| Atta-ur-Rahman |
| We live in an age in which natural resources have diminishing importance. Knowledge has become the single most important factor for socio-economic development. Countries that have realised that their real wealth lies in their children and invested massively in education, science, engineering and innovation have surged forward, leaving others behind. Just one company of Finland (Nokia), a country with a population about one-fourth of Karachi, has exports that are double the entire exports of Pakistan! Singapore, also with a similarly small population, has exports of $351 billion, almost 18 times those of Pakistan. South Korea revamped its educational system, laying emphasis on higher education, science and technology, and increased its university enrolment from five percent of the age group in 1960 to 92 percent of the same age group in 2010. The result was an astonishing increase in its exports, from $32 billion in 1960 to $466 billion by 2010. (Pakistan’s exports stagnate at about $20 billion.) What went wrong in Pakistan? Since its formation in 1947 Pakistan has been facing one crisis after another. It is oscillating between successive democratic and military regimes. Regular military interventions were necessitated by corrupt governments which looted and plundered at will whenever they got an opportunity to do so, putting to shame the vision of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah of a progressive, modern Pakistan. The military governments failed to punish those criminal politicians and bureaucrats who amassed vast fortunes abroad. In contrast, India brought in genuine land reforms and, guided by the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, gave the highest emphasis to education, science and technology. In contrast, Pakistan – where a robust middle class did not emerge because of the absence of land reforms – has developed one of the worst school systems in the world. The powerfully entrenched feudals, who have a stranglehold on the cabinets and parliaments, gave education the lowest importance, with Pakistan spending only 1.2 percent of its GDP, which makes it comparable to Bhutan, Nepal or Togo. We are now ranked among the bottom 10 countries of the world in terms of investments in education, a shameful fact about a nuclear power. The result has been an illiterate and lawless nation, drowning in foreign loans while the powerful loot and plunder. What, then, is the way forward? Clearly, the British parliamentary system of democracy has been an abject failure. Military rule is also not an answer. Learning from bitter experiences, we need to adopt a system of governance which will root out and prevent corruption and promote the development of a strong knowledge economy. The following key proposals are made in this connection: 1. Governance Reforms: We need to bring in constitutional and governance reforms by abolishing the present parliamentary form of democracy (which is bringing up largely corrupt politicians – 51 were found to have forged degrees and the degrees of another 250 are suspect) and replace it with a presidential form of democracy. The cabinet ministers, who should be eminent experts in their respective fields, could then be appointed directly on merit by the president (who will be the chief executive), from outside parliament. The Constitution will need to be changed to make this happen. The revised Constitution should also ensure that parliamentarians are highly educated, as their primary job is lawmaking. Government secretaries should all be persons of international repute in the fields in which they are holding secretarial positions, and be selected on merit after open competition. The above measures will ensure that there will always be a competent government of technocrats. The positions of president, secretaries and parliamentarians should be screened by an Eminent Citizens Committee to be appointed by judges of the Supreme Court for “suitability” prior to their election/appointment. Persons judged by this committee as having “doubtful reputation” should not be allowed to contest any elections or hold any key positions in government or in government-controlled institutions. The heads and members of the boards of governors of public-sector organisations (PIA, the Steel Mills, etc.), as well as of such organisations as the Federal Board of Revenue, the FIA, the NAB, should be appointed by their respective boards of governors on merit after screening by the Eminent Citizens Committee, and not by the government. They should work as completely autonomous organisations reporting to their own eminent boards of governors and not to any government ministry or official. It is notable that the former federal minister of finance, Mr Shaukat Tareen, estimated corruption of Rs500 billion annually in the FBR alone! 2. Education: If we are to rid ourselves of the crushing poverty and the huge national debt, we must develop a robust knowledge economy. This is only possible if we make necessary amendments to our Constitution to force our decision-makers to give education the highest national priority. Malaysia has been investing 30 percent of its budget for the last 30 years – we must by a constitutional requirement do the same. The only way out for Pakistan from its myriad difficulties – law and order problems, corruption, non-functional democracy, poverty, industrial stagnation, etc. – is to make quality education the launching pad for a new Pakistan. With about 90 million young people below the age of 19, we have a tremendous potential human resource. This offers a unique opportunity for development. If we empower this huge young workforce with quality education and training, and provide opportunities for jobs in key economic sectors, then a wonderful future lies ahead. If we don’t, then this can become a stifling burden that will only lead to massive poverty, frustrations and crime. Massive investments in education at all levels will allow us to develop the knowledge workers that are needed in high-tech industries – engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology products, metallurgy, information technology, electronics, high value-added agriculture products, defence goods etc. – so that we can compete in the comity of nations. A national technology policy directed at achievement of national self-reliance needs to be formulated and implemented so that we become a major global exporter of high-tech products. 3. Prompt Access to Justice: We must punish the corrupt and those responsible for terrorism. The normal legal system has failed in this respect, because of the life threats to judges and witnesses by the powerful, the corrupt and terrorists. This has to be initially done under independent military courts until cleanup is achieved and a proper functional police force is established. Those who have amassed vast amounts of national wealth in foreign lands must be forced to return it to the nation and spend the rest of their lives in jails. A major overhaul of the justice system would be needed, including a mandatory requirement that court decisions are made within three months by strengthening the courts. This will need to be accompanied by genuine land reforms and abolition of the patwari system through computerisation of land records, our courts are choked by land disputes. The decision is ours to make as a nation. We have the natural and human resources and creative, hardworking people. The dream of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of our nation, can become a reality if we are courageous and set a new path for ourselves through the above reforms. The writer is former federal minister for science and technology, former chairman of the Higher Education Commission. Email: ibne_sina@ hotmail.com |
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Pakistan – the way forward
Friday, August 12, 2011
August 8, 2011
SNAPSHOT
Turkey's General Dilemma
Democracy and the Reverse Coup
Omer Taspinar
OMER TASPINAR is Professor of National Security at the National War College and a nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe.The days of military coups in Turkey are officially over. Half of all Turkish admirals and one out of ten active duty generals are currently in jail for plotting against the government, and on July 29 the military's chief of staff resigned over a disagreement with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan about staff promotions. The same day, the heads of the army, navy, and air force requested early retirement. These developments are a paradigm shift for a country that has experienced constant military meddling and three military coups in the last half century.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of last week's events was that they did not cause any public uproar or panic. Turkey's stock exchange opened to gains last Monday, and the government seems to be going about its business as usual. This is unexpected, as Turkey's armed forces have traditionally been well respected. The military was the first institution of the Ottoman Empire to modernize, adopting Western military strategy, weapons, as well as science and education methods. Almost all modern Turkey's hallowed founding fathers -- the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk -- were military officers determined to westernize and secularize Turkey's government, laws, education system, and even its clothes and alphabet.
Of course, Atatürk's cultural revolution was not universally embraced, especially among the pious rural masses. As a Kemalist slogan from the 1920s put it, the Turkish government ruled "for the people, despite the people." In the 1920s, the military had to suppress more than a dozen Kurdish and religious uprisings. These experiences traumatized the young republic's military leaders and left them suspicious of all things Kurdish and Islamic.
For the officers, then, democracy was a gamble. Kemalism had given the republic a secularist and nationalist political structure. According to the military, this political structure was the "realm of the state" and had to be protected from the "realm of politics." In other words, politics had to be properly monitored to prevent the rise of Islamism or other factions that would not uphold the republic's fundamental principles.
In 1960, 1971, and 1980, Turkey's powerful military launched coups to defend the realm of the state. In 1960, it intervened because it thought the government had become too authoritarian; in 1971 and 1980, it acted to put a stop to rising socialism. And in 1997, the army pushed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan out of office in the name of defending secularism. Until recently, the military still routinely interfered in politics through the National Security Council, where the top brass exerted considerable political influence over the civilian cabinet.
The story of the military's fall is also the story of the consolidation of power of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although its roots lay in a banned Islamist party, the AKP was allowed to participate in national elections in 2002. Its victory that year was followed by a tense détente with the military that lasted until 2007. That year, Erdogan nominated Abdullah Gül, a well-respected foreign minister, to the post of president -- a position that, for the military, represented the last inviolable bastion of Kemalist secularism. For the generals, the move crossed a red line. In their eyes, Gül -- a man who once flirted with political Islam and whose wife wears a head scarf -- posed an existential threat to Atatürk's republic.
Soon after Erdogan announced the nomination, Yasar Büyükanit, the Turkish chief of staff, staged what a dumbfounded press dubbed an "e-coup." He posted a warning on the Turkish military's official Web site stating that "if necessary, the Turkish Armed Forces will not hesitate to make their position and stance abundantly clear as the absolute defenders of secularism." His note was a thinly veiled threat that a conventional coup might be in the offing.
Instead of backing off, Erdogan defied the military and called early elections, which he won with a landslide 47 percent of the vote. He appealed to the democratic instincts of the Turkish people and touted his economic record. (Between 2003 and 2007, the AKP government had doubled the country's per capita income, significantly improved its democratic record, and begun accession negotiations with the European Union.) Erdogan quickly swore in Gül as president, and Gül promised to abide by Turkey's secular principles and continue to steer the country toward the European Union. Even so, the top brass refused to salute him during his inaugural visit to parliament and stayed away from his oath-taking ceremony.
Since 2007, the Turkish economy has continued to grow, unemployment is at a record low, and Turkey's global stature has reached new heights. As revolutions shook the Middle East in the spring, reformers in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia cited Turkey as a model democracy. Last June, the AKP won its third consecutive electoral victory, this time with 50 percent of the vote.
In a sense, the generals' resignation was the next logical step in Turkey's political maturation; no true democracy can place the military's will above the people's. But troublingly, the country remains deeply polarized, with members of the opposition ever more concerned about creeping authoritarianism and Islamism. They call the government a civilian dictatorship and deplore its use of the judicial system to neuter the military, the opposition media, and rival political parties.
At the heart of the opposition's argument is a court case against Ergenekon, a shadowy organization with possible ties to the military. The judiciary launched the case in 2007, shortly after AKP's second electoral victory, claiming that Ergenekon had planned a coup. The prosecutor of the case accused hundreds of military officials, journalists, and political activists of being involved. According to leaked documents about the case, the Ergenekon network was allegedly behind a number of bombings and assassinations. It planned to use the chaos as a pretext for a coup.
The main problem with the case is that it has yet to reach a verdict despite the arrest of hundreds of suspects. Critics of the AKP argue that the government is using the case to silence its secular opponents, but the AKP responds that it does not control the judiciary and has itself been the court's regular target; in 2008, the constitutional court came close to banning the AKP party and Erdogan from politics for promoting an Islamist agenda.
Two week's ago, after the military's plans were revealed to appoint or promote 250 soldiers and officers who are awaiting hearings as part of the Ergenekon trial, Erdogan announced that he would not allow the military's scheme to go forward. This prompted the spate of military resignations. The fact that the generals chose to bow out rather than fight Erdogan's decision signals just how much power has shifted from the military to civilians. For his part, Erdogan swiftly named General Necdet Ozel acting chief of staff and commander of ground forces.
Supporters of Erdogan and his party, the AKP, argue that the resignation of the commanders is a sign of Turkish democracy's new maturity and its embrace of Western-style civilian supremacy over the military. Detractors, however, express serious concern about the disappearance of checks and balances that they believe have kept civilian governments from becoming authoritarian.
In fact, Turkey is not yet a liberal democracy. But it is certainly moving in the right direction. Those who argue that the military was an essential check on civilian politics should understand that Turkey is now becoming a "normal" democracy, where elections, public opinion, opposition parties, the parliament, the media, and civil society all exert more power. And unlike the military, these institutions have a legitimate role to play in politics.
Meanwhile, in order to prove that Turkey is not becoming more authoritarian, Erdogan must address the critical challenges facing the country -- the Kurdish question, human rights, and freedom of expression -- by creating a more democratic constitution. If he fails, he will have only himself to blame. For the first time in the republic's history, Turkey's performance is totally in the civilians' hands.
Omer Taspinar
OMER TASPINAR is Professor of National Security at the National War College and a nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe.The days of military coups in Turkey are officially over. Half of all Turkish admirals and one out of ten active duty generals are currently in jail for plotting against the government, and on July 29 the military's chief of staff resigned over a disagreement with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan about staff promotions. The same day, the heads of the army, navy, and air force requested early retirement. These developments are a paradigm shift for a country that has experienced constant military meddling and three military coups in the last half century.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of last week's events was that they did not cause any public uproar or panic. Turkey's stock exchange opened to gains last Monday, and the government seems to be going about its business as usual. This is unexpected, as Turkey's armed forces have traditionally been well respected. The military was the first institution of the Ottoman Empire to modernize, adopting Western military strategy, weapons, as well as science and education methods. Almost all modern Turkey's hallowed founding fathers -- the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk -- were military officers determined to westernize and secularize Turkey's government, laws, education system, and even its clothes and alphabet.
Of course, Atatürk's cultural revolution was not universally embraced, especially among the pious rural masses. As a Kemalist slogan from the 1920s put it, the Turkish government ruled "for the people, despite the people." In the 1920s, the military had to suppress more than a dozen Kurdish and religious uprisings. These experiences traumatized the young republic's military leaders and left them suspicious of all things Kurdish and Islamic.
For the officers, then, democracy was a gamble. Kemalism had given the republic a secularist and nationalist political structure. According to the military, this political structure was the "realm of the state" and had to be protected from the "realm of politics." In other words, politics had to be properly monitored to prevent the rise of Islamism or other factions that would not uphold the republic's fundamental principles.
In 1960, 1971, and 1980, Turkey's powerful military launched coups to defend the realm of the state. In 1960, it intervened because it thought the government had become too authoritarian; in 1971 and 1980, it acted to put a stop to rising socialism. And in 1997, the army pushed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan out of office in the name of defending secularism. Until recently, the military still routinely interfered in politics through the National Security Council, where the top brass exerted considerable political influence over the civilian cabinet.
The story of the military's fall is also the story of the consolidation of power of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although its roots lay in a banned Islamist party, the AKP was allowed to participate in national elections in 2002. Its victory that year was followed by a tense détente with the military that lasted until 2007. That year, Erdogan nominated Abdullah Gül, a well-respected foreign minister, to the post of president -- a position that, for the military, represented the last inviolable bastion of Kemalist secularism. For the generals, the move crossed a red line. In their eyes, Gül -- a man who once flirted with political Islam and whose wife wears a head scarf -- posed an existential threat to Atatürk's republic.
Soon after Erdogan announced the nomination, Yasar Büyükanit, the Turkish chief of staff, staged what a dumbfounded press dubbed an "e-coup." He posted a warning on the Turkish military's official Web site stating that "if necessary, the Turkish Armed Forces will not hesitate to make their position and stance abundantly clear as the absolute defenders of secularism." His note was a thinly veiled threat that a conventional coup might be in the offing.
Instead of backing off, Erdogan defied the military and called early elections, which he won with a landslide 47 percent of the vote. He appealed to the democratic instincts of the Turkish people and touted his economic record. (Between 2003 and 2007, the AKP government had doubled the country's per capita income, significantly improved its democratic record, and begun accession negotiations with the European Union.) Erdogan quickly swore in Gül as president, and Gül promised to abide by Turkey's secular principles and continue to steer the country toward the European Union. Even so, the top brass refused to salute him during his inaugural visit to parliament and stayed away from his oath-taking ceremony.
Since 2007, the Turkish economy has continued to grow, unemployment is at a record low, and Turkey's global stature has reached new heights. As revolutions shook the Middle East in the spring, reformers in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia cited Turkey as a model democracy. Last June, the AKP won its third consecutive electoral victory, this time with 50 percent of the vote.
In a sense, the generals' resignation was the next logical step in Turkey's political maturation; no true democracy can place the military's will above the people's. But troublingly, the country remains deeply polarized, with members of the opposition ever more concerned about creeping authoritarianism and Islamism. They call the government a civilian dictatorship and deplore its use of the judicial system to neuter the military, the opposition media, and rival political parties.
At the heart of the opposition's argument is a court case against Ergenekon, a shadowy organization with possible ties to the military. The judiciary launched the case in 2007, shortly after AKP's second electoral victory, claiming that Ergenekon had planned a coup. The prosecutor of the case accused hundreds of military officials, journalists, and political activists of being involved. According to leaked documents about the case, the Ergenekon network was allegedly behind a number of bombings and assassinations. It planned to use the chaos as a pretext for a coup.
The main problem with the case is that it has yet to reach a verdict despite the arrest of hundreds of suspects. Critics of the AKP argue that the government is using the case to silence its secular opponents, but the AKP responds that it does not control the judiciary and has itself been the court's regular target; in 2008, the constitutional court came close to banning the AKP party and Erdogan from politics for promoting an Islamist agenda.
Two week's ago, after the military's plans were revealed to appoint or promote 250 soldiers and officers who are awaiting hearings as part of the Ergenekon trial, Erdogan announced that he would not allow the military's scheme to go forward. This prompted the spate of military resignations. The fact that the generals chose to bow out rather than fight Erdogan's decision signals just how much power has shifted from the military to civilians. For his part, Erdogan swiftly named General Necdet Ozel acting chief of staff and commander of ground forces.
Supporters of Erdogan and his party, the AKP, argue that the resignation of the commanders is a sign of Turkish democracy's new maturity and its embrace of Western-style civilian supremacy over the military. Detractors, however, express serious concern about the disappearance of checks and balances that they believe have kept civilian governments from becoming authoritarian.
In fact, Turkey is not yet a liberal democracy. But it is certainly moving in the right direction. Those who argue that the military was an essential check on civilian politics should understand that Turkey is now becoming a "normal" democracy, where elections, public opinion, opposition parties, the parliament, the media, and civil society all exert more power. And unlike the military, these institutions have a legitimate role to play in politics.
Meanwhile, in order to prove that Turkey is not becoming more authoritarian, Erdogan must address the critical challenges facing the country -- the Kurdish question, human rights, and freedom of expression -- by creating a more democratic constitution. If he fails, he will have only himself to blame. For the first time in the republic's history, Turkey's performance is totally in the civilians' hands.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Multiculturalism and postmodernity: a challenge to our political structures
Mono-cultural nationalism can no longer provide us with the national identities we need. The formation of multi-cultural civic identities requires a new way of drawing our political maps.
Multiculturalism demands a politics of recognition. It implies that the cultural identity of ethnic and national minorities should be recognized, and that these minority cultures should have specific rights in order to express and maintain their culture. Therefore, politics and culture should not be two separate spheres. In multiculturalism, politics actively interferes in culture. In liberalism, however, culture and politics are seen as separated. The liberal principle of benign neglect means that the State should hold a neutral position when it comes to culture. “Culture” belongs exclusively to private life. Charles Taylor rightly states that this principle is untenable, since both State and politics are always culturally embedded. Politics itself is a cultural practice, in which norms and values play an important role. Therefore culture cannot exclusively belong to private life: culture is also a part of the political arena, there is no line between politics and culture. This is a postmodernist conception of the relationship between such categories as society, arts, science, and politics.Postmodernism problematizes the existence of fixed borders between categories that are traditionally seen as strictly separated. Take, for instance, the sharp distinction between science and politics. Science is always performed through the eyes of individuals who hold certain values and norms, and therefore cannot be unbiased. The categories are no longer separated but have become hybrid.
Max Weber argued that politics is in an isolated world of rational top-down decision-making, which exclusively belongs to the political sector. Through legal procedures within an efficient and effective bureaucracy, policy provides blueprints which are then applied ready-made to a distinct and separate sector: society. But this rational view of the machinery of bureaucracy, the cause and effect of its rules and regulations, no longer works. It is not possible to make blueprints centrally and top-down. Nowadays, in order to win support for your blueprints, for rules and regulations, negotiations are needed within a broad field of interest groups. Several actors who have concerns in a specific policy area will demand to have a place at the negotiating table. Policy measures will only win that support if the actors feel that they can influence the outcome of the policies that affect them. So, the blueprints are being constructed bottom-up as well. In this middle range of meso-politics, the outcome of any given blueprint is no longer a fixed product, but rather changes in the enactment. Political goals are no longer reached through modernist rationality, they are reached through participation. This is a network of actors, who all have their own goals, and who deal and negotiate in order to reach compromises. In this postmodern world we see society and politics as intermixed, just as in our multicultural world we see that culture and politics are intermixed. The politics of multiculturalism requires this network approach.
The concept of postmodernity is part of a normative theory relating to empirical reality. Latour’s ‘we have never been modern’ is a statement that is descriptive as well as prescriptive. Multiculturalism can succeed in states that have postmodern network societies. But it will not work in states that are still stuck with modernist top-down decision-making governments. There is a strong connection between multiculturalism and postmodernism. Both, as practice and as norm, reject totalizing and universal concepts, and instead recognise difference and pluralism. Both reject Platonic absolutism and embrace relativism.
Enlightenment concepts of rationalism, centralism and monoculture have to be replaced by notions of diffusion,negotiation and diversity in order to make multiculturalism work successfully. In modernism, national identity presupposes nationalism and vice versa. Nineteenth century nationalism, as an aspect of modernity, went hand in hand with nation-building and drew on the Enlightenment notion that states can be engineered. In these days, notions of nation-building around a group identity are being replaced by notions of globalisation, individualism and diffusion. In Canada, nationalism and national identity are not the same, because there is no official ethnic or national majority group. This does not mean that there are no majority identity groups within Canada, but that Canadian politics has explicitly opted for not choosing one ethnic group as dominant. This is one example, a model, of how to make multiculturalism work. Canadian nationalism celebrates diversity, minority languages and minority cultures. The Canadian identity is officially multicultural. Multiculturalism in Canada articulates the ideology of a non-nation.
Given that postmodernity is a condition for successful multiculturalism, states that largely rely on party-democracies will have difficulty in adapting to multiculturalism, and fostering a politics of multiculturalism. Party democracies still make a strict modernistic distinction between culture (society) and politics. In the field of decision-making, politics has a monopoly. Policy exclusively belongs in the hands of those who are members of, or who belong to, specific political parties. Societal actors do not participate in politics and are excluded. Decision-making is not understood as taking place within a network of actors; it is imposed from the top down upon society in general, with a political party as the central actor.
Only a strong civic culture within society can break this division between politics and society. A meso-political level is needed in order to create successful multiculturalism: ethnic and many other minorities within a strong civic society can then become actors that take part in the processes of decision-making. In this way, blueprints for society are co-created with support from all the actors within this network, without any cultural group finding themselves completely excluded.
Party democracies, however, rely on the notion that they can engineer societies rationally top down, without letting all identity groups participate. States are becoming more and more diverse through processes of globalisation and immigration, yet party democracies still act according to the principles of the Enlightenment as professed in modernism. With the move away from mono-ethnic nationalism, we must reshape the political system.
Territorial autonomy, or decentralisation, if well designed, is one way to ensure the involvement of minorities in the network of decision-making. Such politics can be adapted to multi-ethnic and multi-national states in which minority groups are geographically concentrated. In case such groups are not geographically concentrated, a system should be designed according to the model of 'grand coalitions', a system of policy-making in which all identity groups have representatives inside government.
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