistan.
After 61 years of varied ruling structures ranging from democracy and martial law to khaki democracy to dictatorial democracy, legitimising frameworks ranging from constitution and Provincial Constitutional Orders, hurriedly passed constitutional amendments to doctrine of necessity and coups, finally the Pakistani society and politicians appear to have concluded that the only way forward is genuine constitutional democracy.
Hence on March 17 Pakistan’s political history came full circle. In 1947 this democratic power gave us Pakistan, our independent homeland. By contrast, a section of the Indian National Congress leadership’s non-democratic politics towards the Muslims of India caused the separation of parts of the pre-British India, a loose confederation called Hindustan. That separation occurred 61 years ago when the absence of communications meant relative isolation and atomisation of social and political groups, the idea of political representation still captured the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims who had lived alongside the non-Muslims for centuries. Such has been the power of democratic principles. Democratic and inclusive systems that promote politics along principled and egalitarian lines always capture human imagination and indeed much more now in times of unprecedented clamouring for rights and justice.
Pakistan’s detour from democracy combined with the decision of its numerous rulers to often opt for double-edged security partnership in United States strategic designs in the region have yielded a plethora of constitutional, economic, security, ideological and sociological disasters. The outcome has been the unaccountable exercise of state and political power and the undermining of the intellectual, spiritual and cultural evolution of mainstream Pakistan. No less an admittedly marginal yet devastating brand of politics laced with bloodletting violence has emerged, attempting to overshadow mainstream democratic politics.
The yield of this deviation has been abundant distortions costly for the Pakistani state, society and politics; emergency rules, military operations, alienation of our Baloch sisters and brothers, the suffering of the patriotic Pakistanis of the tribal areas, the judicial hanging of an elected prime minister, the decade-long harassment of opposition leaders by the establishment and the ruling parties, forced and humiliating exit of a two time prime minister, supreme court storming, marginalisation of mainstream politics, systematic undermining of peoples’ democratic temperament, the forced injection of political extremism, violence and intolerance in popular politics, the popularisation by the state of lethal security tools, the thoughtless nexus between security and religious beliefs, etc.
Collectively, the Pakistani nation has suffered the unending anti-democratic deviations, made possible by khaki and mufti power wielders. Yet the biggest losers have been the average Pakistanis who suffered the excesses of unaccountable exercise of power with minimal advantage of a state apparatus that must safeguard rights, ensure access to opportunities and to basic amenities to the less advantaged in society. The less advantaged of Pakistan have been the prime sufferers in a context where public space, public power and public funds are not regulated through transparent and credible rules.
The irony however is that the suffering and marginalisation, undoubtedly only contributed to the reinforcement of the Pakistani democratic spirit. Having lived through and indeed also having intermittently held faith in all the various systems the Pakistani faith in democracy has been rekindled.
A recall of the media’s pivotal role is the return to genuine democracy is in order. A media that had come of age through battling an earlier military ruler General Zia ul Haq (1977-1989) for its freedom has long been a contributing factor to the definitive evolution of Pakistan’s democratic soul. The year 2007, a landmark year for Pakistan’s democratic journey, saw the influence of the media peak. The media covered, debated and reflected upon numerous land mark events in 2007.
These included the lawyers’-led pro-CJP’s citizens movement, the May 12 killings of 48 people in the pro-CJP’s Karachi rally, the July restoration of the CJP, the bloody and controversial June assault on the Red Mosque occupied by militants, the opposition leader and PPP Chairman Benazir Bhutto-Musharraf negotiations and meeting, the attempted return of the opposition leader and president of PML-N Nawaz Sharif, the November 3 imposition of the Emergency, Musharraf’s ransacking of the judiciary and the emergence of Pakistan’s ‘real heroes’ the 60 Supreme Court and Hugh Court judges who refused to take oath under the Provision Constitutional Order, the public pressure on Musharraf for rapid roll back of the emergency, the successful return of Nawaz Sharif, after repeated internal and external pressure, Musharraf’s doffing of his army uniform, and the December assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Having led and facilitated the debate on these numerous elements that went into the maturing of the Pakistani voter, covering the February 18 elections in a conscious and fair manner came almost naturally to the Pakistani media. The media which saw its own freedom steamrolled as all the independent channels were instantly taken off air when President Musharraf imposed the November 3 emergency, recognised yet again the hazards of functioning in a non-democratic context with no respite to independent courts.
In addition to the return of genuine politics, the year 2008 has also witnessed the early signs of the emergence of a new political culture and a shift in the balance of power. Carrying forward the spirit that ensured the joint formulation of the 2006 Charter of Democracy, the two mainstream parties along with the ANP and JUI, signed the Murree Declaration, agreed on a coalition government, amicably agreed on the division of cabinet positions and are now working on drawing up a Common Minimum Agenda outlining their response to the key challenges faced by the country.
The shift in Pakistan’s balance of power has begun to decisively veer towards the parliamentary forces. The two ‘As’ traditionally influencing Pakistan’s power structure, Army and America, were relatively marginalised in the election and the post-election phase. Pakistan’s own political dynamics has asserted itself after decades of political manipulation, political bickering and constitutional deviations.
The leadership of two individuals, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, helped the politicians to reclaim their space in Pakistan’s power construct. Benazir Bhutto, the unquestioned martyr of democracy, made the pragmatic moves to create the space for the return of genuine politics while the uncompromising Nawaz Sharif contributed to the shrinking of space for undemocratic forces.
How far will the Pakistan army and the presidency be restricted to their constitutional role as laid out in the 1973 constitution free of article 58(2)b will largely depend on the new ruling coalition. Irrespective of the intent of the presidency the supreme court and the armed forces cannot move successfully against the national political consensus which calls for genuine constitutional democracy. The future of democratic politics will be as bright as the wisdom and sagacity of the political class that is now in Pakistan’s driving seat. The parliamentarians no longer have the licence to fritter away the nation’s resources and their own energies on mindless bickering and battling. With shrinking resources, rising expectations, increasing violence decreasing security, rising regional challenges and global chaos with shortage of water, electricity and energy, the onus of creative, credible and competent policy making is now on the elected parliamentarians. Law making and policy formulation is their prime task.

—Khaleej Times

Westren Media’s tempring of Tibet issus
Sadaf Yunus

Tens of thousands of netizens have answered calls to condemn CNN and a few other western media organizations for distorting facts in covering the riot in Lhasa, capital city of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. “The fairness and objectivity of CNN’is cropped,” said one of the postings at the online forum of www.china.com., referring to a CNN website picture showing people running in front of a military truck. The original picture uploaded by Chinese netizens, however, actually also shows mobsters throwing stones at the truck. “CNN has cut the part of mobsters attacking the military truck. That’s misleading the public,” said a posting by Sanfeng.
The netizens say that CNN and some western media organizations have intentionally neglected cruelties of the mobsters, revealing the hypocrisy of “objectivity and fairness” they had flaunted. A CNN caption of another picture on its website said that some “Tibetan youths” were attacking a “Chinese”. “Aren’t Tibetan youths also Chinese? I doubt whether the editor has ever studied history,” said one of the postings. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a picture on its website showing Chinese Armed Police officers helping medical staff move a wounded person into an ambulance.
The website’s caption said that “there is a heavy military presence in Lhasa”, neglecting the obvious First Aid and red cross signs on the ambulance. German newspaper Berlin Morning post posted a picture on its website in which police in Lhasa rescued a young man of Han nationality assaulted by rioters. But the caption said “insurrectionist taken away by police”. American Fox TV said in a picture’s caption on its website that Chinese military dragged some protestors onto a vehicle but actually the uniformed people were Indian police. N-TV, headquartered in Germany, used TV footage showing police with captured protestors in a report on the Tibet riots. The footage had been shot in Nepal, the police were Nepalese. Netizens at the online forum www.huanqiu.com said that to destroy the reputation of the Chinese government with unfounded material has been a frequently used tactic by some overseas media. One netizen said a Canadian traveller who witnessed the riot in Lhasa wrote in his blog: those rioters assaulted civilians and policemen. This would have been cracked down on more severely if it had happened in Western countries.
“Why has no major overseas media cited these words?” the netizen complained. The Canadian traveller also put in his blog a photograph he had taken of Chinese Armed Police building a wall of shields to defend against stones and bricks thrown by rioters. Although the picture has been published by the New York Times on its front page, the caption made no mention of the attack by the rioters. “Many friends working in western media consulted me to know more about the truth of the riot in Lhasa and sent me some western media reports,” Liu Na, professor with College of Journalism and Mass Medium at Wuhan University said in an interview with Global Times.
“Bias and even prejudice still exist in some western media coverage about China because of old ways of thinking and different values,” said Liu, who is also a cultural scholar at the University of Birmingham. Xinhua has tried to contact CNN Beijing Bureau for a comment but has so far not succeeded, because the telephone is either busy or is not answered. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a press conference held on March 18 that China will consider the possibility of organizing foreign media to Lhasa and see on the ground what happened there.
Qin Gang, spokesman with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular press conference held on March 20 that efforts to organize such a trip are under way. According to the Manchester Guardian, a slideshow on YouTube accuses CNN, Der Spieggl (a German newspaper), and other media of cropping pictures to show Chinese military while screening out rioters.

—Xinhua






EU should press more states to recognize Kosovo
Sir Cyril Townsend

ON March 17, in Mitrovica, a city some 50 miles Northwest of the Kosovan capital, Pristina, there was a dramatic and dangerous, but not unexpected, outbreak of violence. A crowd of Serbian protestors, several hundred strong, forced the withdrawal of a United Nations police force. Three days before angry Serbs had seized the local courthouse, which has been used by the United Nations in that capacity since 1999, when NATO pushed out the Serbian armed forces from Kosovo.
On March 17 the United Nations police and NATO troops, who have been working well together to maintain the peace in Kosovo, had automatic weapons fired at them and grenades thrown. They replied with teargas and shots over the heads of the crowd. 150 Serbs and 25 policemen were injured. Elsewhere in Kosovo a Ukrainian policeman was killed and thirteen of his colleagues, all serving with the United Nations, were wounded when a police station was attacked. The United Nations decided to withdraw its police, as a temporary measure, to the southern part of Mitrovica. During these disturbances some ten United Nations or NATO vehicles were set on fire. In Brussels a NATO spokesman stated: “NATO condemns, in the strongest terms, violence that we have seen today. NATO will respond firmly to ensure a safe and secure environment.” The violence in Mitrovica had been building up for days. 300 Serbs, who were campaigning to assert Serbian authority in the north, seized the courthouse and said they wanted their own court and refused to leave. Negotiations with UN officials over the weekend were unsuccessful. The UN believed the Serbs planned to take over another building as well.
There is a long and bitter history to this dispute, and the Arab world tends to blame Western Europe for not intervening earlier in the horrendous happenings in the former Yugoslavia, following the death of President Tito in 1980. Centuries-old ethnic feuds came back into play. In the early 1990s, at a time when there were 25 substantial conflicts and 80 potential flashpoints in the world, I, for one, was cautious over the size of the UN commitment, and that of the United Kingdom which was anxious to reduce its worldwide responsibilities and badly swollen defense budget. There was also the traditional feeling in the United Kingdom that the Commonwealth, Africa and the Middle East had a greater priority. When NATO did subsequently get heavily involved over Kosovo it had a considerable success. 750,000 refugees, mainly Muslims, were returned to the homes. (By chance, 750,000 is also the number of Palestinian refugees linked to the birth of the State of Israel in 1948). British Prime Minister Tony Blair obtained much international credit for his powerful and successful leadership role over Kosovo.
Last December the British media, not without reason, were suggesting the Balkans, in particular Kosovo, could be facing another conflict in 2008. David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, let it be known to some of his friends that the Balkans could prove to be a “big test” for the European Union as well as the United Kingdom. He said, correctly in my view, that the European Union needed to build up its military and defense capabilities. The European Union foreign ministers spent much time debating Kosovo. On Feb. 17 Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, who led the guerrilla force that took on the much stronger Serbian troops, said: “We never lost faith in the dream that one day we would stand among the free nations of the world and today we do. We will never be ruled by Belgrade again.”
It was noticeable that the excited crowds in the snowy streets preferred the red and black Albanian flag to the newly designed Kosovan flag. Only 30 countries at the last count have recognized Kosovan independence, including 16 European Union members. Greece has strong opinions on Macedonia. Spain wishes to take no steps abroad that will encourage the Basque secessionists at home. Cyprus, with its problems over the Turkish Occupied Northern Cyprus, does not want to encourage the independence of any part of an existing member of the United Nations.

—Arab News