Cowasjee Articles

' The Two Benazir Bhuttos'

17th Febuary 1995

THEY are all the same. Some come on horseback, some via the stuffed ballot box and manipulated votes cast by illiterates who vote for symbols with their feet.

They are bent on destroying whatever institutions their predecessors have failed to destroy (this government of Benazir's has succeeded in maiming the judiciary as never before). They have in common an insatiable greed for power and pelf. They grab, distribute and sell the nation's assets, its land and what ever else, and when they are tipped off their chairs they fall far richer than when they sat down.

Whilst in power, they waft about in cloud-cuckooland, flying high upon their own rhetoric and that of their army of sycophants. The redundant ministry of information and the other government apologists, who cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of rupees each year, are there solely to support each and every word and deed of their leaders, however wrong or right, and it is their duty to try to clarify to a bemused public the meaning of each doing and utterances. They do exactly what they are paid to do, and should they attempt an iota of honesty they are sacked. Their credibility is zero.

David Ogilvy, 'The Pope of Modern Advertising' and marketing wizard, said years ago: 'Package the product as you may. Come the crunch, and it is only the worth of the product that counts'. In this day and age, in other countries, particularly in the democratic West, the packaging is discounted and the worth of the product is swiftly assessed .

From Paula R. Newberg's op-ed column in The New York Times, February 11 (she is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Judging the State: Courts and Constitutional Politics in Pakistan)

"Pakistan has two prime ministers. Both are named Benazir Bhutto. Interviewed by David Frost, Ms Bhutto is an elegant politician who speaks eloquently about opportunities for Muslim women; at home, she retains laws that use Islam to deny rights to women. When she signs agreements with foreign investors during photo opportunities, she epitomises her nation's aspirations to overcome poverty; but most Pakistanis think her government's corruption thwarts those dreams.

"To Americans, Ms Bhutto is progressive; at home, to those who trusted her promise of creating democracy, she is disappointingly negligent in promoting it in the Parliament, the Press and her own party.

"The government encourages free expression but arrests political opponents, touts the rule of law but packs the courts, campaigns for Bosnian Muslims but callously ignores domestic sectarian violence, speaks for Kashmiri rights but denies minority rights at home, builds atomic bombs but rarely builds schools.

"Modern Karachi, the main tax base and commercial linchpin, is a battleground. More than 1,000 people died violently in incidents involving political parties in 1994; at least 50 have died in the last week. When violence engulfed Karachi University, Ms Bhutto and her security forces did nothing. In the 15 months since she has been Prime Minister, she has made 22 foreign trips but has paid no attention to Karachi's problems. "As in the past, Pakistan's titular democracy is hamstrung by politicians who equate personal ambition with national interest. Their profits derive from contacts, contracts and commissions from sales of influence, commodities and service.

"But the poor remain disenfranchised. The image of a feudal landlord surveying tenants' huts from an air-conditioned Mercedes, cellular phone at hand, is a reminder that the elite luxuriates amid gross inequalities...

"Today, a more powerful Benazir Bhutto is repeating her earlier errors. Foes accuse her of discriminating against minorities and of arrogantly abusing political opponents; allegations of corruption in her family abound.

"The army has remained commendably neutral in the political squabbling, perhaps because Prime Minister Bhutto cultivates its favour as if it still ruled the country. She harnesses the national treasury to its whims, recently buying three French submarines for nearby $1 billion... inflation has almost doubled, government borrowing and' interest rates are up, the stock market has plummeted, and subsidies no longer cushion the poor from higher prices... And prospects for Pakistan democracy suffer at the hand of predatory politicians.

"Both Ms Bhuttos will visit Washington this spring. To ignore Pakistan's corruption will not benefit it, democracy, or strong US-Pakistan relations. When Washington courts Ms Bhutto the democrat, it should remember that the other Ms Bhutto... and the other Pakistan... are not far behind."

As for Newberg's comment "... arrests political opponents, touts the rule of law but packs the courts", Riaz Shafi and many another know all about this. Under what law of the land are untried and unconvicted men produced before magistrates for remand in handcuffs (by the forces of the Federal Investigation Agency, the FIA emulating the first Pipian government's dreaded Gestapo-like FSF)? Under no law.

Arrested on January 31, Riaz Shafi's bail application remains unheard. The hearing has been postponed to February 20, the day after the hearing of the case against Nawaz's privatisation chief, General Saeed Qadir.

Our product Benazir, is today arriving in Manila, her 23rd trip abroad. It was the Americans who installed in The Philippines their puppet, Ferdinand Marcos, and nurtured him there for some 20 years, giving him and his spouse Imelda a free rein to rob at will the country and its people. Last time round, not satisfied with her Harvard honorary doctorate she went on to accept a doctorate of science honoris causa from the Zoroastrian University of Bombay (which has yet to be formed) and the Open International University for Complementary Medicines of Colombo. Now she is to receive a doctorate in humanities honoris causa from the Mindanao State University in recognition, inter alia, of her commitment to human rights. How will this mockery help us, the people.

Her 24th trip will be to the land of our patron saints, where Paula Newberg in the NY Times will have been widely read.

On February 10, shameful beyond belief as it may be, under the laws of our land, two Christians one of them a boy of 14, were sentenced to death for blasphemy. How quickly the world reacts. The very next day, 'The Thunderer' thundered.

From an editorial in The Times (London), on February 11, under the heading "Insult to Islam: Pakistan would shame its own religion by executing Christians": "The sentencing of a 14-year-old boy to death in Pakistan for blasphemy is an abhorrent violation of human rights. It has, predictably and rightly, raised a storm of protest."

Amnesty International considers Salamat Masih and his 40-year old co-defendant... also due to be executed... prisoners of conscience, and believes the charges were maliciously brought and unfairly judged... The reaction was known to Pakistan's judges and politicians even before sentence was passed. Yet they did nothing to discourage the fanatics who intimidated the defence lawyers and nothing to dispel the impression that they acquiesced in judicial outrage to demonstrate their Islamic credentials... The blasphemy laws which mandate the penalty and can be enforced on the word of a single witness are made for abuse...

"All Pakistani politicians, motivated as much by personal ambition as ideological conviction, have pandered to its strictures; all have indulged in pro forma denunciation of Western secularism; yet all know that with a divided clergy, fundamentalism cannot, in fact, threaten their power as it has in Algeria and elsewhere in North Africa. Benazir Bhutto, for all her Western education and secular background, has to make concessions to Islamic populism and never more so than at the present time, when things are going badly in Kashmir, Karachi is terrorised by rival gangs, and ethnic tensions are rising.

"This may explain, but does not excuse, the disproportionate savagery of the sentence against Salamat Masih. The government and judicial authorities may be hoping to have it both ways... appeasing the masses by passing a death sentence, and then appeasing the international community by commuting it as a gesture of clemency. It would be a miscalculation. Even if, as seems likely, the boy's appeal succeeds, the damage to Pakistan's image abroad has been done."

From the two above Press excerpts, one from the US and one from England, both from very widely read newspapers of great repute, we learn to our shame in what light our judiciary is regarded by the dispassionate observant eye. Our Prime Minister may shout from the rooftops that she upholds the supremacy of the law, but there is something drastically wrong with a country according to the laws of which a minor, or a major, can be sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he is dead for a crime for which no convincing evidence has been Presented in court.

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