Governance is a critical issue of the 21st century South Asia. It has assumed greater significance
in respect of Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan because of the strategic geo-political positioning
of these countries in the sub Asian region consisting of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Iran,
Russia, Central Asian Republics and China. This sub region has peculiar characteristics.
Read the full paper by Mumtaz Piracha at http://southasiagovernance.blogspot.com
To the best of my understanding, the US would prefer power-sharing between the PPP and the PMLN in Pakistan for the sake of continuity of the present civilian political setup and to ensure peace and stability at the same time; while the Pakistan military would prefer midterm elections to bring unity, cohesion and good governance in the country. Absolute power never suits Pakistan; it breeds corruption, maladministration and stalls progress and prosperity to the people at large, irrespective of whether it is the civilian government or the military rule.We need two-party system in Pakistan; one party in power and the other in opposition. The history tells us that military steps in whenever the party in power becomes unpopular with the people or with the military or with the US. There is no second choice. The party in power does not let the opposition play its role as a body to exercise checks and balances on the executive branch of the government and remain intact as a second choice. It is so unfortunate that every government in Pakistan, civilian or military, has invariably resorted to the same tactics aimed at taming the bureaucracy, judiciary, parliament, media and military. At this critical juncture, the long lasting solution lies in midterm elections under an interim multi-party national government with the support of the military and the independent election commission. It is only through fresh elections that the political parties/groups sitting outside the legislatures at the centre and the provinces can be inducted to bringabout national cohesion. Likewise, the representatives of smaller parties/groups in smaller provinces in particular can be given the opportunity to enter the legislatures with the support of the leading parties in the larger national interest. The general sense of deprivation in the smaller provinces especially in the rural areas can be minimized by the participation of the representatives of all parties/groups in the decision making of the federal and provincial governments.A truce and patchup between the PPP and the PMLN is not likely to work. That time has already passed. The leader of the PMLN, Mian Nawaz Sharif, is now heading a mass people's movement rather than a merely lawyers' movement. That difference needs to be understood by all that matter in the politics and power of Pakistan. At the moment, there is no check on the functioning of the government at the centre or the provinces. There is no will and no competence to address public issues. The whole country is beset with unbearably high inflation, widespread poverty, extremely poor law and order, economic stagnation or recession in the commercial and industrial sectors, absence of fair legal and social justice, political wranglings, sectarian, ethnic and religious divides of all sorts. Pakistan has today become a country where the values of its founding fathers are fading away to give way to greed, corruption, class conflict, religious intolerance, social and economic inequalities and non-participation of the people in the decision-making of the government at all levels. Even the political party in power does not engage its rank-and-file echelons in the decision-making process of the party and the government.As the Founder of the Pakistan's largest, most diversified and globally-searched Good Governance Forum, I call upon the US and its allies as well as the Pakistan military to help establish and strengthen the institutions i.e. parliament, judiciary and media to exercise checks and balances on the functioning of the executive. All the stakeholders have to act with absolute determination and indomitable will to put the country on its track as fast as possible.
Mumtaz A. Piracha
Founder & Moderator
Good Governance Forum
Karachi - Pakistan -- Good Governance Forum, founded by Mumtaz A. Piracha, is indexed on hundreds of search engines across the globe. It is the largest, most diversified and most global platform of its kind for the exchange of views, opinions and ideas of learned men and women from almost all walks of life. It is a non-political, non-ethnic and non-profit platform for exchange of views among the network members numbering 1000+. The actual number of our email readers runs into hundreds of thousands as our network members circulate emails of the forum in their social circles.It does not assume any liability whatsoever for the network members' views nor does it necessarily agreewith them. We respect privacy. Anybody can join in or opt out of the network any time by informing the forum via email.Anybody can post his/her comments by visiting the blogsite and clicking on the link COMMENTS on its home pageBlogsite: http://ggovernance.blogspot.comEmail: good.governance@gmail.com
Redrawn South Asia map shows truncated Pakistan; sparks fear23 Nov 2008, 1304 hrs IST, PTI
I Remember When a TrillionDollars Was Real Money
1) The Fed Pledges $7.2 Trillion of YOUR Money. Bloomberg News reports that the U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion — approximately half the value of everything produced in the nation last year — to rescue the financial system, which has been in cardiac arrest since the credit markets seized up.
How much is that? The pledged money is equal to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And $2.8 trillion of that has already been spent, according to Bloomberg.Now brace yourself for the bad news ...
2) The Government Has Already Spent $4.3 Trillion Bailing Out Wall Street. According to CNBC, as of last week, the Federal government had already spent $4.3 trillion in bailouts, from $900 billion for the Term Auction Facility ... to $112 billion bailing out AIG ... to $540 billion backing up Money Market funds ... to $700 billion for the Treasury Asset Relief Program (TARP), and more.$4.3 trillion — that's more than America spent on World War II, adjusted for inflation. And it's all going down a black hole created by Wall Street bankers.
The Federal government has already spent $4.3 TRILLION in bailouts and has hardly made a dent in the financial crisis.
All that money has to come from somewhere. Investors are stuffing their money into Treasuries with no yield, and the government still has to go out and borrow more. The U.S. Treasury is on course to borrow $1.5 trillion this year, and it's still not enough! Next year's budget deficit will easily top $1 trillion; more than double this year's deficit.
The overall impact of what the bailout will cost ultimately should be very negative for the U.S. dollar ... and that should be bullish for gold.
3) Wall Street Is Probably Going to Need $Trillions More! The financial crisis is really the death of a thousand cuts. Let's take the Citigroup fiasco as an example. You may have heard that Citigroup is getting a $20 billion equity injection on top of the $25 billion it got in October.But Citi will also carve out $300 billion in troubled assets, which will remain on its balance sheet.The first $37-$40 billion in losses on those assets will go to Citi.
The next $5 billion in losses will hit Treasury.
The next $10 billion in losses will go to the FDIC.
Any more losses will go to the Fed.
These assets are crap-tacularly bad, so basically Uncle Sam is on the hook for another $260 billion in assets, in addition to the $45 billion in liquidity poured onto the desert of Citi's balance sheet.And do you notice that the clowns on Wall Street are balking at giving Detroit a $25 billion bridge loan to save America's auto industry (and prevent a chain of dominos as all of the Big Three's suppliers, finance units and vendors go belly up) but Citi — a zombie of a bank that is probably lurching towards failure — gets $45 billion without even a debate.That brings me to point #4 ...
#4) Obama's Administration: More of the Same? Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has set the bar pretty low as he limbos past barriers of logic and fairness to bail out his fat-cat friends. So you might think that the new administration, and Obama's nomination for Treasury Secretary, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, would be a welcome change from the crony capitalism at work now.The widely respected Big Picture blog has a post by institutional risk analyst Chris Whalen titled: "What Barack Obama Needs to Know About Tim Geithner, the AIG Fiasco and Citigroup." I highly recommend you read Whalen's post. He makes the following point:
By embracing Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama is endorsing the ill-advised scheme to support AIG directed by Hank Paulson et al at Goldman Sachs and executed by Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke. News reports have already documented the ties between GS and AIG, and the backroom machinations by Paulson to get the deal done. This scheme to stay AIG's resolution cannot possibly work and when it does collapse, Barak Obama and his administration will wear the blame due through their endorsement of Tim Geithner.
Read the whole thing. If Whalen is right, the crisis of confidence already shaking the financial markets is nothing compared to the tsunami of trouble that will follow.
For more information and archived issues, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com
Pakistan is a country that is currently lost in transition from the military rule to the civilian rule after the general elections of Feb 2008 and the 'forced' resignation of the former president General (r)Pervez Musharraf in Aug 2008 who had earlier got him elected from the outgoing parliament for another term of five years ending 2012.
General (r) Pervez Musharraf had assumed power in Pakistan by overthrowing the democratically-elected government of the former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif in a military coup on Oct 12, 1999 in a reaction to his dismissal by the former prime minister as the Chief of the Army Staff.
President Musharraf struck a deal with the former chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), late Benazir Bhutto whereby she and her husband Asif Ali Zardari were allowed to return to Pakistan under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) aimed at absolving them of all the pending cases of massive corruption, maladministration and criminal acts in the previous two stints of Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister of Pakistan.
Benazir Bhutto was assasinated on Dec 27, 2007 and the investigation of her murder was hushed up swiftly. After her tragic death, the PPP contested the elections and emerged as the largest single party at the federal level and in its home province of Sindh.
Asif Ali Zardari who had assumed the office of co-chairperson of the PPP after the death of her wife Benazir Bhutto contested the presidential election and won it by striking deals with other political parties after the then president Pervez Musharraf resigned per force.
The former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) received a majority vote in the provincial assembly of Punjab. It also turned out to be the second largest political party in the National Assembly.
Former president Pervez Musharraf-backed ruling party Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) emerged as the third largest party in the National Assembly but could not get a majority in any of the four provinces of Pakistan, though it has the second largest position in the Punjab provincial assembly.
As the situation stands today, the PPP is in power at the Centre in coalition with the Awami National Party (ANP), Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F Group) and Motahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM). It heads the government in Sindh in coalition with the MQM. In Punjab, it is a coalition partner in the government headed by the president of PML-N, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, a younger brother of Mian Nawaz Sharif. In Balochistan province, it heads the provincial government in coalition with other small parties. It is also a coailition partner in the NWFP province headed by ANP.
The worst losers are the PML-N and PML-Q. Both factions were once part of a single party headed by the former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif. The party split into two factions after Mian Nawaz Sharif opted to go into exile in Saudi Arabia along with his brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif and other family members under a deal negotiate with the then president General Pervez Musharraf. The new faction called PML-Q was headed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain who joined hands with the then president Musharraf and formed the governments at the Centre and the provinces after the engineered elections of 2002 to give a civilian facade to the military rule of the then General Pervez Musharraf.
Both PML-N and PML-Q, the second and the third largest in the National Assembly are out of the federal government. PML-N is confined to the home province of Punjab. PML-Q has smaller presence in the provincial assemblies but does not occupy the treasury benches.
In Pakistan, it so happened that whenever the party in power lost the confidence of the people, there was no alternate leadership available to step in and form the government except in the 80's and 90's when the PML-N and PPP alternated in power. As a result of the vacuum, the military had the temptation and the backing of the stakeholders to step in and assume power in 1958, 1977 and 1999. The longest tenure of office has been that of the military rulers, each governing for 9-11 years at a stretch. more by force than mass popularity or genuine democratic elections.
Over the last six decades of its independence, Pakistan has remained devoid of democratic political institutions reaching out to the people at the grass-roots. The parliament and judiciary remained subservient to the executive in both civlian and military governments. The media remained under duress under almost all governments with a few exceptions.
Today, the president Asif Ali Zardari is practically the head of the State, head of the government as well as co-chairperson of the PPP. He has not relinquished the dictatorial powers of his predecessor Pervez Musharraf nor the office of the co-chairperson of the PPP. The prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani is there to implement what the president wants. The parliament is a lame-duck. The judiciary is filled with loyalists. The civilian bureaucracy is under siege. The military has accepted the PPP per force. There has never been healthy relations between the military, particularly the army, and the PPP right from the first PPP government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was overthrown by the then Chief of the Army Staff, General Zia-ul-Haq in 1977.
Pakistan has been ruled by the military for 34 years of its chequered history of 61 years. Democracy could not flourish primarily because of the palace intrigues, military rule and the failure of the political parties to strengthen them and reach out to the people at the grass-roots by setting up their offices at the various levels in the country to interact with the people, particularly the 70% rural population. The parties were more than happy to get into power through the backdoor, most of the time, and remain in power through wheeling and dealing and the use of coercive power against the opposition.
The present government of the PPP, inducted in March 2008, is still unsettled. It has failed to come up with major innovative policies to bringabout a major change in any sector of the country. It is embroiled in intra-party conflicts as well as inter-party disputes. Inflation has shot up to 25% on the average and 35% in food items. The growth in the key economic sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and services has slowed down. Exports stand at half of the imports. Poverty is raging at more than 33%. Unemployment and under-employment is rampant. Law and order is in bad shape. Terrorism and militancy are going sky high within the settled areas of the country. Povery alleviation program of the previous regime is yet to take off and demonstrate its success. Social and legal justice for the have-nots remain a dream unfulfilled.
In a nutshell, the people of Pakistan, by and large, are losing confidence in the government of the PPP and hope in the future. It is high time the two factions of the Pakistan Musim League join hands and sit on the opposition benches in the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies of the Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan to exercise checks and balances on the ruling PPP governments and force the PPP federal and provincial governments to meet its constitutional obligations and create a social welfare state in peace. In the absence of a strong opposition party, it can be safely assumed that the country will have to face another decade of military rule, sooner than expected.
There are two significant aspects of the two-year job plan of the president-elect Obama. First, it will save or create 2.5 million jobs. Second, it will save or create jobs in the right sectors by 'investing billions of dollars to rebuild roads and bridges, modernize schools and develop alternative energy sources and efficient cars.'
Under the present and foreseeable economic senario, it is imperative to maintain consumer spending at its optimum level where the corporations could afford to produce and sell their products at affordable consumer prices. The corporations would need to invest in innovative technologies to reduce product cost and increase consumer satisfaction.
The US should expect falling prices and surplus agricultural and manufacturing production in other countries which will make competition tougher for the American companies, whether operating in the US or abroad.
The US needs to look for the avenues of increasing consumer disposable income and accelerating consumer buying to keep its factories running and jobs secured as well as to ensure revenue generation for the local, state and federal governments.
The American corporations need to restructure their organizations without cutting employment to make them more productive and cost efficient and to generate funds for investment in expansion, diversification or research and development for the future. They need to realize that they have to prepare themselves for competing in the global markets, rather than focusing on their domestic market alone.
The American corporations need to reduce their bank borrowings by generating their own revenues so as to reduce their dependence on credit and its cost.
The US needs to avoid deflation which is now the most-feared dilemma in the economic world.
http://mumtazapiracha.newsvine.com/_news/2008/11/23/2142469-obama-aide-promotes-job-plan-warns-automakers-on-yahoo-news
The second-in-command of Islamic militant network al-Qaeda has called on Muslims to harm"criminal" America.
In a message purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda deputy accused US President-elect Barack Obama of betraying his Muslim roots.
BBC News: Middle East: 19 Nov 2008
After 9/11/2001, Al-Qaeda could not carry out a second attack on the US over the past seven years. Yet, the US is apprehensive of another attack from Al-Qaeda. President Bush may be right in his assumptions but the question is why the US is unable to locate, capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his close aides or destroy their hideouts inspite of all the might at its discretion such as the weapons of mass destruction, sophisticated intelligence apparatus, satelittes, hand-picked governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Does'nt it reflect adversely on the strength and sagacity of the US administration? Is the US so weak that it cannot eliminate an enemy like Al Qaeda who could not operate on the American soil after 9/11?
The world has diverging perceptions of the America's War on Terror. First, it is assumed to be just a bogey that President Bush has been carrying on his back for the last seven years to malign the Muslims and their religion Islam as well as to hide his own incompetence and failures elsewhere. Second, the US presumably does not have the competence, commitment and courage to disable Al-Qaeda. Third, Osama is assumed to be dead for he cannot possibly be alive after remaining on dialysis since late 90's. But the US is unwilling to accept it for reasons best known to President Bush.
Will President Obama has the moral courage to dig out the facts and tell the truth to the Americans and the world at large?
Mr Obama's historic victory bagging overwhelming majority of electoral and popular votes creates a new world perception of America and its people.
The presidential election has re-affirmed the commitment of the American people to their traditional values, beliefs, ethics and norms envisioned by the founding fathers.
It is both a formidable challenge and a great opportunity for Mr Obama to revive and reinforce the American value system by its practical application within and outside the US by his administration.
The Change has to come not only in America but also other parts of the world in the bilateral and multi-lateral engagements of the US administration.
The US will have to live up to the new world perception and American image - an image of a super power out there to protect and secure the world with peaceful co-existence. A super power that will live and let live by peaceful means and will fight against war-mongers and conflict-producers.
Founder & ModeratorGood Governance ForumPakistan
Web: www.ggovernance.co.cc
Email: good.governance@gmail.com
Dear Mr. President-elect:
It may please you to know that 72% of the people in Pakistan voted for you in the online poll of Vote for President. The world voted 87% in the same poll. You can view the results on country to country basis on voteforpresident.org.
Like the overwhelming majority of the Americans and the people around the world, Pakistan also looks ahead to HOPE and CHANGE in the role of the United States as a super power for promoting peace, prosperity and brotherhood across the continents. The World have had enough of conflicts, wars and destruction. It is now the time to build the world and improve upon the inter-state relations.
By voting you to the White House, the Americans earned immense applaud and appreciation from the rest of the world. The people of the United States have proved that the American values are still in place. The American people handed down a new era of HOPE and CHANGE to fellow beings not only in the US but across the lands and seas of the Mother Earth as well.
As you know, our part of the world comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Russia, Central Asian Republics and China have assumed singular importance for the US and the West. You also stated in your statements during the election campaign that your government's focus will shift from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There are divergent views among the people in Pakistan with regard to the War on Terror in the tribal belt. Many aspects of the war remain unexplained to the Pakistanis. Many issues involved in the War on Terror on Pakistan-Afghanistan fragile and porous border remain unresolved. A great majority of Pakistanis are certainly against terrorism in any form and against any country. There is hell of a difference between terrorism and oft-repeated 'Jihad.' Nowher in the history of Muslim rule spread over the past 1400+ years, one can find a period of terrorism in the name of 'Jihad.'
It appears from the media reports that the whole issue of terrorism is camouflaged in many forms and factors. There are Al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban, foreign infiltrators and a host of other groups and sections of people embroiled for known and unknown reasons.
As the pressure builds up in the tribal belt from the US and Pakistan military operations, the people in other parts of Pakistan are subjected to terrorist attacks and many innocent lives are lost, private and public property is damaged and the people are scared.
Before you ascend to the White House, it might be a good opportunity for you to visit Pakistan any time before Jan 20, 2009 to gather first-hand information from more than more source. That will certainly help you and your administration to review the government policy and frame a new policy, more objective, unbiased, and practical. Rest assured, we are with you in your fight against terrorism but we need to know who and where are the terrorists and how they can be eliminated with the least loss of innocent lives, civilian and military, and spread of terrorism in other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I am the Founder & Moderator of the largest online forum on good governance in Pakistan where the learned people from almost all segments of our society including intellectuals, educationists, civil society activists, media persons, politicians, parliamentarians, religious scholars, businessmen, industrialists, authors and writers, civilian bureaucracrats and military officers, diplomats etc. exchange their views and opinions as well as suggestions and recommendations on key national and international issues.
On behalf of the Good Governance Forum and on my own behalf, I most sincerely extend our most cordial invitation to you to visit Pakistan as the future President of the United States of America and be our Guest of Honour at a special session of the forum at Karachi or Islamabad, if the security concerns do not permit your visit to Karachi. Our learned members would have the rare opportunity of listening to the US President-elect and putting across their considered views in the larger interest of both the countries and the region as a whole.
I sincerely wish you every success in your sincere endeavours for a Better America and a Better World.
Kind regards.
The author of the blog is the Founder & Moderator of Good Governance Forum in Pakistan. Some of the emails addressed to the network members of the Good Governance Forum on topics related to the US over the last few months are now posted on this blog. The blog visitors will, therefore, be viewing the original dates of the emails.
Good Governance Forum, headed by its Founder & Moderator Mumtaz A. Piracha, is indexed among the Top 100 of One Million listings on World's No. 1 search engine Google.
It is a non-political, non-ethnic and non-profit platform for exchange of views among the network members numbering 1000+ belonging to almost all segments of the civil society of Pakistan including scholars, educationists, civil society activists, parliamentarians, politicians, journalists, businessmen, industrialists, bureaucrats, military officers and so on.
It is an online non-political, non-ethnic and non-profit platform for exchange of views among the network members numbering 1000+ belonging to almost all segments of the civil society of Pakistan including scholars, educationists, civil society activists, parliamentarians, politicians, journalists, TV anchor persons, businessmen, industrialists, civil servants, military officers and so on.
I had made three predictions about Mr. Obama. First, he will win by a 'landslide victory.' 'Obama will make it to the White House, come what may, God be willing.'He will poll 'over 50%' popular votes. All of them have come true in the same way as the Americans' dream.
I read Mr Obama's biographical sketches many a time, watched his campaign, and scrutinized his public statements and assertions. He is the right person for the right job for the US as well as the world seeking peace, prosperity and progress.
Although Mr Obama has listed 25 public issues on his website, I am of the view that his top 3 priorities for the first 100 days in office would be to plan and implement measures to takeAmerica out of its financial crisis, to withdraw American troops from Iraq and to bring 'War on Terror' to a logical conclusion.
Mr Obama as the president of the United States, would be expected to make the United States a super power for peace rather than war and make America and the world a safe place for all.
Mr Obama's win has enormously added to the public perception of the Americans, their values and their commitment to change and change for the better for a long time to come.
According to the various online polls and surveys, Mr. Obama received 87% of the world votes.
Let us wish and hope that Mr Obama will come upto the expectations of the Americans as well as the world with the undaunted support of his fellow Americans and fellow beings across the globe.
blogsite: www.ggovernance.co.cc
email: good.governance@gmail.com
There is hardly a thing going against Obama. His credentials are impeccable. He is extra-ordinarily intelligent, extremely hardworking, and very confident. He is very knowledgable, straight-forward and endowed with a vision. He knows what America needs and he knows he can provide it.
Change for America will mean Change for the World. The US needs to create a new image of being an all-weather friend of its allies. It needs to carve out a new image of being a friend rather than foe to the world. It needs to develop,sustain and promote a new image of the whole America as a country that has values, ethics and norms to live and let live others on the planet Earth.
Americans must be treated with true love, respect and honour across the globe as a nation that is supportive, caring and committed to the interests of the people around the world. America must not be feared as a super power with military might. It should be perceived as a super power for peace, humanitarian support and a great barrier against aggression in any part of the world.
America must promote peace, security and democracy in the world. It must not support dictators, civilian or military, and the rulers with tainted past or present. It must keep the company of such allies who are clean, enjoy public support in their own countries and share values with the US.
The world has already voted for Obama with over 80% majority. The world, too, needs a Change and it is the super powers or the big powers that have to help the world nations bring about the Change. The world needs to be free of violence, terrorism, hunger, infringement of civil liberties, insecurity and hegemony of foreign bullies.
Let Obama come for changing America and the World.
