Sovereignty: A Misguiding Myth
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“Democracy begins to fail and political life becomes impoverished when society can no longer translate private problems into social issues… the space of shared responsibility has given way to the space of private fears.” - Henry A. Giroux “Beyond The Spectacle of Terrorism.”
In Pakistan, we all hear the phrase “sovereignty of the country” excessively used in the media,. We also repeatedly hear such terms as “Rs. 13.2 billion deficit”, “IMF and World Bank loans and their constricting terms”; and an incessant resonance of the phrase, "Corruption and loot”, and “The flight of about $25 million” on daily basis from Pakistan. In between these, we also hear such phrases as, “The world is a global village and we are a part of it” and the "drone attacks are violating our sovereignty”.
Sovereignty in simple words means, “Being able to exercise supreme and permanent authority, a “state of complete independence and self-governance”. In other words, a country and for that matter, even a person can remain sovereign, enjoy full freedom to move, act, think and associate themselves, until the times, that country or person are able to avoid mortgaging/pawing themselves, intellectually as well as physically. And this is not possible in the modern times for either of them. The country like a person becomes an “Indentured Slave”, when it signs the, “Debt Bondage”. Pay the debt, and you are sovereign again otherwise forget your freedoms. The best course left for such a country or person is to learn to live under the conditions, and think creatively of ways of how to amicably meet the terms of the bondage. Bickering and whining, and wrapping the whole issue with new lies, is neither a solution nor a way leading to a solution. It is a new form of slavery which makes its way to the neck via one's uncontrolled lust for more. The country and the individuals often go for a ”Short Sale” for a“Foreclosure” under such circumstances. Which choice best suits Pakistan, can only be explained by our very able Finance Minister, Mr Ishaq Dar.
I have absolutely no recollection of the days in my 71 year life when I was able to act as “a sovereign over my own self”. Or “when Pakistan held supremacy over its own policies”. Parents in the name of discipline and good morals took away a good portion of my sovereignty; teachers at school robbed me in broad daylight of what by mistake was left of it, not even allowing us to ask simple questions; forbidding us to speak or laugh aloud; not even allowing us to mix up with people whom we liked; not even to eat what we crazed for most; not even to wear what we desired most”. Youth came with all its stars in the eyes. But it did not bring the sovereignty under discussion. Most of us were not even free in the choice of our life-partners; even in the choice of selecting subjects that we were to study (not our parents) in college. After marriage whatever we earned, we always found two sharp accountants, one the wife and the other the parents, auditing us for every penny we spent. Yet we loved sovereignty, we valued self-respect, and we nurtured, albeit these constricting terms, a high sense of personal dignity. We reacted fiercely if someone accused us of lying, cheating, or indulging in any kind of financial embezzlement. Our sovereignty rested on the discretion, dreams and whims of the parents. As Allama Iqbal would say. We, however, managed to keep “Buwai Gadai” miles away. In the modern Pakistan, hunger for sustenance is not as acute a problem as is the hunger in the belly and in the psyche. No wonder some of the richest beggars live in Pakistan in the form of its leaders.
UNITY IS STRENGTH : In school, we were instructed in morals through simple stories. The virtues of “Unity is Strength” were taught through this familiar story, “There was a farmer who had three sons. His sons quarreled all the time. The farmer tried many times to keep them united but failed. He could not convince them to change through the means of logic; so he thought of a plan. He asked them to bring him a bundle of sticks. Then he asked them to break the bundle. They could not do this. Then he untied the bundle and gave sticks to them one at a time. They broke easily all the sticks. Then he gave them the moral of the exercise, “So it is with you, my sons. If you are in harmony, you will be unconquerable by your enemies; but if you quarrel, you will be easily broken like the sticks”.
Our teachers could not think better than this: this brand of unity is not the real unity that can keep people together. It never occurred to them that human beings are not like stiff sticks. All human beings are different in thinking, feeling and in conceiving things. They often do not fall in line with each other; and they hardly ever agree with each other. It is only in the military that they all fall in line on hearing one command; and military rule is not deemed as a good one.
The trees that are stiff, often get uprooted when a storm comes. Only those survive that are flexible, accommodating, tolerant, and are able to cope with the prevalent situation. And the worst part of this story is that the unity which is much eulogized here was wrought through by the farmer through an unnatural process. It is not the sticks that had chosen to stay together and remain united; it was the string or rope that was responsible for keeping them together. Remove that ulterior binding force, and the sticks would fall as most nations fall or individuals fall in the families.
If we substitute that string with the forceful parents; with the dominating rulers; or with the brutal dictatorship, or with the high debts, the shallowness of the story becomes quite obvious. Unity that does not grow from within, and that is not accepted from the heart and soul, is always short-lived. The moment a forceful parent, or ruler or dictator is removed, or dies, things begin to fall apart, and “the sons begin to quarrel again”. Pakistan endorses the above statement.
Pakistan became a sovereign country, but it could never maintain its sovereignty. Its leaders were like the farmer in the story - short-sighted, egoistical and unmindful of what the ”sons” thought, or why they quarreled. Or what could hold them perennially united.
Threads are weaker than sticks, but when they crosswise, and are woven into a fabric, they become strong . They are flexible, tolerant and they hold each other together. Their unity is enduring. Pakistan could never foster that kind of unity, in which all shades and colors - of religions, of cultures, of ethnicities etc.- could live by holding on to each other by respecting each other’s color and shade. Islam respects diversity and calls it “Allah’s Mercy”, but the leaders, especially the religious class, chose it to paint Islam as exclusivist, which debars all others. The attacks on the minorities are the direct result of this thinking that “Pakistan was created in the name of Islam, or that it is the fort of Islam”.
The sovereignty of Pakistan was ravished and raped more by its own leaders than by any other external force. Naively, but quite conveniently, the leaders of Pakistan began to understand that voting by itself is what we call as democracy; that majority rule is a true form of democracy; that rule of law, natural equality, justice for all, and accountability are not as important a component of democracy as is voting.
Voting can be manipulated through wealth, authority and influence. But it does unfailingly bring to our leaders “The Ring of Gyges”. Gyges once in possession of this magic ring could become invisible, and could avoid the normal and natural consequences of his actions. He could seduce the queen, kill the king, and take over the kingdom etc. And yet he could remain unnoticed. The implication is simple.
Anybody would do the same and would be a fool not to so once he got this golden magic ring through voting. Socrates says that if we condemn Gyges, because we are envious or we do not want to be thought badly of. The leaders in opposition today were the leaders in power yesterday. What did they do to the country that today they are preaching morality? The truth is that morality often is relegated to a number two position; in the order of precedence what comes first is one’s own interest. People praise morality for the rewards it brings, but if the rewards can be reaped only through the appearance or facsimile of morality, then why not follow Machiavelli who in his Prince says, “ It is not necessary for the Prince (leader) to have piety, faith, honesty, humanity, and integrity. But it is necessary for him to seem to have them”. So democracy for our leaders is not good because it is a good system for the people; it is good because it best serves their interests.
In the fifties and sixties , most of us were financially poor, but we were not mean-spirited and unconcerned. I remember having a neighbor whose mother often came to our home in the morning to borrow a little bit of “black tea’, or “sugar” from my mother. She was always obliged, but was criticized as well. They were wonderful neighbors, full of compassion and sincerity, but perhaps forced by poverty, they often were seen bartering their “sovereignty” for trifles. How can a country of about 190 million people claim to maintain its “sovereignty”, when every newly born child in Pakistan owes more than Rs. 57,000. His/her dream to equal rights, to good education, to a befitting health care system, to have a good job, to live a life in security etc. gets fizzled out on the first cry he/she makes on arrival in this country.
According to one report Pakistan owes some 15.1 trillion rupees in debt. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, just in one year -2012- Pakistan incurred a debt of 1.697 trillion rupees. Frankly speaking, I didn’t have the faintest idea of how much a trillion could be until I read the following?
“If you really want to see when an empire is getting vulnerable, the big giveaway is when the costs of serving the debt exceed the cost of the defense budget”, said once Harvard Professor and Financial historian, Niall Ferguson. Pakistan owing in debt more than 15.1 trillion rupees can best be visualized in this word picture.
“If you were to take Rs. 10,000 bills ( not Rs. 100, or Rs. 1,000 bills) and stack them seven feet tall and fill in every single inch of an NFL football field from end zone to end zone, that would represent one trillion rupees. (NFL football field is 360 feet x 180 feet). Now put fifteen of those football fields side by side and then start picturing the size of the debt Pakistan has incurred”. In the words of Mr Glenn Beck, “That is the result of corruption, lies, and deceit from our self-serving leaders.”. His statement applies more naturally to our leaders. The laws of economics always win. Debt, deficits, unemployment rates, inflation rates, interest rates, bank failures, terrorism, bank robberies, corruption , selfishness, greed, lack of compassion, and disregard of the laws of the land and much more, all ensue from financial irregularities and financial indiscipline. Morality cannot exist on its own; it passes through the gate-ways of daily life.
Socrates called the City as the soul because a city or State is the mirror of what its inhabitants are.
It was Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist, who introduced the theory that debt can be positively used when there is a phase of economic downturn in the country. The government must generate economic activity by increasing the demand for goods. Borrow money, increase spending, reduce taxes, and this would stimulate demand for goods and services. President F.D. Roosevelt - 1882-1945 - reluctantly decided to follow this policy.
But look what he did even before taking over the oath of the Presidency. He gathered the best minds from among the best politicians, economists, university professors, lawyers, and journalists, and asked them to come out and declare what was best under the circumstances. They came out with what the history calls, “A Fair Deal”. On taking the oath during the first 100 days, the country witnessed the launching of great activity between March 9 to June 16, 1933. The Congress passed 15 major laws relating to the recommendations made by the New Deal. On the first day in office, he closed the banks, declaring a bank holiday, to stop the withdrawals that had started taking place due to fear.
President Roosevelt passed the famous Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation act known as FDIC, guaranteeing bank insurance up to $5,000; he passed Federal Securities Act in May, 1933, binding all corporations to provide complete information on all stocks; he passed laws regulating the Securities and Exchange in order to regulate the stock exchange transactions; he put all the young people between the age of 18-25 to work on building roads, schools, parks, planting trees, on flood control projects; on soil conservation etc., on a monthly wage of $30.00, binding the paying agency to send $25.00 out of it to the workers’ families, while providing free food and lodging in the camps to the youth. He created 4 million jobs through an agency called Civil Works Administration. It built 40,000 schools, paid salaries to 50,000 teachers in rural areas, and built half a million length of roads. Through emergency aid programs, he provided food, clothing and shelter to the needy. America came back, stronger and healthier.
What did Mian Nawaz Sharif do in the first 100 days? Wear a long, sad face on the silly suggestion of the kind of clueless people he is habitual of surrounding himself; undertake foreign tours one after another, a feat he had relentlessly been accusing his predecessors; hold an All Parties Conference to tackle the monster of terrorism while constantly absenting himself from the Parliament sessions; never coming out with a concrete, bold, radical, daring and creative solution to overcome economic stagnation. He annoyed the poor for fear of displeasing the rich; he encouraged the terrorists by not going after them full throttle. At least there were three occasions that the terrorists provided him to crush them; one when they murdered an army Major General, a Colonel and jawans; second when they dismantled the Church in Peshawar; third when they freed their companions from the Dera Ismail Khan Jail. The only little good thing that happened was in Karachi where as a result of some action things have begun to improve. Fear appears to have warped his judgment because fear divides minds; feeds ignorance; and leads to ignorance. Worst of all, fear snatches away and even tempts people to trade away their freedoms for a few moments of false safety. Pakistani leadership, including the army and civil, is living under fear. The Mongolian tactics are working in Pakistan. There are quite a few ‘cheer-leaders’ of the terrorists in the country.
Next door India brought in the best economist of the world, Mr Raghuram Rajan as the new Central Bank governor. The first thing Mr Rajan did was not to deliver a sermon on what should be done, but present an outline of an ambitious plan to shake up the country’s conservative banking system. He said that banks that receive dollars in foreign-currency accounts from Indians living abroad would now be able to swap those dollars for rupees from the RBI. This would provide banks with rupees funds, and whenever the banks want, they would be able to get the same amount of dollars back from the central bank. Keeping dollars with the central bank would be cheaper than keeping it anywhere. He stalled the 19% fall in the devaluation of the Indian rupee, and he also checked the flight of capital from the country. What I liked most was his statement that India should, as India can, pay off all the IMF loans because loans always come with conditions.
Mian Sahib’s government has printed more currency notes than perhaps the previous government did, and has done virtually nothing to check the flight of 25 million dollars per day from the country, or generate more revenues. A scandal relating to the stock exchange shares and leading to the PML (N) quarters is also brewing. Perhaps philosopher Sartre was right when he said, “Existence comes before essence”. A sketch of a knife drawn on a paper does not make it a knife. The nature of a knife is to cut; it exists only if it performs its function. A prime minister or a finance minister exists only if he performs. His existence is to be felt; is to be seen, otherwise he would not exist, neither in essence nor in form.
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