Issue 59 Vol III, March 15, 2008
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Issue 59 Vol III, March 15, 2008 |
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F O C U S Malaysian elections: changing
race equations
Malaysian law and practice allow free campaigning for the ruling coalition while placing severe restraints on the opposition. According to Human Rights Watch the opposition politicians often face the threat of the Sedition Act. In addition, since the draconian Printing Presses and Publications Act places the burden of proof on defendants in defamation cases, opposition parties are self-censoring for fear of being hit hard by libel suits if they critique the establishment.
Irregularities in the voter rolls and other elements of the electoral process raise concerns that the government will seek to manipulate votes in closely fought districts. Indelible ink from India was finally not used on the pretext that in rural Malaysia, some people are likely to mark this ink and stop voters from exercising their right.
The country's ethnic Indians, who make up less than 10 percent of the population, were especially angry at Abdullah over the jailing of five Indian activists after a extraordinary street protest was broken up by the riot police in November and later in February. One of the five activists of the Hindu Rights Action Force [HINDRAF], M. Manoharan, now held without trial under a colonial-era security law, was elected. And, S. Samy Vellu who has lead Malaysian Indian Congress for the past 29 years, winning seven times had to eat the dust. Indian voters form significant numbers in at least 67 parliamentary and 141 state assembly seats where they comprise between 9% and 46% of the electorate. The results indicate they had used their numbers to vote Opposition and helped change the direction of politics in the country. They were the deciding factor in constituencies where Malay and Chinese votes were divided. Indians, traditional backer of the Government made their small numbers count. Twenty-two Indians contested in 18 parliamentary seats and 53 Indians contested in 40 seats. They comprised about 8% of contestants. MIC fielded nine for Parliament and 19 for the state assemblies. The democratic Action Party [DAP] had seven Indians for Parliament and 17 for states while PKR fielded 19 Indians. In Parliament and the state assemblies, there will be about 20 Indians from the DAP and PKR and all will be sitting on the opposition bench. Previously, in the entire country there were only two Indian MPs - Karpal Singh and M. Kulasegaran - holding the fort? In fact, Karpal Singh, a feisty lawyer, Malay of Punjabi origin had sweat revenge by getting his one barrister son Gobind Singh Deo elected to parliament and another Jagdip Singh to Penang state assembly. His home state of Penang is now ruled by DAP and shares power in three other states. Same is true about the people of Chinese origin. A vast majority of Malaysians through this election has a presented an opportunity for both the ruling BN and the opposition. People no longer wish to be exploited and subjugated. That old 40 year Affirmative Action Plan that prefers Malays over other ethnic groups is not acceptable as it has only enriched a minority of Malays and lead to massive corruption. The Internal Security Act that empowered detention for life with no recourse to judicial review must go. The same way Registration of Press and Printing Act that has been misused to shut dissenting independent newspapers and magazines must be removed from the stature book. Jailed journalists must be released and no more arrests. Mass media; radio television and newspapers should not be controlled by the ruling party or any other group. Judicial reforms need to be introduced at once. There should be free quality education without discrimination and more equitable distribution of the vast wealth which Malaysia’s working class has crated. This working class that constituted two third of 2.7 million people is now restless and refuses to be lulled by Malaysia for Malays slogan. |
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Applying Marx to
Pakistan IN The Eighteeenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, published in 1852, Karl Marx made a most incisive observation: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” Following the election of Feb 18, a situation exists in Pakistan where we can make history of a different sort, notwithstanding the fact that the “tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” The reason is that for the first time in Pakistani history, circumstances are somewhat different and a break with the past is possible. The different circumstances are the following: the military has for the first time been reported to have identified the jihadis as threat number one to Pakistan’s security while India has been relegated to the second position. In the past, a symbiosis between the military and the jihadis had resulted in Pakistan becoming the frontline state in a holy war sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia. We need not go over all the harm it has done to Pakistan, but now the jihadis are launching recurrently suicide bombings on the military; the most recent being an attack on the Naval Academy Building on The Mall in Lahore. It is good that instead of the Pakistani military and the jihadis acting as one body they are now two antagonistic forces poised to clash with each other. It is also heartening that the new chief of the army staff, Gen Kiyani, has issued orders to his men not to hobnob with the politicians. I know this would be the most difficult thing to learn and internalise, because bad habits are awfully more difficult to abandon than acquiring good ones. The third reason for optimism that a fresh start can be made is that the two major parties in the parliament, the PPP and the PML-N, have been victims of repression by Gen Musharraf, and logically that should help them work together rather than against each other. A national government committed to a transition to democracy is a possibility—once again, only logically speaking. Fourthly, the Islamists have been roundly defeated—as always happened in the three free and fair elections in Pakistan in 1970, 1988 and now in 2008. The Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted the elections this time but its participation would hardly have worked a miracle in favour of the mullahs. It is now quite clear that the 2002 election result which catapulted the MMA to a leading rightwing bloc in Pakistani politics was an aberration. Hopefully, Sharif’s long stay in Saudi Arabia would have made him realise that Pakistan is a haven of freedom when compared to Saudi Arabia. This should make him value personal liberty and human rights, and indeed democracy, instead of imposing the dogmatic Sharia through some new version of the 15th Amendment that never became law because he was thrown out of power. How much the PPP values the fact that the people of Pakistan—mostly poor and deprived—voted it as the party with the largest number of seats in parliament remains to be seen. It should hopefully encourage Mr Zardari to have some qualms of conscience and not to start devouring afresh the national exchequer. Speaking more realistically and dialectically, as Marx would caution us to do, the fact remains that the deadweight of the past is likely to weigh quite heavy even now. Despite all indications that the people of Pakistan don’t want President Musharraf to remain in power, it seems that he wants to, and so do the Americans. Additionally, with all the corruption cases against Asif Ali Zardari thrown out by the courts, is it any wonder that the PPP is neither keen to challenge the presidency of Musharraf nor to go along with the demand of the PML-N that the deposed chief justice and other judges be re-instated? So, what one can assert at the moment is that a chance or a possibility to break with the past history of massive corruption, military interventions, sectarian killings and terrorism in and around Pakistan does exist, but one should be very hesitant to claim that we are on the threshold of a social or political revolution. But suppose such a revolution does take place despite American interference and Zardari’s compromised situation. We get a new national government, the judiciary is restored to its rightful position and the government machinery starts functioning according to rules and regulations. In that case it would be important that the transition to democracy include genuine autonomy with substantive economic and financial powers being granted to our provinces. Speaking realistically once again, chances of establishing a genuine secular democracy in Pakistan are remote, but that should not mean that in the name of Islamic identity, and so on, we give free reign to draconian laws and ordinances that serve no purpose except to prove that we cannot treat our minorities and women as equals. We will indeed have to make our history under the circumstances that exist, and not those that we may want to exist, but at all moments in time nations and people have a number of choices at hand and not just one. Therefore, it is possible to choose another future for ourselves, rather than produce one that only mirrors our past. Even a small change to a government based on transparency and that upholds the rule of law in principle from our past record of arbitrary rule, intrigues and corruption will be a major step forward. [The writer is a professor of
political science and a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of
South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. Email: courtesy
News Pakistan isasia@nus.edu.sg
Loan waiver:
tinkering with the agrarian crisis Punjab assembly’s current budget session is witnessing heated arguments on the quantum of the total debt relief which the hapless farmers of Punjab would get. The UPA government has announced a package of Rs 60,000 crore to lessen the burden on the debt of millions of farmers across the country. This relief is part of the package which the Congress lead government has in mind to win the hearts and minds of Indians to vote back to power during the elections, whenever these are held.
It is true that the UPA government has elections in mind, yet it is some relief to the hard-pressed farmers whose suffering sees no end. How much finally the farmers in Punjab and Haryana get would become clear only the real disbursement begins. Also, how would get how much is as yet not clear. The most intriguing part of this debt relief package is that it does not find any fiscal provision in the current budget. So far this is a just an announcement made by the finance minister. No one knows from where this huge money would come. One apprehension is that some profit making public sector units may sold to big industrialists to collect this amount. This would only pit workers and their supporters against the farmers. As such this move may not pass through a test in the Lok Sabha as left parties are opposed to it and other opposition parties may not support. This package nonetheless would cover only debt taken from the institutions: commercial banks and cooperatives. This leaves a large number of farmers out who have borrowed from private lenders. The National Sample Survey Organisation says almost half of India's 100 million farming families are in debt. Though the crisis has been building for years, it presents a grave challenge for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ahead of national polls. Farm distress and soaring prices helped turf out the previous government in 2004 and put the Congress into power. Hence this plan to cancel debts of small farmers with loans overdue on December 31, 2007, and which remained unpaid up to February. 29. The write-off is conditional as beneficiaries can own up to five acres and only bank loans will be cancelled. This means nearly a quarter of 40 million targeted farmers will not benefit because most borrowed from rapacious moneylenders or they own larger tracts of land. In Punjab, India’s food bowl where rising cultivation costs are distressing farmers and leading many to commit suicide or to abandon farming. During the past one decade one lakh farmers have left farming. India's dramatic urban-centric economic growth of 8 to 9 per cent has bypassed the farm sector where growth is estimated to have slowed to 2.6 percent in the year ending March 2008, from 3.8 percent the year before. In Punjab this growth is very poor, only 1.1 per cent. Even though farming supports 60 percent of India's 1.1 billion people, it contributes only a fifth of gross domestic product and accounts for only around 15 percent of bank credit. Economic liberalisation since 1991 has not helped as with duties being gradually phased out and farmers facing tough competition from profoundly subsidised European or American growers. What policy shift the government has in mind is not clear. The important question is whether this relief package would address the real problem, the agrarian crisis that is forcing the farmers to take desperate steps like suicides. It is also clear that this would disturb the culture of paying back the debt on time. Why should those suffer who have been repaying their loans? Sometime back Haryana government wrote off electricity bills worth Rs 1600 crore leaving the honest payers poor. While offering this relief the UPA government has ignored the co recommendations of its own Farmers Commission under famous agriculture expert, S. Swaminathan. The efficacy of this package is under doubt though Congress and its UPA allies might reap political advantage. But Dr Manmohan Singh defends this relief plan. He says, “It will allow the fresh flow of institutional credit to farmers, it will clean up bankers' balance sheets, it will stimulate economic activity in rural areas, and I don't make any apologies on this." He forgets since the announcement of this staggering relief package, 60 farmers have killed themselves, adding to a morbid official statistic: more than 150,000 Indian farmers committed suicide since 1997 unable to repay crop loans. Numerous studies show that farmers are under heavy debt and those with small and marginal holdings are suffering the maximum. The major reasons are crop failure and adverse market conditions where buyers dictate the price of farm produce while input prices are dictates by manufacturers and traders. Much of the subsidy also goes to help the fertilizer and other input industry. A 2006 study by the Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, found that 86.5 percent of farmers who took their own lives were indebted. Their average debt was about Rs 35,000 and 40 percent had suffered a crop failure. A deeper malady requires more thoughtful treatment. We need a policy for the farm sector which could make farming a profitable venture and takes care of the adverse weather and market conditions. This would be a boom for India as it would have 60 crore satisfied farmers with more money in their pockets and not pesticides to commit suicides. They would add to the prosperity of the country and help markets boom as buyers of products and services.
Iraq: price of war
now at three trillion dollars Bertrand Russell, the famed philosopher, mathematician and an unchallenged pacifist cites a case of World War II when Germany was defeated and punished with a very heavy fine by the Allied countries. Since it had no money and only factories to run and pay the debt, it offered that it could do that. This arraignment was accepted. Now since it had little finance to produce goods, it asked for loans. This was given. Now it started churning goods and exporting these to the allied countries as part of its debt servicing. This arrangement resulted in Germans getting the work in the factories, some profit for the factory owners and boost to the economy. In reverse cheap goods meant less work for the factories in Allied countries.
Now a new book, authored by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, says that the cost of the Iraq war has now reached $12.5 billion a month, up from $4.4 billion per month in 2003. This means the American would be pushed further into ruin. War spending is extremely unproductive for the invaders and destructive for the invaded. Stiglitz has made the calculation in his book, "The Three Trillion War". He says in the book says the war will cost at least $3 trillion before it's over, based on the forecast that US troops won't leave Iraq completely before 2017. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Columbia University. The cost of Britain's war on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan has almost doubled in the past 12 months, a report reveals. The spiralling cost is because of additional troop deployment, higher fuel costs, larger bonuses to attract US citizens to enlist and replacement or repair of damaged, worn-out or destroyed equipment. England in the same bracket For the United Kingdom, the expenditure on military operations for this financial year is due to reach £3.297bn – a 94 per cent increase on last year, according to figures released by the House of Commons Defence Committee. The spending on Iraq will rise by 72 per cent, despite the cutback in the number of troops and UK forces leaving their last base inside Basra city for the airport. Meanwhile, the cost of the Afghan conflict, with British forces involved in near constant combat against the Taliban, will increase by 122 per cent. The estimated cost of each of the two missions – £1.648bn for Iraq and £1.649bn for Afghanistan – is near to reaching the total for both combined last year, and the figure for Afghanistan is expected to continue rising as new equipment is sent to the frontline. Senior officers also said that British troops at Basra were likely to stay for another three years as a reserve force to be kept in case of emergencies. The committee said it was "surprised" by the amount of money needed for Iraq despite the slowdown in the tempo of operations by British troops. According to defence officials, the increase is mainly due to the costs of depreciation, the supply of armoured vehicles such as the Mastiff, which has better protection against roadside bombs, as well as the payment of operational bonuses. The Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said: "This shows how the Iraq war is continuing to bleed our finances dry, leaving our soldiers in Afghanistan overstretched and under-equipped. "If the Government, supported by the Conservatives, had not been so keen to support the illegal war in Iraq, the Afghanistan operation could have been much better resourced. "When Alistair Darling is writing his Budget speech he might want to consider asking his boss why he thought it was such a good idea to sign the cheques for this disastrous operation in the first place." More Money, More Problems According to American Progress Institute in Washington, With an estimated $16 billion in defense contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, "with eight times the work of its nearest competitor." The firm has 54,000 people working on its projects in Iraq. Until last year, KBR operated as a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services conglomerate over which Vice President Cheney once presided. Prior to the Iraq war, KBR received no-bid contracts from the Bush administration to "rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure" and to "provide support services to troops." The company has profited handsomely from its sweetheart deals, racking up a $71 million profit in the fourth-quarter of 2007 alone. According to American Progress Action Fund,” Yet for all the financial success it has attained, KBR has repeatedly engaged in abusive corporate practices and has shirked its duty to preserve and protect those men and women who are serving on the front lines of war.” CHRONOLOGY OF WAR March 20, 2003: U.S. and British
forces invade from Kuwait. |
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Barisan Nasional, a coalition of a
dozen group and dominated by the United Malays National Organisation [UMNO] that
had ruled Malaysia since its independence in 1957 had massive resources and the
total backup of government machinery at its beck and call. It was like an
unconquerable fort for the opposition parties that were organisationally weak
and often splintered. The BN had all the power and the resources at its command
and had massive absolute majority of 90 seats in the out gone parliament, Dewan
Rakyat or House of Representatives. The public was overawed and under virtual
threat to vote for the BN candidates.
Freedom of the media is hampered
since all private free-to-air television channels are owned by the United Malays
National Organization (UMNO), a founding member of the ruling coalition and
Malaysia’s largest political party. Because Malaysian law requires all
publications to obtain permits to operate on a yearly basis, the state can
easily shut down those that are critical of the government. The minister of
internal security has discretion to grant, revoke or suspend any publication
prejudicial to public order, morality or security, or that is likely to alarm
public opinion. Newspapers such as the Tamil language daily, Makkai Osai, are
self-censoring to avoid being shut down.
The results under such
circumstances brought cheers to the opposition parties and a tight slap on the
face of the BN. Barisan Nasional has now a bare majority of 140 in a house of
222, reduced from 190 in a house of 212. Opposition has 82 seats. The BN polled
just 51.2 per cent of the votes. It has lost control of 4 of the prosperous
large size states out of 13; Penang, Selangor Kedah and Perak and failed to
recapture Kelantan. And, the states enjoy real powers under a federal structure.
BN could no longer amend the constitution as it wishes and play with the limited
liberties which the people enjoy. It has amended the constitution 40 times in 50
years to establish an autocratic rule in the guise of helping the ethnic Malays.
The Akalis have two arguments. The
package is too small and does not meet the needs of the farmers who owe a debt
over 25,000 crore in Punjab alone. Similar argument is put forward by the
opposition parities elsewhere in the country including in Haryana by the Indian
National Lok Dal. Akalis also assert that it was their protest march in Delhi
that forced the government to announce this huge package, unprecedented indeed.
Congress wants the Punjab assembly to pass a resolution to thank the UPA
government for its magnanimous approach to the plight of farmers. It also wants
the Akali-BJP government to reciprocate this package by offering farmers relief
from the debt which they owe to the private lenders.
Who punished whom in the final
analysis?