NY Times: Iran Reacts to Pressure From America

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised on Sunday that Iran would deliver “an unforgettable response” to any “improper actions” from the United States over an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The ayatollah appeared to be responding to an American campaign to further isolate and pressure Iran, an effort that received a push on Sunday with reports that President Obama is pressing United Nations nuclear inspectors to release classified data showing that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

The United States accused Iranian officials last week of plotting to murder the ambassador in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. Two men — the Iranian-American,Mansour J. Arbabsiar, and an officer in the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — have been charged in the plot.

Iran’s leaders have called the case a fabrication meant to distract Americans from their own problems, and The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iranian state TV had said that Iran’s Foreign Ministry requested consular access to Mr. Arbabsiar.

Norbert Bärlocher, a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in Washington, said the embassy had no knowledge of whether the Iranians had passed such a request to the Swiss government. He said, “We represent the U.S. in Iran, but we do not represent Iran in the U.S.”

Asked if she knew of any request to see Mr. Arbabsiar, his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said, “I have no such knowledge.”

The supreme leader’s comments on Sunday were his strongest yet about the case.

“If any American officials entertain delusions, they should know that any improper action, whether political or security related, will meet a decisive response from the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, while speaking to university professors and students in Kermanshah Province in western Iran.

The ayatollah said that the United States was using the accusations to divert attention from its financial problems, suggesting that the protests over economic injustice sweeping the globe were an embarrassment to Washington. He said that “the people of at least 80 nations have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and this is very bitter and difficult for American officials to accept.”

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also weighed in on Sunday, saying the alleged plot is just another of Washington’s “scenarios.” The semiofficial Press TV reported Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying that the United States makes “daily efforts to conceive scenarios against Iran. And, in this instance, it accused Iran of terrorism, but it should be clarified for the Americans that terror is the work of those that have no culture.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, according to Mehr News and IRNA, semiofficial news agencies, also issued a veiled threat to Mr. Ahmadinejad not to overstep his boundaries, addressing a power struggle between the two that has been going on most of this year. The ayatollah said, “Changing Iran into a parliamentary system from a presidential system” someday would not be a problem.

The news agencies focused on this comment. The implication, analysts said, was that Ayatollah Khamenei, the nation’s ultimate authority, was warning Mr. Ahmadinejad that he could abolish the presidency in the future.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/world/middleeast/iran-warns-america-against-trying-to-pressure-it.html?_r=1&src=tp

The Economist: Post-revolutionary Tunisia – Moving Ahead

Frustration and uncertainty persist, but the country is heading the right way

 

COMPARED with the other upheavals across the Arab world this year, Tunisia’s is still the runaway winner. Since the country’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, with his greedy wife, Leila Trabelsi, flew off into a Saudi twilight on January 14th after a nationwide uprising that lasted barely a month, there have been political hiccups, sit-ins, strikes and riots, especially in the fly-blown towns of the interior, and several new governments. But under Beji Caid Sebsi, an avuncular 84-year-old who first served in a cabinet in the 1960s and took over as prime minister on February 27th, Tunisia has calmed down. “People think things are going better than they thought they would the day after the revolution,” says a diplomat.

The postponement until October 23rd of an election to a constituent assembly originally scheduled for July 24th was widely accepted with good grace after the independent electoral commission said it could not prepare properly in time. The country has a clear path ahead. The assembly, once elected, is expected to draw up a constitution within a year, perhaps even sooner, paving the way for a full-blown election. Tunisia is in with a good chance of having a decent democracy and a perky economy by the end of next year.

Its transitional government has a clutch of competent technocrats in key positions, several of whom worked abroad for many years in Western banks but were lured back by the call of patriotism. “Tunisia could be an amazing place,” says Jalloul Ayed, the finance minister, a former Citibank man and composer of classical symphonies. “We have a bright, highly educated population. We’re close to Europe’s markets. We have the right to dream of Tunisia as the Singapore of the Mediterranean. We could achieve it in five to seven years—with a few adjustments.”

The constituent assembly will comprise a range of secular and Islamist parties. More than 90 have registered. In a system of proportional representation in large constituencies, fewer than ten of them will probably get seats. The new constitution is likely to be both presidential and parliamentary, perhaps resembling the model of France, with which Tunisia still has many links. “But we don’t want it to be presidentialist,” says Rafaa Ben Achour, a minister of state and constitutional lawyer, stressing the last syllable.

Virtually every opinion poll puts Nahda, the main Islamist party, in the lead. It wins kudos for its courage and apparent incorruptibility under Mr Ben Ali, who imprisoned many of its leaders (and at one time a good 5,000 of the rank and file), some of them for 20 years. But no poll suggests that Nahda would come close to getting an outright majority. A recent one gave it 14%; its main rival, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), in the secular centre, got 5%. More than two-thirds of Tunisians said they had not made up their minds. Few people, even the Islamists, predict that it will get more than 25%.

The big question is whether Nahda, led by a dignified 70-year-old, Rashid Ghannouchi, who returned this year after more than 20 years in exile, mostly in London, will emerge as the most potent single political force—and whether secular Tunisians, whose various parties together could easily form a majority, would allow it to wield a dominant influence, let alone untrammelled power.

Mr Ghannouchi (no relation of Muhammad Ghannouchi, the short-term prime minister after Mr Ben Ali’s fall) has bent over backwards to present Nahda as moderate and tolerant. His colleagues promise to abide by the rules of democracy, insist on women’s rights, and say they will not impose sharia law, ban alcohol or deter skimpily clad tourists from the West. Like Islamists across the Arab world who have refashioned themselves under new freedoms, Nahda says it looks to Turkey’s mild-mannered ruling Islamists.

But many of the three-quarters or so of Tunisians who do not consider themselves Islamist mistrust Nahda, many of them deeply. Again and again, secular-minded Tunisians accuse it of speaking in different tongues to different people. “They do not understand democracy or freedom,” says Mustapha Mezghani, a businessman who has set up a liberal party. “The least one can say is that they are ambiguous,” says Maya Jribi, the PDP’s co-leader, while deploring Nahda’s tendency, as she puts it, to “use the mosque for sending its political message”.

One movement, calling itself the Modernist Democratic Pole, including the former communist party, Tajdid, is trying to band all secular groups together to ensure that Nahda is kept out of power. Yet most Tunisians also seem aware that excluding Nahda from power could be more destabilising for the country than letting it in, perhaps even as a partner in coalition, at least during a jittery period of transition.

In any event, Tunisia needs a financial helping hand for the next year or so. In late May the G8 group of rich countries promised $20 billion to Tunisia and Egypt in loans and grants over the next three years, of which several billion is to go to Tunisia—the first tranche, according to the finance minister, within a few weeks. It is sorely needed. Economic growth, which was nearly 4% last year, will fall this year to less than 1%. Tourism, which accounted for 7% of GDP, has collapsed. Youth unemployment is around 23%, according to the labour minister. The minimum industrial wage for a 48-hour week is around $50. Of the 700,000 officially reckoned to be jobless in a population of 10.6m, some 170,000 are graduates—the angriest part of a populace enraged by the inequities and corruption that helped spark the revolution against Mr Ben Ali.

The mood in the harsh interior, where the revolution began, is impatient. In Kasserine, a town 300km (180 miles) south-west of Tunis, protesters call for the provincial governor, a military man, to go. Barbed wire surrounds banks and state-owned offices, with armoured cars outside. Civic leaders say that 40% of the townsfolk are unemployed. Last week two prisoners died in the third jail riot since January.

“If there is another social explosion, democracy will be stymied,” says Ms Jribi. Almost everyone in Tunis agrees, often adding that it is also vital that Libya, by far its closest neighbour, also comes right, with Muammar Qaddafi removed. “We consider the Libyan people an extension of the Tunisian people,” says the finance minister. If Libya is set free and Tunisia’s own electoral course goes according to plan, with the angry young men in such towns as Kasserine persuaded to hold their breath, the country could indeed become a beacon for the rest of the Arab world.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/18958251

Tunisians to vote in historic post-revolution polls

TUNIS: Tunisia, which launched the “Arab Spring” when its outraged citizens ousted a seemingly entrenched dictator in January, again takes the lead with a historic vote Sunday for the drafters of a new constitution.

“It is a historic turning point. Tunisians do not have the right to make mistakes, the world is watching this first test on the road to democracy,” a European diplomat said, amid an election campaign dotted with violent outbursts, some by Islamists.

Ten months ago, Tunisian fruitseller Mohamed Bouazizi from Sidi Bouzid, a neglected town in the west of the country, set himself on fire to protest abuses under the 23-year-old regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

He died days later, but Bouazizi’s action sparked Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and region-wide revolts that have toppled leaders in Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli, and still threaten others.

Ben Ali, once backed by the West for his supposed role as a rampart against Islamisation, fled to Saudi Arabia a month into the leaderless uprising by Tunisians driven to the streets by social injustice, poverty and corruption.

Now, after a short transition period marked by protest against the pace of change and sporadic fits of violence, Tunisians will on Sunday have a chance to take charge of their destiny in the Arab world’s first post-revolution vote.

Despite the high stakes, however, voter interest is low in a complex electoral landscape: some 7.3 million potential balloters will elect 217 members of an assembly that will write the country’s new founding law, from more than 10,000 candidates.

Voters in the country of about 12 million people are faced with over 1,400 candidates lists: 787 belonging to political parties, 583 to independent candidates and 50 to party coalitions.

Most of the groupings propagate similar slogans of liberty, democracy and social justice. Half the candidates are women.

The new constitution will be the country’s third after those of 1861 and 1959, and will map out a new path by determining the type of government to take over a hitherto staunchly secular state.

The assembly will also choose an interim president who will appoint a prime minister and a government for the duration of the constitution drafting process leading up to new national elections.

Sunday’s polls will be run by the ISIE, an independent poll body based in the interior ministry that is widely blamed for ballot stuffing since Tunisian independence in 1956.

While the Islamic Ennahda (Renaisssance) party is polled to take the biggest block of votes in the Muslim majority country, the election system has been designed to include as many parties as possible in the constitution drafting process, to the benefit of smaller groups with fewer resources.

The votes cast in 33 constituencies will determine the number of seats allotted to each party. If votes are left over that are insufficient to give a party a full seat, these will be carried over to the next biggest party.

Ennahda, which had been banned under Ben Ali, has run a campaign vowing to build a democracy based on Islamic values, which it has said would include protecting women.

The party has denied involvement in an attack Friday night by Salafist conservatives on a television director’s house after the broadcast of a film deemed offensive to Muslims, while at the same time denouncing the “provocation”.

With more than 100 registered political parties, a handful stand out as strong contenders.

The Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), whose leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, was a vehement Ben Ali critic, has positioned itself as the main alternative to Ennahda and is polled as the second biggest party.

On the left of the political spectrum, the Ettajid former communist party gathers five smaller groupings opposed to Islamisation of the state, while the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (POCT) led by Hamma Hammami, is one of the few parties to have put a woman at the head of an electoral list.

There are about 40 small parties seen as heirs to Ben Ali’s now dissolved Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD), which still has many bureaucrats in the system.

The large number of independent candidates in the poll has been interpreted by analysts as a sign of distrust in political parties like Ennahda, suspected by many of wanting to pick the fruits of a revolution they were not part of.

Opinion polls have suggested that a majority of Tunisians had no idea who they would vote for.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/tunisians-to-vote-in-historic-post-revolution-polls.html

Fasih Bokhari takes over as NAB chief

ISLAMABAD: Former chief of Pakistan Navy, Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari, was formally notified as chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Sunday despite objections raised by the opposition PML-N that the legal process required by the Constitution had not been followed in his nomination for the post.

The new chairman assumed charge of his office late in the night, sources told this correspondent.

With the appointment of Admiral Bokhari to the post which had been lying vacant since the removal of Justice (retd) Deedar Hussain Shah in March this year, the premier accountability organisation of the country became functional again after three months of inaction.

A notification of the law ministry signed by the president said: “The president of Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been pleased to appoint Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari as Chairman National Accountability Bureau in terms of section 6(b) of National Accountability Ordinance 1999, with immediate effect.”

But the PML-N rejected the decision and indicated that it might challenge the appointment in the Supreme Court.

“We believe that the government has taken the decision in haste as President Zardari did not give a satisfactory reply to a letter written by the Leader of Opposition, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, after thorough consultations with opposition party’s legal team,” said PML-N spokesman Mushahidullah.

The notification was issued after former law minister Babar Awan had met President Asif Zardari, the sources said.

Mr Bokhari is the fifth NAB chairman belonging to the armed forces. Earlier, NAB chiefs from the military were Lt-Gen Amjad Hussain, Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool, Lt-Gen Munir Hafiez and Lt-Gen (retd) Shahid Aziz.

The two civilian heads of the bureau are Navaid Ahsan and Justice (retd) Deedar Hussain Shah.

Under the NAB Ordinance, the government is required to hold consultation with the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly for the appointment.

President Zardari had sent a letter to Chaudhry Nisar on Oct 9 seeking his consent for the appointment. Chaudhry Nisar replied on Friday, raising objections to the appointment on technical grounds.

He asked the government to prepare a list of possible candidates for the office of NAB chairman and hold ‘meaningful’ consultations with the opposition.

“Mr President, if the objective of the entire exercise is to select a nominee with impeccable reputation, integrity and credibility and unquestionable impartiality, there is no reason whatsoever for hesitation on the part of the government to engage with the opposition in a thorough, concrete and meaningful consultation.”

When contacted, President’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the president had appointed Admiral (retd) Bokhari as NAB chairman on the advice of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Responding to a question about the opposition’s response, he said: “President Zardari, in his reply to the Leader of Opposition, had addressed all objections raised by Chaudhry Nisar and now the issuance of notification was a mere formality.”

President Zardari in his reply to the Leader of Opposition on Saturday said: “The sense of various judgments of superior courts is that the consultation shall be meaningful and for this purpose there is no necessity of sending a panel of nominees.

“Therefore, meaningful consultation can be done even on a single person and for that purpose you are taken on board quite candidly. Sending of a panel for consultation does not have any legal cover as well, there being no legal requirement as such. I have consulted the Leader of the House in the National Assembly on the subject who has concurred to the proposal.”

Admiral Bokhari is a retired four-star naval officer who served as Chief of Naval Staff from 1997 to 1999.

Admiral Bokhari is a graduate from the French Naval War College and served on several high posts during his tenure at the Pakistan Navy.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/fasih-bokhari-takes-over-as-nab-chief.html

Afghan provincial intel chief targeted in bombing

KABUL: A suicide bomber attacked a car carrying a provincial head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Monday, wounding the spy and killing a child in the north of the country, police said.

The bomber detonated next to a car in which the National Directorate of Security (NDS) official was travelling at 8:20am in Maymanah in Faryab province, Lal Mohammad, police spokesman for the northern region, told AFP.

“The chief of NDS was going to his office when the attacker, a person wearing a suicide vest, detonated near his car.

“One child is killed and six other people, including the provincial chief of NDS, are injured,” said Mohammad.

Mohammad had said initially that a “number of civilians” were killed.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/afghan-provincial-intel-chief-targeted-in-bombing.html

Bolivians rebuke Morales in judicial ballot

LA PAZ: Most Bolivians who voted in Sunday’s election to choose the country’s top judges cast invalid ballots in what would be a stinging rebuke for President Evo Morales, according to unofficial partial results.

If the results hold, it would the first defeat at the polls for the leftist coca-grower’s union leader of his nearly six-year presidency.

Official results were not expected for at least five days in the vote for 56 judgeships on Bolivia’s top four tribunals, including its supreme and constitutional courts.

But an unofficial count by the Ipsos, Opinion y Mercado polling firm found 61 percent of voters cast ballots that were either null or blank. It said its count was based on 75 percent of the vote.

A sober-looking Morales declared himself ”very pleased with the public’s participation” in brief words to the news media. He asserted that ”those who called the boycott have failed.”

Opposition leaders had called on voters to cast invalid ballots to protest what they considered a power grab.

They contended that the election would erode the independence of the judiciary and strengthen Morales because the 114 candidates were chosen by a Congress dominated by his governing MAS movement.

A leading opposition politician, Samuel Doria Medina, said the results proved the election was ”illegitimate.” He called for starting the judicial selection process from scratch.

Under electoral rules, only a majority of valid votes are needed to fill each judicial post.

Prior to a new constitution championed by Morales and approved by voters, the legislature chose judges for the top courts.

The opposition accuses Morales of using the judiciary to persecute adversaries. Several opposition leaders are in exile after being accused of sedition. Morales comfortably won re-election in December 2009 but his popularity has plummeted in the past year over policy decisions that angered many Bolivians.

First, Morales declared just after Christmas that he was ending subsidies on gasoline; he reversed himself after major protests.

Then he insisted on a highway through a lowlands indigenous preserve, and drew further public outrage when police last month attacked Indians marching against it.

Morales has indicated he wants to run for a third term in 2014.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/bolivians-rebuke-morales-in-judicial-ballot.html

‘Islam and democracy are not contradictory’

Older News

TUNIS: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the case for “Islam and democracy” on Thursday in Tunisia, where moderate Islamists modelled on his own party are tipped to win landmark October polls.

On a visit to the country where the “Arab Spring” began, Erdogan also produced the kind of trademark warning to Israel that has earned him hero status across the region. “Islam and democracy are not contradictory. A Muslim can run a state very successfully,” said the 57-year-old after a meeting with his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi.

“The success of the electoral process in Tunisia will show the world that democracy and Islam can go together,” he added.

After ousting Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, one of the world’s most entrenched dictators, Tunisians are due to pick a constituent assembly in October 23 elections pollsters predict will be won by the Ennahda (Renaissance) party.

Rached Ghannouchi’s party is a moderate Islamist movement which was fiercely repressed under Ben Ali’s 23-year rule and claims inspiration from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party.

Secular Tunisians and intellectuals have expressed fears that an Ennahda election victory could set back religious freedom and women’s rights, despite Ghannouchi’s assurances. “Turkey is 99 percent Muslim yet it is a democratic secular state where all religions are equal,” Erdogan said. “A Muslim, a Christian and a Jew are equal in a secular state.” Analyst Faycal Cherif argued that Erdogan’s thinly-veiled support for Ghannouchi, whom he was due to meet later Thursday, was a huge boost for Ennahda.

“Turkey is a heavyweight. It cannot be completely innocent for Erdogan to visit Tunisia with elections just a month away. He is sending a reassuring message to public opinion: do not fear Ennahda,” Cherif said.

Ankara was one of the first powers to support the protest movement by Tunisian youths demanding jobs and regime change and Turkey’s foreign minister was among the first top officials to visit after Ben Ali’s January ouster.

Among the constituent assembly’s tasks will be the drafting of a new constitution for Tunisia, where the outcome of the revolution is being closely scrutinised by other Arab countries and the rest of the world.

After the rapturous welcome he received on the first leg of his “Arab Spring tour” in Cairo confirmed his rising regional status, Erdogan took yet another swipe at Israel when he spoke after his meeting with Essebsi.

“Israel will no longer be able to do what it wants in the Mediterranean and you’ll be seeing Turkish warships in this sea,” Erdogan said.

He reiterated his insistence on an Israeli apology for last year’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead, all of them Turks or of Turkish origin.

Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=67837&Cat=1

No small matter By Hajrah Mumtaz

MOST people would, at least initially, tend to shrug the matter away. Concerns about people’s ability to question the great and the good in government?

People’s ‘right’ to gain access to information about what public entities and departments are doing? Dream on, they’d say.

Let’s start with the right to food, water and a generally decent life; let’s start with some human rights.

Thought about just a little more deeply, though, the fallaciousness of this line of reasoning becomes clear. Why don’t a lot of people have access to food or potable water, for example? In general terms, because of mismanagement, the lack of planning and — here one can hear lots of voices piping up — that scourge of Pakistan, corruption. Most will get this far and start calling
for accountability. Fewer, though, will pause and think about what accountability means.

In the very first instance, someone who does something for which they ought to be held accountable later is a person who does not expect to be found out. In other words, certain knowledge that information can be withheld can allow dishonesty of purpose. Veils of secrecy make shady deals and wheels within wheels, or just plain inefficiency or even laziness, much more likely. The ability to keep information from getting out is the first box to tick on the list of any potential fraudster; the first crutch of those guilty of the dereliction of duty.

‘Knowledge is power’ is just about the oldest aphorism in the book. And a people with access to knowledge about those that rule over their lives and country — knowledge about how that task is accomplished — are very powerful indeed. So it is that access to information has always been at the heart of the tussle between bureaucracies the world over and the people: the latter want it, the former doesn’t want to cough it up because unsavoury secrets may come to light; accountability may occur.

Realising the role that access to information plays in fostering improved and more honest governance, many countries have enacted legislation making public access to certain sorts of information mandatory — the ‘transparency’, in short, that every Pakistani craves.

Technically, Pakistanis too have the right to freely access information. In fact, we were the first South Asian country to come up with a law in this regard, the Freedom of Information Ordinance 1997 which was later fine-tuned by the Musharraf government into the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.

However, many have argued that although this did, at least technically, give Pakistanis the legal tool to demand information from governmental bodies, it remains merely that: a technicality. In practice, the legislation is riddled with clauses that allow secrets to remains under wraps.

Its detractors — and there are a great many of them (the few proponents seemingly comprising stakeholders in secrecy in the bureaucracy itself) — say that exemptions and procedures given to governmental departments under the 2002 ordinance
are such that they render it virtually and practically ineffective.

There are other points of criticism as well, such as that it deals with only federal ministries and divisions (although two provinces subsequently passed their own legislation, i.e. the Balochistan Freedom of Information Act 2005 and the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006). Other criticisms are that the 2002 ordinance’s implementing mechanisms — means through which reluctant bureaucracies can be prodded into actually producing the information demanded — are such that they invite evasiveness, and that there is no protection for whistleblowers.

The civil bureaucracy wields considerable power anywhere in the world; it is a machine that runs under its own weight and is notoriously averse to letting any information out. Political circles everywhere seek to control it; as permanent secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby smirked during an episode of Yes, Minister, “ministers come and go, but I go on forever”. Transparency, one route to which is the right to information, is important in this regard. Pakistan has not been lacking in those demanding better legislation on people’s right to information, though one could wish there were a few more voices. Amongst them are a number of activists and reformers, some of whom have argued for this cause on these pages.

Amongst politicians, a staunch proponent has been former information and broadcasting minister Sherry Rehman. Last week, she submitted a draft of her Right to Information Bill before the National Assembly, a project she initiated in 2004 with the submission of an initial draft that called for deep-reaching amendments to the 2002 ordinance. Updated versions of the bill were also submitted for review in 2006 and 2008.

The 2011 Right to Information Bill seeks a repeal of the 2002 legislation and tries to close some of the gaps. There are more stringent implementing mechanism clauses, whistleblower-protection clauses and most interestingly, a clause that seeks to bring large private companies within the ambit of the law if and when it is approved.

If the new proposals do become law, they are likely to have at least some positive effect. Sporadic articles published in various newspapers over the years have documented individuals’ (failed) efforts, under the 2002 ordinance, to obtain information from various departments. In most cases, these people cited the loopholes in the legislation itself that allowed bureaucracies to retain their secrets.

On March 29, 2008 — soon after receiving a unanimous vote of confidence in parliament, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani set out his administration’s 100-day priorities.

Amongst those that remain unfulfilled well past the 100-day deadline is a new freedom of information law. And the 18th Amendment inserted Article 19(A) into the constitution, which explicitly recognises that every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance (subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law).

It’s about time these promises were fulfilled.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/no-small-matter.html

Corporate fraud: Every good boy deserves fudged profits

JIALAN WANG has a fascinating post up (via Kevin Drum, via Tyler Cowen) on apparent telltale mathematical evidence that corporate accounting fraud is a gradual upward trend over the past 30 years. The great thing is, she seems to have compiled this evidence in a few hours, by accessing Compustat, plugging all the financial data from 20,000 corporations into her model, and analysing the results. I am in awe of people who can do things like this, in something like the way I am in awe of people who can slam-dunk a basketball. Her analysis relies on Benford's Law, which establishes probabilistic relationships between the frequency with which the nine natural numbers occur as the first digit in measurements of natural phenomena. (The number 1 occurs most frequently, the number 9 least frequently.)

Benford's law has been used in legal cases to detect corporate fraud, because deviations from the law can indicate that a company's books have been manipulated. Naturally, I was keen to see whether it applies to the large public firms that we commonly study in finance...

So according to Benford's law, accounting statements are getting less and less representative of what's really going on inside of companies. The major reform that was passed after Enron and other major accounting standards barely made a dent.

Next, I looked at Benford's law for three industries: finance, information technology, and manufacturing. The finance industry showed a huge surge in the deviation from Benford's from 1981-82, coincident with two major deregulatory acts that sparked the beginnings of that other big mortgage debacle, the Savings and Loan Crisis. The deviation from Benford's in the finance industry reached a peak in 1988 and then decreased starting in 1993 at the tail end of the S&L fraud wave, not matching its 1988 level until...2008.

So that's nice to know. Now, here's what I'm interested in: when I was living in Vietnam, everybody knew that major companies, especially public ones, kept at least two sets of books, a secret one full of real numbers so the people who ran the company would know what was going on, and a public one full of pleasant fantasies for the foreign chumps who wanted to buy the stock. (It's the next China! Get in now!) My question is, do American companies do this too? Do they generally have a separate set of numbers somewhere that shows their own executives what's really going on? Is there a Benford's Law-conformant ledger of raw accurate information somewhere deep inside their servers that can generate top-secret reports for company officers, so they can be conscious of the company's actual mediocre performance? Or do they force their own executives to use the same, possibly deluded, investor-friendly numbers they present in the quarterly filings? Are the executives drinking the Compustat Kool-Aid? It wouldn't surprise me if, in America, with our superior commitment to openness and transparency, people had generally learned that the only way to lie successfully is to actually convince yourself of the falsehoods you're peddling. But I wonder. Anybody have any insight on this?

Update: Free exchange had it before we did.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/10/corporate-fraud?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/everygoodboydeserves

The Egyptian military's 'pseudo coup' By Juliette Kayyem: Global Public Square

Last Spring, when the world was heralding the events in Egypt, many of us speculated about whether the Egyptian Army's steady hand would mark the beginnings of a pseudo-coup. I never liked the idea that America's interest in supporting the revolutionaries in the street could be so easily placated by the vaguely described Egyptian Army or military.

Now I am troubled by increasing evidence that the military is simply not sticking to its word - delaying timelines and the transition of power. That, coupled with increasing violence, only suggests that Egypt's Arab Spring experience will be much more complicated - more in line with nations like Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.  Maybe Egypt is just on a slower timeline towards unease. While we were busy giving awards to Egyptian freedom advocates - or focused on the plight of our former ally Hosni Mubarak - we may have missed a coup.

But that storyline did not fit with the media enthusiasm. It also was not consistent with America's financial and professional support of the Egyptian military. The storyline does, however, seem to be closer to the truth than we could have ever imagined.

Now, maybe the U.S. can use its considerable financial support of the Egyptian Army to force change - but that will be difficult absent cutting the bank account.

This all means may need a new name for what is going on in Egypt. Is this the first "slow-roll coup" of the 21st Century? The coup that shall not be named? The pseudo-coup?

Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/16/the-egyptian-militarys-pseudo-coup/

Honoured for what? By Huma Yusuf

I HAD barely been at university for two weeks when the buzz began: Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa, was coming to campus to receive an honorary degree.

It was the third time in the institution’s 362-year history that a special convocation would be held to bestow such an award: the previous recipients were George Washington and Winston Churchill. It was history in the making.

The convocation ranks as one of the most memorable days of my life: over 25,000 people gathered in my university yard to hear Mandela speak, and see him receive the distinct honour. It also offered one of the most important lessons of my university years: that the best learning does not necessarily happen in the classroom.

For a freshman, attending the historic recognition of Mandela’s struggles against apartheid was an exercise in humility. I believed until then that a good degree was a ticket to success; his example demonstrated that it would take much more than just graduating to make a real difference.

Since Interior Minister Rehman Malik received an honorary degree from the University of Karachi, and that too in a special
ceremony at the Governor House, the memory of Mandela’s convocation has recurred to me many times. In retrospect, what strikes me most about that event is that before Mandela took the podium, the president of the university delivered a speech explaining why Mandela was receiving an honorary degree.

The speech listed all of Mandela’s achievements, from his early years as a student activist to his time in prison and his gains as South Africa’s first black president. None in that crowd of thousands would have disputed that Mandela deserved the degree, and yet the university president retraced his long walk to freedom.

I now realise that this preamble was necessary to maintain the integrity of the institution by publicly justifying its motivations for honouring Mandela.

As such, the convocation was simultaneously a celebration of Mandela’s remarkable career and the university’s values. The message for assembled students was clear: do not take accolades lightly, earn them and revere them. It is truly unfortunate that Malik’s recent degree ceremony conveyed a far less inspiring message for Pakistan’s college-age students.

In a country where knowledge and merit are regularly trounced by violence and social connections, Malik’s honorary degree reiterates that who you know is more important than what you know.

This message rings truer because an incomplete university syndicate approved the decision to award Malik the degree, meaning that proper university protocol was not observed in this case. Speaking to the press, many KU faculty members have
expressed serious reservations about the decision. This dissent will no doubt further mar the integrity of the university administration.

The obvious political dimensions of the award could also have far-reaching consequences for educational environments.

Students may be more inclined to engage with the student wings of political parties, believing those contacts to be more useful to their future success than their coursework. Given the aggressive and counterproductive nature of student politics at KU, this is not necessarily a good thing. Student politics are meant to nurture the bud of democracy, not blight it with nepotism.

The award is particularly damaging in light of the recent ‘fake degree’ scandal in our parliament (who can forget Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani’s “a degree is a degree, whether it is fake or genuine” logic?). That episode had senior politicians discrediting the worth of education by deeming it irrelevant. Malik’s doctoral degree is further proof that educational qualifications have utility even if they are hollow and shambolic. Many are also questioning the timing of the degree, which acknowledges Malik’s efforts to bring stability to Karachi and fight terrorism. Violence continues to erupt in corners of Karachi, and recent newspaper headlines have decried the non-implementation of the Supreme Court’s recommendations in its suo motu judgment.

Counterterror initiatives are also flagging: there has been an uptick in terror attacks; Pakistan’s recent tensions with the US cast doubt on its commitment to dismantle militant groups; and the memory of the terrorist attack against the Mehran naval base in Karachi lingers. In short, the task of bringing peace to Pakistan has barely even begun — any awards that imply otherwise are certainly premature.

There’s also the simple matter of lowered standards for politicians: as the interior minister of our country, it is Malik’s job to stem violence in the commercial capital and to spearhead the national fight against terror groups. His achievements, however they are counted, are the basic responsibility of his political position. That which KU has recognised him for is what our other elected representatives should be doing day in and day out, in service of the nation.

Take a step back from the situation and it becomes disturbing to think that a politician who makes a few gestures that resemble service is awarded an honorary doctoral degree. Leave aside the political context of the award and it becomes an indication of how low Pakistani expectations of politicians are.

Ultimately, though, the most problematic aspect of Malik’s honorary degree is the negative impact it has on role models for Pakistani youth. Already, our country’s youngsters have few nationally revered figures to admire and emulate. Even fewer of these are intellectuals. Our one Nobel Prize laureate has been wiped from the public imagination owing to rampant religious discrimination.

The controversy surrounding Malik’s degree could cast doubt on the integrity — and more importantly, the relevance — of genuine academics throughout the country. And that’s the last thing a country suffering such severe intellectual poverty needs.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/honoured-for-what.html

Poverty in Pakistan by By M. Zaidi

IN Pakistan’s scenario, where approximately two-thirds of the people live in rural areas, rural poverty is a major destabilising factor. Authoritative studies have documented rising poverty levels with a decreased capacity to acquire and hold land which is the main source of subsistence in the agricultural areas.

Nearly 67 per cent of Pakistan’s households are landless (though this cannot in itself be taken to be the sole denominator of poverty in the country). The problem is thrown into sharp relief when compared to the decline in India’s rural poverty levels between 1987 and 2000.

The comparison is pertinent since both countries inherited a nearly identical system of land holdings and feudalism. India seems to have tackled the issues better than Pakistan which appears to have alternated between monetary policies dictated by the IMF and the World Bank and its own experiments with land reforms which proved unsuccessful. The income disparity between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in Pakistan has also increased significantly while income disparity largely became an urban phenomenon during the period under review.

Since the reasons behind the rise of radicalisation are multifarious, an analysis utilising any single variable would be empirical, not to mention misleading. Nevertheless, whenever socioeconomic factors spring up in debates, the relationship between rural poverty and radicalisation figures quite prominently. Rural poverty was going down in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s but started increasing steadily during the 1990s. Although the methodologies and assumptions interpolated into the projection by a publicly funded Pakistani body are open to discussion, the poverty increase trend in the 1990s is alarming.

The official notification points out that nearly 67 per cent of households owned no land at the time this study came out; 18.25 per cent households owned less than five acres of land; and 9.66 per cent owned between five and 12.5 acres, sufficient only to provide meagre levels of existence for sometimes large extended families that tend to rely on land as the sole source of income. The pattern is dismally skewed towards a few feudal families in possession of large land holdings; barely one per cent (0.64 per cent plus 0.37 per cent) of households owned over 35 acres.

Thus, the problem in Pakistan is not just low levels of land holdings but also highly unequal land distribution leading to a class of ‘land haves and have-nots’.

Strikingly, poverty levels tend to decrease in inverse proportion to land-holdings, with poverty virtually disappearing with holdings of 55 acres and above. This indicates that poverty and landlessness are directly related to each other in Pakistan’s rural areas.

In terms of the spatial distribution of landlessness, 86 per cent of the households in Sindh were landless (landless plus non-agricultural), followed by 78 per cent in Balochistan and 74 per cent in Punjab. The evidence of the income disparity rampant in Pakistani society is bolstered by statistics, with the Lorenz curve of 2001-02 for Pakistan lying below the 1984-85 levels. In economics, the Lorenz curve is often used to represent income distribution and can also be used to show the distribution of assets.

This indicates that income distribution patterns have gradually worsened, resulting in higher income inequality in 2001-02 relative to 1984-85. Greater changes are visible in the higher part of the income distribution curves than in the middle and lower parts of the income brackets. This stipulates that during 2001-02, the upper income brackets registered a gain in income share to the richest 20 per cent at the expense of the poorest 20 per cent and middle 60 per cent.

This increased poverty levels in the lower and middle brackets. This projection also indicates that the richest one per cent who used to get 10 per cent of the total income in 1984-85 was, in 2001-02, getting almost 20 per cent.

It is estimated that in 1998-99, 30.6 per cent of Pakistanis were living below the poverty line. The estimate stands at 23.9 per cent in the period 2004-5, and according to official projections, dropped to 22.3 per cent by 2005-6. Rural poverty was estimated at 27 per cent in 2005-06, unfavourably comparing with an urban incidence of 13.1 per cent.

The official surveys have, however, been criticised on the grounds of faulty methodologies and the padding of results. A World Bank survey put the figures of poverty incidence in Pakistan at 28.3 per cent in 2004-05, with income distribution patterns utilising the Gini coefficient yielding a figure of 0.3 in 2005-06 as compared to 0.27 in 2001-02. This indicates that there is a skewed income distribution pattern in favour of the high earners, which negates the gains made in the eradication of absolute poverty by increasing income inequality. The overall poverty incidence was highest in Balochistan, with almost half the population living below the poverty line, with minimal difference between the poverty incidence in Sindh and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa. However, once the Sindh data was adjusted for the skewed data patterns for rural poverty obtained by the inclusion of Karachi by comparing rural Sindh with rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Sindh figures rose to 38 per cent of the rural population living under the poverty line as compared to 27 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Punjab fared the best, with an overall poverty incidence of 26 per cent and, anomalously, a rural poverty incidence of just 24 per cent. This also implies that rural poverty was lower than average in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, which seems to militate against conventional wisdom and other studies.

However, the problem is compounded once other variables such as lack of education, cultural and social paradigms are factored in, areas that need greater research in order to present a more meaningful picture of poverty in Pakistan.

The writer is a security analyst.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/poverty-in-pakistan.html