Long-term interest and Local Government !

Column of the Day - ASHFAQ REHMANI

Pakistan is a federal republic comprising four provinces: Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These are divided into 111 districts, 397 towns – middle-tier administrative units – and 6044 unions, the lowest tier of government, with each union comprising a number of villages. Local government elections were due in 2009. However, following the 2008 general election, the new provincial governments decided to postpone local elections in order to amend the local government system.

Some provincial government coalition members in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are considering changing the local government structure altogether; others like the Muttahida Quami Movement party in the Sindh coalition government would like to keep the existing system from 2001. These reform processes constitute an opportunity to draft new election-related arrangements in line with the 18th Amendment to the constitution, which limits presidential powers and gives other institutions greater autonomy, and the June 2010 ratification of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, a UN treaty which commits signatories to ensuring the political and civil rights of individuals.

To date, those amendments have still largely not been made.

The result is that no firm dates have been set for local elections. Instead of the people’s representatives running local governments, decisions are being made by an interim civil bureaucratic administration.

This cannot last. It removes citizens’ right to turn to local council members and mayors to deliver basic social services and provide local political accountability. This lack of accountability and the absence of citizen participation at the local level represent a grave threat to Pakistani democracy.

This does not mean that the previous local government system was necessarily a good thing. It has rightly been criticised for being about the consolidation of power, designed to serve and benefit various military regimes. Each of the military rulers throughout Pakistan’s history established elected local government systems which served to consolidate their power base.

In contrast, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, civilian prime minister from 1973 until 1977, opted to install local bureaucrats – civil servants – to administer local affairs. Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif’s governments between 1988 and 1999 did not revive elected local government either. Many argue this was done to prevent the emergence of grassroots political power and therefore continue undisputed national and provincial leverage on policies at the local level.

The local government reform process and preparation for elections is interminably slow and tortuous. It has been argued that provincial governments are delaying holding local elections in order to avoid their political power being tested mid-term, particularly given the challenges of a struggling economy, rampant insecurity and post-flood reconstruction. However, elected local governments could be a stabilising force for the country, establishing governance accountability and increasing a culture of participation.

The local government reform process has been driven since 2009 by provincial executive branches. The provincial assemblies have played little to no role in the development of policy or legislation. And legislative committees responsible for local government may exist, but they are sidelined.

One particularly important aspect of the new legal framework for local government will be the election laws. This is a highly sensitive matter needing broad-based political support if the laws are to be accepted as legitimate by all political forces.

According to domestic and international groups working on election reform in Pakistan, significant issues to address include (but are not limited to): candidacy requirements, criteria for constituency demarcation and the participation of political parties. It is critical that there be opportunity for stakeholders to be consulted on these matters and to have meaningful opportunity to review proposals. These stakeholders include the ruling parties, the opposition, the election management body, civil society and the public.

The respective provincial legislatures need to pass legislation based on such consultation. This legislation needs to be fully compliant with the constitution and Pakistan’s international legal commitments, including those related to elections, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Democratic practices must be strengthened at all levels in Pakistan if there is to be effective civilian governance. The next few years may be difficult, but failure to address democratic reform at the national and local levels is in nobody’s long-term interest.

summer Academy for SAARC Journalists in INDIA

Pakistan - New Road Regarding Educational initiative’s

Column by - ASHFAQ REHMANI


My world view changed dramatically as I saw first-hand the stark challenges of poverty – illiteracy, child labor, abuse and the privations imposed by caste hierarchies. I was astounded by this contradictory nation – innovative yet impoverished, globally oriented yet parochially sectarian.
The reality is that the lowest sections of Indian and Pakistani society are united by their shared sorrows. A child’s education is still largely determined by his birthplace and socio-economic background. If former Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah could see us today, 63 years after independence, nothing would shock them more than the extent of illiteracy among the masses. They would be appalled that half the adult population (and more than half the female population) remains unable to read and write, and powerless to break the cycle of poverty and servitude.

With all the depressing news coming out of Pakistan lately, there is one major development that has me hopeful and excited. Last month saw the launch of the Teach For Pakistan movement, which aims to expand the urban poor’s access to quality education by recruiting highly qualified young Pakistanis to teach in under-resourced schools for two years. In the long run, these “fellows” will go on to be successful leaders in various other fields, but will continue to support local educational initiatives from their positions of influence.

Imagine the socio-economic revolution possible if our youth are better equipped to compete for secure employment, to defend them in court, to enforce their rights, to take advantage of technology and to take part, intelligently, in political activity.

Even without teaching full-time, there are numerous ways to be a part of the solution. Your time and presence is the most valuable commodity you can offer.

Volunteering in classrooms and talking about your life and work allows students to fashion a broader mindset. They learn to communicate more effectively and find role models to emulate. Even something as simple as donating and reading out simple, colorful storybooks – which affluent children have easy access to – makes a huge impact.

In just two years as a teacher, I ended up learning much more than I could ever teach. And I hope that, in the years to come, we will see many more young South Asians joining and supporting educational organizations and having similarly profound experiences – in humility, perseverance and leadership.

Christianity in Pakistan - What needs to change?

Column of the Day !!
In the history of some countries there comes a period when political and factional murder becomes almost routine – Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and its neighbours in the early 1930s. It has invariably been the precursor of a breakdown of legal and political order and of long-term suffering for a whole population. And last week, with the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, Pakistan has taken a further step down this catastrophic road.
To those who actually support such atrocities, there is little to say. They inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety. As the shocked responses from so many Muslims in this country and elsewhere make plain, their actions are as undermining of Qur’anic ethics as they are of rational politics.
But to those who recognise something truly dreadful going on in their midst – to the majority in Pakistan who have elected a government that, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism – we have surely to say, "Do not imagine that this can be 'managed' or tolerated."
The government of Pakistan and the great majority of its population are, in effect, being blackmailed. The widespread and deep desire for Pakistan to be what it was meant to be, for justice to be guaranteed for all, and for some of the most easily abused laws on the statute book to be reviewed is being paralysed by the threat of murder. The blasphemy case of the Pakistani Christian woman, Aasia Noreen, so prominent in the debates of recent months, and the connected murder of Salman Taseer, the Governor of the Punjab, make it crystal clear that there is a faction in Pakistan wholly uninterested in justice and due process of law, concerned only with promoting an inhuman pseudo-religious tyranny.
Pakistan was created by Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a consciously Muslim state in which, nonetheless, the non-Muslim enjoyed an absolute right of citizenship and the civic securities and liberties that go with it. In common with the best historical examples of Muslim governance, there was a realistic and generous recognition that plural and diverse convictions would not go away and that therefore a just Muslim state, no more and no less than a just Christian or secular state, had to provide for the rights of its minorities.
If the state's willingness to guarantee absolute security for minorities of every kind is a test of political maturity and durability, whatever the confessional background, Pakistan's founding vision was a mature one. The disdain shown for that vision by Bhatti's killers is an offence against Islam as much as against Christianity in Pakistan.What needs to change?
There needs to be a rational debate in Pakistan and, more widely, about the blasphemy laws that are at the root of so much of this. And this is likely to happen only if the international Muslim intelligentsia can form a coherent judgment on the level of abuse that characterises the practice of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan.
Most Muslim thinkers are embarrassed by supposedly "Islamic" laws in various contexts that conceal murderous oppression and bullying. Their voices are widely noted; they need to be heard more clearly in Pakistan, where part of the problem is the weakening of properly traditional Islam by the populist illiteracies of modern extremism.
And there needs to be some credible proof of the government of Pakistan's political will not only to resist blackmail, but also to assess realistically the levels of risk under which minority communities and the individuals who support them live.
Bhatti knew what his chances of survival were – as the moving recorded testimony he left makes plain. He was not protected by the government he so bravely served. How many minority Christian communities, law abiding, peaceful and frequently profoundly disadvantaged, are similarly not protected by their government? What increased guarantees of security are being offered?
The protection of minorities of any and every kind is one acid test of moral legitimacy for a government; and such protection is built into Pakistan's modern identity as an Islamic state with civic recognition for non-Muslims. Many are anxious about Pakistan's future for strategic reasons. But those of us who love Pakistan and its people are anxious for its soul as well as its political stability.
It is heartbreaking to see those we count as friends living with the threat of being coerced and menaced into silence and, ultimately, into a betrayal of themselves. This must not be allowed to happen. They need to know of the support of Christians and others outside Pakistan for their historic and distinctive vision.
Bhatti died, for all practical purposes, as a martyr – let me be clear – not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims. When he and I talked at Lambeth Palace in London last year, he was fully aware of the risks he ran. He did not allow himself to be diverted for a moment from his commitment to justice for all.
That a person of such courage and steadfastness of purpose was nourished in the political culture of Pakistan is itself a witness to the capacity of that culture to keep its vision alive and compelling. And that is one of the few real marks of hope in a situation of deepening tragedy that urgently needs both prayer and action

madrasahs - where is culture of tolerance ?

Several Muslim-majority countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, have been trying to reform their religious seminaries to introduce rational sciences with varying degrees of success. Given Pakistan’s proximity to conflict-ridden Afghanistan, focusing on madrasah reforms within this specific context is particularly important.
Many senior Taliban leaders are the products of madrasahs within Pakistan, though it is important to clarify that not all madrasahs across the country promote outright militancy. Many of them are, however, established along sectarian lines and their students are often trained to rebut other sects through fierce polemics, which is partly responsible for sectarian strife in the country. There is thus an urgent need for students trained in dialogue, rather than violently denouncing divergent belief systems.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to a spike in funding of madrasahs within Pakistan, and supplied a steady stream of ideologically motivated students to fuel the US-backed insurgency across the border. US and Pakistani use of madrasah students in the proxy war in Afghanistan, promoting them as mujahideen who were supposedly fighting in the name of Islam, led to a disturbing trend of growing militancy inside such schools, which has now become a major problem both for the international community and for Pakistan.
According to research conducted by the World Bank, the number of madrasahs is small compared to the Pakistan’s public and private schools, and accounts for less than 200,000 full-time students, or less than one percent of total students enrolled across Pakistan.
This study, however, does not count the number of students who attend madrasahs in the evening to study the Qur’an, which perhaps explains why the International Crisis Group estimates that closer to 1.5 million students attend madrasahs across the country.
Due to the rising militancy and extremist violence within the country, Pakistan’s government has been struggling to bring madrasahs under its control. But attempts to register and scrutinise madrasah finances have met with much resistance. At the end of this past year, the Pakistan Ministry of Interior concluded yet another agreement with the United Organizations of Pakistani Madaris (ITMP), a coalition of five major madrasah boards in the country, which grants them independence in designing religious curriculum. However, they must begin teaching modern subjects like mathematics, science and social studies in accordance with the syllabus prescribed by the government.
This agreement, however, did not clarify exactly what the religious curriculum for madrasahs would encompass. This is worrying since inclusion of modern subjects alone is not sufficient to prevent intolerance, especially if madrasahs continue to propound myopic worldviews.
Surely the Muslim world has produced sufficient knowledge in Islamic subjects as well as contemporary disciplines such as the sciences and humanities over the past 14 centuries, which is acceptable to different schools of thought and could creatively be infused into the existing religious curriculum to expand the worldview of madrasah students. Curriculum and pedagogical improvements are the only way that dialogue and understanding can take the place of polemics amongst madrasah graduates.
Yet, efforts to help promote a culture of tolerance within madrasahs, by engaging constructively with their existing syllabus and teaching staff, have been limited. Although madrasahs do admittedly need a multi-tiered accountability system to ensure that extremist ideologies are not being inculcated, it is equally important that religious scholars and community members are involved in ensuring such a system comes to fruition, instead of relying upon government officials alone. Coercive attempts at external scrutiny of madrasahs, be it through government or donor agencies, will only be met with suspicion by madrasah teachers and administrators, and will continue to yield disappointing results.
It is not the international donor community but Muslim intellectuals themselves who must seriously look into these issues and try to promote intellectual awakening and serious research through madrasah education.
It is thus imperative to encourage entities like the ITMP to include the works of mainstream Islamic scholars on a range of topics within their existing religious curriculum and to pay more attention to the quality of teaching by encouraging critical thinking rather than rote learning in their schools.