Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

Dr Yunus, I take this opportunity and congratulate you as the first Bangladeshi to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole nation is proud of you, and we all pray for your well-being. Your vision on poverty alleviation through micro-credit became a tool in micro economics. The whole world acknowledged this, and many nations followed this tool to reduce poverty.
   I also thank you, for giving us the chance to express our opinions on a new chapter in our country’s politics. I read your letter with great interest and would like to express my views on it.
   Today, our country witnesses a ray of hope in the political atmosphere — thanks to some bold steps taken by the caretaker administration. Our country’s mainstream politicians were not at all patriotic, while in the treasury bench or in the opposition. Their selfish approach and poor governance did not allow us to progress smoothly as a nation, despite having an annual GDP growth of 6 per cent (on average). Corruption is the number one reason behind this, and this infected our administration — top to bottom. We always talk about our struggle for democracy, but sadly the politicians who fought for it became the most autocratic and selfish, as soon as going to power. The mainstream political parties got themselves engaged in continuous unnecessary feuds, which literally crippled our nation. Hartals, parliament boycotts, strikes etc. were common phenomenon over the past 15 years. Our economy lost millions of dollars due to their political enmity. But, the government in power (both the AL and the BNP) never thought about our economy. Their only concern was how to get corrupt and amass wealth overnight. We, the common people became the pawn to their unethical and immoral politics. All of us were somehow relieved when state of emergency was declared and the current caretaker government took over. Corrupt politicians, despite of their rank, are now brought to justice. The common people applauded the steps taken by this caretaker government and we hope that they remain in power until and unless the whole system purifies. There is no benefit in fair election, as long as these negative elements remain in politics. Time is required to clean up the whole system, and only peoples’ support can keep their clock ticking.
   On February 11, you expressed your desire to form a new political party and wanted to know what we think about it. I think there are many determinants which need to be addressed before taking such a step. Nobody denies your ability and eligibility to do this. But, to form a political party and that too, with a different mindset is not an easy task to accomplish. You asked several questions and I would like to draw your attention on these. Who will be the members of your party, both top brass and at the grassroot level? I assume your answer is honest politicians from all the parties. If your party is based on honesty, goodwill and if most of the honest politicians join your party, what will be the political field left with? Definitely, as soon as all competent leaders join your party, their original parties will become extinct, as people will totally boycott them. So, this means your new party, is the only political party with all the politicians? How will democracy be practised under such circumstances? Now, if you decide to recruit new members to your party, where will you get so many people? Civil society is there to support, but they will never join any political party. On the other hand, to create a new atmosphere in politics, your party definitely needs the infrastructural support all across the country. How will you acquire this many people throughout the country, with this much of political experience? You tried to express your desire involving citizens’ participation. But, common people from all walks of life cannot join politics with you. Everybody has their own profession. Who will carry out your political activities? Where will the funds to launce such a big step, come from? It needs lot of time and homework before the party gets ready and is able, both financially and structurally. How quickly can you mobilise your new political ambition and activities, across the country? To be a competent leader, you need to create a virus like ‘BNP/AL’, and inject it to the common people’s daily life. You cannot contest in more than five seats, so where will you get 295 new candidates strong enough to defeat AL/BNP candidates? I remember the well-renowned jurist Dr. Kamal Hossian bagged 600 votes in an election against the AL leader Mokbul Hossain who got 74,000 in Dhaka 9 constituency. Perhaps, his place is in the courts not ‘maidans’. Most of the citizens in our country, vote by symbol not by judging how good/bad the candidate is. This is where power of M (MUSCLE AND MONEY), plays a big role. Right now to launch a new chapter in politics, and the introduction of a new political party, is however very unrealistic.
   It is better for us to root out their current leadership and create ways for new honest leaders to emerge. That is what will resolve the current negative externalities from politics. Without, prior experience in this field, I think it is not going to be a productive idea for you to take such a big step, that too at this age. Also, there is not ample time for you to get ready with your proposal of a new party because no matter what, we are already due for an election. Therefore, I would advice you to emphasise more on giving support to the current caretaker government with the help of your esteemed knowledge, outside the political arena (just like the current administration). The current caretaker government is providing their support but they are not entering politics. But, they are doing a great job fixing the political stage and atmosphere. Let us all bring the evil leaders to justice, make new channels for upcoming leaderships. We have no problem with the AL or the BNP. I think you should engage yourself sharing ideas, and supporting the current caretaker government to eradicate corrupt, selfish politics, thus create a healthy atmosphere where politicians will do politics, traditional political parties would be in politics, and civil society is in its place. Also, your devotion towards poverty reduction is much more important than joining politics. I can assure you one thing; we need your help in the micro-financing projects in rural areas. Politics will only blacken your highly respected career and put you in that level where you are not today. Today, despite political identity, all of us respect and honour you. Tomorrow when you join politics, you will lose that honour and be somebody very debatable.
   Arafat Islam writes from the USA

A WORD of caution is in order before I go on. The lines which follow are written not in jest but in dead seriousness. So self-appointed arbiters of piety and morality — of whom there is no shortage in this country — should resist the temptation to reach for their pistols until they reach the end.
   Two things above all others choke our national gutters: one, the plastic shopping bag; two, false morality. The effect of greenhouse gases will come to Pakistan later. The havoc wrought by plastic ‘shoppers’ is all around us.
   No less visible are the effects of hypocrisy. It was not always like this. But today, thanks largely to General Zia’s legacy, this nation finds itself strangled by false piety.
   Hence the necessity of first appending a long preface and mumbling a few pieties of your own, as I am doing, before being even remotely candid about anything considered ‘sensitive’ in this country. Now if I may come to the subject matter of my column.
   Ask the good and the great, one of the most sought after commodities in Pakistan today is an honest bootlegger. Why is this? Because we have succeeded in turning an ordinary sin — according to the Islamic canon — into one of the biggest con activities of our times (next only I think in scope to the property business and dealings on the stock exchange). More spiritual water on an average is consumed in Pakistan today than it even was in General Yahya Khan’s time, in our historical mythology the highpoint of national decadence.
   Drinking among certain classes of people, especially the upper strata, was fairly common then but, and this may shock young readers, few people stocked drink at home as the good and the great are reduced to doing today. Thus a sin — although to go by the testimony of aficionados (how would I know myself?) a wickedly pleasant one (talk of the devil and his ways) — instead of being controlled, which as an Islamic obligation it should be, allowed to spin out of control.
   Is it not time to rend the veil asunder and stop being coy on this score? More moonshine and contraband and things noxious are consumed today than ever before, to the advantage not of the exchequer, as in more squeamish societies, but in our robust environment to the advantage of bootleggers, both honest and dishonest.
   But mostly dishonest because an honest bootlegger is rare, therefore all the more to be sought after and cherished when discovered. An army of federal ministers infests Islamabad, close to a hundred if wags are to be believed. How many honest bootleggers? Not more than half a dozen. So for devotees dedicated to the rites of Dionysus, who is the more prized commodity?
   But we should be concerned about larger matters. Prohibition in the United States ––1920-1933 — did nothing to curtail drinking. Rather it whetted the national gullet and spawned an entire crime industry because fabulous money was to be made from the liquor trade. Just as fabulous money is to be made from the drug trade today.
   Al Capone’s criminal empire was liquor-based as was the Kennedy fortune, Joe Kennedy, the clan’s patriarch and later ambassador to the Court of St James, reportedly involved in liquor smuggling himself.
   Our minorities may be disadvantaged in other ways but in one crucial respect they are empowered: exemption from prohibition giving them a privilege (do I hear pious voices saying, a curse?) denied other communities. The more enterprising spirits among them are doing well as a result, catering to a thirst which instead of being controlled and regulated, as it should be in any well-ordered society, is now well and truly out of control.
   In Chakwal I am told (ah, the extent to which I have to rely on hearsay) it is standard practice for dabblers in the trade to turn one bottle of hooch from Murree Brewery into two or three, adding heaven alone knows what to make up the difference. A new alchemy: this is what it amounts to. Even Al Capone couldn’t have done better.
   This is how restrictive laws based on false assumptions, and bearing no relation to reality, end up begetting crime. The law of unintended consequences: you aim for one thing and get another, especially when your motives are false or mixed.
   Bhutto introduced prohibition in 1977 (or rather tightened it because prohibition in one form or the other had always existed in Pakistan) as a ploy to disarm the religious right which was out in the streets trying to topple him. It didn’t work. Far from being placated, the battalions of the right were more emboldened by the perception that they had Bhutto on the run. In the end he was toppled.
   General Zia added a few more screws to prohibition because he wanted to appear as a champion of Islam. That was about the one card he knew how to play. Did Pakistan become more religious under him? It only became more hypocritical.
   Is anyone concerned about national health? Are doctors of the faith, professors of divinity, willing to debate this matter with any degree of honesty? It’s a strange land we live in. Drinking in public can get you into a great deal of trouble, as perhaps it should. But a shrug is all you are likely to elicit if you light up a cigarette and those around you know there is heroin in it.
   It’s like our attitude to things gay. Holding a girl’s hand in public is not the done thing in Pakistan. Our honour is pricked (or someone’s honour is) if we do that. In the Frontier and Balochistan, indeed in much of rural Pakistan, it can even become a killing matter. But holding a boy’s hand (and you know what I mean) is all right. Liberation in this sphere arrived in San Francisco much later. An indulgent and often amusing form of tolerance for the same thing has been present in our society — in fact in all Muslim societies — from time immemorial.
   Do I advocate permissiveness? Far from it. I have grown-up daughters myself and when my youngest who is in high school dresses up adventurously, although what I think provocative she considers quite normal, I feel outraged and say angry things to her. Coming from where I do this is a normal reaction. Our societies are conservative, and a good thing they are, ruling out the kind of permissiveness which is the norm in other societies. To each his/her own.
   Even so, if permissiveness represents one end of the spectrum, excessive restrictiveness, leading invariably to hypocrisy or disguise (doing things surreptitiously and, therefore, guiltily), represents the other. For health and balance both extremes are best avoided.
   Politically the Musharraf era may be a disaster but on the social front things have eased up a bit. Every period takes its colour from the top. In Yahya Khan’s time hard drinking was considered a virtue. Bhutto’s was a relaxed time in which people did what came naturally to them. With Zia’s coming, officialdom and the governing class went native and put on a mantle of piety.
   With Musharraf there has been a loosening up at the top, with ministers and even generals investing in designer suits (wonder how they can afford them) and the phrase ‘enlightened moderation’ — the mantra of the ruling set-up — triggering sly expressions and funny remarks, usually when a comely face or an attractive figure, of which there are not a few in the corridors of political relevance, passes by or is seen on one of the many TV channels which have sprouted up.
   But this loosening up has meaning only for the affluent classes. ‘Temptation’, ‘entertainment’ or ‘relaxation’ (take your choice) are priced out of the range of most Pakistanis, available but not coming cheap. And you have to look for them hard. Apart from their other woes, in this respect too the people of Pakistan remain disenfranchised.

COLOMBO: The abrupt dismissal of three senior ministers by President Mahinda Rajapaksa would have come as a surprise to most people. It is likely to reinforce the belief in many people of the president’s ability and willingness to dispose of any opposition to him, if necessary.  But the dismissals have also raised questions about the stability of the government and about the prospects of a snap general election. Until the sacking of former ministers, Mangala Samaraweera, Anura Bandaranaike and Sripathy Sooriyarachchi, the government had seemed to be heading from strength to strength.
   For the past several months the LTTE has been lying relatively prostrate after a series of military defeats, while the major opposition party, the UNP, was also silenced and broken. But now suddenly there is an appearance of vulnerability in the government that the very harshness of the action against the three ministers was meant to deny. Those who are confident and strong do not seek to make enemies out of those who have been allies, even if there is a present divergence of visions and interests.
   Only a severe threat, as perceived by the president and those who advise him, could have caused him to take such drastic action against the ministers, two of whom helped the president at the presidential election of November 2005 in such a big way. The rumour mills are active in putting forward conspiracy theories. The state media even talks of assassination plots, indirect assistance to the LTTE by not being present for voting for the emergency and voting at the UN at the behest of the United States against a resolution on Palestine, as some of the causes of the upheaval.
   But more than anything else, the sacking of the three ministers has called into question the president’s commitment to an inclusive approach to governance. In the aftermath of becoming the ruling party’s presidential candidate in 2005, President Rajapaksa showed himself as striving for inclusivity and getting everyone on board his journey to the presidency. Mangala Samaraweera, who was one of the sacked ministers, played a key role in allying the Marxist nationalist JVP with the president, who had cultivated a middle of the road image.
   After winning the presidential election by a narrow margin, the president continued with his bid for inclusivity, trying to get everyone on board his journey to peace. He seemed to be succeeding with great aplomb, even securing an unprecedented memorandum of understanding with the main opposition party, the UNP. That agreement could be considered to be the high point of the president’s bid to adopt a consensual and inclusive approach to governance. But this MOU was not adhered to when an opportunity to break up the UNP came into being.
   President Rajapaksa was able to bring in 18 of the most impressive and reform-minded UNP parliamentarians onto his side to strengthen his government. These crossovers appear to have taken place on the president’s terms, as the MOU that the UNP group was expected to sign with the president never materialised. But this crossover also came at a considerable price to the government. It meant a withdrawal of support of the JVP.
   
   President’s terms
   While cultivating inclusiveness, the president also gave early indications that the basis of inclusiveness had to be on his terms. In his most recent call to the LTTE to return to the negotiating table, the president insisted that the LTTE should first lay down their arms. This also explains why the TNA which was elected on the basis that they were to be the LTTE’s proxies in parliament, have been effectively excluded from the president’s efforts to reach a consensus. The costs of this policy of exclusion have been war, human rights abuses, abductions, assassinations and internal displacement.
   Now it is also apparent that the president is prepared to exclude even those who have been his most loyal allies, if they have a different agenda to his. In recent weeks, the president has demonstrated decisiveness in openly distancing himself from the JVP whose grassroots election machinery was crucial in delivering to him the votes he needed for victory at the presidential elections of 2005. With the sacking of the three ministers, he has shown himself to be capable of making quick decisions, even if they are controversial ones.
   But the costs of dismissing those dissenting ministers need to be weighed against the benefits. Sometimes it is better to win back dissenters than to have them join opposing parties. There are already speculations about new alliances that will bring together disparate parties such as loyalists of former President Chandrika Kumaratunga from within the ruling party and the JVP, and even the UNP.
   Undoubtedly, partnering the JVP in the governance of a multi-ethnic and plural society that is thoroughly integrated into the international economy is a difficult task. The JVP’s economic philosophy is more relevant for a bygone era of socialism, while its attitude towards the ethnic conflict is bereft of understanding of the nationalism of other peoples. But the JVP has the merit of being disciplined, pro-poor and anti-corruption.
   The difficulty of partnering the JVP in governance may have been the reason why President Rajapaksa was prepared to ignore the MoU he had signed with it in the heady days of the presidential election campaign. Mangala Samaraweera was one of the few government ministers to openly show his disagreement with the president regarding the exchange of allies that saw the UNP reformist crossovers come in and the JVP go out. But there was more to the sacked minister’s dissent than the partisan interests of party politics.
   Minister’s dissent
   In an open letter to President Rajapaksa when he was still the country’s foreign minister, Samaraweera highlighted the unacceptable nature of the human rights abuses taking place in the country. Especially in a civil war, a government is responsible for ensuring that human rights are not violated, as those who suffer from such violations are its own citizens. Perhaps it is this concern that Samaraweera showed for the human rights of the mostly Tamil victims that has caused the state media to label him as indirectly supporting the LTTE.
   There were other issues as well in Samaraweera’s letter to the president, such as corruption and interference with tenders by the Presidential Secretariat, that might have catalysed the president’s ire. But what may have forced the president’s hand was the prospect of more parliamentarians from the ruling party following the lead set by Samaraweera. There are reports of a great deal of resentment due to important ministerial portfolios being taken away from old-time loyalists of the ruling party and being given to the newcomers from the UNP who have crossed over.
   Unless the present conflict within the government is swiftly resolved, it can continue to grow. President Rajapaksa has said that the ministers who have been sacked can have their positions restored to them if they admit to their mistakes. However, peace making and reconciliation are two-way processes. The concerns of the sacked ministers also need to be taken into consideration. The danger of mutual recriminations is that both sides will expose and discredit each other to the detriment of public confidence in the government.
   The tragedy of the present turn of events is that the pressing problems of the people will continue to be neglected, while the political leaders fight for power and position. Instead of being moved by the human tragedy that is unfolding in the country, their attention will be riveted on the clash of the political titans.  President Rajapaksa and his government would do well to reconsider their strategy of excluding those deemed to be enemies.  The price of trying to keep them excluded can prove to be very high. Often inclusion can be the less costly option.
   The stakes are high for the people. Over 200,000 persons continue to live in abject conditions as refugees in their own country, and the ambushes, killings, abductions and child recruitments all continue without abatement. The cost of living that affects all sections of the people continues to soar, even as billions are expended on war and corruption. These are Sri Lanka’s major challenges and they require the inclusion, cooperation and consensus of all sections of the polity, including the JVP and LTTE, if long-term answers to them are to be found.
   Jehan Perera is media director of the National Peace Council in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He can be reached at:

Politics in the name of
cultural programmes

Barrister Mainul Hosein has said the government will not allow politics in the name of holding cultural programmes, hiring halls, etc. What about Jamaat-e-Islami’s politics in the name of religious events (milad, boyan, etc.)? Will the caretaker government give immunity to them?
   Helal Akand
   Australia

---