What Is Anarchy? By I.A. Rehman: New Age Islam's Selection, 11 January 2018
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
11 January 2018
What Is Anarchy?
By I.A. Rehman
Fixing Democracy
By Kamila Hyat
The Unending Pressures on Pakistan
By Talat Masood
Unfit Trump’s Policies Eclipse Peace Future
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi
Resetting Defence Policy
By Dr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal
Balochistan Crisis: Lessons For PML-N
By Rafiullah Kakar
Playing Old Games
By Imtiaz Alam
Dangerous Gamble
By S. Mudassir Ali Shah
Apron Strings
By F.S. Aijazuddin
Perplexity of Democracy in Pakistan
By Rameez Ali Mahesar
Between The Lines
By Kuldip Nayar
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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What Is Anarchy?
By I.A. Rehman
January 11, 2018
SOME people (politicos, media pundits and commentators of different hues) have been warning all and sundry that Pakistan is racing towards anarchy, while some other people assert that the country is already in its grip. This is not only a matter of difference on the definition of anarchy but also of some confusion caused by the acceptance of different levels of anarchy as normal by officialdom on the one hand and citizens on the other.
While Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was rebutting, apparently in a state of anger, US allegations of Pakistan’s denial of rights to religious minorities, the National Commission for Human Rights released its report on the plight of the Kalash people. The official commission found several serious violations of the Kalash people’s rights that call for action.
Soon afterwards we learnt of the killing of three Hindu citizens in once peaceful Mithi, apparently a result of the influx of religious militants under the patronage of law-enforcement personnel, and the minority community’s fears that the horrible crimes against them might be hushed up like the 2014 killing of two brothers in Umerkot.
A great deal of disorder in the education sector has been reported over the past couple of weeks. All of a sudden, the Higher Education Commission came under attack from two directions. The governments of Punjab and Sindh forbade vice chancellors from their provinces to attend a meeting called by the HEC, on the grounds that under the 18th Amendment the federal authority’s powers should have been passed to the provincial governments. At the same time, the head of the Federation of the All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association presented a 29-point indictment of the HEC.
Chaos, and not good governance, is the order of the day.
While assailing the HEC, a number of reports on the state of education in Pakistan from various organisations were cited. For instance, it was said that the World Economic Forum’s Global Human Capital Report 2017 had described Pakistan as one of the worst countries for education and skill development. Further, according to the Global Competitiveness Report, Pakistan was lagging behind Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Malaysia and even Bhutan.
While it seemed unfair to blame the HEC alone for the country’s backwardness in the educational sector, and the sudden uproar against it could perhaps be attributed to infighting and imminent change at the top, there were some other indications of disorder in this sector.
According to a report based on census reports, private schools are surpassing public institutions in key areas in Punjab. Then the way 33 kanals of Punjab University land in Lahore has been grabbed by various organisations over a decade is a scandal of the first order.
Now the government is forcing the university to surrender a part of its playground to a coalition ally. The vice chancellor preferred to resign rather than concede to the outlandish demand. He has included the ground in national heritage, an argument that has little effect on the rulers. Above everything else, this ground is one of the vital lungs the city needs for breathing.
The chief justice of Pakistan appears to be out on a mission to shame the government for its acts of omission and commission or to refurbish the judiciary’s image as an ever-ready and ultimate defender of the people’s rights and interests. He wants to close down substandard medical colleges and to ensure that not only the staff in his office but also the people at large get clean and unpolluted water to drink. His concern is backed by a Unicef report that 53,000 Pakistani children die annually of diseases caused by drinking contaminated water.
The honourable chief justice is also trying to ensure that hospitals, private as well as public, look like hospitals and offer facilities they are expected to provide. He is extremely angry over reports that the Punjab government has been diverting funds earmarked for education to its favourite development project and has warned it would be torpedoed if the health and education sectors don’t get better. This course could lead to the closure of a good many projects.
Finally, the chief justice has announced his plan to reform the judicial system and demonstrate that the court will do what parliament has failed to carry out. The whole country will pray for the chief justice’s success and thank him for making the executive and the legislature redundant.
The oil tankers have been in the news ever since a vehicle overturned near Bahawalpur. The state failed to impose safety standards on the tanker lobby and also failed to warn it against using the underpasses in Lahore. An oil tanker did get stuck in an underpass with two results. One, the fun-loving Lahoris could see an oil spill, and, secondly, a debate began on raising the height of underpass ceilings to allow for the passage of oil tankers and perhaps trucks too.
A large number of people gathered in Lahore to demand the recovery of a peacenik named Raza and discovered that those responsible for enforced disappearances are a law unto themselves.
Sugarcane growers in Punjab and Sindh are furious and quite a few of them have burnt the product of their hard labour because the authorities have failed to compel the mill owners to pay for sugarcane according to the rates fixed by the government. This matter concerns the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people but it gets less space in the media than the affair of the PTI supremo’s third marriage and the debate on the consequences of the concentration of both spiritual and temporal powers in a single household.
If you have a country with more than one centre of power, where authority is not wielded by a publicly recognised government and where society’s conduct depends neither on reason nor on enlightened self-interest, what more proof is needed to diagnose it as suffering from anarchy?
Source: dawn.com/news/1382073/what-is-anarchy
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Fixing Democracy
By Kamila Hyat
January 11, 2018
We can say many things about late Air Marshal Asghar Khan. But one lasting achievement was his success, after a struggle of over a decade and a half, to persuade the Supreme Court to have a ruling delivered in the case involving massive rigging by intelligence agencies in the 1990 elections, to keep the PPP out of power.
The case removed all possible doubt about the extent to which outside agents were willing to go to steal an election and turn democracy into a farce by determining behind closed doors what the result would be. Through his perseverance, Asghar Khan brought the truth out before all of us.
The attempts to ‘fix’ democracy from the outside have been a feature of our political history. Small-time rigging took place in every poll but gained far greater menace after 1998, when more sophisticated means were used to control elected governments and sometimes determine who would form government.
This control in fact meant that the votes people cast and the choices they made were in so many ways irrelevant. What appeared as democracy on the surface was in almost every case through to the 2000s a government manipulated by multiple different factors. Other institutions, players from within the administration, presidents of the country and sometimes business interests all played a part in this. The phenomenon is worth looking at, since it means that within our democracy, it is not really the people who decide alone but external agents decide as well.
We have of course heard a great deal about this over the past year and over past decades. Opposition politicians have been manipulated, coerced and utilised to play specific games. Successive ballots have led to manufactured results, or partially manufactured results, through the use of rigging at three different stages. Clumsy, poll-day rigging, the reality which is most often talked about and covered by the media, has a more or less inconsequential impact on the outcome of polls. It is the carefully contrived pre-poll rigging, by interim governments in their appointment of administrative officials and through other means, and then organised efforts in some cases to alter the outcome which has the most damaging impact.
In 1997, as the PML-N began its second term in power, there were newspaper reports questioning the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast for the National Assembly and each of the provincial assemblies, in the first election during which balloting for both chambers occurred on the same day. The strange difference in numbers has never been explained, with the Election Commission at the time refusing to answer questions raised about the curious anomaly. Rumours of electronic tampering within control rooms run by non-democratic agents were also heard widely. The problem came up against in future elections when ‘ghost’ polling stations and illogical balloting numbers in terms of total votes cast were noted by independent poll monitors. Again no satisfactory explanation ever emerged.
Efforts to organise the outcome of the democratic vote after the polls and the formation of a government have been seen repeatedly. Some see the recent occurrences in Balochistan as just one example. In other cases, vast sums of money have been used to buy over elected representatives or to otherwise determine the manner in which decisions are made within the legislature, which should only the people of Pakistan. These actions are dangerous because, as the verdict in the Asghar Khan case proved, the people really matter very little in all this. There are too many other influential elements attempting to decide things for them. Sadly, the investigation in that case has still not been completed by the FIA, even after the 2012 verdict; the trial which should follow this investigation under SC orders has still to be conducted.
Whether this trial will ever happen we do not know. What we do know is that there is no guarantee future elections will not be tampered with. Some attempts already appear to be on to determine the results of the 2018 poll, regardless of what people choose or how they vote. The dangers of such practices are extreme.
The matter goes far beyond the rigging we hear about after almost every poll. In general, this is a reference to small-time hooliganism at polling stations or attempts to use administrative mechanisms to either hold back voters or bring them to the polls. The real derailment of democracy occurs in secret, hidden from the public eye and beyond the scope of the poll monitors who gather to witness the balloting process.
The result is that the process of voting, which stands at the centre of democracy, essentially becomes meaningless. It amounts then to the expenditure of billions of rupees to elect a legislature which has very limited power. This theft of democracy from the hands of the people is a key reason for many of the problems our country faces, and the tenuous hold of democratic institutions on governance.
Much of the fault lies with political parties themselves. They have turned balloting into a process involving vast sums of money used to bribe people in various ways and then bring them, sometimes through coercion, to vote. Actual choice is limited for people in a situation where fewer and fewer ideological differences exist between mainstream parties and where they are at any rate reluctant to talk about policies or their implementation.
The extremely poor effort to deliver what people need has not helped the democratic cause either. Instead, our politics has boiled down to personal attacks, big money, and no real effort to involve people in the entire process.
The elimination of people presents its own dangers for political parties and elected governments. The people are essential to hold up democracy and support it when it requires such bolstering. Their involvement is also crucial in anything that resembles a real democracy. If they are simply left by the sidelines, we cannot claim our democracy is a real one or one that holds any meaning for people.
One elected government after the other has failed to put the people first, instead using power to bolster their own interests or put in place grandiose schemes in the hope that they will impress people.
The disconnect with the electorate has to end. Essentially, democracy is a relationship between the citizens of a country and the representatives they elect. When this relationship breaks down, a vacuum will always be created into which others can move. The expertise acquired over the years in altering the outcome of elections or then determining how governments will act after the process is equally hazardous.
Political parties need to play the primary role in bringing people back to the centre stage of democracy, both at the point where ballots are cast and far beyond this when governments begin to function and make decisions important to the lives of those who voted them into power and others who balloted for different parties but of course remain a part of the democratic whole. This understanding has to be gained. Our political parties have largely lost it, and there are as yet little signs it will be recovered. This makes it easier for other elements to intervene.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/266924-fixing-democracy
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The Unending Pressures on Pakistan
By Talat Masood
January 10, 2018
The leaders of Pakistan, a country that remains in perpetual internal and external crises, need to be more introspective and analyse rationally how they can maximise its positives and minimise its predicaments.
What then are Pakistan’s positives? Its geography is certainly a geo-strategic asset but regrettably has turned into being the central source of instability. This rare asset that would be the envy of many countries has become its greatest liability.
Apart from CPEC where China and Pakistan plan to profit from the latter’s centrality, this option due to strained relations remains closed to India and Afghanistan. For this predicament, Pakistan may be only partly responsible but is one of its worst sufferers. The prevailing logic is that India is an enemy country and its policies are extremely hostile towards us. How can we even think of providing transit facility that will give India such an advantage when they are brutalising the Kashmiris, purusing hostile activities against us in Afghanistan and globally? There is no denying that this is true. But the counter question is: have our policies gained any traction internationally to lessen these negatives? Are we not divorced from the reality in failing to grasp where we stand today? Can we afford to remain in a state of inertia; an unwillingness to adapt to the changed global and regional environment?
Former PM Nawaz Sharif has been advocating a conciliatory approach towards India and his recent statement reaffirms both his personal and his party’s commitment to this policy. The PPP, the ANP, the MQM and even several regional parties hold similar views.
This raises the thorny question: how long will we remain restrained in taking the initiative of opening borders? And adopt policies that supposedly will be beneficial to us in the form of additional transit tariffs, reduce Afghan and Indian hostility and enhance mutual dependence and regional connectivity? In the long-term this policy shift should further facilitate in connecting us to Central Asian states and beyond. More importantly, with easing of tension between India and Pakistan, there could be relatively better prospects of engaging seriously on Kashmir and other bilateral issues.
We have the example of China-India or China-US relations that despite their deep political differences and strategic rivalry, they have been able to engage in flourishing trade and other activities with each other. According to latest statistics, the bilateral trade between China and India exceeded $70 billion last year and is continuously on an upward trajectory. Similarly, China remains the single largest trade partner of the US.
It is likely that improved relations with India and Afghanistan would have a salutary impact on Pakistan-US relations. The opposite is equally true that strained relations with Afghanistan and India will continue to bedevil the confidence level between the US and Pakistan as these relationships are interlinked. Relations with the US would greatly influence how the military deals with the question of Haqqani network and the Taliban Shura. Due to the protracted security situation in the region, the army has remained the principal architect of our policies towards the US, India and Afghanistan. Understandably, it has viewed these relationships through a one-dimensional security oriented lens. Whereas, in the present circumstances, a more holistic approach with a long-term perspective towards foreign and security policies for the region is necessary. This would be possible if the political government takes military leadership and all stakeholders into confidence and assumes its responsibility of formulating and conducting foreign policy.
First and foremost, a critical and objective analysis of the gains and pitfalls of supporting any militant organisation whether these are orientated towards India or Afghanistan should be undertaken. This assessment is more in our national interest and less to satisfy Washington or New Delhi. For after all, these organisations have spread their militant agenda in society with serious repercussions on the country’s security.
Moreover, the European Union and many countries of the world equally disapprove of Pakistan’s linkages with these groups. Even our close allies do not approve of it, and they are only being discreet by not openly discussing it. A soiled image has largely offset the credit and support that Pakistan richly deserved for having made such enormous sacrifices as a front-line state. Its highly successful campaign in fighting militancy is also overlooked. We have been lamenting over Pakistan being ignored but the irony is instead of being noticed and recognised we have been put shamefully on ‘notice’. The sad part is that Trump’s hardline tactics towards Pakistan are generally supported across the political spectrum in the US. There are few takers for the Pakistani position, despite its enormous sacrifices and major role in supporting the US effort in Afghanistan. Even Secretary Mattis acknowledged “Pakistan has lost more troops in total than all of Nato coalition combined in the fight against them.”
Despite these remarks, the US is likely to continue behaving like a hegemonic power and would want all mutual issues be resolved in its favour. Pakistan will relent only to an extent keeping its interests in view. If this is unacceptable and no median approach is found, the relationship will remain rocky and unpredictable.
These challenges are not peculiar to Pakistan. History is replete with examples where countries have pursued contradictory policies that have harmed them but later recovered. But the ability to damage control the fallout of inappropriate policies depends on the country’s intrinsic strength. Unfortunately, Pakistan internally is at its lowest nadir. The ruling party is locked in salvaging the reputation of its top leadership. The opposition is equally in disarray. Whether it is the PPP or the PTI their role presently is to act as a spoiler rather than as the nation’s stabiliser. If there is any characteristic positive or inspiring of their leadership either that is lost to scandals or mutual recrimination. Parliament too has fallen prey to the indifference of the political parties. In these circumstances raising relevant issues and promoting the right candidates for elections would rest largely on the media and civil society.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1604464/6-unending-pressures-pakistan/
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Unfit Trump’s Policies Eclipse Peace Future
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi
January 10, 2018
NEVER throughout the US presidential history a man has ever faced so much embarrassment and questionability regarding his suitability as the head of state as Donald Trump (albeit a self-acclaimed genius) faces today. Being the head of a state which is the most potent power of the world, Donald Trump fundamentally faces the question about his fitness/accountability/capability that none other than himself has so much harmed the US foreign policy as he has done. Journalist Michael Wolf, the author of the latest book on Trump ‘The Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House’, has made such a blunt and lucid commentary on Trump that it erects a veritable question mark on the mental credibility of a man who controls the most sensitive affairs of a nation whose future largely depends on the policies narratives that are cradled by the White House.
A simulacrum of the Trump presidency in a currently released book on Friday, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff, stunned the White House and caused a public split between President Donald Trump and his former chief strategist and far-right campaign architect Steve Bannon. The book casts an extraordinary impact for the readers of American history – which paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth – includes extensive quotes from Bannon. The current survey shows that Trump’s popularity has been readily declining.
A Democratic Congressman has proposed convening a special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors whose job would be to determine if President Donald Trump is fit to serve in the Oval Office. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who also teaches constitutional law at American University, has reasonably gained the attention and support of many Democrats to his banner. And irrefutably, the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment does allow for a majority of the president’s cabinet, or ‘such other body as Congress may by law provide,’ to decide if an Oval Office occupant is unable to carry out his duties – and then to put it to a full Congressional vote.
Senators seem concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behaviour. The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, and House Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer, made that case. “This president has made statements and taken actions that are beyond the pale for most Americans, embracing those who espouse hatred and division while promoting policies that would harm our economy and undermine our national security,” the Democrats said. “Legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation’’. Congressional committees remain engaged in investigations into the president’s actions.
As glaringly shown by Trump’s daredevilry, there is the wilful and ongoing destruction of the State Department, an incomprehensible blunder that will cripple the United States’ international influence for years to come. And then there’s his peculiar fondness for authoritarian leaders, his susceptibility to whatever self-serving blandishments they offer his vulnerable ego, and his refusal to take responsibility for just about anything. In Trump’s Oval Office, the buck always stops around the president. Unfortunately, this instability –cum-ineptitude, this ability to initiate violent interventions without parliamentary oversight or the diplomatic experience to understand context, or even the political experience needed to differentiate between licence and latitude, is now embodied in the bizarre bully in the White House reflected by the controversial tweets. The apparently growing intensifying focus— on the discontinuities in Trump’s handling of foreign policy —has eclipsed debate over the continuities; ruptures in style often obscure the enduring substance of problematic policies—nurturing political and social turmoil. His provocative white nationalism, his apartheid- like segregating policies against the Muslims, and his most dangerously uncalculated Jerusalem move subsequently accompanied by his parti pris tweet against Pakistan— all are the striking policy blunders or trickeries that reserve unforeseen failures/implications for global peace future.
In its Jan 4 editorial, Washington Post commented: ‘’ Still, the tweet triggered a question all too often asked about Mr. Trump’s public statements: What was the point? Was the public insult to the Pakistani government part of a carefully considered strategy for turning around an important but troubled foreign relationship — or simply an impulsive gesture? Given Mr. Trump’s record, the latter seems a safe bet. After all, in his previous tweet about Pakistan, in October, the president declared that his administration was “starting to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders.”
Make no mistake that the Trump administration’s any underestimated misadventure or unilateralist move against Pakistan could cause fatal consequences. Without a Pakistani support, US can’t think to successfully move into Afghanistan. The scowling dangers posed by Trump’s atypical behaviour remain more mounting at the moment. While examining his unprecedented moves— full of dissension and diversion in trade and diplomacy — divorcing the Transpacific Trade Pact(TTP); nullifying NAFTA agreement; reinventing a new US South Asia policy; backing out from Iran- nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord; and Washington’s ongoing coercive diplomacy towards the UN, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan, one may reasonably conclude all these developments are the glaring evidences of his faltering presidency.
Nonetheless Trump’s ascent to the White House adds to the evidence, representing the biggest shift in the US’ orientation vis-à-vis the global balance of power/global economy system/human rights regime in the post-Cold war era. By all reasonable accounts, Trump’s policy discontinuity is a source of uncertainty in and of itself—putting America’s future peace role under fire with regard to Washington’s relations with other nations and vice versa.
Source: pakobserver.net/unfit-trumps-policies-eclipse-peace-future/
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Resetting Defence Policy
By Dr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal
January 10, 2018
SINCE the (in-)famous President Donald Trump tweet, the Pakistani ruling elite has been ensuring the nation that they are vigilant and capable to safeguard the national interest. The befitting rhetorical responses of the high-ups have a soothing effect on the people of Pakistan, but the government seems inept in chalking out and announcing a realistic strategy to prevent the Trump Administration’s bullish attitude towards Pakistan. It has clearly reprimanded the country. On November 9, 2018, Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir-Khan pointed out that ‘the US is using Pakistan as a scapegoat for its failures in Afghanistan.’ Islamabad is responding diplomatically, but military threats cannot be deterred without preparing and flexing the military muscle.
Islamabad is repeating the old tested tactics to engage Americans and satisfy them without realizing that global strategic environment has immensely transformed. The change in the international strategic environment has both advantageous as well as disadvantageous for Pakistan. The demerit of the emerging global order is that Pakistan has gradually been losing its relevance in Washington’s strategic calculation due cementing Indo-US strategic partnership and bolstering Sino-Pak relations. Hence, the dismaying relations with Washington and the transforming global strategic environment necessitates the resetting of Pakistan’s defence policy in view of our own national security interest i.e. to deter the aggressive designs of both global and regional powers.
Islamabad’s refusal to accept India’s hegemony in South Asia and denial to accede President Trump’s new plan for South Asia and Afghanistan announced on August 21, 2017 frustrated Trump Administration. Pakistan’s Defence Minister categorically stated: “We won’t allow Afghan war be fought on Pakistani soil.” It is a clear message to both Afghanistan and United States that Pakistan is not harbouring any Afghan Taliban group on its territory, including famous Haqqani network. Despite Pakistan’s clarification, the Trump administration determined to extend the Afghan war well inside Pakistan.
Islamabad’s rejection of President Trump’s baseless allegations and non-acceptance of his national security team demands have negative ramifications for U.S.-Pakistan relations. Last week, Washington suspended $255 million of military aid to Pakistan. On December 17, 2017, Pentagon announced that Americans would also take unilateral steps in areas of divergence with Pakistan. Trump Administration has ‘put on notice’ Pakistan and thereby a few measures are likely to follow. These developments are clear signals about the probability of Americans troops conducting military operation on Pakistani territory without the permission of Islamabad in the near future.
President Trump seems determined to take punitive action against Pakistan. This bullying attitude towards Pakistan refreshes the Salala’s tragic incident. On November 26, 2011, Americans conducted unjustifiable airstrikes and martyred 24 Pakistani soldiers and officers deployed at Salala Check post situated on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Hence, one cannot rule out the repetition of Salala type military operation against the Pakistani forces in the future. The probability of American military strikes necessitates that Pakistani defence policy makers ought to chalk out a practical strategy to prevent the Americans military adventurism instead of simply repeating that Americans should realize sacrifices of Pakistanis in the war on terror.
In realpolitik moral principles or sacrifices are lesser important; only political interest determine state’s foreign and strategic policy. Pakistan’s ruling elite is too much relying on the diplomatic options and partners support to prevent the Americans aggressive designs. Admittedly, the emerging trends in the global strategic environment are conducive for Pakistan’s diplomatic and economic policy. Therefore, Americans economic sanctions and diplomatic maligning initiatives could be having lesser repercussions for Pakistan. However, the cementing strategic partnership with China and increasing strategic understanding with Russian Federation are not reliable alternatives to the significance of the sovereign defence.
The review of history proves that nation’s dependency on the auxiliary; partners or allies’ military muscles only perpetuate the vulnerability of the state’s sovereign survival. The famous dictum of the international politics—no permanent friends; no permanent enemies—alarms us that depending on allies or partners for sovereign survival is not advisable in the current interdependent global strategic environment. Thus, Islamabad has to follow look-within and self-help strategy to deter the aggressive designs of a super power.
The Pakistani policy-makers need to chalk out a Grand strategy to solidify the defensive fence of the country. The revisiting and altering of Pakistan’s defence policy does not mean that Islamabad is going to prepare itself to challenge the military might of the United States and pursue aggressive designs in South Asia. Precisely, Islamabad’s resetting defence policy only objective is to deter both the regional and great powers military adventurism against Pakistan.
Source: pakobserver.net/resetting-defence-policy/
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Balochistan Crisis: Lessons for PML-N
By Rafiullah Kakar
January 11, 2018
Balochistan is once again in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Opposition benches filed a no-confidence motion against the provincial chief minister, Nawab Sanaullah Zehri. Zehri needed a simple majority (33 votes) to continue as the Leader of the House. With 21 members in the provincial assembly, the PML-N should have been able to defeat the motion comfortably with support from the coalition partners — the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and the National Party — which together account for 25 seats.
Zehri failed to muster the required support due to a revolt from within his party and resigned, instead, to avert a political crisis. Although Zehri’s resignation has ostensibly calmed down things, the crisis is far from subsiding. If the theory of a plot against Senate elections is to be believed, then the threat persists because the candidates who are likely to replace Zehri — Saleh Bhootani, Jan Jamali, Changaiz Marri and Sarfaraz Bugti — are all considered to be close to the establishment and less likely to defy pressure for dissolving the assembly.
Political commentary on the issue so far has focused primarily on the role of non-democratic forces in instigating the crisis and rightly so. This analysis, however, provides only a partial explanation of the turmoil. Yes, non-democratic hands may have been at play but why did the PML-N Balochistan chapter proved to be so fragile and vulnerable? CM Zehri needed only eight to nine votes to survive and couldn’t secure them out of a pool of 21 members.
Given the political climate of the past few months, the PML-N should have known that this was coming. What should be surprising for the PML-N and political pundits alike are the manner and ease with which the PML-N Balochistan chapter fell like a house of cards.
A deeper and more systematic analysis of the Balochistan crisis should also ask the question: why a big state-wide party like the PML-N proved to be more susceptible to outside manipulation compared to the smaller ethno-regional parties like the PkMAP and the NP? State-wide parties in Balochistan have a history of being prone to manoeuverings and machinations. Understanding the reasons of this vulnerability is critical to making the political system and political parties resilient to such intrigues in the future.
In order to answer the aforementioned question, it is imperative to first take stock of the organisational structure and support base of these parties in Balochistan. Three types of political parties currently populate the political stage in the restive province: state-wide parties, religious parties and ethno-nationalist parties.
The case of state-wide parties in Balochistan is a rather interesting one. These parties, namely the PML-N, the PPP, the PML-Q, have ruled the province on multiple occasions. Between 1970 and 2017, Balochistan has remained under dejure civilian rule for only 23 years. Of these 23 years, state-wide parties have ruled for approximately 17 years (72%) whereas ethno-regional parties have ruled for six years (28%) only.
Despite having ruled the province multiple times, these parties have the poorest organisational strength and support base. Their membership is weak and grassroots presence almost non-existent. Instead of representing the aggregate interest of the public, these parties are widely believed to be advancing the interests of a part of the state apparatus. No wonder, they have failed in cultivating ideational support among common masses and establishing a core group of supporters. They have almost always relied on intermediaries in the form of the evergreen tribal chieftains who tend to have a personalised and narrow voter base. Most of these tribal chieftains are political turncoats who change political loyalties every five to 10 years. For instance, nearly 90% of the current PML-N MPAs in the provincial assembly, including CM Zehri and other cabinet members, have changed political loyalties at least once in the past. Indeed, the current PML-N Balochistan chapter can hardly be called a political party in the strict sense of the word. It is a bunch of powerful individuals who have joined hands to exercise power for five years and then are likely to switch sides as the power balance shifts.
In contrast, ethno-nationalist and religious parties are better organised and more deeply rooted with a better organisational structure. Let’s take the case of ethno-nationalist parties like the NP, the BNP-M and the PkMAP. The core support base of these parties comprises professional middle class, including university students, doctors and schoolteachers. This core group performs the vital functions of grassroots organisation, recruitment and mobilisation. While the educated middle class dominates the rank and file, tribal chiefs and old landed elites have historically had an over-proportionate presence at the top leadership positions. This especially holds true for ethnic parties in the Baloch region, where Sardari system is more deeply entrenched compared to other regions of the province.
Ethno-nationalist parties have not only survived the state repression but also preserved organisational structure and grassroots connectivity in the face of political exclusion and distance from power. In contrast, state-wide parties like the PML-N have easily proven to be susceptible to intrigues, thanks largely to weak organisational strength and over-reliance on political turncoats and powerful individuals. Moving forward, state-wide parties need to revamp their organisational structure and make efforts to cultivate genuine social support if they want to succeed as agents of democratisation, accountability and integration.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1605338/6-balochistan-crisis-lessons-pml-n/
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Playing Old Games
By Imtiaz Alam
January 11, 2018
Young Kaleem Ullah, who had come from Zhob to study in Quetta, was among the victims of the suicide attack that took place on Tuesday close to the Balochistan Assembly where self-serving members of the assembly were gathered for a vote of no-confidence against Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri.
Zehri was left with no option but to resign, to pre-empt the weather-cocks of his own party from stabbing the PML-N in the back. And this is not just to disrupt the Senate and derail the democratic transition. But, wait, the anti-climax is yet to come and might be beyond our imagination – and with far greater geo-strategic implications.
I am rather shocked at the self-serving stupid games various power groups and stakeholders are playing in a geographically strategic, ethnically alienated and divided, and persistently defiant province which refuses to be subdued by the fourth counter-insurgency operation. Is this the way we are putting our house in order in the face of heightening tensions with the sole superpower – by destabilising even the sham political edifice (that the exploited and deprived Baloch people find little hope in)?
Ever since the accession and annexation of the Kalat state, Balochistan’s integration into the so-called national mainstream has remained problematic. Rather than democratically and inclusively resolving the dichotomy of the centre-periphery incompatibility, authoritarian forces continued to act in a naked coercive way. Consequently, rather than integrating and voluntarily assimilating the Baloch people into the nation-building project, we have continued to deepen the estrangement and alienation of our Baloch brothers and sisters and relied on parasitic tribal chieftains to keep the oppressed Baloch masses under double subjugation.
In an inverse pyramid like ‘development’ model, two cores of Karachi and central Punjab continued to thrive at the cost of the periphery, which has continued to supply raw materials, natural gas and agricultural surpluses to subsidise the urban sectors while living on the wages of marginalisation. From the creation of ‘One Unit’ to the successive military operations, the Baloch and other marginalised ethnic groups have continued to suffer for ‘integration’ that has, consequently, deepened the gulf between the ‘strong centre’ and the smaller provinces. In a kind of ‘modernist-burden’, the integrationists have continued to play on the paranoia of separatism, and have cast aspersions on ethno-lingual nationalists as agents of external enemies.
It is true that previously Afghanistan, the Soviet Union and India did raise the bogies of Greater Balochistan and Pakthunistan, and now the Americans, Indians and Afghans seem to be fiddling with separatist tendencies. Forced by repressive policies and military operations, sections of nationalists did accept support from wherever they could get. This dynamic resulted in two opposite narratives, however exaggerated they might have been.
The fact is that neither did the Pakistani state succeed in suppressing the democratic aspirations of the Baloch people, nor could the nationalists achieve their separatist delusions due to an exceptional demographic scarcity in an extremely disproportionate geographic spread. The Baloch do claim to be a nation, and they have a right to say so, but they are fragmented on tribal-lingual lines and their growth as a nationality is stunted by an archaic tribal-feudal social formation and primitive modes of production.
For almost 70 years, the Pakistani state failed to address the political, existential and economic aspirations of the Baloch people who refused to be subjugated. Unlike the more mature Bengali nationalism, the Pakhtuns’ dual-nationalism for privileges on both sides of the Durand Line and Sindhi linguistic nationalism consummated by federalism, Baloch nationalism is essentially honour-based. No amount of repression can browbeat them.
Interestingly, all the Baloch nationalist parties have been at the forefront of the struggle for equal rights of all the nationalities of Pakistan, a federalist democratic structure and a secular polity. And the leaders of these parties continued to suffer at the hands of both civilian and military authoritarian rulers. A regressive counter-strategy introduced sectarian militancy to neutralise the nationalist resistance, as if this menace is not already threatening the very cohesion of our social fabric.
Paradoxically, Baloch nationalist leaders and tribal-chieftains have been shifting their positions in pursuit of their tribal rivalries. The most glaring example was of Nawab Akbar Bugti who became the hangman of the first Baloch nationalist government of Sardar Attaullah Mengal. In his martyrdom at the hands of the arrogant General Musharraf, Bugti became yet another catalyst for the Baloch insurgency. Ironically, if one of the icons of a tribal chief raises the banner of separatism, his other offspring joins the bandwagon of a lucrative counter-insurgency, such as the Bugtis, the Marris and the Khans of Kalat. It is a no-win situation in a zero-sum game.
Once again Balochistan is on the radar of international and regional rivalries. With CPEC focusing on a long coastline and centred on a free port at Gwadar – and with a possible Chinese naval post nearby ala Djibouti – rival powers are bound to react. With US-Pak relations at their lowest ebb, President Trump’s refusal to certify the nuclear deal with Iran, the US-India aversion to CPEC and the Saudi-Gulf increasing rivalry with Iran, Balochistan is going to become one of the focal points for various rivalries.
As the restive local Baloch population feel left out of the grand ‘game changer’, their resentment is bound to erupt, especially when various international actors are inclined to fish in these troubled waters. If viewed in this context, where does one place the crisis of the Balochistan government?
The PML-N-PkMAP-NP coalition and the agreement between a Punjabi prime minister and the nationalists in Balochistan to have half-tenures which would be rotated between the nationalists and integrationists was the best thing to happen in Balochistan. A political solution to the insurgency could have been found had this coalition been allowed greater space and freedom to negotiate with the separatists.
During Dr Maalik’s government some moves were made, but they couldn’t move ahead. Chief Minister Zehri also tried that with the Khan of Kalat in exile, but that effort was also subverted. It must not be forgotten that the current members of the assembly from the Baloch belt could get few votes as the boycott by the nationalists was quite effective. The maturity of our helmsmen can be judged by their manipulation of even a nominal representative facade in Balochistan.
Let the PkMAP, NP and steadfast sections of the PML-N – not the renegades – come up with a reliable chief minister and foil this conspiracy. Perhaps we have not learnt lessons from our past since we continue to play old tricks with the people of this land.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/266925-playing-old-games
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Dangerous Gamble
By S. Mudassir Ali Shah
January 11, 2018
A NEW twist of events may scuttle President Donald Trump’s strategy for ending the longest war in US history. By suspending nearly all military assistance to Pakistan, Trump has literally taken a gamble in what the entire world views as a complex conflict in Afghanistan.
In a tweet that reflected unwanted diplomatic brinkmanship, he assailed Pakistan for fooling the US for years and giving the Americans nothing but lies and deceit in return for $33 billion in military and development assistance over the past one and a half decade.
As for the aid figure he received from the Congressional Research Service, it is factually erroneous. The agency documents allocated aid, not the funds actually dispersed.
His tempestuous post has warmed the cockles of Kabul officialdom’s heart. They have long been urging the US to coerce Pakistan into honouring its commitments to cracking down on militants, who are attacking military and civilian targets in Afghanistan. For obvious reasons, they are euphoric about the denial of more than a billion dollars in US aid to Pakistan.
Restrictions on Pakistan won’t halt attacks in Afghanistan.
Unable to deal with security, economic and political challenges on the domestic front, the Afghan government wants the US to play hardball with Pakistan over the issue of terrorism. But they tend to lose sight of the patent reality that pressure tactics, including the aid freeze, will in no way contribute to stabilising Afghanistan.
Trump’s decision stands in sharp contradiction to his characterisation of Pakistan as a key ally in the campaign against militant outfits, notably in Afghanistan. Despite an uptick in air strikes by US-led coalition and Afghan forces, the Taliban and the militant Islamic State group continue to make territorial gains and stage high-profile attacks.
Last week’s deadly assault in Kabul is a case in point. At least 20 policemen and civilians lost their lives in the massive suicide bombing, reportedly claimed by the IS, which left 27 people wounded.
With the suspension of security assistance, Washington has upped the ante in bullying Islamabad to change its policy towards Kabul. The move, however, does not seem to take into consideration Pakistan’s crucial role in achieving a political settlement in the war-torn neighbour.
In fact, an arm-twisting approach risks escalating tensions and impeding peace efforts. Over the past 17 years, strong-arm tactics have only led to mistrust — something that has torpedoed efforts at eradicating terrorism. With this in mind, the Trump administration should resist calls for imposing more restrictions on Pakistan.
A tit-for-tat response from Pakistan — closing supply lines for Nato troops and blocking its airspace for the Americans — will ramp up the cost of the war. Although the US is trying to build flexibility into the ground lines of communications to avoid overreliance on a single option, Pakistan remains critical to the delivery of supplies to the 14,000 US forces based in Afghanistan.
Washington’s confrontationist posture has only added to the complexity of political stand-off with Islamabad over its new policy that was rolled out in August 2017. Subsequent visits to Islamabad by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis failed to win Pakistan’s support for the military mission across the border.
If American claims about the presence of Afghan Taliban and Haqqani leaders in Pakistan are true, Islamabad can nudge the militants to the negotiating table. For peace talks to resume, the US should shun counterproductive measures that can harm its rollercoaster relationship with Islamabad.
Unconvinced by Pakistan’s narrative, the US military may step up drone strikes against rebel networks in the tribal region. Such raids, however, could result in collateral damage and denunciation of the Trump administration from human rights watchdogs.
or a reality check, Trump should take a look at the Global Terrorism Index report, which notes a marked decline in terrorism in Pakistan since 2014. The fall is essentially linked to military operations in the tribal belt.
Barack Obama had also withheld millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan in 2011 and 2016 — a plan that fizzled out. Having already experienced many US aid cuts in previous years, Pakistan will manage to ride out the present crisis. But it should not rule out even harsher actions from an American president known for his hair-trigger temper.
As things stand, America must accept the fact it is losing the war in Afghanistan —and allies around the globe. Surprisingly, Trump is spoiling for a fight with North Korea and Iran at a time when the Afghan Taliban are on the march and the Ghani government is on the retreat.
Source: dawn.com/news/1382076/dangerous-gamble
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Apron Strings
By F.S. Aijazuddin
January 11, 2018
SOME marriages are made to last. The marriage between Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, for example, despite the marital squalls that a naval officer and his working wife had to endure, has lasted 70 years. That is longer than the marriage of convenience between Pakistan and the United Sates.
Since 1947, Pakistan has espoused more US presidents than Elizabeth Taylor did husbands. Each betrothal brought to the fore its own character, its own intensity, its own protestations of fidelity, its own satanic suspicions. Some US presidents like Lyndon B. Johnson had visited Pakistan. He was so enamoured that he hosted a Karachi camel driver named Bashir in Washington DC. President Richard M. Nixon came when vice president and again as president to solicit Pakistan’s help in opening a back channel with the People’s Republic of China. John F. Kennedy sent his wife Jacqueline as his proxy, a trend followed by Hillary Clinton. Her husband Bill Clinton came later to castigate the new, insecure Chief Executive Gen Musharraf.
President Barack Obama, despite his early friendship with Pakistani fellow students (from whom he learned how to make daal) never found the time to visit Pakistan. President Donald Trump has no intention of doing so. For him, Pakistan has all the stale allure of a spent spouse. He cannot wait to extricate himself from an unwanted relationship. That would explain why suddenly, on New Year’s morning this year, he awoke from a hamburger hangover and tweeted that the cost of the relationship with Pakistan — $33 billion over 16 years — was unbearably high. He wants out. Donald Trump is used to divorces. What matters to him is not the length of a marriage; it is the quantum of the exit settlement.
For Trump, Pakistan has all the stale allure of a spent spouse.
One does not need to be a divorce attorney to dissect the validity (or otherwise) of Trump’s accusations. One need only access the Congressional Research Service report on Pakistan prepared in November 2017 and disseminated amongst multiple congressional offices. An annexure to that report tabulates ‘Direct Overt US Aid and Appropriations for and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY 2002 — FY 2018’. There, in the final column, is the tell-tale total: $33.927bn.
Had someone in the White House staff with an axe to grind against Pakistan (might it be his ambassador to the UN the Pakistan-phobe Nikki Haley?) shown Trump that statement, and the morning 2018 dawned all he could remember was the glaring total, not its confusing detail.
Devils though, as divorce attorneys know to their client’s cost, lurk in the detail. Out of the total of $33.9bn, Economic-Related Aid comprises Rs$11.1bn, of which $8.7bn was disbursed as Economic Support between 2002 and 2011. That leaves $8.2bn of Security Related Aid. Again the bulk of this — $4.1bn was applied towards Foreign Military Financing. Another $2.3bn was taken up by the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund/ Counterinsurgency Capability Fund overseen by the Pentagon and the State Department respectively.
The Economic Related Aid and the Security Related Aid are dwarfed by the Coalition Support Fund reimbursements (CSF). These reimbursements are against claims prepared by the Pakistan armed forces for supplies, services and logistics provided to the US-led coalition in its war in Afghanistan. These claims are verified by the US government auditors and then (depending on the whim of the administration) approved for reimbursement to the Pakistan government, usually with a six-month time lag. Since 2002, these have ballooned to $14.5bn, of which $8.8bn was disbursed before 2011, seven years ago.
The Pakistani public sees only the Economic Related Aid of $11bn, which is less than one third of $33bn. The other $22bn is the cost of toys for the boys. It is obvious who will need to take Trump’s threats to cut off security aid seriously.
There was a time when Pakistan chose to be monogamous, loyal to only one superpower. Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto changed that. Taking a cue from his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, who described China as “a sleeping giant”, Mr Bhutto helped a groggy China totter to its feet diplomatically. Every successive government has benefited from Mr Bhutto’s initiative, even though few have given him due credit.
If any superpower understands Pakistan, it is not the United States but China. It has seen Pakistan survive earthquakes, floods, social traumas, the murder of its leadership and the massacre of its schoolchildren, political upheavals, dismissal of elected prime ministers, self-satisfied pontification by ousted leaders, and now the soufflé aspirations of a sportsman-turned-politician who might soon announce his third marriage.
Source: dawn.com/news/1382075/apron-strings
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Perplexity of Democracy in Pakistan
By Rameez Ali Mahesar
January 11, 2018
BEYOND a shadow of doubt, Pakistan has enjoyed 70 years of its age. Founding father Mr. Jinnah had pegged a way at achieving Pakistan democratically. But his reverie towards the country to be democratic has yet not been fulfilled. In the initial two decades, the country was governed by civil cum military bureaucracy under the authoritarian and oligarchic condition. This was the first episode of dictatorship. But onward, the situation briskly changed its roots.
Pakistan is based on three democratic phases started from 1970 to the present day. The first phase of democratic system in the country was evolved under the inspiring aegis of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the decade of 1970 to 1977. The second and the third phases were shaped from 1988 to 1999 and 2007 to date. Although, Pakistan has exercised almost her 24 years of democratic era. The leaders thus have failed painstakingly in achieving democracy at all. The fingers invariably rise on these lines asking; why Pakistan has yet not been evolved the democratic tradition? There are a few factors which contribute in barring a society from exercising democratic traditions. Feudalism, illiterate people who give the guns in the hands of monkeys as inept people then these people of undemocratic manner as the leaders pillage the nation’s resources and hoodwink them – the apathetic people – lack of public opinion, going a separate way among the masses, self-imposed leaders and congenital politics beget the failure in democratic system.
When people elect their ham-fisted leaders, then heir clumsy leaders even visit them a few times as they do not have a meagre concern with the well-being of their divested communities of facilities. On the first hand, they do not realise what the problems are faced by people of their constituencies and on the other hand, they are not adept in solving the problems. It is because they are uneducated or if they are; then they undoubtedly are destitute of the skills to know and straighten the snags.
Ours country is subjected to the Islamic principles that stress on education aptly. Because; the education teaches the people the principles of democracy and fight for justice. It would be better to quote here the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as he says; “democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy therefore is education”. Also, Prof. Col. ® M. Zahur-ul-Haq in jots down his Essays Book; “Education is a soul and the heart of democracy”. Thus society sans education cannot develop. But sorry thing to notice is that; our education system is also fallen victim to vulnerability. As per Economic survey (2016-2017) literacy rate in Pakistan has just been fallen 2 percent from 60% to 58%. Province-wise string depicted in the reports is also saddening story. As per reports, in the FY 2016, Baluchistan stood at 41% as compared to 44% in FY15, Sindh 55% against 60% in the previous year, KP was stagnant at 53% since 2014 fiscal and whereas Punjab has witnessed a little drop at 1.0% in opposite to FY15. The susceptible state of education in the country cannot assist in exercising democratic tradition.
If creating awareness among the people of Pakistan towards democracy is the option, then media is the only tool to play its constructive role. Because on the earth, media is unassailable power. It wields its influence over the people and it has the power to change the minds of the people. Scott Pelly has rightly said; “Democracies succeed or failed based on their journalism. America is strong because its journalism is strong. That is how democracies work. They are only as good as the quality of information that the public possess and that is where we come in”. Therefore, boosting the education, abolishing the feudalism, curbing haves and have nots isms and putting an end to the favoritism are some of the initiatives to formulate and develop the democracy in Pakistan. In addition to this, rule of law, social equality, justice and fraternity across the country must be exercised. Corruption in the country is also in its full swing, leaders have stockpiled their bank accounts abroad. The complete execution of all these measure must be taken comprehensively. Then it can easily lead the country towards a successful democratic system.
Source: pakobserver.net/perplexity-democracy-pakistan/
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Between The Lines
By Kuldip Nayar
January 11, 2018
When I was in Sialkot city, now a part of Pakistan, I used to visit cinema halls in the cantonment regularly. What I resented then was that I had to stand up for the British national anthem, “God save the king…” The cinema halls did not bolt the doors and left it to an individual how he or she behaved. There was no compulsion, but you were expected to stand up when the British national anthem was played.
The British rulers were sensitive to the people’s rights and did not make it compulsory or impose any penal action against the public that did not stand up. Significantly, the practice of playing the British national anthem at the end of Indian films was gradually avoided, lest the viewers’ dishonour the king and later the queen. Even otherwise, they wanted to avoid the spectacle.
There have been legal interventions on playing the national anthem in theatres in the past. In 2003, the Maharashtra assembly passed an order mandating the playing of the national anthem before the start of a movie. In the 1960s, the national anthem would be played at the end of the film. But as people simply filed out after the movie, this practice was stopped.
Existing laws don’t penalise or force any person to stand up or sing the national anthem. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act of 1971 states: “Whoever intentionally prevents the singing of the Jana Gana Mana or causes disturbances to any assembly engaged in such singing shall be punished with imprisonment for a term, which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”
The official duration of the anthem is 52 seconds, though what is usually played in cinema halls exceeds that length. A home ministry order in 2015 stated, “Whenever the anthem is sung or played, the audience shall stand to attention. However, when in the course of a newsreel or documentary the anthem is played as a part of the film, it is not expected of the audience to stand as standing is bound to interrupt the exhibition of the film and would create disorder and confusion rather than add to the dignity of the anthem.”
And the law until now, specifically says that it has been left “to the good sense of the people” not to indulge in indiscriminate singing or playing of the national anthem. There are even specific rules as to whom the national anthem should be played for (the president and not the prime minister), and when people can indulge in mass singing of the anthem.
While the application of the Supreme Court order and the penalties for its violation are not clear, there are definitely precedents for individually perceived notions of freedom, which the court order says are overindulged, being upheld over nationalistic causes.
As things stand now, there is no judgment by the apex court, or a legal provision, or an administrative direction that makes it mandatory for people to stand during the national anthem. That they do so is essentially an expression of personal respect. But the Supreme Court had ruled that the national anthem should be played before the screening of films in cinema halls, and that all should “stand up in respect… people should feel that they live in a nation and show respect to the national anthem and the national flag.”
During the October 2017 hearing by the Supreme Court, Justice Chandrachud had hinted at modifying the 2016 order, observing “why do people have to wear their patriotism on their sleeve?… People go to a movie theatre for undiluted entertainment. Society needs that entertainment.”
But the government has told the court it may consider restoring the position that existed prior to the November 2016 order when it was not mandatory for movie halls to play the national anthem. “This Honourable Court may consider the restoration of status quo ante till then, ie, restoration of the position as it stood before the order passed by this Honourable Court on November 30, 2016 with regard to direction ‘d’ in the said order to the extent that it mandates the playing of the national anthem in all cinemas before the feature film starts,” it said.
Some years ago, a two-judge bench of the apex court had ordered a school in Kerala to take back three children who had been expelled for not singing the national anthem, although they stood during the anthem. The children desisted from singing because of their conviction that their religion did not permit them to join any rituals except in their prayers to Jehovah, their god.
The Supreme Court ruled that there is no legal provision that obliges anyone to sing the national anthem, and it is not disrespectful to the anthem if a person who stands up respectfully when it is being sung does not join in the singing. The court, however, did not deal with the issue of whether it would be disrespectful if a person chose not to stand during the national anthem. The judgment ended with the message: “Our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practices tolerance; let us not dilute it.”
Unfortunately, in the absence of a clear-cut decision, several high courts have dealt with such cases differently. For instance, in August 2014, the police in Kerala slapped IPC Section 124A (sedition) on seven people, including two women, after they failed to stand when the national anthem was played in a Thiruvananthapuram theatre. One of them, 25-year-old M Salman, was arrested for allegedly “sitting and hooting” as the anthem was played. He was also charged under Section 66A of the IT Act for allegedly posting a derogatory comment about the national flag on Facebook.
I personally think that there only should be a clear-cut order that all will have to stand when the anthem is sung or played because some part of the provision seem to make it mandatory to stand whenever the national anthem is played, while the other part creates an exception. But the rules nowhere prescribe a penalty for not adhering to it and, therefore, it has to work in accordance with the Act.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1605335/6-between-the-lines-2/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/anarchy-i.a.-rehman-new-age/d/113892