Keeping the democratic faith in difficult times

" Civil rights activism in Pakistan remains high meanwhile, with bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission intervening vigorously in matters of national importance. Individual opinion makers are not chary of confronting the government or fundamentalists with tough language and specific denunciations."

by Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

(October 10, Islamabad,Sri Lanka Guardian)The perception of many in Sri Lanka that despite all its problems, (of course, still others even deny that the country faces any problems at all), we are better off than other countries in the South Asian region where Rule of Law priorities are concerned. This is however a most seductive myth.

Useful lessons from the Pakistani example

The truth is that this is far from the case and there are lessons to be learnt in saying so. For example and ironically, there are many who would be quick to advise against travelling to Pakistan in a context where daily reports of suicide bomb explosions in the teeming cities of Lahore and Karachi abound, perhaps much similar to the image perception that bedeviled Colombo not so many years back.

Pakistan’s problems are certainly multifarious and the fear that many ordinary people speak of growing fundamentalism is very real. Internal and external political tensions range from former President Pervez Musharraf’s recent intemperate outbursts against the current political leaders to the white hot anger expressed even by moderate opinion makers in response to casualties of the war in neighbouring Afghanistan between NATO troops and the Taliban, including the recent killing of two Frontier Corps soldiers when NATO troops unlawfully shelled a border post after crossing over from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

Manifold problems facing the Pakistani people

Apologies issued by the United States military command and promises to effectively investigate the incident have not mollified tempers here. NATO oil tankers passing through Pakistan on their way to Afghanistan have been repeatedly attacked by bike riding militants and set ablaze, resulting in the deaths of civilians. The rise in religious fundamentalism has targeted ordinary people with a suicide bomb explosion at the tomb of a holy saint in Karachi being the most recent incident where many worshippers died.

In the border areas, the problems are far worse as symbolized by this month’s assassination of Dr Farooz Khan, a religious scholar and the Vice Chancellor of the Swat University who had been trying to put into practice, liberal ideals of academic freedom and in so doing, had angered fundamentalist opinion. The media itself has been targeted both by the militant as well as by sections of the government and prominent journalists have been abducted, beaten up and threatened. Media freedom in Pakistan remains on the watch list of countries where journalists are at risk, along for that matter, with Sri Lanka.

All this against the country’s history of militarization, the increased internationalization of border tensions linked as this is to the war in Afghanistan, precariously unstable internal political structures and rampant corruption are not optimistic pointers to the future. The sum total of this litany of woes, aggravated as it has been by the recent devastating floods in some parts of the country, would perhaps trump Sri Lanka’s difficult dilemmas of governance even at the height of the conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The position of the Bar then and now

Yet, despite all this the Pakistani people (most particularly, activists, the media and lawyers, to mention only some segments of society), exhibit qualities of resilience and courage that one cannot but admire. The part played by the Pakistani Bar in 2007 in toppling President Pervez Musharraf from power after he humiliated and degraded Chief Justice Ifthikar Chaudhry is a case in point. This spirit of legal activism continues.

This week, the single story dominating the national newspapers was the tussle that took place between members of the Lahore Bar and the Chief Justice of the province’s High Court whom the lawyers accused of supporting a judge who was ‘un-judicial-like’ in his behaviour. Undeterred by government annoyance, the lawyers went so far as to invade the chambers of the Chief Justice to protest. The protesting lawyers were thereafter attacked by the police resulting in widespread outrage.

The protests subsided only after the Chief Justice assured the Lahore Bar that their complaints would be taken heed of. While opinions may differ as to the extent to which legal professionals should take the law into their own hands when disgruntled, it is clear that the lawyers in this country have proved themselves to be a force that is significant to reckon with.

Right to Information and gender equity

At another level, national debates on the need for Pakistan to improve its Right to Information laws are vibrant. The 2002 Freedom of Information Ordinance together with other laws such as the Local Government Ordinance of 2001, the Balochistan Freedom of Information Act, 2005 and the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006 are argued to be inadequate. Announcements by government ministers recently that public servants should take care before issuing statements to the media provoked public annoyance as infringing the right to information and encouraging a culture of secrecy. In contrast, Sri Lanka has yet to even enact a most basic law relating to the right to information.

Civil rights activism in Pakistan remains high meanwhile, with bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission intervening vigorously in matters of national importance. Individual opinion makers are not chary of confronting the government or fundamentalists with tough language and specific denunciations. Significantly, despite the rise in religious fundamentalism which has targeted women in particular, taken together with historically barbaric practices such as ‘honour killings’ some of the region’s most striking voices pushing gender equity come from Pakistani women. A good portion of Pakistan's legislators are women. This is telling at a time when we are undergoing the cruellest birthpangs to provide for even the most nominal concessions for women to enter the political process.

Resilience and courage in facing unstable democracy

In the archaeological museum at Taxila within the district of Gandhara, Pakistan's historical ancient city and site of education from the 6th century BC, a statute of Athena, the Greek goddess of worship sits side by side with a statue of Ganesh. Both are flanked by rows of numerous beautifully preserved relicts of the Gautama Buddha, though the Grecian features of the Buddhist statues and the depicted style of dress may cause purists to grumble to themselves. Nonetheless this speaks eloquently indeed to a meeting point of the oriental religions and philosophies with the Grecian civilizations where the Greek generals who came with Alexander the Great (and described Taxila as the greatest of all cities in Asia), stayed back after he left the Punjab and associated themselves with the local cultures and traditions, resulting in oddities as incongruous as 'Dionysius, King of the Punjab.'

These historical sites in the Punjab reflect the successive rules of the Persians, the Bactrian Greeks, the Mauryans (including the great emperor Ashoka), the Scythians and the Parthians until the city was destroyed in the 5th century AD by invading Hun armies from central Asia. Taxila exemplifies the temporary nature of political power, political arrogance and dreams of great empire while standing testimony to the lasting and universal concepts of religious harmony and tolerance between disparate cultures and traditions.

Set against this most magnificent history, the vibrancy that the Pakistani people evidence in facing contemporary injustice and the inequalities of the society that they live in, despite the manifold problems that the country is facing, holds very potent lessons for Sri Lanka, a country with equally proud histories and cultures. We are at a point when we are looking down the long road to a democratic dictatorship very much akin to the travails that Pakistan itself has been undergoing for the past several decades. It is to the credit of the Pakistani people that they have not allowed their democratic spirit to be dampened despite these challenges.

Could the same be said of us now or in later years down this very same road that we tread?