Author Archives: Umer Farooq

Nuclear explosions and elections

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Interestingly, issues related to India and Kashmir are completely absent from political parties campaigning for the 2013 election. This could be perceived in both, a positive and negative manner. Positive because we appear, finally, to be out of that antagonists mindset, where India has to be rivalled at every cost and in every situation. And negative because we seem to be missing out on important developments in our neighbouring country and these developments are going to affect us in the long run.

Ironically, we do witness some glimpses of the nuclear energy issue in the campaigns, but even in this respect, the assertions of our political leaders do not appear aligned with latest developments. The developments have bypassed our political class and therefore have reinforced the perception that our political elite are ignorant and do not contribute to the strategic debate. In fact, watching these political leaders prattle uselessly on nuclear issue compels one to be believe that we don’t have informed debate on the nuclear energy issue in our society and in the process they have left the leave the field open for an obscure and limited group of military officials to make the decisions regarding nuclear energy — and this has fateful consequences for us as a nation.

The glimpses of nuclear issues presented by Rehman Malik, the former interior minister, who, while, addressing a press conference in Lahore (reported by Urdu newspapers) said that it was the military which conducted the nuclear tests in May 1998 and when Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, was informed he felt very scared. Apparently, Malik’s statement was meant to blunt the affects of Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz’s (PMLN) elections campaign, which prominently features Sharif as the statesman’ who conducted the nuclear tests and ensured Pakistan’s entry into nuclear club.

The fact that Malik made this statement after presiding over a meeting of party-ticket holders in Lahore, clearly indicate that Pakistan Peoples Party doesn’t want to let Sharif take credit for five nuclear explosions which were carried out by Pakistan on May 28, 1998. Sharif, on the other hand, has made it a point to include the visuals of nuclear explosions at Chagai in each of his campaign advertisements that are being show on television.

All this clearly reflects one thing: that Pakistan’s political class is still bogged down by the mindset that nuclear explosions are a capability of great jingoistic value. Malik’s statement assumes that carrying out nuclear explosions is a great act of valour which only Pakistan’s military is capable of. At the same time PMLN’s campaign advertisements want to pin this badge of bravery on the shoulder of their leader. It’s true that this is what the Pakistani public – especially the people in the urban areas of Central Punjab – would like to hear from their leaders before they decide who to vote for on May 11. But the character and style of politicians should be different from people from the performing arts (no offense), whose primary purpose is to attract an audience.

A general overview of nuclear developments in the region and in the country will show how out of touch with reality all this prattling is. When Pakistan carried out the nuclear explosions the mantra coming out of corridors of Pakistani security establishment was about how the nation has now attained a weapon which has made its defence “impregnable”. This has now changed. Now many a times will you hear the refrain that Pakistani nation and armed forces are ready to sacrifice their lives for defending their country’s “strategic weapons”. General (retd) Pervez Musharraf was the first Pakistani leader who started to “treat the nuclear arsenal as the vital interest to protect rather than the means to protect the Pakistani people.” This was the natural consequence of a situation where Pakistani nuclear weapons were facing twin threats from extremists from within the country and from ‘friendly’ US military forces stationed in Afghanistan, which (as reported by the American media) have carried out mock exercises to snatch weapons from Pakistani strategic forces. If the situation is so grim can the Pakistani political class afford to remain bogged down in the jingoistic mindset of 1990s?

The second and more depressing prospect with regard to our nuclear capability is related to our relations with India. Brigadier (retd) Feroz Hassan Khan, a former eminent member of country’s nuclear establishment, writes in Eating Grass, his latest book, that after coming under military pressure from India in the last 10 years, Pakistani armed forces have started integrating nuclear weapons into conventional war plans. “By the time the second peak of the crisis occurs in May 2002, the Pakistan military had finalised plans for integrating its conventional and nuclear forces … the crisis accelerated the pace of force planning and integration,” writes Khan in his book.

Now both the regional and international security experts are saying that Pakistani and Indian militaries are flirting with very dangerous military concepts and doctrines. Repeated flight testing of short-range tactical missiles, which can be used in the battlefield, by Pakistan clearly indicate its intentions to respond to India’s conventional attack with tactical nuclear weapons. Indian military planners, on the other hand, are flirting with a more dangerous Cold Start doctrine, under which they harbour the belief that they can punish Pakistan with their conventional military superiority and yet stop short of invoking Pakistan’s nuclear response. Indian military, in fact, tried to implement part of this concept in their military exercises close to Pakistan’s border in 2011. On the other hand, it was precisely at this time that our military conducted flight tests of its short range tactical missiles.

Now the question is that if the situation is potentially so unstable then can we afford to remain bogged down in our jingoistic mindset? Can we afford to feed Pakistani public on the same jingoistic jargon that could be so destabilising? Can we afford to leave this issue in the hands of obscure military officials, who rarely share their thoughts with the public? The answers to all these questions are in the negative. Instead, we should be engaging in an informed debate — a debate which can open avenues for making Pakistan more secure and less jingoistic.

And it is because of this reason that I argue that the complete absence of India from our election campaign is not a positive development. In fact I remember the 1997 election campaign when both PMLN and PPP used ‘bettering relations with India’ as the central issue of their election campaign. And it was because of this that the then prime minister gained enough confidence to initiate the normalisation process with India, which brought Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, to Lahore and Islamabad. Ironically, in the wake of the Lahore Summit, Pakistani and Indian experts were expected to meet regularly to exchange nuclear doctrines and concepts to avoid nuclear brinkmanship.

Unfortunately this process was disrupted as a result of military takeover in Pakistan.

In the ‘right’ direction

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Umer-deatiled-1

Javed Manj is raving and ranting against “corrupt and inefficient” politicians in front of a crowd of approximately 400 industrial workers and roadside vendors at Rohanwala village at the outskirts of Faisalabad city. His tirade against the traditional political elite appears tired to an outside observer but to the villagers listening to him his words sound exciting. After he finishes his speech, members of the audience come one by one to him to pledge that they will vote for change. “I have addressed more than 500 such corner meetings during the last two years,” Manj later tells the Herald.

People like Manj, who is a local leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), have developed a narrative immersed in the region’s political history and social realities. First and foremost, this narrative dwells on the insecurities of Faisalabad’s settler or migrant communities who came here in the first half of the twentieth century along with British-built irrigation canals. Manj says settlers/migrants, who form a majority of the population in the district, have an enduring sense of insecurity as most of them either have small agricultural landholdings or they do not own any land at all which makes them dependent on local industry, commerce and even bigger landowners to earn their livelihood. “These people are more easily attracted to the idea of change and revolution. In 1970s, [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto won all the seats from this district because people were attracted to his slogan of change,” says Manj.

And then he puts Bhutto and PTI in a single sentence — something that many other political parties have tried in the past with varying degrees of success or failure. Manj recalls how Bhutto came to Faisalabad in early 1970s and how writer and activist Tariq Ali organised a rally, raising slogans in support of a revolution. “Bhutto said in response to the slogans that revolutions don’t happen every day; there was a revolution in 1947 and there was another one in 1970 and the third one will come after 40 years,” he says and adds that Imran Khan in 2013 represents the change that Bhutto had predicted four decades ago.

Manj believes the signs of change have already started to become visible in Faisalabad. “The July 24, 2011 rally by Imran Khan was the biggest in the history of this district,” he says. “Khan’s Dijkot rally on October 7, 2011 was even bigger than the one by Bhutto [in the same town],” he tells the Herald.

Even after discounting the element of exaggeration in Manj’s observations, the fact remains that PTI is emerging as a political force to reckon with in central Punjab, primarily because its cadres are making a serious effort to make its presence felt in the urban areas of the region. They are undoubtedly buoyed by the big public rallies that Khan has addressed in different towns and cities over the last two years or so. After PTI’s March 23 rally at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, the party’s workers and activists are feeling a renewed level of confidence, leading them to stake their claim as being the biggest political force in the province. In another reflection of PTI’s renewed self belief is the party’s decision to field Khan as a candidate from one constituency each in Lahore and Rawalpindi — two cities in Punjab where electoral politics has long been dominated by Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN). With PTI making gains, it is unsurprising that people in most urban areas across central Punjab talk about PMLN versus PTI when they talk about tough electoral battles, rather than PMLN versus Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as the case used to be in the past. “There should be no doubt about this after the March 23 rally; it is now between us and the PMLN in Punjab,” says Manj.

In another indication of PPP’s waning fortunes in central Punjab, it is finding almost no allies from among the smaller parties in the region. Even the leaders and the workers of the Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ) – with which PPP is seeking to strike some seat adjustment deal in places such as Gujrat – see it as a foe rather than a friend. “We don’t interact with PPP workers even at the social level,” says Mian Imran Masood, a former provincial legislator and a PMLQ leader in Gujrat. Most small parties in the region either want to jump onto the PMLN bandwagon or see it as their only electoral rival. Masood, for instance, believes that the main battles in his district will be fought between his party and the PMLN.

Left to right: Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi; Imran Khan; Dr Tahirul Qadri

Left to right: Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi; Imran Khan; Dr Tahirul Qadri

The shift away from PPP has become highly visible over the last three years with the rise of many, mainly right wing, political parties and groups such as PTI and Dr Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT). This has happened mostly at PPP’s expense. That the party has lost its status of being one of the two top contenders for power in Punjab is evident to almost all its political opponents. Azeem Randhawa, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief in Faisalabad, says there was a time when people used to say PPP would win if right-wing parties had two candidates in the same constituency. “This is no more the case,” he says, suggesting that the right-wing vote has increased so much that even when split within it will not result in an automatic advantage for PPP.

Some of the central Punjab parties and groups claim to be bigger than even the PMLN in their respective strongholds. This is exactly what PMLQ’s self-image is in the Gujrat district. Here, the family of Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has succeeded in maintaining its status as a dominant political player, using its access to power as an effective tool to create and sustain an elaborate network of political patronage. Some PMLQ leaders feel no hesitation in admitting that their role as a coalition partner in the outgoing federal government has helped them to remain relevant in the electoral politics of Gujrat. “We have ministries, senate seats, development funds, jobs and other benefits,” says Masood, a close associate of the Chaudhry family. “People vote for us because they perceive us as [being able to] come to their help in times of trouble,” he says. During the two-and-a-half hours that Herald interviewed him in his public office in Gujrat, he was simultaneously addressing three different complaints by three different groups of people — one related to illegal occupation of land, another related to gas supply to a locality and the third about the admission of young boys and girls in a local college.

Some traditional right-wing parties, such as JI, also see the coming election as a chance to ensure their survival in the political field and, therefore, are making serious efforts to leave some mark on polling day. The party, according to Asha’ar Rehman, resident editor of daily Dawn in Lahore, “has lost its vote bank by allowing itself to be an appendage of the PMLN for far too long” but it is intent on keeping its fingers in the electoral pie by any means possible. Consequently, it is open to joining hands with any party except for PPP. While there are reports that JI is negotiating a seat adjustment formula with PTI, one of its central leader tells the Herald that his party will be making seat adjustments at the district level on a case-to-case basis. “It will not mean that if we have a seat adjustment in one constituency with one party, we will be bound to have the same arrangement with that party in any other constituency,” says Amirul Azeem, the JI spokesperson. “This means that we can have seat adjustments with more than one party.” Practically, this allows JI to have seat adjustment arrangements both with PMLN and PTI and that too in the same district.

Qadri’s PAT, after having proved its mettle in Lahore and Islamabad a few weeks ago, is now finding it difficult to repeat its performance in the electoral arena and its leaders say the party is not yet ready to take part in the polls. “Right now we are carrying out a membership campaign,” says Basharat Jaspal, who heads PAT in Punjab. He also points out that his party is not satisfied with the existing electoral system which is not conducive to bringing about change. “If we cannot bring change, I think, contesting elections will be meaningless,” he says. The other reason for the party’s indifference towards election is its electoral performance. So far it has only one election victory to its credit — Qadri winning a National Assembly seat from Lahore in 2002. In the absence of a strong presence in the poll calculus, PAT, however, has the capacity to swing a few thousand votes in many urban and semi-urban constituencies in central Punjab, usually in favour of some right-wing party. For instance, in Gujrat, says Masood of PMLQ, “PAT has supported us during the last two general elections.”

While it is difficult to predict which final combination will come about to determine the internal relationships between all these right-wing groups and parties in central Punjab and how they will cooperate or compete with PMLN or PTI, the situation throws up a definite conclusion: PPP loses its electoral sheen in the most thickly populated, most urbanised part of Pakistan — at least for the time being.

Campaign of terror

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There were nationwide protests against the February 16 bomb blast targetting the Hazara community in Quetta

There were nationwide protests against the February 16 bomb blast targetting the Hazara community in Quetta

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti was on his way to address a public meeting in Mardan on February 15 when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade as it passed by the bustling College Chowk. The chief minister and his entourage escaped unhurt. Three days later, four security personnel and two civilians were killed and 14 others were injured in Peshawar when two militants wearing suicide vests opened indiscriminate fire while walking into the offices of Khyber Agency’s political agent; the attackers then proceeded to detonate themselves. Representatives of various political parties were holding a meeting there to determine a code of ethics for the upcoming general election in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). A few weeks earlier, on January 1, an explosive device attached to a motorbike detonated just outside a Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) public meeting organised to welcome Dr Tahirul Qadri at the party’s headquarters in Karachi.

These incidents, clearly targeting politicians and political activities, evoke little surprise when seen in the light of a recent statement by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which made it clear that the militants have plans to sabotage elections. “We are in the process of forming a policy and will make it public as soon as a final announcement for elections is made,” the ominous statement quoted TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan as saying.

These attacks are also reminiscent of the previous election season which witnessed attacks on many political activities, parties and leaders, most notably the October 18, 2007 assault on the motorcade of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister and the then head of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), in Karachi, which resulted in 139 deaths, and her assassination on December 27, 2007. Indeed, both in terms of sources and perception of security threats Pakistan is facing in the run up to the 2013 election there are broad similarities with the situation before the 2008 election. “Every intelligence agency had identified two threats to the election process [in 2008]: the Taliban and other banned militant organisations,” says Lieutenant General (retd) Hamid Nawaz, who served as interior minister in the 2008 caretaker cabinet. It appears that even now threats to security emanate from the same sources. Also, as in 2008, Peshawar in particular and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in general, remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks, owing to their geographical proximity to the epicentre of militancy.

There are, however, some significant departures from five years ago. Firstly, it appears that the overall number of casualties is exponentially higher this time around even though a fewer number of high-profile politicians have been targeted. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that tracks incidents of terrorism in Pakistan, 792 civilians and security personnel have perished as a result of terrorist violence in the first 48 days of 2013. In contrast, in the four months leading up to and during the 2008 general elections (November and December 2007, and January and February 2008), 660 civilians and law enforcers died in acts of violence. It is worth noting, however, that November and December 2007 were deadlier months than those that immediately preceded the previous polls.

Moreover, the explosion outside the MQM meeting in Karachi is an indication that the geographical locus of terrorist violence has expanded considerably. A senior security official tells the Herald that security threats to the election process are coming primarily from the same old groups but the focus of these threats has shifted from Punjab to Karachi and Quetta. Empirical evidence verifies this. According to a newspaper report, 16 suicide attacks took place in the first 71 days of 2008 — falling immediately before and after the last general election. Out of these, the highest number of attacks happened in February, the month of the election, and Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar were primarily targeted. This year, however, Karachi and Quetta appear to have become prime targets.
Security experts and officials say that continued acts of terrorism imply that the government will have to deploy law enforcement agencies – even the army in some cases – in large numbers in many places across Pakistan. In some areas, violence and terrorist activities could lead to a scaling down of electioneering and campaigning. “I don’t know what shape the election campaign will take in this security environment,” says Afrasiyab Khattak, a central leader of the Awami National Party (ANP). “But we will certainly not be holding large rallies,” he tells the Herald. In Karachi, too, according to MQM’s Faisal Sabzwari, “holding big rallies will be problematic for every party.”

The other difference in the pattern of the current violence as compared to 2008 is that terrorist incidents this year are far more sectarian in nature, the most significant examples being the two targeted attacks on the Shia Hazara community in Quetta. Similarly, the high profile assassination of an MQM provincial legislator, Manzar Imam, on January 17, 2013, was also deemed to have sectarian motivations — although it later emerged that he did not belong to the Shia community.

According to a senior official speaking on the condition of anonymity, the ruling PPP is privy to the security assessments carried out by intelligence agencies but, he says, the party wants to avoid being perceived as spreading panic and causing a postponement of election. After a caretaker government is instated, the PPP may become more vocal in conveying its concern to the public, to campaigning politicians and to government officials.
But Brigadier (retd) Asad Munir, who served as the provincial director of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa around 2008 polls, says the current security situation is better in some areas than it was back in 2008. “The situation then was much worse: the Taliban were virtually ruling 17 districts in the north-west of the country,” he says. “Right now even the tribal areas, except North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies, are within the control of the army.”

Senior provincial minister and member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Bashir Ahmad Bilour was killed in a suicide attack in Peshawar in December last year. Photo by AFP

Senior provincial minister and member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Bashir Ahmad Bilour was killed in a suicide attack in Peshawar in December last year. Photo by AFP

The immediate impact of the Taliban having lost control is visible in Punjab which has not suffered any major incident of terrorist violence this year. That explains why key political parties, including the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN), have already worked out campaign strategies that hinge on holding large rallies in major urban centres of the province. Apparently, the provincial law enforcement authorities have no objection to this type of campaigning. Khan Beg, Punjab’s inspector-general police, says the provincial police, with the help of elite intelligence agencies, have carried out threat assessments with a specific focus on elections and election processes. “I believe we can manage security at big rallies,” he says. His department’s strategy, he says, is to provide ample security to leading political figures who, according to official assessment, could be on the terrorists’ hit list.

In contrast, the ruling ANP’s strategy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa appears to be two-pronged — a mix of preventative and curative measures. On the one hand, the party leadership is rethinking traditional methods of interacting with the masses. “Security of the people [during public interactions] will definitely be our foremost concern,” says Khattak. On the other hand, the ANP is trying to convince mainstream political parties across the country to initiate talks with the Taliban; many security planners are of the opinion that the terrorist threat could be mitigated if the prospect of negotiations is kept alive until elections are held in the country. Indeed, this is the strategy that the caretaker government adopted in the months immediately preceding the previous elections: according to Lieutenant General (retd) Hamid Nawaz, the government in 2008 brought together tribal leaders and asked them to formulate a strategy for holding talks with the Taliban.

In strife-torn Balochistan, however, this luxury – of floating proposals for talks with militants – is not available because the government has no formal or informal contact with Baloch separatist groups. In parts of the province, local political leaders simply see holding of polling impossible in the face of threats from the Baloch militants. “The Balochistan Liberation Army has threatened to kill anyone taking part in elections in Makran, Kalat, Khuzdar and Mastung,” says PPP’s Balochistan President Sadiq Umrani.

The result is a frightened political class. “We are all afraid of this situation,” says Lieutenant General (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, a PMLN parliamentarian hailing from Balochistan. The possibility of holding elections for the whole of the province in a single day, therefore, seems highly unlikely to him. Election on a single day will “spread law enforcing agencies thin,” he argues. “The government should try to concentrate law enforcers in one area and hold elections there, then wait for two days and repeat the process in other areas.”

Baloch, who has supervised security arrangements in Balochistan as a senior military officer, also believes that more attacks against the Shia Hazara community in Quetta could potentially paralyse the entire country, as was amply demonstrated when, within 12 hours of the February 16 incident, protests spread to more than 20 cities nationwide, including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. “Terrorist attacks [against the Hazaras] can locally affect two constituencies within Quetta as far as elections are concerned,” he says, “but if the protests that start after such attacks spread and lead to a counter mobilisation in the cities, how then will elections be possible?”

Campaign of terror

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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti was on his way to address a public meeting in Mardan on February 15 when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade as it passed by the bustling College Chowk. The chief minister and his entourage escaped unhurt. Three days later, four security personnel and two civilians were killed and 14 others were injured in Peshawar when two militants wearing suicide vests opened indiscriminate fire while walking into the offices of Khyber Agency’s political agent; the attackers then proceeded to detonate themselves. Representatives of various political parties were holding a meeting there to determine a code of ethics for the upcoming general election in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). A few weeks earlier, on January 1, an explosive device attached to a motorbike detonated just outside a Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) public meeting organised to welcome Dr Tahirul Qadri at the party’s headquarters in Karachi.

These incidents, clearly targeting politicians and political activities, evoke little surprise when seen in the light of a recent statement by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which made it clear that the militants have plans to sabotage elections. “We are in the process of forming a policy and will make it public as soon as a final announcement for elections is made,” the ominous statement quoted TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan as saying.

Plane logic

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Photo by Lorenzo Giacobbo

Photo by Lorenzo Giacobbo

Flights cancellations and delays have become a norm with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). Almost a third of PIA flights suffered delays due to technical and administrative reasons in 2012. More than 4,345 of PIA’s 12,184 flights were delayed due to various administrative and technical problems in last year’s first three months, Syed Naveed Qamar, the federal defence minister, told the parliament earlier in the year. The result was huge financial loss: in December 2012 the minister revealed that the airline currently faces a loss of 141.4 billion rupees, as compared to 42.4 billion rupees in 2008. Much of the problem is attributed to PIA’s ageing fleet of aircraft, most of which has outlived its manufacturer-prescribed age of 16 years. This ageing fleet has also become an international embarrassment, with several European countries repeatedly conveying safety concerns to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in Pakistan and demanding that a ban be imposed on PIA’s flights. Even on domestic routes, passengers frequently complain about a deteriorating quality of service, leading to a shift to alternative, private airlines for domestic travel.

“Liberalisation is really at the heart of PIA’s woes.”
YES AND NO

PIA’s management has claimed that 150 billion rupees of what should have been the airline’s share of the market has been lost to other international airlines in the past three years since the government has granted traffic rights to foreign carriers. PIA spokesperson Syed Sultan Hasan tells the Herald that granting of such rights has an adverse effect on the airline. “PIA, being the national flag carrier, has suffered badly during the last decade when international carriers started to penetrate the Pakistani market.” The airline calculates the loss resulting from this measure as seven million potential passengers who travelled through foreign airlines between 2009 and 2012.

“A majority of these passengers were travelling from Pakistan to their final destination via the origin (hub) of those airlines; these passengers are carried to other destinations such as UK or USA, where PIA is already running direct flights from Pakistan,” says Hasan.

These international airlines are also said to have increased their market share by periodically lowering their fares to unprecedented levels that PIA finds difficult to match. These low fares, say PIA officials, not only have an adverse effect on the market, but also lead to a huge loss of foreign exchange. “PIA has raised this issue on several forums. While Pakistan has been liberal in granting traffic rights, the advanced nations have been protective about their own markets, economies and airlines by not allowing foreign carriers to operate,” complains Hasan.

Regular air travellers present a different argument, focusing on PIA’s performance, not only on international, but even on domestic routes. They cite flight delays and comparatively expensive air tickets as the main reason for a shift to other, private, airlines. After two air crashes involving private airlines in recent years, a shift of domestic passengers back to PIA was seen, but as the memory of these accidents fades into the past, there has been a renewed move towards private airlines, primarily because of a more competitive quality of service.

There are many voices, even within PIA, which argue against the provision of protective safeguards on international routes to an organisation with such poor performance that it is not even attractive for passengers on domestic routes. Many take a pessimistic view about the airline’s problems being solved through protection from the government. “Only performance and quality will revive PIA, not protective measures,” says one senior PIA official based in Karachi.

“Corruption is what has led PIA to the present pass.” 
MOST WOULD AGREE

It may be argued that the slump in PIA’s profitability is tied up with a rise in global fuel prices and downturn in local and international economies. However, economists do not overlook the fact that rising international fuel prices coincide with a time when management issues within PIA also started dominating the national media. “It’s true that the airline business goes through ups and downs all over the world, but PIA [also] has serious management issues which are responsible for the crisis it is [presently] facing,” says Asad Umar, an economist and senior vice president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. He also sees the present phase of crisis in the airline as coinciding with the coming to power of the Pakistan Peoples Party. “That’s when issues of governance started to rise generally … and particularly in PIA and other public-sector entities … If you compare PIA’s performance during the last four years with the four years that preceded [this period], you will find a marked deterioration.”

Others agree to some degree with the PIA management’s assessment of rising fuel prices in the international market as a basic factor in the airline’s woes. According to banker and economist Sakib Sherani, “Rising fuel prices is one cause of the crisis, but after that it is basically management issues that are causing trouble.” Non-merit appointments and petty corruption figure largely within such management issues. The airline has continued to hire new people despite its state of deep financial crisis and a government ban on recruitment. In October 2012, Qamar told the Senate that more than 2,590 people have been appointed to PIA since 2008, when the new government came to power and the ban was imposed. Engineer Arshad H Abbasi, who is an adviser at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, confirms the graveness of the problem, “Over-employment is the biggest reason behind PIA’s crisis … [the airline’s] employee-aeroplane ratio is the highest in the world.”

Most of these appointments – some with rather hefty salaries – have been in the officers’ cadre. A case in point is that of former deputy managing director Salim Sayani, a Pakistani American, who was appointed in 2009 for a salary of 20,000 US dollars per month, along with other perks and privileges. For years, the management resisted pressure to remove him from office, for, as per the rules of his employment contract, his dismissal would come at huge financial cost. After severe public criticism, it complied by firing Sayani in July 2012.

Since PIA’s internal irregularities and mismanagement have become such a recurrent issue in the media, practically turning the organisation into a byword for corruption in the eyes of the public, the airline appears to be taking some measures to address the issue. “The present management has taken major steps for conducting a forensic audit of the airline, for which it would be inviting offers from the international market,” says Hasan. According to him, an internal accountability committee will also be constituted, which will consist of officers of the highest integrity and unimpeachable character who will investigate and review corruption cases, before referring them to the National Accountability Bureau or other investigating agencies, as well as recommend departmental disciplinary action.

The airline’s state of internal chaos may prove to be beyond these corrective measures, however. According to Abbasi, trade unions have tremendous influence in PIA’s various departments, leading to total helplessness on the part of the top management to act in a situation where merit is largely missing as a factor in hiring. “There is a total collapse of the internal accountability system … recently, they discovered fake degrees of [a number of long-serving] pilots … The top management has lost central control of PIA and this has negatively impacted the working of the organisation.”

VP-detailed-3

“Blaming birds for PIA’s poor performance is preposterous.”
NOT NECESSARILY

When it comes to flight delays caused by bird hits, the national carrier does appear to be dogged by bad luck, both on domestic and international flights. Two large passenger planes were hit by birds in July 2012, and a senior official of PIA tells the Herald that over 45 bird hits occurred in the outgoing year alone, while there had been 60 such incidents in 2011.
The airline places the blame on CAA for not clearing the sky around runways. Both bird hits in July took place near the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore primarily because its runway is close to the residential areas. The question is: why are private airlines not complaining about bird hits, when they too fly out from the same airports? A senior PIA official tells Herald that private airlines, too, are not happy with the situation: “I don’t know why these airlines are not making a public issue of it, but I know for a fact that they too complain about it.”

CAA officials say that the growth of residential areas around runways is responsible for the problem. “Population growth is something we cannot control,” says one official. “This is for the local government to do.” Bird hits have caused millions of rupees in loss to PIA, with a single hit costing the airline as much as two million rupees, according to officials.

“Investing in new carriers would solve PIA’s problems.” 
SCEPTICS ABOUND

PIA spokesperson Hasan emphasises that acquisition of new aircraft will improve the airline’s performance. The argument is based on the premise that the country surely needs a national carrier with more – and more fuel-efficient – aircraft in its fleet, which will not only balance its employee-aircraft ratio, but will also help in earning profit. He tells the Herald that more than half of the PIA’s airplanes are older than 20 years. “PIA’s fuel expenses swallow 55 per cent of the total revenue … The new technology aircraft [which the PIA is in the process of buying] are approximately 50 per cent more fuel-efficient than existing ones … [Replacing older aircraft] will considerably reduce maintenance costs … The fuel bill will also be reduced by half, which will enable PIA to achieve profits.”

Scepticism abounds with regards to pouring more money into an airline which has for some time been seen by many as a white elephant and far too reliant on external support. “If it is dependent on the government for acquisition of a new fleet, then it is obvious that PIA is no longer a financially viable entity,” says Umar, proceeding to argue that had the airline been financially viable, it would have had no problem in acquiring a new fleet through commercial financing.

The way the airline has gone about seeking to acquire new aeroplanes has also been criticised. “I think the first thing PIA needs to do is rationalisation of its fleet … If it can’t fly to the US because of restrictions, it should not go for bigger aircraft,” says Sherani.

PIA’s managing director, Junaid Yunus, nevertheless expresses confidence in a recent statement saying that inducting newer aircraft would be a “turning point” for the airline, as it would provide for cutting fuel costs, improving punctuality and regularity, and restoring customer confidence. His December press release cites a surge in the airline’s profits in the three previous months amidst “difficult economic conditions, fierce competition, rising fuel prices, foreign exchange losses and law and order situation” as even further reason to acquire new airplanes, which may advance this trend.

PIA advertisement from the 1980s

PIA advertisement from the 1980s

“A national carrier should be done away with altogether.”
AN UNLIKELY PROSPECT

As PIA appears to stumble from crisis to crisis, many have started to question the actual need for a national carrier. After all, there are countries whose transportation system remains effective and dynamic, without the financial burden of maintaining a national carrier. The United States is a prime example of a country where air travel is completely in the hands of private sector.

PIA officials argue that this is not really possible in Pakistan’s case because the airline is necessary for serving the state’s purposes. “PIA flies to Dera Ismail Khan without earning profit, it flies to remote parts of Balochistan, and these are routes which are not at all profitable and which no private airline will fly to [on the fare that people from these areas can afford],” says Hasan, arguing that it is only the national flag carrier which connects the remotest areas of the country with major cities.

But what is the extent of the cost that the national exchequer can bear for making possible this kind of connectivity? The silver lining is that the amount of money required for subsidising operations on these routes is not huge. “The losses incurred on these unprofitable routes don’t make up a large part of PIA’s overall losses,” explains a senior official. And there are also political reasons to keep such routes running. On December 25, 2012, for instance, PIA launched its Quetta-Kandahar flight. The route is not expected to be profitable in the coming months, but the flight is expected to serve a political purpose by strengthening relations between Pakistani and Afghan people and traders.

Abolishing PIA is also not likely for a variety of other reasons. A number of vested interests are seen as ensuring that the airline continues serving as an employment exchange. During military governments, PIA becomes a dumping ground for retired army officers, and during democratic regimes, it becomes a favourite destination for the cronies and protégés of politicians. “Besides, PIA performs many national services which cannot be discussed in public,” claims Hasan.

General perception

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In the continuously played out power game in Islamabad, the Pakistan Army uses image as its most potent weapon. Portrayed as efficient, smart and highly disciplined, it is projected as an institution which can fix anything that others – especially politicians – cannot, from disaster management to overseeing polling and maintaining law and order. “The army legitimises its role by claiming to do what others cannot do. For instance, Ayub Khan said he would carry out development, General Ziaul Haq said he would Islamise the country and Musharraf said he would cleanse it of corruption,” says Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst based in Islamabad.

Siddiqa says that the army has been successful in creating such an image, and sustaining it through most of the country’s history, because it has been successful in taking “intellectual control” of society. The exercise of this control involves domination of historical, social and political discourses; anyone questioning such establishmentarian discourses is dubbed a traitor. The intellectual control then translates into political power, which hinges on the army’s image as an institution superior to and better than any other in the country. “The army wants to be perceived as a powerful entity that never fails,” says Siddiqa.

Don’t have a policy? Try a project

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It appears logical for a country like Pakistan to have well-defined policies to tackle the twin menaces of terrorism and radicalisation. After all, the country is one of the greatest targets of both religion-inspired terrorists and radicalised segments of society which refuse to accept, let alone obey, the writ of the state. But it is yet to come up with a policy to tackle the two problems, either separately or together. In the words of an official associated with counterterrorism, Pakistan has only made “fragmented” efforts so far on both counts and have never tried to even discuss basic questions such as “who needs to be de-radicalised and how?”

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Former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani shakes hands with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry before a meeting in Islamabad in 2010

Many political analysts agree to the extent that the SC verdict has “invented” a new mechanism to oust a government without the involvement of the Parliament at a time when Article 58(2)(b) is no longer in the statute books and the military is no longer willing to get directly involved in politics. For Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst based in Lahore, the present political situation is similar to a military coup in many respects. “The Supreme Court removing a prime minister is just like the army removing a prime minister. The army always created justification for its coups; in the same manner now the court has created justification to remove a prime minister,” he says.

When the Herald asks Rizvi to comment about the scenes of jubilation in different parts of Pakistan over the ouster of a prime minister who was seen as being both corrupt and inefficient, he responds by referring once again to military coups. “The present situation is similar to what happens following a military coup; public opinion gets divided: some people distribute sweets while others condemn the generals for launching the coup. The same thing is happening now.”

Given the history of institutional imbalance in the country, where powerful unrepresentative institutions have ousted elected representatives more than once, it is likely that the SC verdict will further shift the power balance in favour of non-representative and non-elected institutions. Some analysts and jurists tend to agree that the consequences will be similar to those brought about by past sackings. In the long run, Rizvi says, “the judgement has damaged parliamentary democracy as much as a military coup [would have]”.

Dr Mohammad Waseem, a senior teacher of politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences also views the SC verdict as being akin to the sacking of governments under Article 58(2)(b) and believes that it will have serious consequences for parliamentary democracy in Pakistan. “The first implication [after the judgement] is that parliamentary sovereignty is gone. This was the effect of Article 58(2)(b) and this is the effect of the present situation,” he says.

For Rizvi, another broader implication of the judgement is that the SC has extended its mandate far beyond what is envisaged by the Constitution. “What the SC should have done is send the reference to the Election Commission of Pakistan which has the authority to disqualify the members of the Parliament. Instead it disqualified Gilani on its own,” he says. “This is actually an expansion of domain on the part of the SC.”

While legal experts do not want to draw parallels between Article 58(2)(b) and the SC verdict against Gilani, they agree that no one in the existing institutional set-up can now stop the SC from exercising the power to sack the prime minister again. S M Zafar, a senior lawyer and former Senator, disagrees with the argument that the SC judgement is akin to Article 58(2)(b) but then adds: “No future prime minister will behave like [the outgoing prime minister has] and if anybody does then he will have to face a similar judgement.”

Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood, who was also a top-ranking leader of the movement for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in 2007-2009, says legally speaking the verdict and Article 58(2)(b) “are different concepts” but “their political fallouts are similar.”

There is another, and perhaps important, dissimilarity. The SC, unlike the coup-making generals and parliament-sacking presidents, refused to take responsibility for the political implications of its decision — instead, the judges asked President Asif Ali Zardari to take necessary steps to ensure the continuity of the democratic set-up. Even if one accepts that the SC has nothing to do with the political implications of its decisions as long as they are legally and judicially sound, it is difficult to ignore the fact that Gilani’s sacking and the prospects of a similar fate awaiting the new prime minister has certainly pushed the existing democratic and parliamentary set-up further towards the brink.

The next moves

On June 27, the SC directed the Attorney General of Pakistan to obtain a written reply from the new Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf by July 12, 2012 if and when he will implement the court’s order to write a letter to the Swiss authorities for reopening of cases against Zardari. Ashraf, in the meanwhile, has already stated that after becoming the prime minister he will not write the letter because he believes Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from legal proceedings both inside and outside Pakistan.
For legal experts, this means that Ashraf will face the same Gilani-like situation, the difference is that the court may not take as many months as it did earlier to disqualify the new premier after his refusal to write the letter. They point out that the court may no longer follow the earlier process of issuing a verdict and then waiting for a ruling by the Speaker of the National Assembly. So Ashraf’s disqualification, if and when it happens, may take a few weeks rather than many months. “Perhaps this time, the court can directly come to the point of disqualifying the Prime Minister if he disobeys the court order,” says a senior constitutional lawyer in Islamabad.
The PPP and its partners in the ruling coalition have so far emitted mixed signals about their course of action following Gilani’s dismissal. On the one hand, they have implemented the SC verdict against the outgoing premier, while on the other, they say they have not accepted the judgement and have reservations about it given that it appears harmful for democracy. Reports suggest that in the coming sessions of the National Assembly, many ruling coalition legislators may wish to indulge in a heated, perhaps even a nasty debate about the verdict against Gilani.

Will the ruling coalition let another prime minister fall due to another SC verdict? Nobody in the government is ready to give a direct answer. “The government will try to buy as much time as is possible before it takes any decision,” says a senior bureaucrat in Islamabad.

Independent analysts point out that buying time will not be easy for a government which is already reeling under the weight of its own inefficiency in tackling the economically crippling energy shortages and which is hobbled by unrelenting allegations of large-scale corruption among its ranks. Pointing out that the “government is fast losing credibility and legitimacy,” Waseem says that “the SC verdict is not a one-time neutral step but it has the effect of [further] weakening an already weak government.”

Acoording to a senior bureaucrat the only way for the government to neutralise the consequences of the court’s recent and future actions is to sit with the opposition and decide on a unanimous road map for early elections. For example, he says, the government and the opposition should agree on who will run the caretaker government in the run-up to the election; they should also be able to unanimously decide on the next chief election commissioner and, most crucially, on what role Zardari will have in the caretaker administration. If the system falls before the two sides have agreed on these issues, they risk losing out to the unelected institutions, which will then decide who will be in the caretaker government and the Election Commission.

While the government has given no solid indication that it is willing to cross the bridge and sit with the opposition to negotiate and settle these crucial issues, the opposition too seems focused on immediate gains rather than thinking about long-term political stability and democratic institutionalisation. In private conversations, the leaders of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), the main opposition party, admit that the disqualification of a prime minister by the SC will hang like the sword of Damocles over the heads of all future prime ministers but in their public statements they don’t want to be seen as supporting, even indirectly, a beleaguered government. Former prime minister and current PMLN chief Nawaz Sharif, who knows from his experience of confrontation with the judiciary in 1997 that there are no easy ways of emerging from such an imbroglio, told a television interviewer recently that Gilani’s sacking was “real accountability”.

“It is true that the Parliament is not expected to be a trade union or a regimented force that would act in unison in any crisis situation — after all, dissent and differences are the essence of a parliamentary democracy,” says a PPP legislator. Still, one would expect a collective response from the government and the opposition when the very essence of parliamentary democracy is under threat, he adds.

There are certain voices outside the Parliament arguing that the SC should handle the situation with caution. Senior lawyer and human-rights activist Asma Jahangir has suggested that the SC should send the letter to Swiss officials on its own, through the office of its registrar, without involving the government and thus avoiding the possibility of putting another prime minister on trial.

Mahmood, while he believes that it will be extremely difficult for the judiciary to send another prime minister home, wants everyone to avoid the possibility of a repeat of Gilani’s sacking. “That will have far serious implications for the system,” he says.

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Almost everyone agrees that the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision to disqualify Yousuf Raza Gilani as a member of the National Assembly and as the Prime Minister of Pakistan will have serious implications for the political system within the country even when opinions differ on whether the court’s verdict is legally and judicially justified. Leaders and members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) argue that Gilani’s sacking is the “judicial equivalent” of the sacking of governments and parliaments in the past by the President of Pakistan through the powers he once possessed under Article 58(2)(b) of the Constitution, which the 18th Amendment has now removed. Repeatedly in Pakistan’s history, unelected institutions and military dictators have assumed powers to dismiss elected prime ministers, thus negating the principle that only the people of Pakistan should hold the government and the Parliament responsible and accountable, says a senior PPP leader.

Can a convicted man serve the nation?

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The prevailing constitutional and political situation in the country is akin to the old pattern of Pakistani politics, wherein, after a brief confrontation between two constitutional offices the opposition jumps into the arena with a detailed and comprehensive plan of agitation, and in the process paves the way for the president, who used to be equipped with the powers to dissolve the assemblies and send everybody packing home. Fortunately the president no longer has the power to dissolve the assemblies and dismiss the government. The reason Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz is oft accused of being a ‘soft’ opposition is because under the prevailing constitutional setup, its capacity, as an opposition party, to disrupt the political process is not as immense as it used to be in 1990s. Thus the former prime minister and current opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, has to stomach the accusations from his critics that, as an opposition party they are good for nothing. Perhaps this is why Sharif wanted to prove everybody wrong when he raised the slogan: quit as prime minister or face the country-wide protest movement.

The immediate constitutional issue facing the country is whether a convicted man can continue as the chief executive of the country. The opposition says Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gailani has been disqualified from the National Assembly due to his conviction in the contempt of court case. Opposition leaders think that any deviation from this legal and constitutional path will lead the country towards chaos and anarchy. On the other hand, the government is insisting that the question of the prime minister’s qualification doesn’t arise in the prevailing situation.  Media reports suggest that in the latest cabinet meeting the members suggested that the Supreme Court should be dealt with aggressively.

To me this situation seems to be a replay of events in the Supreme Court back in 1997 when the then prime minister, Sharif, was faced with contempt of court proceedings. The capital was abuzz with speculations that Sharif would be disqualified once he was convicted by the Supreme Court. It would be instructive to examine the response of the then government to that situation,not with the intention to enter into any political polemics or to prove anybody wrong, but solely to point out the similarity in the responses of ruling politicians towards any threat to their survival no matter how high the cost is. Sharif’s response in 1997 was harsh and crud. He had the contempt of court law amended in the parliament to forestall the judgment of the court. He made his intention known that he would make the parliamentary committee summon the chief justice and question him on the charges of breaching the parliamentary privilege.

One concern of the political class was as genuine then as it is now: that no one should be allowed to invent a constitutional and legal mechanism to oust an elected prime minister – apart from the existing constitutional procedure of no-confidence vote given in the constitution. Ousting the prime minister by way of his conviction in a contempt case after which he loses his national assembly seat is tantamount to inventing such a mechanism. Given the history of institutional imbalance in the country, where, powerful unrepresentative institutions are allowed to oust elected representatives by using such invented mechanisms, it is likely that the power balance will further shift toward non-representative and non-elected institutions. Part of the problem is the absence of strong traditions of parliamentary democracy in the country’s political culture. If we had an uninterrupted parliamentary tradition such petty questions would not have given rise to national crises. For instance a court conviction could have convinced the prime minister to simply resign from his office, without having to fear that his resignation could lead to non-representative institutions finishing off rest of the political process.

Many independent analysts do not disagree with the point that ousting the prime minister through an invented mechanism can weaken the parliamentary democracy irreparably. The political class has to understand that they are not in a battlefield, despite the mines that have been planted on the path they have to tread. So aggression as suggested by some cabinet members could prove to be self-destructive. For surely, keeping the whole system on track, is primarily their responsibility. They have to understand that courts in any society play a foundational role in keeping the society from drifting towards anarchy. Head-on-collision must be avoided at every cost.