Being Untrustworthy in Crisis

The News on Sunday|Sunday 29, 2010| Political Economy Section

>> Foreign assistance does not respond to development needs but to arbitrary decisions and strategic alliances <<

By Zubair Faisal Abbasi

International development organisations recently conveyed us a message that the government in Pakistan is untrustworthy and, therefore, humanitarian aid in desirable quantity is hard to arrange. Many of us accepted the argument and started divulging additional reasons on international donors being right in avoiding a direly-needed bout of foreign assistance.

We should try to be critical about such claims which primarily blame the victim. This is especially important because India, which seems to be in the driving seat in efforts to isolating Pakistan, has offered monetary assistance to fight flood and food insecurity.

The international community calls us untrustworthy and, therefore, refuses to cough up some money and wants us to face unprecedented calamity on our own. You call our state institutions untrustworthy. You call us untrustworthy because we got a bigger cheque from the US and refused the communists. Had we accepted the smaller cheque and fought the imposed war against you then what we were supposed to be? Traitors?

But we accepted the cheque and remained trustworthy till the time cheap gun fodder was needed. The transaction was simple and persuasive. We, the untrustworthy, joined the most 'truthful' arrangements like SEATO/CENTO and remained the most allied nation outside the NATO and fought as frontline state -- we remained trustworthy.

Now, once the war-machine appears to be tired, exhausted, and needs oiling we become untrustworthy, corrupt, and extortionists. In fact, we were trustworthy for the expansion of military-industrial complex and now when we need humanitarian assistance we are untrustworthy. Our fragile democracy and a civil government is corrupt and badly-elected by the illiterate and ignorant voters.

Let us be clear, the option for Pakistan is not to drift away from democracy towards military. The country can lapse into the quagmire of militancy. If the current regimes and international community fails in relief, recovery, and rehabilitation, there are chances of unprecedented social and political upheavals.

However, we should have the courage to call a spade a spade. Let us be very clear that a significant part of foreign aid is a high political and strategic drama played on the world stage.

It follows the logic of strategic alignments not poverty or inequality or under-development. Foreign aid in practice is not always a true reflection of global humanitarian deployment but very meticulously designed matrix to keep strategic alliances.

A simple question: how much foreign aid is given to Palestinians who are suffering from poverty and exclusion and how much is given to the other side of the divide? Let us have a look at the World Development Indicators issued by the World Bank in 2001. It shows that South Asia received US $3 per person where around 50 percent of the world's poor live while Europe and Central Asia received US $23 per person of foreign assistance. Sub-Saharan Africa got US $20 while the Middle East which has more than five times higher income than South Asia received US $18 per person.

Development literature shows that foreign assistance does not respond to development needs but to arbitrary decisions and strategic alliances. Therefore, we should be very clear about such patterns before naming Pakistanis an untrustworthy nation.

While aid has been political, much of it has actually been used to tease out the desired kind of 'leadership' from the less-developed yet strategically placed countries. Let us ask ourselves, what kind of regimes have been supported in Chile, Pakistan, Afghanistan and a host of other countries. It appears that the main idea was to support a dictator but he should be 'our' dictator.

The 'trustworthy' governments were installed which suited the vested interests and such installed regimes could thrive only when they captured state resources and diverted them to be aligned with the war-machine of a particular brand.

In fact, we are crafty. We know how to engage and disengage. We know how to save our skin and keep our hands clean. We know how to civilise the world with missionary zeal by keeping people in prisons without a fair trial. Here the reference is not to Guantanamo Bay but to the father of Barak Obama who was kept like this in Kenya by Churchill's empire.

We know the art of blaming the victim. We intervene with financial and military might, we change the whole power structure, get our work done, and leave the corrupt, extortionist, and deceitful governments behind with the people struggling for 'democracy and justice'. Right? But trust me, I am not untrustworthy, these are the powers on the world stage which co-opt with the 'trustworthy' local elites and ultimately I suffer if something goes wrong between you and the comprador class.

Source: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2010-weekly/nos-29-08-2010/pol1.htm#8

Democracy, Growth and Governance

Pakistan as a democratic federation must think how people react if they are not being treated equally by the state>>
The News on Sunday|July 4, 2010 | Political Economy Section

By Zubair Faisal Abbasi

Populist rhetoric of politicians aside, one often hears a question whether democracy can be expected to generate equitable economic growth and impartial governance. The answers range from democracy being singled out as an external idea, and the state and society unprepared to practice a democratic polity. The current phase of economic crisis and stories of friction between the executive and the judiciary has brought this question on our national political scene once again.

Some argue that self-interest seeking politicians do not make a strong case for democratic governance in Pakistan. Therefore, in order to qualify for a democratic polity, a society needs to fulfil some prerequisites first. In our part of the world, a patronising support from the non-elected institutional arrangements is provided to shake off the non-qualification trap. It ventures to develop 'basic democracy' during the 1960s, fiddle with 'Islamic democracy' during the 1980s, and find pathways for 'sustainable democracy' in 2000s.

Though adjectives before the word democracy are changed in every decade, the debate somehow neglects the central question: what democracy itself envisions for the well-being of society? No doubt, the sphere of democracy encompasses much more than free and fair elections and equality in voting rights. According to Amartya Sen, establishing 'freedoms' which increase both human and systemic capabilities to function is central to the idea of democracy. It is about enabling people, without any discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, religion, gender, and colour to enjoy a full life in the legal, social, economic, and political dimensions.

We need to have a critical look at what democracy can actually help a society to achieve. Despite democracy being a system of immense social value, many researches do not support the argument that democracy necessarily leads to robust economic growth. Empirical evidence, on the contrary, shows that equitable economic growth leads to improvement in the provision of goods and services which create a public demand for improvement in the quality of government and hence an inclusionary democracy. Inequity in distribution despite growth, however, can create a low-trust society drowning in social conflicts. Pakistan has had enough cleavages in the past and still carries wounds from the past.

The point here is not to suggest that since democracy has not been a means of robust economic growth so Pakistan should seek an authoritarian and militarised version of government. Military dictatorships in Pakistan have been highly partisan, failing to establish autonomy of the state structures.

Instead, there is a need to rationalise expectations from democracy and focus more on how to improve prospects of economic development and the quality of government. Such a focus will make democracy and political participation more meaningful for the people of Pakistan.

In reality, democracy has to travel in two divergent directions. In the first phase, it has to tread upon the path of 'partisanship' to ensure that the aspirants who are chosen by the majority of voters hold public offices. In this process, the political contests create divisive camps. The second phase demands 'impartiality' in the process of implementing rules and regulations by the office holders. Institutional arrangements of the state need to learn how to seamlessly make a transition from 'partisanship' to 'impartiality'. Democracy to be successful as a statecraft, which aims at securing people's trust and respect, must build state institutions as autonomous structures but socially and politically embedded in society.

The embedded autonomy, as Peter Evans calls it, has been a critical component in robust economic growth, especially in East Asian miracle economies. For Pakistan, the point is that despite having democracy, there is no guarantee that an equitable economic development will take root. For a successful turnaround in the financial conditions of state-owned enterprises like the Steel Mills and Railways, such a vision of the state is absolutely necessary. Researches also show that 'big governments' are not necessarily 'bad governments'. The only important point is that whether a government is effective or hostage to special interests.

Forms of institutions matter in democratic polity. However, what matters most is the functionality of institutional arrangements. It is possible to create a replica of the executive (and armed forces), the judiciary, the legislature which are present in the developed world, but becoming a state strong enough to regulate their functioning requires more 'credible commitments'. Such commitments are manifested in low incidence of corruption, the rule of law, accountability, and bureaucratic efficiency along with the ability to guard property and human rights for all citizens without discrimination.

Last but not least, Pakistan as a democratic federation must think how people feel and possibly react if they are not being treated equally and fairly by the state -- neither in economic development nor in systems of governance.

Source: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2010-weekly/nos-04-07-2010/pol1.htm#9