Elements of dysfunction in Politics

Pakistan has many political parties. And though the debate of Army vs Democracy continues to resurface every now and then, people have yet to identify the main problem with the exchange of power. According to scholars, Pakistan is firstly divided into many factions, each promoting their own tribe, culture, values and even religion. In present day this is seen in the split of the Bhutto’s (Zardari wing) and Sharif’s (Nawaz Shairf, Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz). The Bhutto’s are more regionally attached to Sindh with a lean towards Shitte culture where as the Sharif’s are Punjab based with a rather Sunii following. This shift in culture plays a great role when either party rises to power. While the bureaucracy relishes its power in Islamabad and sometimes Karachi (both being the countries power hubs), the political parties prefer to fawn over their regional counterparts. In doing so, the demographic split between civilians who vote is widened.

Military power was not a concept that was present in Pakistan during the time of independence. The Pakistani military became independent from the British and took on their role of civil subordination and political aloofness as they traditionally are. The erosion of these traditions was commenced by the gradual fall of political institutions in the 1950’s. The military began to take a greater stance to spread their influence and (along with the civil bureaucracy) soon emerged as a distinguishing factor in the decision making at the national level. The repeated military interventions in politics since 1958 and the military rule of dictators such as Zia and Musharaf, has changed the traditional pattern of relationships between civilians and military.

While the military faction of Pakistan is aligned with the elitist bloc, political parties are aligned with feudalistic blocs. Thus in a battle of powers, the major benefactors are those who hold considerable influence in the country. Pakistan has been unable to dismantle prevalent feudal structures which propel the country blindly with brute force being the driving power. Even so, Pakistan sees the rise in political parties professing to be saviors of the nation. Many parties have shed their former policies to step along the trend of secularism while others choose fundamentalist policies, thus proving that land ties are not the only source of loyalty. Political parties have risen in quantity but declined in political power, principally in relation to the military.  

Manipulation by the Media

The greatest form of conditioning is repetition. This is further put forth by imagery and putting forth information in a subtle way. According to researches by the Glasgow Media Group, media messages are full of connotative codes that evoke emotion and feelings in a person. The most common example of media conditioning is seen by the issue of gender representation in media. Media reinforces capitalists’ ideologies as advocated by Marx. He says that the mass media in every form reinstates females in a passive role and men in an active role. Even children’s books and stories follow the same theme. Disney movies have also reinforced this ideology that females no matter how strong mentally must await their Prince Charming who will sweep them off their feet and give them endless happiness. According to Marxist feminists, this conditioning reinforces women to wait for men to provide for them and remain good home makers instead of fighting for their rights in the work force. The Glasgow Media Group also talks about agenda setting being a common practice in media corporations. Agenda setting involves specific media content being tailored to match elitist perspectives. For example, newspaper editors under Rupert Murdoch tell stories about Murdoch’s telephone calls to direct the content of the front page.

Even if we set aside the blame on media corporations for setting content of their media, the journalist are not free of blame. Journalists of major corporations are trained to specifically broadcast a certain type of message across to the audience. Their style of reporting impacts the public very much. This can be seen in the aftermath of the Iraqi War where many American journalists roamed around with the US Army, reporting the conditions of the Iraqi’s but at the same time from behind the US Army hence never negating their image of freedom fighters irrespective of the views of the Iraqi civilians.  It is not only the news that impacts the people but also subliminal messages in movies, books and magazines. The influence of media is not restricted to reinforcing social norms but also to simply offer a different perspective that can be used negatively or positively by the audience. The influence of media is best illustrated by the headline of Observer International, Sunday 18^th November, 2001, which blamed the movie ‘Scream’ for influencing a teenage girl’s copy cat murderer.

Pakistani History

The history of Pakistan is a struggle for power between the military bureaucracy and the political parties; each who believe that Pakistan would be most progressive in their hands. Since the death of the Quaid, political parties who have been vying for power are steeped in corruption and money laundering thus depleting the treasury of a country that was established as a vision of secular excellence.

According to scholars it is the pre-mature death of the Quaid and the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan that propelled Pakistan in to a series of political mishaps. Had the Quaid not died, he would have been in a position to launch the country forward and dealt with the problems that had plagued the country as it was born. Also, due to the sudden death of the Quaid, there was no successor that was named to take his place. And though Fatima Jinnah did contest for power in governing Pakistan, she was out voted by men who had glamorous profiles but faulty personalities.

 However, according to others, elements to destabilize Pakistan had been set into motion before its inception was even completed. Many historians turn an eye to Pakistan’s hostile neighbor and the disgruntled British forces that had no say in Pakistani politics. India has played a role in demeaning Pakistan and it had been said that the Indian Government never expected the infant state to survive its elementary years of existence. Though a single reason or corner stone cannot be identified, historians have taken both views into account when studying the historical debacle of Pakistani politics.    

The crumble of Pakistan’s solidarity is when the political parties and military bureaucracy did not see eye to eye on dealing with Pakistani issues. Pakistani leadership has been a contest between these two powers who have been accused of conspiring against each other. The contest continues till today as General Pervaiz Musharaf heads the military bureaucracy and Asif Ali Zardari chairs the political party of PPP (Pakistan Peoples’ Party).

The contest of Military rule against Political Parties

Pakistani history has been plagued by Military dictatorship time and again. The swift exchange of power has been done amid political turmoil when one rule fails and the other steps up to take its place. The battle between the militia and political parties has been in place since former General Iskandar Mirza took up position of power and left it to Ayub Khan, who was also a man of belonging to the military sector. Iskandar Mirza not only abrogated the constitution but was the first one to declare martial law in the country. Pakistan received its first constitution in 1956, 9 years after its creation. Several leaders threw the country in to an abyss of darkness in order to consolidate their own power rather than develop the country from within.

After Ayub Khan’s policies supporting the elite and promoting the bureaucracy and military, Pakistan’s civilians fall in to discontentment and turn against the government. The impending dissatisfaction of East Pakistan with the West Pakistani Military rulers became apparent with the hint of war. West Pakistani bureaucracy saw themselves as a beacon of enlightenment and refused any interference in East Pakistan by any East Pakistani political party. And this mentality led to the war with India for the third time which liberated East Pakistan, turning it into Bangladesh. This turn of events defamed the military rulers such as Ayub Khan and General Yahya Khan.

The rising amount of dissatisfaction led to the election of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto which discredited the Pakistani military and chose to put into action socialist policies which crippled the elitist bureaucracy. This move enabled the civil military to rise against him in an underground movement. By this time, Pakistan has been refaced by a new constitution of 1973. While the country was settling down with Bhutto’s reforms which failed to reach the masses, another military coup under General Zia-Ul-Haq was carried out which made him President of Pakistan. So the military re-established their power with martial law in Pakistan. And thus history repeated itself till present day.

Human Nature in the Sciences'

Human nature is susceptible to constant interpretation which changes over a span of time. And with time not only do meanings change but they lose their older meaning and assume a new one according to the local context.

I agree that natural sciences play a rather important part in social sciences. Every form of study requires some sort of quantitative data to be able to compared and set against changing time. By gaining statistical data, the facts can be compared year after year since the basis of collecting data is repeatable. For e.g. by statistics we know that there has been a change in the attitudes of women towards marriage and careers. Statistical knowledge hence can be put up as facts in a natural scientific realm. But even though this knowledge is very important it cannot answer the ‘why’ question since it eliminates values from the equation. Subjective knowledge though very controversial is very important to understand society layer by layer.

Descriptivists are flawed in their very method on non judgement. Phenomenologist’s though gain a deep insight are not unbiased observers. And if they manage to keep their own judgements out of research they do end up influencing those around them. According to basic sociological study, human behaviour is likely to change if observed due to demand characteristics. Hence, either the data is coloured by judgement or demand characteristics alter the human behaviour under study. Descriptivists escape this criticism by being passive observers but their presence does influence others behaviour. Also descriptions cannot explain personal and social phenomenon as they do not delve deeper than face value. Description is part of the natural sciences therefore they don’t explain events either.

Once again, even if they do gain the ‘why’ perspective by asking questions to the observed group, i ask who do they ask to gain the best interpretation. Within a muslim community, there are rather different interpretations of a single event, many people perceive a similar event with a different interpretation. According to that who is the single authority to define muslim culture? Even in a family, there is a split between an older generation and a younger generation interpretation. Another criticism is that even though descriptivists put their own judgements out of their study they judge people around them. Fauzia saaed followed this same method but she judged society who looked down upon the red light society though she didn’t judge the red light society itself. 

Critical social scientist stand on very stable grounds when they put forth that observations cannot be uncoloured by ones judgement and that social sciences cannot be descriptive alone. Human study if wanted to be evaluated has to be put against a standard and the main question arising is that who sets the standard of what’s wrong and right. There can be no standard of appropriate behaviour in the world. They also advocate that everything in this world is relative hence relativity itself becomes absolute and change becomes constant. But they don’t really put up a proper method to analyse.

Post modernists do hit close to home that every social order and meaning is local and contextual. But according to their theory no society can be studied deeply as a whole since cosmopolitan society has various layers which hold their own local interpretations. Every society has layers and large societies which share different shared values from one and other are ignored in their theory. But they made the best point so far that every value is susceptible to change in every time frame. There is no fixed human behaviour just as there is no one interpretation of human behaviour. But once again many societies don’t form values on their own; they follow it as passed on by higher authorities. Such as in older times religion became the basis of human behaviour hence people didn’t have any social order and meaning of their own but borrowed them from a higher powerful authority. Therefore their behaviour cannot be held as natural and their own as they were forced into submission. Social constructionists give the biggest complexity that objectivity and subjectivity is part of each other. One cannot exist without the other if society is to be studied on a pedestal.

Ode to Pakistani Cinema's

This one fine day,

I went to Saddar,

As lame as it might sound,

Crossing that area is Ghaddar,

Stuck in traffic,

Trying to ignore lewd stares,

I look up in in the sky,

And suddenly at the billboards I glare,

Theres a semi naked woman,

And her tongues poking out,

I don’t mean to offend,

But man was she stout!

The man beside her was just big,

With moustache so black,

Kala Kola would be embarrassed,

Cause they’d fail to ever colour like that,

Now this woman is lying,

Under a bloody charpayee,

The man sits on it,

Having lassi with malayee,

The woman pokes out from under,

The man doesn’t seem to notice,

He must be really blind,

Cause shes the size of Popeye’s Brutus,

The colours of the some clothes that are,

Are garish and bright,

They seem constrictive,

Stuck on her so tight,

The man seems to be breathing well,

In that lungi like skirt,

His kurta seems to be missing,

And hes covered in dirt,

You know what makes me sad?

Is that this could really be art,

Vulgarity shouldn’t be an option,

These guys need a fresh start.

Theres so much talent in the industry,

That’s going  to cheap waste,

The billboards are a shame,

When they can have class and taste.

You have issues with us,

Wearing high capris and low necks,

Why don’t you look at the billboards,

Where you should really be keeping checks,

Hunt for talent,

Upgrade what exists,

Stop going on about the masses,

Theyre not from different planets.

Frankly on the boards,

Is an invitation to soft porn,

Men and boys buy legit tickets,

And watch bullshit with popcorn,

Fresh blood is plenty,

Old blood is willing,

Maybe then we wont have such crappy titles,

Wth is pyasa badan and haseena 20?

Victims of dysfunctional politics

While the political ends of the country rage forward to win over the nation, the power clashes leave behind inerasable marks. The most prominent of these marks would be the separation of former East Pakistan and present day Bangladesh. Had the West Pakistani bureaucracy stepped down from their pedestals, they would’ve been able to quell the growing anguish in the lower segments of East Pakistani society.

Also, the exchange of power based on superiority has led to the loss of proper methods to receive power. In a country that has come 60 plus years from the past, elections are by no means a foreign concept. However, with power being received with coups, martial law declarations, bribery, corruption and impeachment, the concept of graceful power exchange has been lost. No more do parties wish to consort to winning elections with a sufficient amount of votes. In a country where power speaks louder than good will, politics is the ticket to greater spheres of influence.  

Other than the political game losing its innocence, the civilians of Pakistan have also struggled to redefine themselves time and again with the change in political power. With the continuing change in Pakistani power, the Pakistani public has seen no change in the rate of corruption and the level of crime in the country. If a political power starts a reform, it is put aside when power exchanges hands. Thus no reform gets truly implemented long enough to change society. Though many reforms have been implemented, none of them have been watched over to be put into force by the country.

Pakistan has internal problems due to the rise and fall of politics. But the constant political exchange has spoilt any foreign image that Pakistan held as a prosperous or developing country. The change in power has led to foreign intervention in the country and an increase in aid which piles up debt. Pakistan’s economy has crippled due to political leaders robbing the state treasury and depriving the country of any means to prosper. According to many civilians, Pakistani politics is not only limited to political parties and the military, but also includes foreign governmental pressure especially from USA in today’s time.      

Shirin Ebadi: Peace Hero

A peace hero resembles the fairy tale knight in shining armor, who not only rescues the princess but saves all of humanity from a tragic situation. Such has been the life of Shirin Ebadi. She not only set a precedent for her own country and people, but left a glorified example for all of humanity to follow. For me peace is not constricted to the unifying of two nations but also to the unification of ideologies, which, is something Shirin Ebadi has been trying to achieve. 

Born in the city of Hamedan (Northern Iran) on July 2nd 1947, Shirin Ebadis family was both academicals and practicing Muslims. She moved to Iran at the age of one and grew up in the country’s capital. She describes her childhood as one filled with fun and great kindness. Her father, a pioneer of lecturing in Commercial Law, passed away in 1993. But his influence geared Shirin Ebadi to pursue law on her own. She graduated from Tehran University with a degree in Law after three and a half years. Soon after she took the entrance exam for the Department of Justice, and began apprenticeship. She officially served as a judge in 1969 and went on to obtain a doctorate of honors in private law from Tehran University in 1971.

Since then she served multiple position in the Justice Department and became one of the first woman to become a judge in the history of Iran. Unfortunately, after the Iranian Revolution, many female judges were removed from their posts simple because it was considered un-Islamic.  She was made a clerk in the very court she once presided over. After protests, women were made ‘experts’ but not given back their positions. Shirin Ebadi resigned early and her application to practice law was turned down. During her time of unemployment she was housebound. In this moment of angst she penned down several books and articles that were published in Iranian journals.   

Shirin Ebadi began her private law practice after obtaining her license in 1992. Since then she has begun her crusade against the prevailing injustice towards women and children in particular. She represented journalists, women, and children and fought for public justice for anyone who felt oppressed. She also represented serial murder victims. Her work brought Iranian justice into the limelight abroad thus earning her the merit of opening up new avenues for improving social justice in Iran. Apart from seeking justice in courts, she established the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child (SPRC) and the Human Rights Defenders Centre. Her most famous and recent case is of Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi who was raped, tortured and murdered in Iran.

"In the last 23 years, from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years of doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith," she wrote in her book, Iran Awakening.

She further said that, "It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered. That belief, along with the conviction that change in Iran must come peacefully and from within, has underpinned my work."

She has received awards for her outstanding bravery and pursue of justice. She received an official Human Rights Watch observer in 1996 and she was also the Recipient of the Rafto Human Rights Foundation prize for human rights activities of Norway in 2001. Her book ‘The selection of The Rights of the Child’ was awarded Book of the Year by the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry. In 2003 she received the Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel award committee said she had been chosen because "as a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, and far beyond".

Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She has battled for the sake of others while upholding her own values and morals. Shirin Ebadi is a mother, a wife and a social activist. Her cry for justice has stirred human rights sentiments in Iran and many students flock to her for advice and wish to continue in her shadow.

Due to her increasingly controversial nature in Iran, she was forced to flee the country in 2009. Shirin Ebadi claimed to receive death threats and her husband was also harassed. Even so she has not stopped her work and continues to attract international support for victims of intolerance in Iran. She has sought amnesty in UK where she teaches and holds seminars in various parts of the world.

I chose Shirin Ebadi because her voice stands out as a lone defender of human rights in Iran. Also, being against the Iranian system of governance, she still believes in change from within rather than through foreign intervention. Dr. Ebadi doesn’t believe in a forced removal of a government. She wishes people to overcome tyranny and oppression themselves. This according to her is a true struggle which she hopes Iran will one day win.