The New Nation - Internet Edition

Upholding dignity of taxpayers

THE National Board of Revenue (NBR) is reportedly ready to give information about the income tax performance of the taxpayers to any government agency that might need such information for election purposes. According to the NBR, about seven lakh people out of more than 22 lakh Tax Identification Number (TIN) holders have submitted their income tax returns this year. A large number of the potential taxpayers have not yet paid income tax. Under the existing electoral law, income tax defaulters are not eligible for contesting election. The Election Commission may demand the relevant information and disqualify defaulters.

On demand from the Election Commission, NBR may have to provide necessary information about relevant taxpayers. But it should be done in a dignified manner so that the taxpayers are not lowered is esteem. Nicety of expression should be upheld. Voluntary taxpayers and tax evaders should not be mixed up. Cases of tax evasion should be dealt with in a lawful and transparent manner. Tax evasion is a social problem. It cannot be stopped in the same way ordinary crimes are dealt with. While following legal processes against evaders, personal dignity of the income tax payers should be upheld as far as possible. The danger of harsh treatment of the taxpayers is that it may scare them away and make them refrain from voluntary submission of income tax returns.

Taxpayers were once declared first class citizens of the country. As contributors to the state exchequer, they shoulder a great responsibility of the state and the society. They deserve to be treated with all humility. They should not only be honoured but also be protected. Decorum should be maintained while talking about and dealing with them.

Addressing the grim energy situation

ENERGY reporters at a seminar at the Jatiya Press Club the other day sought to sensitise the potential policy makers of the country to the very pressing need of increasing energy supply in the backdrop of energy starved conditions in the country. Civil society organisations are expected to continue to put pressure on the major political parties to be committed to addressing the very worse energy supply conditions. The leader of a major political party who was present in the seminar aired his party's plan to produce some 5,000 mw of power or 1,000 mw on an annual basis if they win the election.

Representatives of other political parties should also have come up with similar pledges. It is high time that the seriousness of the issue is reflected in the election manifestoes of the political parties. The apex chamber body in the country, FBCCI, at a recent seminar told the political parties that they should agree on some rules to be observed before the election to remain true to them after the election, such as agreeing to give up hartal, not to boycott parliament. The political parties should also be told that they must address the energy issue on a war footing.

The aim should be to imprint the message firmly in the minds of the top leadership of the parties that they should go to work to increase energy supply right from their first day in office-- if they go to power. If this is done, they would be under a greater compulsion to work more dedicatedly to address the energy problems. The economy faces a grim situation from the worsening problems of energy supply which must be improved.

Finding an escape from financial tsunami

Md. Masum Billah

G-20 nations comprising of United States, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain, Canada, European Union, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, South Africa and Turkey sat in an emergency summit like meeting in Washington National Building Museum when the world economy has been gripped by ' economic tsunami'. Spain and the Netherlands were also invited. This G-20 group was established in 1999 with the wealthy and emerging economic countries. Several important proposal were made and some decisions are underway. This 20- nation group represents eighty-five percent world economies. It issued a five page communiqué that pledged to take whatever further actions necessary to stabilize the financial system. The members vowed saying "We are determined to enhance our cooperation and work together to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world's financial system." The leaders tasked their finance ministers with drawing up by March 31 a list of financial institutions whose collapse would imperil global capitalism.

Leaders considered creating a 'college of supervisors' to oversee the world's biggest financial institutions. They also proposed that they would add a level of security to monitor excessive risk-taking by banks and other financial firms. College of supervisors would bring together international regulators to coordinate oversight of the world's 30 largest financial institutions. US, EU, Japan and major developing countries are now close to a deal to create an early warning system to detect weakness in global financial system before they reach epic proportion. . International Monetary Fund and Financial Stability Forum also said they would cooperate to provide an 'early warning system' in an effort to prevent new financial crisis. This can be termed as a great success of this summit.

US Congress approved an aid package worth 25 billion dollars in September to help the auto industry invest in new generation technology but no timetable was fixed for payments to be made. Since then problems have mounted on the global financial crisis that has savaged the economy with all three US majors- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler- clamoring for help in the same way as Washington has bailed out the US banks.

The 15 nations in the eurozone are gripped by recession, two quarters of a economic contraction. EU data revealed that eruozone economy shrunk 0 .2 percent in the second and third quarters. 27 -nation European Union as a whole contracted in the third quarter but avoided recession only because its economy had zero growth in the second.France narrowly avoided joining Germany and Britain in recession with 0.1 percent growth in the third quarter. Finance minister Christine Lagarade acknowledged that it had been an 'astonishing escape'. But even Hong Kong, the trading tiger, falls into recession. Its direct effect has hit the whole world economy.

More in line with the thinking of European leaders such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the G-20 members gave the March 31 deadline for concrete proposals on global regulation oversight and market transparency.

While Bush wants a limited tinkering with global financial rules and no new trade barriers, Sarkozy has declared that ' Laissze-faire capitalism is over' as banks crippled by toxic mortgage assets are forced to turn to government aid

Though president-elect Barack Obama did not present himself directly in the summit, on his behalf former secretary of state Madeline Albright and ex-Republican lawmaker Jim Leach held a flurry of contacts with G-20 delegations including with Britain, China, France, Italy and Japan. In the Democratic Party's weekly radio address Obama said the US economy was already in 'recession' and welcomed Bush's convening the summit because present global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response. And yet as we act in concert with other nations we must also act immediately with other nations here at home to address America's own economic crisis. Through Obama's support and appreciation the summit has achieved political importance as well. He also felt its necessity.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck commented the importance of the summit in this way"The window of opportunities for financial reform has never been as wide open as at present.". Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, "It was unlikely that the major economies of the world would consent to external control of their regulatory system." French president Nicholas Sarkozy said, "We want to change the rules of the game in the financial world. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken the lead in urging China and other big countries with big cOst stockpiles to finance the International Monetary Fund so that it can make more emerging loans. Japan announced it is prepared to lend up to $ 100 billion to the IMF to help emerging economies hit by the financial crisis. Deputy governor of China Central Bank Yi Gang said, "we will actively participate in rescue activities for the international financial crisis." Probably in exchange China is likely to want to hold more power at the IMF which is dominated by US and European Union. Again, the present milk scandal of China in the global business arena may cast a light through their participation.

Bush outlined to improve bank risk management practices, improve accounting rules for securities and harmonising accounting laws. Japan, US and other leading nations have agreed so that emerging economies such as China have a greater voice which China wants to volunteer.

The outgoing American president George W. Bush whose initiative actually convened the summit hoped "The world leaders have clear aim to lay the foundation for reform that will help prevent a similar crisis in future." But EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso commented on the success of the summit "We cannot expect a miracle from the summit but it's a beginning." Really it's a good beginning.

Asia, America can be partners

Tom Plate

Here's the problem: Serious intellectual narrowing can happen to even the brightest folk once nested down on the East Coast.

They become preoccupied (almost neurotically, almost provincially) with the problems of the past -- especially with the Middle East and Europe -- and lose sight of the new problems and opportunities of this 21st century. They become lost in the inner space of a 20th century time warp.

Yet, it is the near-unanimous opinion of everyone, that the big news of the current century is the whale-like emergence of the Asia-Pacific region as the new centre of global geopolitical gravity. People on the East Coast sometimes lose track of this, and thus it is our noble civic duty from this end of the U.S. to remind them what's what. After all, before too long, the presidential mind and body of Barack Obama will take leave from his friends in hometown Chicago to establish White House residence in the intensely provincial environment of Washington D.C.

Concerned West-Coasters everywhere need to remind him that "we stand on the western edge of the Pacific at the start of the Pacific Century," as Steve Sample has framed it. "Our view from here shifts the paradigm. There is no longer 'the Far East.' That is the Eurocentric view, now obsolete. Here it is "the Near West!" - made even nearer by the erosion of distances and borders through the communications revolution."

No one makes this case for Asia as the Near West better than Sample, who has been cogitating over the growing Pacific mega-phenomenon for more than a decade. Since 1991, Sample has been the president of the University of Southern California (USC). One of three internationally prominent universities in southern California, it shares limelight with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). All three are world-class institutions that have resisted the temptation to rest on their laurels.

This is particularly true of USC under Sample, who deserves credit not only for almost heroically raising USC out of past doldrums of intellectual mediocrity but also for taking up the task of expanding our cosmopolitanism. This prominent educator recently employed the civic pulpit of the World Affairs Council here in Los Angeles to lay out a speech on his theme that greater Los Angeles is nothing less than "the capital of the entire Pacific Rim."

Solid statistics and some wily interpretation made his case. The facts are, though, that the Los Angeles area has the largest population of people of Mexican descent than anywhere outside Mexico, the largest Korean population outside Seoul, the largest Filipino population outside Manila, the largest Japanese population outside Japan t you see where this is going: We have by far the largest Asian-American population in the United States. More than 120 different cultures, 96 cradle languages, 600 different religious groups, and hundreds of foreign-language radio and TV stations remind us hourly that in Kansas we are not.

Sample's contribution is to shout out the historic importance of the entire West Coast, even as he cannot help proclaiming southern California's leading role: "Greater L.A. t is an economic powerhouse. The county [L.A. county alone] is the world's 18th largest economy: larger than those of Sweden, Indonesia, Switzerland, Norway, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Greece, or Denmark." He scarcely had to remind anyone of the region's flamboyant film industry, but perhaps not many realised that Univision, the largest radio and TV company serving a growing Latino audience, plants its headquarters here. L.A. is also the American headquarters for many Asia-based banks and companies, including Toyota and Honda.

The careless listener might have mistaken the Sample speech as little more than some sort of boastful Chamber of Commerce pitch. But the USC chief was aiming for a broader audience and a higher star: The notion of Los Angeles (not to mention San Diego and San Francisco and Seattle and so on) as the major contemporary historical soul mate with the likes of Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, New Delhi and Dubai, the rising star on the very western edge of Asia and the eastern edge of the Middle East.

That deepening and lengthening family structure of economic and demographic alliances - and it is truly massive when strung together - means that to ignore the new "Far West" is to chop in half America's expanse of future possibility. Instead of viewing China as a potential enemy or Japan as inscrutable or India as impossible, the futurists among America's leaders will want to envision them as kindred spirits. How can they help us as we help them?

Surely it is the folly of Neanderthals and isolationists to resist reality. If the environmental crisis failed to heighten the sense that we are all in the global soup together, surely the emerging economic meltdown makes that point. Sample's vision, so sharpened from his eye-opening years here, should remind the incoming Obama administration of the West Coast as the main bridge that America has to the future. America may be one nation but it has two coasts; and they are rather different.

Dark continent's colourful fantasies after Obama

Bashir Goth

Obama's election as the 44th President of the United States has resounded throughout the African continent as it did in many other parts of the world.

It was a definitive moment in history, an incredible dream come true for millions of African Americans, a shattering of a psychological Bastille for white Americans and indeed a triumph for all humanity. It was also a day of recognition for tens of thousands of American biracial people like my son, an offspring of an African father and a white American mother.

Young people and families in different time zones around the world stayed awake all night as the election results started trickling from state to state. As my wife and I went to bed, we left our son glued to CNN and devotedly following up the results on his laptop, adorned with Obama's campaign wear. Briefing me on the results when I woke up Wednesday morning in Abu Dhabi, still Tuesday night in America, I could see how fired up he was. This is when I realised that this was something the world had never seen the like of it in living memory.

In Africa this was equal to the 1960s when the wind of change for freedom was blowing over the continent and Africans were breaking the chains of colonialism. Obama's victory was embraced throughout the world as a victory of character over colour as was dreamt by Martin Luther King, a victory of human equality over bigotry and a success story that could only be written in America.

After arriving at work, I received a call from my son telling me that Obama had won. Thinking about it I had to call him back immediately after I put down the phone in order to share the moment with him in the way it deserved and listen to his voice as he narrated the numbers and developments to me in heightened enthusiasm. Soon after I ended his call, I kept receiving messages from friends all over the world. An African Ambassador and a friend in Abu Dhabi couldn't hold back his emotions and pride. "Africa is at the top of the world," he told me.

My brother, a journalist, reached me from our hometown in Somaliland and told me how anxiously the people in Somaliland, that remote and neglected corner of Africa, awaited the results of the election. In Kenya, Obama father's homeland, the government declared a national holiday, and the feeling was equally ecstatic all over Africa.

My brain was working overtime as I tried to capture the importance of the moment. This is not the time to dig into history but in order to fathom the awe striking enormity of the moment one cannot escape to remember that America went through tumultuous times since the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibited slavery and through the Civil Rights movement in 1960s until Obama's election victory. The importance of the day and the emotional burden it carried is something that only an American can comprehend. However, as an African who as a young student was imbibed with Africa's post colonial nationalism, the literature of Negritude, the horrors of apartheid in South Africa and the last vestiges of colonialism in former Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola, I can understand why Africa should rejoice in Obama's victory. But as the last echoes of the event faded away, I asked myself why Africa should rejoice? Obama's victory is an American victory; a victory that was conceived and delivered in America. Why Africans had celebrated as if an African dream leader had been elected for the continent; as if the African people would wake up to a new dawn where all their suffering and hardships would disappear.

After a sober examination I realised that Africa's gloating over Obama's victory was nothing but an illusion and that Obama's story was impossible to achieve in Africa. African immigrants would be lucky if they get peace in another African country let alone aspire for a political post. Slavery is still practised in Africa where Africans enslave Africans in countries such as Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Sudan. The Rwandan Genocide is still going on in lesser degrees in Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda. In my country Somalia, the most homogenous country in Africa, where people belong to the same race, speak the same language and worship God in the same religion, a neighbour slaughters his neighbour on primitive clan supremacy while some Somalis still suffer from inhuman social and cultural segregation due to psychological prejudices. In Darfur, thousands of people are killed in cold blood simply because they have a slightly darker skin tone than their tormentors.

In South Africa, a country seen as the icon of democracy and freedom in Africa, the rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela, Africa's world statesman, African immigrants are lynched and their families burned alive in the country that all Africans had for decades prayed and sang for its freedom.

While Obama rose above the racial divide and symbolised hope for all Americans, Africa is immersed in an internecine fratricide and people have lost hope even in their prayers. Africa had its share of great men; men in whose shoes Obama can only dream to fill. Epoch making figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Ahmed Sékou Touré, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Jomo Kenyatta, Ahmed Ben Bella, Agostinho Neto, Amilcar Cabral, Nelson Mandela and others.