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| Announcement: Musharraf wins but faces fight for power |
| Posted: W3s @ Sun Oct 07, 2007 8:38 pm |
Pakistan's president has secured another five years in office, but life for half his countrymen remains a daily battle for survival
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President Pervez Musharraf, the general who has ruled Pakistan for the past eight years, swept to victory in presidential elections yesterday, winning a new five-year mandate at the head of the world's second largest Muslim country.
By early yesterday afternoon, supporters were already celebrating a win for the president, who has been weakened in recent months by a series of domestic crises, internal militant violence and a loss of international goodwill. Though the victory can still theoretically be overturned by a supreme court judgment, the massive win, with 252 of the 257 votes cast in parliament and landslides in all four provinces, makes that unlikely.
The huge victory allowed ministers yesterday to claim 'a return to full democracy'. Many senior Musharraf loyalists looked forward to full legislative polls, due to be held in the new year. 'We will be fighting on our record in power in free and fair elections,' said the Information Minister, Mohammed Ali Durrani. 'The election process is very transparent and we respect our country and its institutions.'
However, the margin of Musharraf's victory owes much to a last-minute deal with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. In just over a week, Bhutto will make a spectacular return to her homeland after nearly a decade in exile in London and Dubai, in a move that will return her to power. In return for Musharraf pledging to resign as head of the army, and a new legal device lifting corruption charges against her, representatives from her Pakistan People's Party did not resign, merely staging a symbolic walkout from voting in parliament yesterday.
Many observers are concerned that such deal-making is distracting attention from the real issues in one of the most strategically crucial states in the world: rising Islamic militancy and, despite recent economic growth, the profound, crushing poverty in which at least half of Pakistan's 160 million citizens live.
At dawn tomorrow, the thousand men, women and children who work on the brick kilns of Tarli village will wake up at 5am, pray and go to work. Their day will last until sunset, 13 hours of backbreaking physical toil in the heat and dust of a Pakistani autumn. In the evening, they will draw water from the fetid well, eat a thin lentil curry and sleep. The day after, they will wake at 5am again, pray and go back to work.
There is no electricity, water or sanitation in Tarli. Saddled with unpayable debts to the owners of the kilns, often incurred generations ago, the families of Tarli know that escape is impossible. At night, the village is ringed by armed guards. During the day, the villagers are watched closely. And where would they go if they made good their escape? The families of Tarli are at the bottom of Pakistan's social and economic hierarchy. They have no protectors, no one looking out for them. 'We are nothing,' said Mohammed Akram, 36, a father of three who has worked all his life on the kilns, paying off a loan taken by his father.
Tarli lies in a small hollow of red clay beside a stagnant lake. The kilns send plumes of thick smoke into the clear sky, six days out of seven. Just a 10-minute drive away is Islamabad, the capital, where the white marble-fronted blocks of Pakistan's parliament, supreme court and presidential palace are clearly visible from where the villagers live and work.
Akram has never been to Islamabad and few people from the city, apart from the owner of the kilns who lives in a 'big house' there, have ever visited Tarli. 'It is a different world,' he said, raising his voice as a Boeing 747 on its way into Islamabad roars overhead.
The main players in that world are familiar: Musharraf himself; Benazir Bhutto, the 54-year-old Harvard-and Oxford-educated aristocrat and two-time Prime Minister, who has spent the past nine years in exile; the standard array of bit players in Pakistani politics grouped into an alphabet soup of parties, factions and lobbies of every complexion of religious observance, political affiliation, ethnic and regional loyalty.
Musharraf and Bhutto dominate. Each detests, and is dependent on, the other. Musharraf, a former commando who has refused to give up his post as head of Pakistan's powerful army, needs the smiling, female, moderate, democratic face of Bhutto to bring to his wavering rule a vital degree of international legitimacy. And without the corruption charges against her - which she says are trumped up - being dropped, Bhutto's return to her homeland would have meant prison, not power.
The two have spent the past few weeks thrashing out a deal that may have fascinated the world's media and the Pakistani political elite - many of whom have massive private incomes from land or commerce - but has hardly gripped the country as a whole.
The biggest landowner in Tarli is Ahmed Shamraz, whose 10 acres, on sandy slopes above the brick kilns, bring him of £4,000 a year, 10 times the average annual income. Shamraz says he likes the way Musharraf has built lots of roads, but is troubled by the recent surge in prices of staples such as palm oil.
Unlike many of his countrymen, troubled by recent revelations of the major economic assets amassed by the Pakistani military over the decades, by the lucrative sinecures in the newly booming private and public sector that so many senior military officers seem to find, Shamraz still admires the army. 'They have fought two wars against the Indians to protect us. They are the shield of Pakistan,' he says.
Nor is he bothered by the fact that the only people the Pakistani army is fighting at the moment are his own countrymen, in the bloody and ineffective campaigns against Islamic militants and 'the Pakistani Taliban' on the borders with Afghanistan. 'Those people are terrorists and bandits, and it is good that our army is battling with them,' he says loyally.
Shamraz, 31, vaguely remembers Bhutto's previous two stints in office when he was in his late teens and early twenties. He thinks she would make 'a good prime minister, but a lousy president'.
'When she was in power, prices were cheaper...but I am not sure if all the allegations of corruption are true or not,' Shamraz said. Two 11-year-olds, walking down to the brick kilns nearby with spades and shovels and dirt-smeared faces, said they had never heard of Bhutto. But they had heard of Musharraf. He was 'the king' of Pakistan. Neither had been to school and, like more than 50 per cent of the country, were and would remain illiterate.
'We would really like to see entirely new political people,' said Shamraz. Yet this weekend, it looks unlikely that his wish will be fulfilled.
Negotiations for the deal between Musharraf and Bhutto started in earnest in the late spring, after a crisis sparked by the violent opposition of the country's lawyers to an attempt to intimidate and sideline the vain but independent chief justice and the supreme court. Then, in July, a pitched battle against Islamic extremists who had taken over and fortified a mosque in the centre of Islamabad shocked many Pakistanis who detest their president's commitment to the 'war on terror'. A spate of suicide bombings followed, undermining Musharraf's claim to be guarantor of order and security.
Overseas, Musharraf also found himself weakened. Many in Washington have lost patience with an ally who, despite receiving massive financial aid, delivered neither democracy nor results against al-Qaeda and Islamic militants fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan from bases in Pakistan. Clever lobbying by Bhutto also left Musharraf, who refused to give up his position as head of the armed forces despite the dubious constitutionality of keeping his uniform, wrong-footed. 'She has put a lot of effort into wooing Congress... and has seen results,' a Western diplomat in Islamabad said.
Pressure on Musharraf to 'democratise' also came from London. Though Foreign Office spokesmen strongly deny any 'intermediary role', a series of sources, from key ministers to officials at other Western embassies, told The Observer that key London-based Foreign Office diplomats had been involved in bringing the parties together. London was certainly the key location for negotiations with senior military personnel, such as General Ashfaq Kayani, the man in effect nominated by Musharraf to succeed him as head of the army if, as seems now likely, the president resigns the post in the coming weeks, regularly visiting representatives of Bhutto in the British capital. Though spending much of her time in exile in Dubai, Bhutto has used London as a base, particularly for her lobbying and media campaigns.
Yet despite the months that the negotiations have lasted, the past few days have been frantic. First, Bhutto wanted to secure Musharraf's promise that he would indeed resign from his army post. Her own father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was deposed and then hanged by an army chief, Zia ul-Haq, and she made it clear that she would not allow the members of parliament loyal to her Pakistan People's Party to vote in the presidential elections yesterday - and thus give the result a degree of credibility - unless Musharraf pledged to ditch his uniform.
According to one minister, this was the easiest demand to meet: 'He was always going to do it. It is no big deal.' On Thursday, negotiations centred on a trickier issue: amnesty for all those facing outstanding corruption charges.
For seven hours, Musharraf and the cabinet sat in a lounge in the prime minister's house as an agreed text was faxed back and forward between Islamabad and Bhutto and her aides in London. At 1.30am Pakistan time, a solution was found and the next day Musharraf signed a presidential 'national reconciliation' ordinance withdrawing all 'politically motivated' charges of corruption dating from before the military coup. Constitutional obstacles to Bhutto becoming prime minister still remain, particularly a law introduced in the aftermath of the 1999 coup limiting anyone to two terms in the job, but the threat of arrest on arrival has now gone.
Bhutto will not be the only beneficiary of the 'National Reconciliation Ordinance'. Her great rival, Nawaz Sharif, who was deposed by Musharaf in 1999, is likely to also make a new attempt to return to Pakistan. His most recent, last month, got him no further than Islamabad airport. And there are hundreds of other senior bureaucrats and politicians who have been accused of graft who no longer face investigation. Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, who himself faces 'politically motivated charges', said yesterday that the ordinance was necessary 'to build a national consensus' to 'further democracy'.
So with two of her key demands fulfilled, Bhutto's PPP did not boycott the election. The deadlines were met. The deal was done. The representatives of national and provincial assemblies calmly cast their ballots unhindered. And Musharraf won a massive victory.
Was it a stitch-up? Yes, said Mubarak Ali, a columnist in the Dawn newspaper. 'Instead of political succession by the approval of the people, the transfer of power is basically a question of compromise among those who are already at the helm of affairs in the country.'
Not entirely, said Ayaz Amir, a political analyst. 'We are moving from a pure military rule to something different, and we shouldn't discount that,' he said, pointing out that the president, soon to be a civilian, will now not have the unalloyed power his uniform gave him.
Not a stitch-up at all, said Durrani, the information minister: 'It was the responsibility of government to stay in dialogue with Mrs Bhutto. We hope we have changed the political culture of Pakistan. We will contend the coming [legislative] elections on the basis of our record over the last years.'
Recent months have been less exciting for the people of Tarli. Each day of brutal physical labour on the kilns, which are run at full capacity to keep up with the demand from Pakistan's construction boom, is the same.
Akram remembers May not for the legal crisis that rocked Musharraf, but because his wife, Safia, injured her hand. Seeing a doctor is out of the question: with his earnings rarely exceeding 300 rupees (£2.50) a day, he has barely enough to feed his family, especially with recent price rises. The alternative is a further loan from the kiln owner, to whom he already owes 125,000 rupees (£1,040). 'We are not human beings,' he said. 'We are donkeys.'
Akram remembers September, when Bhutto announced her return, for the end of the rains that meant no work, no income and therefore hunger. Akram does not remember much of last week at all. On Thursday, he worked late to buy some meat. 'They ask us for chicken so we try to give it to them once a week,' he said. Friday, the weekly day off, Akram remembers simply for the pleasure of not working. Yesterday, he was back at the kilns.
The elections? Akram spits. 'The politicians don't think or know anything about us,' he says. 'We don't know anything about them. We are nothing.'
How Pakistan votes - and what comes next
Who elects Pakistan's president?
Members of the two houses of parliament - the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate and assemblies in the four provinces of Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. It is a secret ballot and the president has a five-year term.
Who disputes Musharraf's right to stand?
Critics say his re-election while army chief is illegal. Opposition parties have challenged his candidacy, while 160 opposition lawmakers resigned in protest.
Will Musharraf remove his uniform?
He says he will resign as chief of staff before November's presidential swearing-in. He has named a successor, golf-loving Lieutenant General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani. But no date has been set and he has broken promises before. If he quits, he will retain power to dismiss the government and parliament but could be weaker, especially with a popular prime minister in place.
Why has Pakistan had such a tricky year?
Taliban militants have been on the rise, attacking the army along the Afghan border. There has been a surge in violence and suicide bombings. Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has made a number of judgments against the government and Musharraf's efforts to sack him caused riots.
Tracy McVeigh
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| Announcement: I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer |
| Posted: W3s @ Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:31 pm |
· Scientist has made synthetic chromosome
· Breakthrough could combat global warming
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Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.
The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.
Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be "a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before".
The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.
The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition.
It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell's species. Mr Venter said he was "100% confident" the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome.
The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being the building block of life.
Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said. He has further heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying for a patent for the synthetic bacterium.
Pat Mooney, director of a Canadian bioethics organisation, ETC group, said the move was an enormous challenge to society to debate the risks involved. "Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up call - what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?"
He said Mr Venter was creating a "chassis on which you could build almost anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons".
Mr Venter believes designer genomes have enormous positive potential if properly regulated. In the long-term, he hopes they could lead to alternative energy sources previously unthinkable. Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to global warming, or produce fuels such as butane or propane made entirely from sugar.
"We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking," he said. "We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can't expect everybody to be happy."
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