The New Nation - Internet Edition

Glory for the Olympics

THE curtain of the 29th Olympic Games has been raised at the Bird's Nest, the majestic national stadium in Beijing with the theme "One World, One Dream". This is the culmination of an intensive preparation for several years at a cost of over US$43 billion, which is almost three times the amount spent to host the previous games. More than ten thousand athlets from 204 countries from around the globe are displaying sports excellence in an atmosphere of peace and friendship. Eighty world leaders and 91,000 spectators witnessed the grand opening that depicted the glorious history of Chinese civilisation.

Olympic Games are the oldest and the greatest sports event held in the globe. The ancient Olympic Games began on 776 BC in Greece. This annal of the sports events lasted for 1170 years until they were banned in 393 AD. The history of modern Olympic Games began with revival of the games in 1896 to foster the ideal of a 'sound mind in a sound body'. Following the Greek tradition, they were held every four years except cancellation and boycott of some of them.

Sports, especially the Olympic Games, are human endeavours to achieve excellence in physical performances. They are sources of unmixed pleasure for all human beings. The victors bring glory to their nations without hurting others. The first event of Olympic Games was held on the occasion of an agreement signed between the Greek city-states of Elis and Pisa marking the end of wars and establishment of peace. But this spirit was, at times, tarnished by politics, boycott and wars. Olympic Games could not be held in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to world wars. The Beijing Olympics was also threatened but at last the games won.

The pending audit reports

ACCORDING to media reports, the interim government recently held talks with the World Bank to find an alternative way for clearing a huge backlog of audit reports in absence of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Some 800 audit reports prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General's Office, have been pending for review since the dissolution of the Jatiyo Sangsad about two years back in October 2006. The World Bank put forward a proposal for the constitution of a high-power advisory committee comprising independent members to inform the President as well as the next public accounts committee (PAC) of these issues.

The World Bank also informed that the ad hoc committee would not be a replacement for the PAC as it does not have the constitutional authority as the Members of Parliament have. The World Bank, as reported, feels that the advisory committee should immediately be formed 'to make recommendations' before the formation of new committee on completion of the parliamentary election, and the committee could also 'model certain best practices' for the next public accounts committee. A World Bank delegation during its recent visit discussed on how the government could benefit from the planned interim arrangement for reviewing audit findings and suggesting measures for quick disposal of audit objections.

The present government started discussion with the multilateral lending agency in late 2007 to put in place a process through such a committee which could track the work of the parliamentary committee and ensure proper action on recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. While underlining the importance of reviewing the audit reports, the World Bank team covered a number of areas. The importance ultimately lies effectively with the elected body like the parliamentary committee on public accounts.

Pakistani leaders and media should not mislead people

Dr. M. S. Haq

The recent agreement - between and among representatives of ruling political parties in Pakistan - on matters relating to impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf represents, among other things, an apparent shift in the priority and focus of concerned political parties in pertinent areas. As a result, the priority associated with the reinstatement of deposed judges has come down to priority number two from priority number one and the matter concerning impeachment of president has - as at today, 8th day of August 2008 - occupied the position of priority number one.

The people of Pakistan and the world at large (I mean, those concerned) are watching the development in Pakistan with for example an extra careful eye. Because it is taking place at the time: when hardships of Pakistanis and cases of say, in-country terrorism have increased manifold; when the country's vulnerability to nuclear insecurity is on the rise; when the soldiers are busy in fighting terrorism with a mixed success; when the poor performance of coalition government with regard to tackling local, national, international and other problems is being camouflaged - in varying degrees, though - by political rhetoric, blame games, long term promises, media (print, electronic, others) manipulations and by over protective, as well as emotional (used in a negative sense) stances in relevant areas; when major political parties and certain TV channels are busy in mobilizing public opinion in favor of President Musharraf's impeachment by, inter alia and as appropriate, hiding the truth, using arbitrarily and in an unauthorized manner their relevant versions and opinions as the versions and opinions of entire Pakistanis - interesting though, the total number of Pakistanis who actually cast their vote in the recent national assembly poll does not amount to even 46 percent of total registered voters. It implies inter alia an aggregate of the treasury bench, the opposition bench and the independent members at the federal parliament do not enjoy the mandate of majority of Pakistani voters - closely relating to it, is the fact PML-Q, the leader of opposition in the parliament, represents the second largest amount of popular vote in the parliament; and when political instabilities are taking toll on the country's comparative, competitive and other advantages in relevant areas - chances are there, the situation might deteriorate further at least through a period of time in the future if the impeachment materializes eventually or fails eventually or a mixture of both; to mention a few.

The development mentioned calls for inter alia the application of matured, free, fair, unbiased, calculative, cool-minded, informed and lawful approaches - by all Pakistanis, to whom it might concern, though - towards dealing with challenges and opportunities that might arise out of and in the course of impeachment.

In light of above, it has now become more incumbent than in the past upon the country's politicians, the coalition government, the opposition political parties, civil society, the media and others to assist people of Pakistan in taking the right decision at the right time and cost on matters for example: whether or not to impeach the president. It will not be out of place to mention here: the politicians and the media (print, electronic, other) should not mislead the people when it comes to matters such as and as appropriate:

1. Why did PM Nawaz Sharif and his government act in an unlawful and cowardly manner - when it comes to their attempt towards sending General Pervez Musharraf to exile when the general was returning to Pakistan via air? Why did PM Nawaz & Co not elect to follow the country's constitution and the rule of law to deal with the general on the ground - I mean on the soil of Pakistan? Why did Nawaz & Co force the brave, courageous and law-abiding armed forces of Pakistan to act on that fateful day? Thanks to Pakistan Army's timely and decisive role in dealing successfully with the situation in the greater interest of the country's rule of law and constitution. Congratulations!

2. Where were the moral, ethical, democratic, legal and constitutional stances of PML-N and other concerned political parties hiding when it comes to creating an enabling environment for General Musharraf's entry into the government against the backdrop of an illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic act committed by those parties? In light of above, concerned people of Pakistan should be assisted in the determination of matters such as: Who was the root cause of the subsequent military rule in Pakistan? Who should be charged in the first place by people of Pakistan?

3. The contributions made by President General Pervez Musharraf and his team during the crucial period of 9/11 deserve inter alia commendations from people of Pakistan and others. The president with the support of his team was able to transform Pakistan into an ally of the US at the time when Pakistan and perhaps not Afghanistan would have been the first target of US-led war on terror. It is expected people of Pakistan will not be misled by the propaganda of concerned political parties and certain sections of the media in pertinent areas.

4. The success stories regarding economic growth and developments in other areas of Pakistan during the 5-year term of PM Aziz and his team - under the overall leadership of President General Pervez Musharraf - is known to people and institutions (including inter alia the World Bank) at local, national, global and other levels - as appropriate. Likewise, matters pertaining to development related inadequacies during that period.

But sustaining the impressive gains achieved in pertinent areas during that period and the effort towards building upon those gains through the future period were constrained by limitations such as and as appropriate: the constitutional provisions pertaining to mobility (used in a wider sense) of care-taker government; the temporary nature of that government; the impact of internal disturbances - that witnessed inter alia the tragic death of PM Benezir (peace be upon her) - on the well-being of Pakistan; and unproductive and unnecessary speculations by concerned politicians, the media and others in relevant areas.

5. Factors responsible for the second PCO included inter alia: (i) the need for meeting challenges arising out of and in the course of excesses done by the country's superior judiciary with the help of certain judges under the leadership of the then Chief Judge Chaudhry - a Musharraf appointed PCO judge. A windfall from the development was threatening the basic edifice of government of Pakistan under a continually deteriorating law and order situation; (ii) the need for creating an enabling environment for a free and fair election in the country; (iii) the need for sustaining the benefits of NRO in the interest of say, peace and democracy in the country; and (iv) the need for protecting the country from an eminent danger of civil war, per se.

6. PCO and NRO beneficiaries (including inter alia the members of ruling coalition) should be subjected - as appropriate - to legal and other implications plus complications plus ramifications, in the event those instruments are challenged in the country's upcoming 'independent judiciary' for which (I mean the independent judiciary) PPP, PML-N (of lately), concerned lawyers and others have been reportedly fighting. I believe PM Nawaz, Senator Zardari, and others are ready to face - as applicable - those implications, complications and ramifications at least for the sake of sustaining and promoting the right justice at the right time and cost for all at all time. I believe Pak judiciary is now in dire need of examples of above nature.

The bottom line is: people of Pakistan and others cannot afford, among other things, to underestimate efforts and contributions of President Pervez Musharraf towards the well-being of Pakistan during peace times and in emergencies. He and his policies are, among other things, the cause, effect and causality of present day democratic status of Pakistan.

It is expected President Pervez Musharraf will fight his political case politically and his legal case legally provided that Pakistan could afford him political and legal assistance, as well as justice in pertinent areas.

President, his team and others (including inter alia friends of Pakistan) should also explore and exploit opportunities for the settlement of dispute in a timely, peaceful and result-oriented fashion and to the satisfaction of all concerned.

But if the situation of Pakistan demands - between now and in the immediate future - a declaration of the state emergency in the greater and overall interest of Pakistan and Pakistanis, the president should then act accordingly and refer the matter to Supreme Court of Pakistan for its action in accordance with the law of land. In such an event, it is also expected Armed Forces of Pakistan will again assist the president - as required - in relevant areas, again in the greater and overall interest of Pakistan and Pakistanis.

In the event of state emergency, it is hoped the president will declare new dates for elections in the country and make firm commitments to Pakistanis that he will submit to the people's will via those elections. One more thing, if the president feels he will not get the right justice from the people at the right time and cost in relevant areas, he might then elect to take a safe exit. Let justice prevail for all.

Beijing's Catch-22

Victor D. Cha

THE back-and-forth over Beijing's restrictions on Internet access for foreign journalists during the Olympics is just the latest in a series of complaints that China is not fulfilling its promises to the International Olympic Committee. These complaints only fuel critics of China's poor human rights record who deplore President George W. Bush's decision to attend the Games. This view is wrong-headed.

The president left Washington on Monday for a week-long trip to Asia, including four days in China beginning Friday, when he and other world leaders - including President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is also representing the European Union, and Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda - are scheduled to attend the opening ceremonies of the Games. Other world leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, have decided not to attend.

Boycotting the Games or the opening ceremony will achieve nothing but a symbolic snub of the Chinese. It amounts to a checkmark in the box labeled, "Have you done your share to protest the Olympics today?"

On the other hand, Bush's decision to attend the Games and to hold private meetings with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, gives him the opportunity to press the human rights case on Tibet, Burma and other issues, and could be infinitely more productive in working to produce changes in Chinese behaviour.

What often gets missed in all the noise about Beijing boycotts is the process of political change that is already being spurred on by the Olympics. Beijing's leaders have bitten off more than they can chew. They face an inescapable Catch-22 when it comes to their cherished Olympics: They seek the Olympic limelight to showcase China's greatness, but they must pay the price for that limelight in terms of intense pressures for political change. To ignore these pressures would embarrass China and spoil its coming out party.

And so China is changing. In Sudan, Hu stated in 2004 that Chinese aid to Khartoum is "free of political conditionality." His Trade Ministry official was more blunt: "We import from every oil source we can." But since then, Hu has pressed for Sudan's acceptance of a UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the country, and in March 2007, quietly removed Sudan from Beijing's preferred trade-status list, effectively taking away incentives for Chinese companies doing business in Sudan. In Burma, the Chinese quietly hardened their stance towards the military junta after the September 2007 crackdown against peaceful monk demonstrations. Beijing cut arms sales to the regime and played an instrumental role in getting UN representation on the ground.

The point here is not to sing China's praises. But Beijing did not step up on either issue until nongovernment organisations, entertainers, politicians and athletes linked Sudan and Burma to something the Chinese held very dear to their own prestige. Pre-Olympic pressures affected political change in a way that years of diplomacy could not. Moreover, pre-Olympic changes in Beijing's foreign policy will not melt away once the Olympic spotlight dims. This is because every positive adjustment by China is met with higher world expectations for Beijing to do more.

Complaints by journalists that Beijing is not meeting its commitment to allow for Press freedoms in the run-up to the Games are predictable. But with 20,000 journalists flowing into Beijing, restrictive news access in China will never again be enjoyed by the rulers in the same way.

Beijing's demands for Tibetan cooperation during the Olympics as a condition for continuing talks with the monks in Lhasa is typical Beijing parochialism. The start of these talks, however, sets a higher standard of dealing with the autonomous region's grievances that Beijing cannot simply walk away from after the Games. This is the slippery slope of change that Beijing has now embarked upon with these Games. Critics are right that Beijing has shown no flexibility on domestic human rights, but the last thing that these domestic dissidents want is for the world to skip the Games. On the contrary, they want the world to come to Beijing to witness their plight.

The Olympics is forcing one of the world's most rigid systems to change. The appointment of the Communist Party's rising star, Xi Jinping, as the Olympics "czar" this past spring was very un-Chinese. Widely acknowledged as the future leader of China, Xi will have to internalise all that is at stake for China in these Olympics and contend squarely with the Catch-22 of political change. China will be a different country after the Games - whether the Chinese Communist Party likes it or not.

(Victor D. Cha is director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Pacific Council for International Policy. He is author of "Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia.")

Israeli bullets, Palestinian boys

Ramzy Baroud

AHMAD Musa was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the West Bank village of Nilin, near Ramallah. Mohammed Bahloul is a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza City. The former was shot and killed on July 29, by Israeli forces, following a peaceful protest against the Israeli Wall. The latter is awaiting death in a dilapidated hospital in Gaza.

Reports on Ahmad's death vary. Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign's report said that the boy was "sitting under a tree with his friends when a military jeep drove up and the army shot him - a live bullet pierced his head. The boy died immediately."

Agence France Presse' report, a day following his death, confirmed the nature of the death, but said that the boy was killed during the demonstration. Nilin, one of the numerous villages losing land to the Israeli Wall - deemed illegal according to the International Court of Justice in 2004 - holds regular protests against the confiscation and destruction of the village's farms. It's part of a sustained non-violent campaign that brings together Israeli, Palestinian and international peace activists. "Musa tried to run away but his sandal slipped off after he stumbled over a part of the fence," according to one of Ahmed's friends.

The fact is, a young boy who should be home enjoying the company of his family and friends, or attending a summer camp is now dead. He is one of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers in recent years in a consistent pattern of deliberately targeting children.

Trying to make sense out of his tragedy, the father had this to say. "God gave me my son Ahmad, and he took him as a martyr."

Not an hour and a half drive away from Nilin, another 12-year-old, Mohammed Bahloul is suffering from kidney failure. He is hooked up to a pitiable looking dialysis machine in a Gaza hospital. Aljazeera.net reported on Mohammed's case. For three months, said his mother, Nadia, Mohammed received no medications and no vitamins to strengthen his sickly body. "There isn't one door I didn't knock on, hoping to find medicine for Mohammed," said Nadia. In a place similar in many respects to a concentration camp, where 1.5 million people are held under extremely inhumane conditions, Mohammed's case is hardly the exception.

Despite the ceasefire between the Hamas government in Gaza and Israel, which ensured that homemade Palestinian rockets are no longer fired at a southern Israeli town, there is no respite from poverty and siege in Gaza. UNRWA head of Gaza operations, John Ging, said that the situation is getting "worse and worse" for 1.2 million people in Gaza, who are aid-dependent. He promised that his office will do all it can to help "those poor people, as they continue to get poorer and poorer."

The extent of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has already passed many thresholds as poverty has rendered most Gazans dependent on food aid for survival. Hospitals are lacking equipment and medicine, and neither Israel nor Egypt allows Palestinians from Gaza suffering from life threatening illnesses to travel freely, and on a regular basis.

And now the water of Gaza is polluted beyond foreseeable remedy. The Christian Science Monitor reported, July 21 that only one-sixth of Gaza's daily sewage - estimated at up to 120 million liters a day - is fully treated. The massive amount of untreated sewage finds its way into the sea, and into the Strip's water supply. "If there is a stronger word than catastrophe, I would use that word," said Nader Al Khateeb, the Palestinian director of Friends of the Earth Middle East. The catastrophe is a "result of Gaza's dilapidated water and sewage infrastructure undermined by (Israeli) attacks and fuel blockades."

According to Monther Shoblak, the director of Gaza Emergency Waste Project - funded by the World Bank: Due to sewage seeping into the ground, the aquifer beneath Gaza, which provides water for drinking and washing, is now polluted with nitrate that only 10 per cent currently meets World Health Organization (WHO) standards for safety.

As a result, water related diseases in Gaza are rife.

Gaza is experiencing real devastation on so many levels that it is impossible to locate any positive health or economic indicators whatsoever. Mohammed's mother's search for medicine to save her son is not promising either, as her husband lost his job due to the siege, and there are other mouths to feed. Unemployment in Gaza is skyrocketing, and children are often forced out of school to help with poor families' meagre income. Selling tea in the street from giant teapots hauled by little children, often not old enough to enroll in school, is a growing profession.

While Palestinian villages in the West Bank are fighting eviction notices from their homes and lands to make space for Israel's projected 723 kilometer-long wall (454 miles), out of which 57 per cent is already complete, Palestinians in Gaza are fighting for mere survival. Their plight is dreadfully similar. Despite the fact that the West Bank and Gaza were divided by occupation and self-seeking and wealthy politicians, they are united by grief, and by common struggle.

Meanwhile, in a report, released on July 30, Human Rights Watch claimed that Hamas and Fatah have both carried out serious human rights abuses, including torture against members of the opposing group.

While Hamas is regularly derided for human rights violations reported in Gaza, which have been used to retrospectively justify the lethal siege, Mahmoud Abbas' party hardly receives any reprimand. The report "faulted the United States and other donors, which have bankrolled President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority and Fatah-dominated security agencies, for 'not paying adequate attention to the systematic abuses by those forces," reported Al-Bawaba in Jordan..