Tidal Waves

The descent of the long-marchers on Islamabad, which began Friday afternoon and continued into Saturday, marks an event of immense significance. After decades, ordinary people may well prove the force they wield is mightier than that of dictators and political parties who align themselves with them. Buoyed by the immense crowd, the tone of the key speakers certainly left no doubt that they intended to ensure their target was attained. This goal, as lawyer leader and Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan clarified, was the restoration of the pre-November 3 judges and the creation of a welfare state. Mian Nawaz Sharif, who arrived at the venue of the mammoth rally several hours into Saturday, made it clear there would be no safe exit for the president. He also called on parliament to make decisions in keeping with the wishes of the people. He stressed these wishes included the departure of President Musharraf.

Whereas an initial plan to stage an indefinite sit-in at Islamabad was cancelled, with Aitzaz citing resource constraints, the impact of the long march will not dissipate with the dispersal of the hundreds of thousands who participated in it. Figures being projected range from about 200,000 to half a million with the actual figure, most probably, somewhere in between. By any standards, the gathering was huge. More remarkable still was the fact it included so large a cross-section of people, ranging from political workers and lawyers to ordinary housewives and professionals. It seems in many ways extraordinary that an issue which on paper appears to be rather academic – that is the restoration of judges – could have galvanized so many people to come together, braving high heat, hours of travel and the threat of terrorist attacks that now hover everywhere.

What those who had predicted the long march would fizzle out, and the political parties – chiefly the PPP – which distanced itself from it, had not realized that the campaign for judicial restoration has metamorphosed since its earliest days. Today, it has come to represent a struggle by people against oppression, against injustice, against a lack of democracy and against wrong of every kind. The presence of tens of thousands of people under the shadows of the three buildings that represent the institutes of state; parliament, the Supreme Court and the presidency was as such extremely appropriate. The slogans raised hour after hour by the crowd, calling for Musharraf to leave, also made it clear which institution they saw as the main source of anti-people authority.

The results that emerge from the march on Islamabad are yet to be seen. Will President Musharraf, as he has done in the past, simply turn a blind eye to all that has happened and go back to his insistence that people wish him to stay? Has Aitzaz Ahsan emerged as, potentially, the man to lead the country at some point in the not too distant future? Will a newly galvanized PML-N carry on where the long march left off?

But perhaps most intriguing of all will be the impact on the PPP – the party that terms itself a party of the masses, yet removed itself from their midst as these masses converged on Islamabad. Within the party the voices critical of the manner in which Asif Ali Zardari has handled matters are rising. Some believe a split may not be far off; others say it is still not too late for the PPP to jump onto the long march bandwagon by beginning the process to impeach the president. But Zardari, who delivered a talk to Steel Mill workers in Karachi as the long marchers shook Islamabad, will have to make truly heroic efforts if his party is to recover from this latest debacle. The PPP, at present, is regarded as having allied itself with the presidency for reasons of expediency. After the long march, there is growing conviction that this is the losing side.

Parliament too, as the body representing people, needs to rise up to its role. All eyes will be on it during the days ahead. The people have shown they are capable of demanding their rights. Parliament needs to prove it is capable of delivering these to them.

Geo TV told to stop two popular programmes

Geo TV has again been asked to stop its transmissions by the Dubai administration, apparently under immense pressure from the Pakistani authorities to stop the channel from supporting the restoration of the deposed judges of the Supreme Court.

In communications to the Geo management, the Dubai authorities, rather apologetically, pleaded that the channel should stop at least two popular talk shows, “Capital Talk” hosted by anchor Hamid Mir and “Meray Mutabiq” hosted by Dr Shahid Masood, because the authorities in Pakistan so desired.

The Geo management was told that the programmes were damaging the relations between Dubai and the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan. similar request was made by the Dubai administration about one month ago in which it was said that all programmes supporting the restoration of the deposed judges should be stopped by the channel.

The Geo management has told the Dubai authorities, very politely, that the channel was serving the Urdu-speaking community around the world and was providing the latest information about the events in their country without bias or ill-will.

The Dubai administration was also told that Geo never had any intention to damage relations between the two countries and had never done anything to create any misunderstanding or ill-will between them.

The Dubai administration was also told that if it insisted on closing the transmissions, Geo TV would quickly move its entire Dubai operations to either the UK or Hong Kong as it was committed to inform its viewers about the real situation in Pakistan.

The Dubai administration was told that President Musharraf and his allies were continuously trying to pressurise TV channels to stop all programmes on the issue of the restoration of the judiciary. The current demand to stop the popular TV programmes was also from the same associates and allies of President Musharraf.

The Geo management has also emphasized to the Dubai administration that the channel will continue to keep its viewers informed and will not succumb to the vested interests of some interested quarters in Pakistan.

The Geo management has also requested the Dubai authorities not to stop the transmission and let the channel know how and when it had violated the rules and regulations of Dubai in its telecasts for the last many years.

The Geo management has also stressed that any such action by the Dubai authorities will cause serious unwarranted damage to the channel. Meanwhile, in a press release, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) called on the governments of Pakistan and the UAE to explain how the Geo News that broadcasts by satellite from Dubai, was under threat of losing its licence to operate in Dubai.

Geo TV president Imran Aslam told RWB that the Dubai authorities informed him last night that the station would lose its licence if “Capital Talk,” a show hosted by Hamid Mir, and “Meray Mutabiq”, hosted by Shahid Masood, were not taken off the air.

Officials at Dubai Media City, where the Geo TV group is based, said these programmes threatened the UAE’s relations with a friendly country.The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also expressed grave concern on dropping of two popular talk shows at the request of the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The IFJ calls on the UAE government to explain why, and on whose authority, it asked the independent Pakistan television broadcaster to cancel the programmes,” a press release of the federation said.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) said the owner of Geo and the Jang group of newspapers, Mir Shakeelur Rehman, confirmed that UAE authorities had asked Geo to discontinue broadcasting Capital Talk, and Meray Mutabiq. Information Minister Sherry Rehman reportedly said that the new government had not asked the UAE to act against Geo.

It is the second time in six months that the UAE has blocked Geo programming. On November 17, 2007, the broadcaster’s Dubai office was shut down by a phone call from the UAE government under pressure from Pakistan, which at that time was under emergency rule imposed by President Pervez Musharraf.

Hamid Mir told the IFJ on Thursday that he had received messages in recent weeks that President Musharraf was displeased with his programme. Mir was informed, as he prepared for his regular Thursday programme, that the closure of both shows came into force at midnight on June 11.

Capital Talk had only returned to air in early March 2008 after being banned during the November state of emergency. On Thursday, the PFUJ was informed that the new bans would be debated when parliament next meets on June 14. The IFJ joins the PFUJ in calling for a prompt parliamentary resolution for Pakistan’s government to request that UAE authorities not intervene in the affairs of independent broadcasters and that the ban be overturned and the programmes returned to air.

“The new Dubai bans against Geo TV continue a disturbing censorship pact that emerged in November 2007 when Pakistan pressured the UAE to act against independent broadcasters,” said the IFJ Asia-Pacific.

“The IFJ calls on the UAE Government to step back from its interference in independent and critical programming, which are essential components of a free media and open society anywhere in the world,” the statement said.

A lacklustre budget

The first reaction to the figures presented for the federal budget for 2008-09 is that many of the estimates seem unrealistic at best. For instance, the budgeted amount for overall expenditure is estimated at Rs2,009.8 billion. While this may be higher than the budget estimates of Rs1875 billion for total expenditure for 2007-08, the government and its finance managers would have surely noticed that actual expenditure in 2007-08 was, according to the Economic Survey released on June 10, an astounding Rs2,228.9 billion! This is almost 19 per cent higher than the budgeted estimate and the survey attributes the overrun to the rising

price of oil – which it quotes as being $115 a barrel in May 2008 – and the government having 1.7 million tons of wheat at “all time high prices”. So, if the government (be it the former PML-Q one and partly the caretaker administration of Mohammadmian Soomro) overran the budgeted expenditure estimate by such a massive margin, one can only wonder what gives this government so much confidence for it to set a budgeted amount for overall expenditure

some Rs200 billion lower than the actual expenditure for 2007-08.

Perhaps, one reading of this, giving the current government the benefit of the doubt, could be that the amount indicates a belt-tightening, given the current global economic environment. But here too lies a caveat — two of the key reasons mentioned in the finance ministry’s Economic Survey 2007-08, spiralling oil prices and the government being forced to import 1.7 million tons of wheat at ‘all time high’ prices —- are both likely to stay during 2008-09. The oil factor is obvious: the Economic Survey cites it as being a thorn in the government’s side at a time when the price for a barrel was $115, and now it is close to $140. As for the wheat issue, the reason was smuggling to Afghanistan and hoarding by local sellers, both of which continue unabated. The bulk of the revenue, as expected comes from direct and indirect tax collection but here too the outlook is not all that bright. As admitted by the government itself, Pakistan continues to have among the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world, around 10 per cent, while the average for developing countries is in the region of 17-18 per cent. In this regard, the budgeted estimate for tax collection of Rs1,251.5 billion, compared to Rs1,025 billion for 2007-08 seems overly ambitious. How the government intends to improve the Federal Bureau of Revenue’s efficiency such that its collection increases by almost 25 per cent is something that many would like to pay close attention to in the coming years, especially given that the tax collection and administration mechanism continues to be riddled with corruption and inefficiencies with officials exercising too much discretion and authority. In any case, one needs a booming economy to achieve such an ambitious increase in tax collection and given that growth may be decelerating this may become next to impossible.

The allocation of Rs296.1 billion to defence and services – though the prime minister has said that the defence budget has not risen in real terms – again means that a large chunk of the outlay is reserved for the upkeep of the military and that Pakistan continues to be one of those unenviable developing countries which spend far more on their armies than on arming their citizens with a good education and providing them access to a safe, reliable and affordable healthcare system. The biggest chunk of the overall budget expenditure is, as always, to go on running the government. At a whopping Rs929.5 billion, the amount is also said to include pensions as well as debt servicing but is reflective of a very large, overbearing, bureaucratic and generally inefficient government machinery. That it has been rewarded in the form of higher salaries will be more or less a slap in the face of salaried persons working in the private sector and other non-government fields because for most of them, their employers do not necessarily index their wages to inflation.

The public sector development programme (PSDP) has been budgeted at Rs549.7 billion, slightly lower than last year but it remains to be seen whether the oil price crisis and other economic issues don’t end up restricting the government’s ability to finance the PSDP. In this regard, the deficit between expenditure and revenue for 2008-09 is to be met partly by government borrowing, but this figure too appears to be highly unrealistic and ignores what happened on this account during 2007-08. The government has set a limit of Rs149 billion for bank borrowing to finance its expenditures for 2008-09 but surely it knows that this is low given that during 2007-08 actual bank borrowing by the government crossed the budget estimate by a staggering 330.5 per cent! Again, the simply, almost school-boyish question, that immediately comes to mind is that how does the present government intend to restrict bank borrowing to the targeted amount given that many of the external factors that were behind the overrun for 2007-08 are very much there.

The depressing fact is that the financing of the government machinery, debt servicing and defence budget have consumed 60.9 per cent of the 2008-09 allocations. For this to be the case with a country as poor as ours is nothing but a shame. Yes miracles should not be expected overnight but the dismal pattern of the past, with these three heads eating up close to two-thirds of every rupee that the government spends is being repeated all over again. And at a time when the average Pakistani’s individual budget is shrinking from all sides. It is reducing because of rising petrol and kerosene prices and it is shrinking because of rampant inflation, particularly food inflation. At the same time, his/her access to public services and amenities such as sanitation, clean drinking water and safe and reliable roads has not improved in terms of quality. In fact, the same is true for education and healthcare facilities or even to a provision as basic as vaccination, where for example the re-emergence of polio in parts of the country means that the inoculation programme for combating it is seriously flawed. The only consolation for the PPP government and Mr Naveed Qamar is perhaps that much of this has been inherited by them, given that the government was formed less than three months ago. However, that is of little consolation to the ordinary Pakistani for whom the budget, yet again, holds little promise or hope. (The News, Pakistan.)

Curriculum of hate

Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Syria, UAE, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Iraq, Maldives, Djibouti, Benin, Brunei, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Suriname, Togo, Guyana and Côte d’Ivoire are all Muslim-majority states. Can you name the one — and the only — Muslim-majority state where Muslims blew up the Danish embassy killing at least eight other Muslims?

Why, why Pakistan? I don’t have all the answers, and I am sure no one does. But, please have a look at what the Punjab Textbook Board is teaching eleven-year old Pakistanis. Here is a paragraph from the Social Studies textbook for Class 7, page 43 (written by Professor Dr M H Bokhari and Syed Hassan Tahir):

“European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies on naked aggression to subjugate the countries of the Muslim world.”

Here is a paragraph that was not part of the previous year’s Pakistan Studies but has been inserted in the textbook for the current academic year. This text was written by Muhammad Hussain Chaudhry, Ali Iqtadar Mirza, Sheikh Anees, Rai Faiz Ahmad Kharal, Syed Abbas Haidar and Dr Qais. This is for students of Class 9 and appears on page 3:

“The economic system of (the) west was creating unsolvable problems and had failed to do justice with the people.”

Thirteen- and fourteen-year-old students of Pakistan Studies are being taught that “one of the reasons of the downfall of the Muslims in the sub-continent was the lack of the spirit of jihad (Class 9-10; Pakistan Studies, page 7).”

Imagine; thirteen-year-old Pakistanis are being taught that “In Islam jihad is very important…..The person who offers his life never dies….All the prayers nurture one’s passion of jihad (Class 9-10; Pakistan Studies, page 10).”

Look at what Dr Sultan Khan, Muhammad Farooq Malik, Rai Faiz Ahmad Kharal, Muhammad Hussain Chaudhry and Khadim Ali Khan are teaching sixteen-year-old Pakistanis: “Always keep oneself ready to sacrifice one’s life and property is jihad…..The basic purpose of all submissions and jihad is to keep oneself follower of the good will of Allah Almighty (Class 12; Pakistan Studies, page 4).”

At the tender age of 10, Pakistani students are discovering what the British had done to them. “The British sent rare books from these libraries to England. Thus the British ruined the Muslim schools. They did not want that Islam should spread (Class 6; Social Studies, page 99).” This text was scripted and translated by Professor Mian Muhammed Aslam, Professor Muhammed Farooq Malik and Qazi Sajjad Ahmed.

Look at the remarkable breakthrough achieved by of our learned Professor Dr M H Bokhari and Syed Hassan Tahir. In a total of 36 words, the duo has managed to capture the cause of the crusades: “History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the crusades (Class 7; Social Studies, page 25).”

It seems as if our ministry of education is grooming our children for death rather than for life. The examples quoted above are all out of our federal ministry of education’s curriculum designed by the curriculum wing. I agree that nine-, ten- and eleven-year-old students after reading these textbooks are not going to go and blow themselves up but the federal ministry of education is certainly creating a thoroughly militarized society. In that sense, our curriculum appears to have been deliberately designed to facilitate the usurpation of genuine educational space by forces of hate, violence and that of extremism. What we have is a primary and secondary school environment consciously manufactured to nurture terror, promote prejudice and breed extremism.

Our ‘Curriculum of hate’ is, hopefully, not producing suicide bombers but it is definitely breeding closet bombers who wholeheartedly support the ideals of suicide bombers being produced elsewhere. In essence, the two — suicide bombers and closet bombers — have a strange symbiotic relationship whereby the parasite cannot survive without a receptive host. And, the receptive host is all around us — courtesy the ministry of education, government of Pakistan. Why is our ministry of education so bent upon preparing our kids for death and not for life?

Author: Dr Farrukh Saleem.