the filthy rich election

7/27/2019 The Filthy Rich Election

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The Filthy Rich ElectionTariq Ali

Not long before last months elections, dozens of workers (the youngest was 12) were burned to death in factory fires in Karachi and Lahore. Pakistans rulers wereunmoved: there were token expressions of regret but no talk of tough new laws beingpassed after the election. There is barely any safety regulation in Pakistan, and if any legislation does impede business a modest bribe usually solves the problem. Factory inspections were discontinued during the Musharraf regime in order, it was claimed,to protect industry from harassment by state inspectors. Ali Enterprises, the factory that burned down in Karachi, somehow passed an inspection by a New York-based body called Social Accountability International.

As for outright crimes, its best to use the cloak of religion to justify them. Thiseffectively paralyses the lower and middle echelons of the judiciary, the police andthe politicians. In March, Joseph Colony, a Christian settlement in Lahore, wasattacked by a Muslim group calling itself Lovers of the Prophet. The Lovers hadheard that one of the Christians had defiled the name of Muhammad. The accusation was false, but the person accused was arrested even so, and, even so, the Lovers andother zealots attacked the settlement, burning down 171 dwellings as the police and

other worthy citizens watched. As news of the disaster spread and the chief ministerof the Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, pretended nothing was going on, the chief justice of the Supreme Court criticised the police and the Punjab government for failing toprotect the public and noted that it hadnt learned the lesson of the even worseatrocity in the predominantly Christian town of Gojra in 2009, when eight Christians were burned alive, dozens were injured, houses were torched and a churchdestroyed. The chief justice asked why the report submitted by the judicial inquiry into that incident had not been published. There was no reply from the provincial

government. One reason for politicians complacency is that they know they have thesupport of the silent majority. A Pew Institute survey carried out in April reveals that84 per cent of Pakistanis favour the sharia as the only law of the land, slightly fewerthan in Iraq (91 per cent), more than Egypt (74 per cent) and seven times as high asin Turkey (12 per cent).


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The elected representatives of the people didnt pay much attention to the factory fires or to the anti-Christian riots. They were busy elsewhere. Take just one example:the shenanigans of the provincial assembly in Sindh where the Pak istan PeoplesParty, led by Benazir Bhuttos widower, Asif Zardari, is the single largest bloc. Theday before the assembly was due to be dissolved in advance of the general election,the provincial government ordered all the banks to stay open (it was a Saturday) sothat money could be withdrawn. Long-forgotten schemes were revived and a numberof dodgy deals hurriedly voted through the chamber. And as if to reward themselvesfor all this hard work, the assembly voted its members a 60 per cent salary rise backdated to July 2011, adding measures to make sure that anyone who wasnt re -elected kept his or her perks: free government accommodation with servants laid on, VIP treatment at airports, official passports and so on. Its a mystery why they dont just make the privileges hereditary. Needless to say, very few members of parliamentpay taxes and several outgoing cabinet ministers, including the prime minister, arerefusing to pay the electricity and telephone bills in their government residences. Itseasy to see why so many Pakistanis want to become members of one of the fiveparliamentary assemblies.

On 11 May, having been governed for five years by the PPP, the country voted toreplace the filthy rich Zardari and his gang with the filthy rich Sharif brothers andtheir gang. Many of the parliamentarians seem frightening and powerful figures back home: a land-grab or two here, a few abducted women, stolen property, some blackmail, violence or bullying. But in the National Assembly they are mediocrities,ignored by their patrons and barely able to understand a parliamentary bill drawnup by civil servants (whose own standards have dropped dramatically). Their mainconcern is to make as much money and get as much land as they can while theirparty is in power. The history of Zardari and the Sharif brothers has been sketched inthe LRB often enough. Is there anything new to say about this particular election?

The turnout was huge: 84 million people (55 per cent of the electorate) voted. ThePakistan Muslim League (N), the vehicle used by the Sharifs, won convincingly, withthe help of the distortions of the first-past-the- post system. It didnt get quite enoughseats to govern on its own, so a few so-called Independents promised their vote: they usually auction themselves to the highest bidder when no party is close to an overallmajority, but if its clear who the winner is they are less lucratively bound to go


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with the largest party, and it decides the price. The Sharifs want to bring into theirgovernment the JUI (Jamiat Ulema Islam), an outfit led by a roguish mullah calledMaulana Fazlur Rehman, better known as Maulana Diesel after the deal he cut withBenazir Bhutto giving him the diesel franchise in the Peshawar region in return for apromise of parliamentary support. Rehman accused Imran Khan and his party,Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaf, of being backed by Americans, Jews, Ahmadis, but if he wants backing to mount a coup against Khans PTI in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (the border province alongside Afghanistan where Khans party won a convincing victory)he might encounter some resistance. Nawaz Sharif, a cricket fanatic, is keen tomaintain good relations with Khan.

The PPP, long past its sell-by date even before Zardari took over, has been wiped outas a natio nal force. It was humiliated in the countrys largest province, Punjab, andnow has an effective presence only in its homebase of Sindh. The reason for itsdownfall isnt a mystery. For example, Zardari and his cronies wouldnt bother evento think up a story before demanding out of the blue that people sell their houses andland at a fraction of their value. At a gathering of party workers and leaders inLahore late last month, Zardari was attacked for having made two of his corruptfriends men who had absolutely no interest in the welfare of the country or itspeople prime minister. Naheed Khan, Benazir Bhuttos confidant and privatesecretary, who was sitting next to her when she was assassinated, was one of thecritics. Zardari loathes her (and vice versa) and she has remained silent on thesubject of Benazirs death largely out of an understandable fear of being bumped off. Will she now reveal all?

Khans PTI emerged as the second largest party in the country. The political tsunamithat he promised w ould sweep him to power didnt, however, materialise. Themajority of first-time voters plumped for the Sharifs, believing presumably that as businessmen themselves the brothers would act to end the power cuts that have

destroyed many small businesses and made the peoples lives a misery. The only policies so far touted are the immediate privatisation of steel mills, airlines, railwaysand power and the ending of food subsidies. Its true the state has disastrously failedto deliver, but the poor will suffe r. Nawaz Sharifs motorway has reduced the journey from Lahore to Islamabad by nearly two hours, but it is barely used. The bullet trains being proposed for the line from Karachi to Peshawar via Lahore would make a lot of


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local contractors and foreign companies very rich, as the new motorway did, buthardly anyone would be able to afford a ticket. To impose IMF-required austerity measures in a country like Pakistan would only deepen the class divide. Introducing VAT, for instance, would increase malnutrition and encourage more people to resortto barter or the black economy. And the notion that privatisation reduces corruptionis a joke.

Immediate reform is needed in the tax system. As elsewhere in the world, the rich barely pay any taxes since most of their income is hidden from view. A recent report by the Westminster Parliaments International Development Committee found thatonly 768,000 Pakistanis paid any income tax last year thats 0.57 per cent of thepopulation. In countries of a comparable level of development the figure is usually around 15 per cent. Unsurprisingly, 69 per cent of National Assembly members paidno tax in 2011. All this uncollected money could lay the foundations for the properstate education and health service that was the main demand of the PTI. (Perhapsthe IRS, armed with a few drones, could lend a hand with the tax collecting.)

Khan lost because people decided to give the Sharif brothers another chance tomodernise the country. The PTI had antagonised some of its supporters by doingdeals with bandwagon careerists who joined the party thinking they would be on the winning side. Others didnt like cosying up to the Jamaat -e-Islami, a moderate

Islamist party not unlike the Muslim Brotherhood. There was large-scale vote-rigging in Karachi, but thats always the case there since the MQM, the party thatruns the city, also runs protection rackets that ensure a steady flow of funds andparliamentary representation. On this occasion a recount led to the seat being won by the PTI, a vic tory that soured when one of the partys local leaders, Zahra ShahidHussain, a woman who had fought for good causes most of her adult life and hadcampaigned vigorously for a recount, was shot dead outside her house by men onmotorbikes, whose identities remain unknown. Was this ordered by the MQM or

carried out by a pair of executioners acting without authority? We dont know andthe MQM has denied responsibility. It always does.

If there is a difference between the defeated and the victors it is this: Zardari and hisgang enriched themselves and bullied and punished those who stood in their way;the Sharif brothers insist that they are no longer interested in the accumulation of personal capital. Nawazs longish sojourn in Saudi Arabia as a guest of the s tate


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the filthy rich election

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