TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

From blank pages to blackout

Zahid Hussain | October 23, 2019

The writer is an author and journalist.

IN the bad old days of Gen Ziaul Haq, newspapers would often carry blank spaces
indicating that certain stories had been pulled out by the authorities. The military
ruler had enforced pre-censorship whereby news content had to be cleared before
being printed. It was at the sole discretion of the press department what could or could
not be published. Obviously, there was no concept of an independent TV channel back
then.

We seem to have come full circle with the looming shadow of authoritarianism. Slowly but
surely, the Ziaist model is coming back. There may not be pre-censorship where the media is
concerned as yet, but we are close to it. There are already restrictions on what can or cannot
be printed or telecast. The methods of control are different but not the objective.

There may not be blank spaces in newspapers but it is apparent what has not been
published. The list of taboos is getting longer. The curbs on the electronic media, however,
are more ominous. The muted voices of listed opposition leaders are reminiscent of the
blank spaces in newspapers during the 1980s.
Now the latest on the list of ‘baddies’ is JUI-F head Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Clearly, his
press conferences and rallies are not supposed to be telecast — no one knows under whose
orders and under what rules. Pemra denies giving any such instructions, and yet, the ‘ban’ is
fully implemented by all channels. It’s amusing to watch the maulana on screen with his
voice muted — ‘read my lips’.

The attempt to control the press and

encourage a pliant media is extremely
dangerous.

Earlier, Pemra had banned former president Asif Ali Zardari’s interview on the pretext that
he is an under-trial prisoner, though he remains a member of the National Assembly.
Similarly, TV channels were instructed not to telecast Maryam Nawaz’s pressers, when she
was out on bail, because she was convicted. Again no one knows under what law. It’s all
done in a creepy manner.

But the maulana is neither convicted nor facing any court trial. So why ban his
appearances? His speeches are said to be provocative. Maybe. But what about the threat
hurled by the top leadership of the ruling party being telecast directly?

Again the instructions to the media come from ‘unspecified’ authorities. Unlike the Zia
period, when the military had publicly set the rules of the game, matters are more arbitrary
now. Perhaps it has something to do with the existing hybrid power structure. A deliberate
ambiguity is maintained around the executing authority.

It is obvious that the PTI government is getting panicky with the maulana’s call for storming
the capital and other main opposition parties extending him support. One may completely
disagree with the maulana’s crafty political game and his shenanigans. But this is not the
way to deal with the problem. It is still his democratic right to protest.

Imran Khan and his party should be the last ones to attack the maulana on that count. Just a
few years ago, the PTI had marched into the capital with thousands of its supporters laying
siege to the city for almost four months calling for the resignation of the then prime
minister Nawaz Sharif. The sit-in was not peaceful either.

Arguably, more than any other politician, it is Khan who has benefited from a free media,
though there is a question mark hanging over the 24/7 coverage of the dharna when he
sought to bring down the government through street power. The dharna continued for more
than four months but failed to achieve the objective. Perhaps, the maulana is trying to
emulate Khan’s irrationality back then. Khan is now being paid back in the same coin.

Ironically, blacking out his speeches has probably given the maulana more publicity than he
could have ever imagined. Almost all TV talk shows and the 24/7 news cycle for the past two
weeks have revolved around the maulana’s march. Every statement and presser by federal
ministers blasting the JUI-F leader has perhaps given him a political boost. It has catapulted
him onto the political centre stage.

More disturbing, however, is the shrinking space for a free and independent media that has
already reversed the democratic political process. It is not just about the blackout of some
opposition political leaders, but the manipulation of the media. The attempt to control the
press and encourage a pliant media is extremely dangerous. Recent moves against the
independent media demonstrate weakening civilian power. A major question is, who is in
charge?

Last week, Pakistani authorities denied entry to Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator
for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), citing a blacklist managed by the interior
ministry. According to the reports, Butler was sent back from Lahore airport despite the fact
that he was travelling on a valid journalist visa.

He had come to Pakistan to participate in the Asma Jahangir Conference-Roadmap for

Human Rights. He was told that his name was “on a stop list of the interior ministry”. Even
worse, his passport was confiscated and he was forced to take a flight to Doha on the way to
Washington.

In a message to the CPJ, Butler said he was in “a kind of restricted custody” as the flight crew
was in possession of his passport and boarding pass. The government has failed to provide
any explanation for Butler’s expulsion. Nevertheless, Butler addressed the conference via
Skype to the embarrassment of the Pakistani government. So much for the country’s image.

What the civil and military leadership fail to understand is that the world has changed since
the Zia period. Blank pages are not workable any more. In this age of digital media, there is
a limit to what the authorities can do to control media and stop the flow of information.
Such draconian measures can only bring embarrassment to those controlling the levers of
power. The suppression of the fundamental right of freedom of expression can only weaken
the state. Imran Khan should learn from the past — such actions only strengthen non-
elected institutions of the state.

The writer is an author and journalist.

zhussain100@yahoo.com

Twitter: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

Kate’s pretty outfits

Rafia Zakaria | October 23, 2019

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and

political philosophy.

IT is the curse, perhaps, of every post-colonial condition. The rational rendition of the
present tells us to drop the costumes of our subjugation and directs us toward a pre-
colonial way of being that no one can recall.

Our instinctual tendency however seems to be servility, one which emerges especially when
royal members of the white race alight on our doorstep. After all, if all the maharajas and
nawabs of India were willing to bow before the crown at the Delhi durbar, held in honour of
a Queen Victoria who cheekily did not attend, then why should those living now be any
different?

Perhaps because of this legacy of bowing, everyone knows their role well: the elites and
industrialists of our small struggling country flit about boasting of their knowledge of
London shops and of meeting with royals of old, the religious ones bring out their
prescriptions and jauntily — if predictably — condemn the West. The remainder, the large
silent suffering, say nothing, continue to worry about their jobs and their lives and the
pressure of family demands and the general torture of a country made for the few.
None of this is a problem, for as far as dissecting the royals is concerned, the British have
done it themselves. In a lecture titled ‘Royal Bodies’ and published in The London Review of
Books, Hilary Mantel, celebrated as Britain’s most eminent living author, sums it up: “Kate
seems to have been selected for her role as princess because she was irreproachable, as
painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without risks of the
emergence of character. She appears precision made, machine made” and “a jointed doll on
which certain rags are hung”, “a shop-window mannequin”, with no personality of her own,
entirely defined by the clothes.

Our instinctual tendency however seems to

be servility, one which emerges especially
when royal members of the white race
alight on our doorstep.

In Mantel’s view (and she was criticised for her comments) Kate and everything she
represents is a tragedy; the pitiably predictable duties, ribbon-cutting and cake-cutting,
fashion and frippery. All of this was on display as Kate and William took rickshaw rides and
danced with the Kalash (one wonders if the Kalash’s dutiful function as royal entertainment
can become an argument for their preservation) and things back home in Britain remained
submerged in a miasma of uncertainty.

The queen herself, ashen and leaden, was during the days of the visit enacting her own
pantomime. On October 15, the monarch, all dressed up in her jewels and baubles and
sporting the actual crown, read out a ‘Queen’s Speech’ detailing the plans and provisions of
a government that is sure to end before the month is up. Her speech was pointless but it was
its very pointlessness that highlighted the situation of the monarchy itself. Lacking any real
relevance to what happens in the United Kingdom, the queen and prince and duchess are all
sentenced to scripted roles, the forever props who may not step outside their polite smiles
and nods.

All of this makes the clothes, especially the duchess’s clothes, terribly important. As Mantel
would put it, it is she who was selected for the clothes rather than vice versa. In this regard,
the designers who had a part in producing the clothes the princess wore can claim a bit role
in the royal production of modelling: health, wealth and glamour.

It is all very well in Pakistan, however, for the “jointed doll on which certain rags are hung”
also happens to be the model of the ideal Pakistani woman. The tittering Pakistani elites,
decked out themselves and all set to gasp and gaze at the visiting royal couple, love such
women. Young women and girls all over the land are regularly selected as wives and
daughters-in-law based on their ability to be the best jointed dolls on which certain rags can
be hung.

There are other more pernicious reasons that Pakistan adores royals of all sorts. Pakistani
society continues to be tied to primordial identities, the accident of birth determining the
station of life, inherited wealth passing generation after generation into the same hands.
Who your father is and who your grandfather was are matters of crucial importance here
and now; all of this is to say that while the world may have turned away from such limiting
fictions, they are carefully preserved and proclaimed in the land of the pure. Naturally, in
such a society, the adulation of royalty is not a thing of the past: a vestigial treat of tradition,
it is alive and well and a value in the present.

Pakistani pretences tend to hide acts of puppetry. If the royals are facile and perfunctory in
the United Kingdom, while prime ministers and parliaments make the real laws and
legislation, it is not quite the case in Pakistan. Those enacting the rituals of democratic
government are the frail puppets on whose skeletons offices and titles and the hopes of the
harangued hapless masses are hung. The rituals and rules of governance are acted out for
public consumption with some fervour, the services of a small army of talk-show hosts
deployed as emissaries of their legitimacy. The matter of representative government hangs
by a thread in Pakistan, a thread that can unspool an entire fabric at first tug.

Given all of this, Pakistanis need not object to the British royals, for their fashion choices or
their frippery or the choreographed tedium of their tour. They should lament the contrast
that the appearance of princes and princesses of a figurehead monarchy highlights at home.
In what century will the purveyors of inherited wealth and privilege in Pakistan be
figureheads, no one can say. What can be said is that while the British royals seem to have
moved on from tragedies past, new faces and races adding to their numbers, the Pakistan
they visit periodically to remind themselves that it’s not that fun to rule all the world,
remains stubborn and stolid, still nursing a forever frail and feeble democracy.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

Price of a pen?
Michael Carlos Best | Adnan Qadir Khan | October 23, 2019

THE words ‘public procurement’ do not raise strong feelings in the minds of most
readers. But they should. The way the government spends taxpayers’ money on
everything from pens to highways has great bearing on how efficiently it functions.
Wasteful procurement means that the government’s budget is able to provide fewer of
the services that really matter to taxpayers, while a lean government that keeps
unnecessary expenses at a minimum can serve its citizens better.

Public procurement is a substantial part of national income and the budget; estimates
suggest that it is about 19.8 per cent of GDP in Pakistan. Our research has revealed a low-
cost policy that can make this money go further.

First, the context: many policies have been tried out around the world, but they often
contradict each other. For example, international organisations have often advocated a
policy of writing strict rules and strong monitoring and oversight to ensure compliance. This
has a downside: procurement officers have to deal with red tape, filling out extensive forms
and providing complete documentation.

Other governments and businesses have pushed in the other direction, to give greater
power to procurement officers, trusting them to use their discretion to seek out value for
money, and using lighter monitoring techniques and strict enforcement only in cases of
wrongdoing. Such policies are often accompanied by pay-for-performance schemes that
reward procurement officers when they perform well: spend more efficiently and receive a
bonus.

We had the chance to test these two policies against each other, and our results can guide
policy.
 Here’s a low-cost policy that can make the
money go further.

Over the past several years, in a research project with Oriana Bandiera (LSE) and Andrea
Prat (Columbia University), we have engaged with the Punjab government to deploy a
methodology for measuring value for money of generic goods and developed a web portal
named Punjab Online Procurement System. The project was conducted with the Public
Procurement Regulatory Authority and Punjab Information Technology Board.

We found a big difference in prices paid by different public bodies for exactly the same
good. The online version of this article uses graphs to illustrate this: high-performing buyers
pay as little as Rs3.50 for pens worth Rs25, while poor performers pay up to Rs115. There is a
similarly wide range for other products.

Why are offices paying such different amounts for simple, off-the-shelf items? Is it possible
to find ways to get poor performers to stop overpaying and behave more like high
performers? We worked with the government to design and experimentally test two policy
initiatives to improve the performance of front-line procurement agents.

Our first initiative reduced the red tape faced by procurement officers when making
purchases, simplifying or bypassing much of the pre-audit monitoring of their procurement
of generic goods. Our second initiative introduced performance pay for procurement
officers, rewarding them financially for achieving greater value for money.

After running the experiment for two years, we learned that both giving procurement
officers autonomy and performance pay can improve the value for money achieved in
public procurement in Pakistan.

The autonomy initiative saved the government Rs13 million, or around 8pc of the spending
by the offices we worked with, and was virtually costless to the government. The pay-for-
performance initiative saved Rs4m, and cost Rs2.65m, providing a 45pc return on
investment for the government. Offices where both initiatives were implemented together
displayed a 261pc rate of return. Again, the online version features further details.

The results of these initiatives in a relatively small sample of offices are encouraging,
suggesting that real savings are possible across the government without cutting back on
items being purchased to provide services with, and guiding us to how to achieve them.
So, perhaps we need to check our instinct to react to the inefficiency and corruption in
government procurement by imposing additional monitoring on bureaucrats. In many
places, the elaborate system of pre-audit monitoring they face is probably doing more harm
than good, and should be replaced with greater autonomy and rigorous post-audit of
purchases.

More broadly, creating a civil service that empowers bureaucrats who want to make a
difference, while reining in the excesses of bad apples who exploit the system, will serve
Pakistan better than a rule-bound behemoth. For Pakistan to develop as a nation, it is
imperative for the design of that civil service and all public policies to be based on evidence
of what works, what doesn’t, when and why. This is as true of procuring pens and paper as
for any other policy.

Michael Carlos Best is an assistant professor of economics at Columbia University.

Adnan Qadir Khan is a co-founder of the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan.

A longer version of this article appears on the newspaper’s website.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

The last straw

Mahir Ali | October 23, 2019

Mahir Ali

JUST a few days before his capital and several other cities descended into anarchy,
Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastián Piñera, was heard extolling his country’s
virtues as an oasis of stability in a region prone to chaos.

It brought to mind a similar declaration at the cusp of the 1980s by General Ziaul Haq, who
sought to advertise Pakistan as ‘an island of stability’ just as the nation was descending into
the worst phase of its brief history.

Piñera was evidently taken by surprise when a three per cent hike in public transport fares
unleashed a youth rebellion that rapidly transmogrified into a much broader revolt against
his right-wing government’s policies.

Healthcare and education costs, and more generally the poor delivery of government
services to those who most need them, have been cited by Chilean protesters as reasons for
their angst. Piñera lost little time in rescinding the fare increase, declaring that he was
bowing in humility to the demands of his compatriots, while decrying the “violence and
delinquency” of those who had taken to the streets.
 It’s hard to tell when tipping points will kick
in.

The trouble with tipping points is that it’s hard to tell when they will kick in. Hence the
Lebanese elite, much like that of Chile, was taken entirely by surprise when a proposed tax
on WhatsApp voice calls sparked a full-fledged rebellion against what is perceived, with
considerable justification, as a corrupt, self-serving ruling class.

It may or may not be a coincidence that Lebanon’s prime minister, much like the Chilean
president, is one of the richest men in his country. Saad Hariri has blamed the uprising in
his nation on the recalcitrance of his ruling coalition partners towards economic reform.

In the lingua franca of the neoliberal upper crust, however, ‘reform’ all too often implies
measures that target the poor at the expense of the rich. Perceptions of corruption are a key
factor in the Lebanese uprising, which stands out not least because it embraces all
communities in a country whose polity is based on a sectarian division of power.

That’s the basis on which the Lebanese civil war was concluded in 1990 after 15 years of
strife. However, in recent weeks the Christian president, Michel Aoun, and the Shia
parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, have been at the receiving end of popular wrath almost
as much as Hariri, the Sunni prime minister who attracted much public sympathy after he
was held hostage in Riyadh a couple of years ago at the behest of the Saudi crown prince.

Lebanon isn’t the only Middle Eastern country, though, where perceptions of corruption at
the highest level have lately led to outrage on the streets. Iraq has been coping with
explosions of anger on the streets, as has Egypt, somewhat more surprisingly, given that
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi brooks no dissent, much like his counterpart in Turkey.

The relatively small protests in Egypt, apparently launched partly because of exhortations
from a self-exiled former government contractor, were just hundreds strong, yet have led to
an estimated 2,000 arrests. They have consequently petered out, but served as a useful
reminder to the man Donald Trump describes as ‘my favourite dictator’ that his
extraordinarily repressive status quo cannot indefinitely be maintained, regardless of what
‘friends’ such as the US, Israel or Saudi Arabia may favour.

Media reports cited a supporter of Sisi claiming that under the former military chief at least
the trains run on time. Who can say whether he was knowingly citing a parallel with the
regime of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini?
The trend towards fascistic tendencies is by no means uniquely an Egyptian phenomenon,
though, what with a number of European electorates leaning increasingly towards the far
right. In almost every case, a backlash will inevitably follow in due course — even if no one
knows for certain what the last straw may turn out to be.

It is notable, though, that the attempted implementation of self-harming agreements with

the IMF all too often proves incendiary. It certainly did in the case of Ecuador, whose
president, Lenin Moreno — who was elected on a centre-left platform but has since veered
sharply to the right — was obliged to relocate his government after his indigenous
compatriots revolted against an increase in fuel prices which affects the cost of living.

As Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, discovered soon after proposing an
unacceptable law that would enable the semi-autonomous territory to extradite people to
the Chinese mainland, rescinding a proposed law that aggravates tensions is never enough.
There is invariably a plethora of grievances in the minds of those who put their consciences
and sometimes their lives on the line.

In a world that seems to be going to the dogs, whether or not ordained by the IMF, it’s
somewhat heartening to be reminded that the popular will frequently continues to gravitate
towards amorphous but nonetheless preferable alternatives.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

PM’s snub
Editorial | October 23, 2019

PRIME MINISTER Imran Khan’s decision to not meet Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali
Shah during his visit to Karachi on Monday was tantamount to a public rebuke that ill
behoves the prime minister of the country. The fact that Mr Khan decided to meet
members of the anti-PPP alliance GDA but not Mr Shah demonstrates more than just a
dismissive attitude towards the provincial government; it conveys that he has no
qualms about widening the divide that already exists between the centre and the
Sindh setup. How then can he expect the public to believe the federal government
when it says it is willing to extend its support to resolve the issues of Karachi and the
rest of the province? Mr Khan is the chief executive of Pakistan and its constituent
provinces, and the responsibilities and requirements of his office are above and
beyond what is expected from the leader of a political party. He represents all sections
of the public — whether or not they voted for his party, they look to him for the
resolution of their problems.

If, as Mr Khan has suggested, the federal government has taken over the responsibility of
works which the provincial rulers were obligated to undertake, there needs to be a clear
strategy for carrying out these additional duties, otherwise these projects will be marred by
organisational chaos. Though it is true that the performance of the PPP in terms of
governance has been dismal over the past decade or so, the fact that the party came to
power yet again through the popular vote is not something to be taken lightly. The problems
of governance in Sindh cannot be resolved without talking to the biggest and most
important stakeholder in the province. There is no other way to pave the way for
development other than rising above petty politics and talking to the representatives of the
provincial government who have been voted into office by the people of Sindh.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

Redacted pages
Editorial | October 23, 2019

AUSTRALIAN newspapers on Monday made a powerful statement against state

censorship. In a coordinated campaign, they published identical, redacted front pages
accompanied by a question: “When government keeps the truth from you, what are
they covering?” The media industry in that country has been in an uproar since
several months over raids by police on a journalist’s residence and the headquarters of
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to recover leaked documents that had
provided material for an exposé published in 2018. The story blew the lid off plans for
an Australian intelligence agency to be given unprecedented powers to spy on the
country’s citizens, and was deeply embarrassing for the government. The development
comes amid a climate of increasing restrictions on the media’s right to access
information, particularly on grounds of national security.

This is a growing trend across the globe, with governments treating freedom of speech and
the right to information as a privilege they bestow on their citizens. The pretext of ‘national
security’ in a post-9/11 world is particularly useful, being an amorphous concept that can be
made to fit any inconvenient truth and throttle independent reportage. This is naturally par
for the course in countries with dictatorial regimes where the leadership is unaccountable
and whose workings are closed to media scrutiny. Worryingly, however, many democratic
governments are also weakening the fourth pillar of the state, with populists such as
President Trump attempting to erode the credibility of news outlets critical of their policies,
while overtly supporting those that give them more favourable coverage. That has further
emboldened leaders elsewhere. In India, the illegal media blackout in held Kashmir after
the region was stripped of its autonomy has been largely successful in stifling the voices of
people suffering under the Modi government’s tyranny. The Australian newspapers’ shock
tactic on Monday is familiar to many senior journalists in Pakistan who have worked under
Gen Zia’s military dictatorship. During that regime, in a pointed rebuke against restrictions
on the press, newspapers began to leave blank spaces where official censors had excised
entire reports or certain lines in the text. The media in Pakistan is once again in the grip of
censorship from official quarters, though this time it leaves behind no ‘press advice’ as
evidence of its intolerance for dissenting views. Unfortunately, however, also missing now is
the unity among media players that can make for a collective resistance against the state’s
high-handedness.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019

 TODAY'S PAPER | OCTOBER 23, 2019

Madressah reform
Editorial | October 23, 2019

THE debate over how to reform madressahs in Pakistan is not a new one. While
seminaries in the country experienced explosive growth during the Zia years,
producing the human raw material required for the anti-Soviet Afghan ‘jihad’, during
the Musharraf era, and especially in the aftermath of 9/11, the establishment had
second thoughts about these institutions. The various madressah reform campaigns
over the years have had mixed success, with the clergy expectedly putting up
resistance to any efforts by the state to encroach upon what they perceive to be their
turf. However, the present government has also indicated that it wants to
‘mainstream’ the institutions. The Ministry of Federal Education and Professional
Training says a directorate to oversee madressahs is almost ready, and that ulema are
on board. A few days earlier, while meeting clerics, the prime minister had also
remarked that ‘revolutionary’ reforms to overhaul seminaries were in the works.

If the government were to succeed in bringing madressahs into the mainstream, specifically
in overseeing their curriculum and ensuring their registration, it would be a feat worth
appreciating. However, this is easier said than done. For example, there are no concrete
figures about how many seminaries — registered and otherwise — exist in the country;
estimates range from 30,000 to 60,000. Moreover, ensuring that all sects and sub-sects that
run madressahs are on board is another challenge. It would be wrong to say that all
madressahs preach terror and extremism; many do not, but as the experiences of Lal Masjid
as well as of the seminaries that helped produce sectarian and jihadi terrorists show, even a
small unregulated minority is enough to challenge the writ of the state. What is more, there
are relevant questions about what the students of madressahs will do after they graduate.
Surely not all graduates can be absorbed as prayer leaders and Quran teachers. Therefore,
these youngsters need life skills along with their religious education that can help them find
gainful employment upon completing their courses at seminaries.
Madressah reform efforts, therefore, must focus on two key areas: eliminating extremist
and sectarian content from the syllabus, and giving seminarians training that will help them
find jobs in a wide variety of fields. While the state has indeed cracked down on seminaries
linked to militant groups, more needs to be done to eliminate content that may fan
extremism and sectarianism in the impressionable young minds that study in madressahs.
Instead of focusing on the ‘othering’ of different sects and faiths, madressahs need to teach
young pupils the compassion and civic duties that religion stresses. Moreover, cosmetic
changes — such as introducing English and computer classes — will not do much unless
madressah pupils are given vocational training that will make them employable in the job
market. But most of all, the state needs to reform the public education system so that the
majority of parents can send their wards to school.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019