US envoy in Malidives to ease political crises

 

A top US diplomat arrived in the Maldives on Saturday seeking to help resolve a deepening political crisis sparked by the ousting of the Indian Ocean nation s first democratically elected president.

 

Mohamed Nasheed, who came to power in 2008, says he was forced to resign on Tuesday in a coup d etat led by mutinous army and police officers who threatened him with violence unless he stepped down.

 

He was replaced as head of state by his vice president Mohamed Waheed, whom Nasheed accuses of being party to the conspiracy to topple him.

 

The US assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Robert Blake, will seek to clarify how power was transferred during a visit to the crowded capital of the famous holiday islands, the state department announced.

 

“Ambassador Blake will meet the president as well as the opposition during his 12-hour visit,” a US official in the capital island Male told AFP.

 

Since stepping down, Nasheed has called for fresh elections and has threatened protests if the police continue targeting his party members and figures in his former administration.

 

Rioting erupted across the country on Wednesday when Nasheed publicly said he was the victim of a military-backed coup and senior members of his party were beaten during a rally in Male.

 

At least 18 police stations were torched and dozens of vehicles, court houses and government buildings were destroyed some of the remote islets of the archipelago, police say.

 

The Maldivian police confirmed they were carrying out mass arrests of troublemakers while Nasheed said 350 people linked to his administration had been detained within three days of his resignation.

 

New President Waheed has rejected Nasheed s demand for elections.

 

“Simply because an ex-president wants an election we can t have one just like that,” Waheed s spokesman Masood Imad told AFP. “There is a constitutional process.”

 

Imad said Waheed had no intention of clinging on to power and would hold the next election when it is due, by November 2013.

 

New protests would spell further instability and damage for the country which depends on the hundreds of thousands of high-end travellers and honeymooners who visit its pristine islands each year.

 

Nasheed s efforts to force Waheed to step down suffered a major blow Thursday when Washington announced it recognised his successor s administration as legitimate.

 

Nasheed, a former political prisoner and climate change campaigner, voiced disappointment at the announcement and the US later appeared to step back from its earlier declaration.

 

“We will work with the government of the Maldives, but believe that the circumstances surrounding the transfer of power need to be clarified,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

 

“And we also suggest that all parties agree to an independent mechanism to do that.”

 

“He (Blake) will see all of the major players and have a chance to talk about an appropriate way forward and reconciliation and national unity mechanism.”

 

Nasheed said Friday that recognition of the new Male administration would not help resolve the crisis.

 

The former president claimed police “stripped and hand-cuffed” his supporters and ransacked homes in Addu, the southernmost atoll, and said he would travel there in the next 24 hours unless the crackdown stopped.

 

A UN special envoy, Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, arrived in the Maldives Friday and met both sides, diplomatic sources said.

 

A European Union and Indian delegation are also due to visit.

 

Diplomatic pressure has been applied to prevent police acting on an arrest warrant for Nasheed issued by a local criminal court on Thursday, diplomatic sources said.

 

Presidential spokesman Imad said police were obliged to execute the arrest warrant only if they felt there was a risk that Nasheed would not appear in court to answer charges which are yet to be made public.

 

“He can go anywhere in the country, but he can t leave the country,” Imad said.
 

No progress on 20th Amend until demands are met: PML-N

 

PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif said if party’s demands on transparent election commission were not met, 20th Constitutional Amendment would not be approved.

 

While talking to media in Bahawalpur today, PMl-N chief termed the demand for an independent election commission as justified and demanded a purposeful consultation not like the ones held in the past.

 

Replying to a question regarding Bahawalpur, Nawaz said it should be made a separate province adding this is the right of the people of this area.  

 

Nawaz credited his party with bringing NRO to a halt and also urged Prime Minister Gilani to stand firm on his viewpoint.

SC suspends membership of 28 MPs

The Supreme Court has further said the membership of 28 MPs would remain suspended until the Parliamentary endorsement. The apex court had given the deadline until February 6 for endorsement.

 

These 28 members include three senators out of which two are working as federal ministers while nine are members of the National Assembly, 11 of the provincial assemblies and five members are on reserved seats.

 

The members include Federal Minister for Finance Senator Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Minister for Petroleum Dr Asim Hussain, Senator Syed Sajid Hussain.

 

Nine MNAs are Chaudhary Asghar Ali Jutt of PPP, Jamshed Ahmed Dasti of PPP, Muhammad Akhtar Khan Kanju (Independent), Sardar Shafqat Hayat Khan (PML-N), Ch Tassaduq Masud Khan (PPP), Haji Khuda Bux Rajar (PML-F), Ms Khadija Aamir Yar Malik (PPP), Sardar Mumtaz Khan (PML-N), Sardar Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari (PML-Q).

 

The MPA s include Syed Basit Ahmed Sultan, Mian Muhammad Ajmal Asif, Ahmed Mujtaba Gilani, Sardar Meer Badshah Qaisrani, Malik Saif-ul-Malook Khokhar, Ijaz Ahmed Khatoon, Malik Ghulam Raza, Saifuddin Khalid, Ghulam Qadir Khan Bettani, Muhammad Rashad Khan and Maulvi Muhammad Sarwar Musakhel.

 

Five MPs on reserved seats of women and minorities are Humaira Awais Shahid, Rana Rizvi, Arif Masih, Rasheed Khan Bhai, Chettan Mal were elected after the promulgation of 18th Amendment.

 

The talks between PPP and PML-N were held to pass the 20th amendment to the Constitution so that the membership of elected MPs could remain intact.

 

The court has adjourned the hearing of incomplete Election Commission case for two weeks.
 

SC to resume hearing on by-polls under incomplete EC

 

A four-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry will hear the case regarding by-elections under the incomplete Election Commission.

 

The court will also decide about the fate of 23 parliamentarians who were elected under the incomplete Election Commission.

 

Earlier, the court had granted time till Feb 6 to get parliamentary ratification of the elections but the government failed to meet the deadline.

 

On the other hand, session of the National Assembly will hold on 5pm, in which the government will struggle to pass the 20th amendment.
 

Pakistan wants equity-based relationship with US: Sherry Rehman

 

Pakistani ambassador to United States, Sherry Rehman has said that Pakistan wants “transparency, consistency and predictability in the relationship with US”. “Mutual respect and partnership has to be the basis of this relationship”, she stressed during a dinner meeting hosted in her honour by the Pakistani journalists in Washington, DC area. 

 

While urging the need to institute parliamentary oversight in everything, she said that decision are being taken in a purely democratic manner while keeping national interest in the foremost “instead of taking decision on a phone call like before”, hinting to the relationship with US during the Mushrarraf era.

 

“For the first time in Pakistani history, parliamentary strategic review with relations to US is in process”, she said observing that it would be better to wait for the recommendations before jumping to any pre-conceived conclusions.

 

“At present, we are waiting for the recommendations of parliamentary review to be forwarded to the US by the Pakistani government. I also have to wait for the recommendations of parliamentary review before making policy pronouncements”, she argued.

 

In her first media interaction since taking-up the tough assignment in Washington, she said “we want good relations with the US but on an equal basis, and the entire country is on one page about it”. “Respect is the first principle of a partnership and we expect the same from US”, she reiterated.

 

“We want trade not aid, and the US should give us preferential trade status as well as a level playing field like other countries”, she demanded adding that Pakistan had much to benefit from the relationship, if the priorities could be set right.

In an obvious reference to the general mood against Pakistan in the US administration, she said “it is election year in the US where getting attention on Pakistan could be focused. During such junctures, foreign policy becomes the first causality”, she rued. She, however, also conceded that “run-up to elections” has also started in Pakistan and democracy is flourishing.

 

On the US demands to “do more”, she said that Pakistan had been the worst victim of terrorism. “We don t want to go in  victim narrative  but our sacrifices during last 10 years and even before that should also be respected”, Sherry observed.

 

On the question of Afghanistan s future and the ongoing efforts to achieve peace through reconciliation, she said that “Pakistan is concerned about the troops withdrawal of US from Afghanistan, and hopes that it will be responsible”.

 

“Pakistan has stakes in Afghanistan s peace and irresponsible withdrawal of US will make Pakistan the first victim”, she opined and stressed that Pakistan wanted to foster good relations with all its neighbours including India and Afghnaistan.

 

Having arrived in the US capital to replace Husain Haqqani, who became a victim to the memogate scandal, Sherry thanked President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani for trusting her with a tough assignment. She assured to give it her best shot with the help of Pakistani expatriate community.

 

- Contributed by Awais Saleem, News Trends correspondent in Washington, DC

Police open fire at Bangladesh protesters, 3 dead

 

The clashes killed at least three people and injuring more than 100, a news report and doctors at two hospitals said.

 

The opposition party said 1,200 of its activists were arrested, but the figure could not immediately be confirmed.

 

The main Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its key Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami are demanding an independent caretaker government oversee elections. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina scrapped the 15-year-old system last year, saying it contradicted the constitution.

 

The opposition, led by Hasina s archrival former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, says elections will be rigged if held under the current government and without a caretaker system in place.

 

Clashes during Sunday s nationwide protests were reported in about a dozen towns, Desh television station said.

 

Two men died from bullet wounds at a government hospital in the eastern town of Chandpur, physician Mahmudunnabi told The Associated Press by phone.

 

They were shot by police who fired at a procession of protesters trying to march forward by breaking a police barricade, the United News of Bangladesh agency said.

 

Separately, a youth died and four people with bullet wounds were being treated at a government hospital in Laxmipur, another eastern town, said doctor Mohammad Nizam Uddin.

 

The identities of the dead were not immediately clear. Zia s party claimed one was a party activist while media reports said two others were rickshawpullers.

 

Hasan Mahmud Khandaker, the country s police chief, said authorities would investigate the violence to determine what actually happened.

 

Police arrested about 1,200 activists, opposition spokesman Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said. The figure could not be confirmed immediately.

 

The South Asian nation s politics became tense recently as the opposition has geared up its anti-government protests targeting the next general election due in 2014.

 

Hasina s government is also at loggerheads with Zia and the largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami over its effort to try suspected war criminals involving the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

 

Five top officials and a former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami facing charges of war crimes are currently behind bars for their alleged role in the nine-month war in which the government said at least 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army in collaboration with the suspects. Two others of Zia s party also face similar charges of crimes against humanity that include killing, rape and arson.

 

Zia and Jamaat-e-Islami party have rejected the trial and said it is politically motivated to eliminate the opposition.

 

The opposition parties also held several general strikes in recent months.

 

Violent protests are common opposition tactics to embarrass the government in Bangladesh, a fragile parliamentary democracy that has a history of two successful and 19 failed military coups since 1971 when the country broke from Pakistan.

 

On Jan. 19, the Bangladesh military said it foiled a plot by a group of hardline officers, their retired colleagues and Bangladeshi conspirators living abroad to overthrow Hasina.–AP
 

Supported PPP on Musharrafs advice: Shujaat

 

Addressing a press conference after presiding over a provincial parliamentary party meeting in Quetta, Ch Shujaat Hussain said that PML-Q believes in democracy and provincial autonomy.

 

Shujaat promised that PML-Q will never bring any candidate from outside Balochistan in Senate election and assured that candidates for Senate will be nominated by the provincial leadership. “We want election instead of auction.”
 

 

He also asserted that Pervez Musharraf will be arrested on his return.

 

Nisar asks rulers not to test peoples patience any more

In a statement, Ch Nisar Ali Khan said that constitutional amendments without establishing and independent Election Commission and authentic electoral list show double standards on the part of the current rulers.

 

On the issue of calling joint session of the parliament for debating NATO attacks, the opposition leader, asked that why the government want to put burden of its inability on the parliament.
 

No peace without Pak-Afghan cooperation: Sherpao

Addressing a press conference, Pakistan Peoples Party (Sherpao) Chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said that there is lack of communication between Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan, adding that new phase of dialogue should be started with Afghanistan while bringing betterment in relations with neighbouring country.

 

Commenting on current situation in the country, he said that clash and contradiction among institutions are not good and every department should work within its jurisdiction.

 

He said that the party claiming to be the champion of Pakhtuns rights is making their public rallies with the support of state machinery.

 

He also demanded that general polls should be held by autonomous Election Commission with transparent voting lists.
 

Her legacy set in stone, ‘Dalit queen’ faces polls

LUCKNOW: By her own standards, Kumari Mayawati’s birthday celebrations were low-key this year. After driving through a red-carpeted tunnel of plaster elephant tusks in an Ambassador, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh swept past a coterie of her party’s workers, who bowed and touched her feet.

Diamonds adorned the diminutive figure of “the Dalit Queen”, encrusting her necklace, a bracelet, her earrings, a nose-ring and her watch, as she accepted a few bouquets of flowers and marched about briskly in the marigold-draped party headquarters.

But the huge crowds of gaping admirers were missing this year; there was no garland of banknotes, no upper-caste Brahmin on hand to symbolically pop a morsel of birthday cake into the mouth of an “untouchable” who has risen from the bottom of India’s social pile to become one of the most powerful women in the world.

That’s because election campaign rules are now in effect for staggered polls to be held in February and March in Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati is far from a sure bet to win another term as chief minister of the northern state whose population of 200 million would rank as the fifth-most populous in the world if it were a country.

If she doesn’t, it would be a blow to her undisguised ambition to one day become prime minister of India, a goal that looked reasonable back in 2007 when she won a huge mandate from the state’s voters by appealing to a rainbow of castes, which still define the socio-economic status for many of India’s 1.2 billion people.

Launching the seventh, gilt-edged volume of an autobiography that runs to thousands of pages and is printed in Hindi and English, Mayawati bemoaned Election Commission rules that obliged her to row back on her usual birthday beneficence.

“Normally, my birthday is an occasion to give away thousands of crores in welfare schemes for Dalits and other backward castes, but because of the election code of conduct we could not do that this year,” she said.

Mayawati’s nemesis in the election is Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has ruled the country for most of its six decades of independence. A relative greenhorn in the hurly-burly of Indian politics, Gandhi has staked his future on the performance of the venerable but troubled Congress party in Uttar Pradesh.

A TRADITION OF EXTRAVAGANCE

Although she presides over one of the most poverty-plagued states of India — its per-capita income is just above 50 percent of the national average — Mayawati’s extraordinary personal extravagance preserves a tradition set over the centuries by a succession of rulers in the plains of the river Ganges.

In the five years since she took office, she has blanketed hundreds of acres of prime real estate in Lucknow and elsewhere in pink marble and sandstone monuments.

Statues of marble elephants and icons of the lower castes, including a dozen of herself, occupy memorial parks created on a scale not seen in India since the British built New Delhi in the fading days of their empire.

A government report found that Uttar Pradesh lavished more than $400 million on such projects between 2007 and 2009 alone — and the building continues.

“She’s taken it straight out of the pages of the Mughals and the first British Viceroys who built huge statues. These are abiding icons that the Dalits always hankered after but never had themselves,” said Ajoy Bose, author of a biography of Mayawati.

Like the Nawabs, descendents of Persian courtiers who governed the region in the 18th century, Mayawati likes to flaunt her wealth. On paper, she is India’s richest chief minister, with declared assets of $16 million that include a shopping mall in New Delhi and $169,000 in jewellery. But unlike many of her peers in other states, she is open about her income and pays taxes on it.

A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last year recounted how she once sent a private jet to fetch a pair of sandals from Mumbai, 1,000 km (620 miles) away. According to the cable, one minister was forced to do sit-ups in front of Mayawati as a punishment for a minor offence; those wanting to become election candidates for her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege.

But, unlike her aristocratic Mughal, Nawab and British predecessors, she hails from India’s “Dalit” castes, who were marginalized for centuries on the bottom rungs of Hinduism’s social ladder. Still today, the idea that a Dalit could become prime minister is as outlandish for many Indians as the thought of a black president once was in the United States.

“FIRST-RATE EGOMANIAC”

One of nine children of a poor government clerk, Mayawati grew up in a Delhi slum and became a school teacher before launching into politics. Aides say she’s a news junkie, who obsessively watches the many all-news channels now available in India.

She is often ridiculed by urban middle classes for her monumental personality cult — the U.S. cable described her as a “first-rate egomaniac” — and yet Mayawati still has many supporters in Uttar Pradesh, where economic growth has picked up and law and order have improved on her watch.

Mayawati’s aides point out that she has spent far more on building roads and joining villages to the electrical grid than she has on the icons to herself and the Dalit people.

“Once you get the infrastructure on the ground, Uttar Pradesh will grow on its own,” said a senior official in her inner circle, who asked not to be identified.

Sympathetic analysts even liken her park-building spree to that of the Nawab of Lucknow, Asaf-Ud-Dowlah, who employed 20,000 people to build a shrine during a harsh 1784 famine, a project some historians call an example of pre-Keynesian economics.

That might be a stretch, but electrification and rural welfare projects have undoubtedly contributed to economic growth, which at seven percent annually in her first four years of office, was the state’s fastest-ever rate.

A report by the central government’s economic Planning Commission last year said Mayawati’s pro-Dalit policies had begun to improve the dire nutrition situation in the state, where 42 percent of children under five are underweight.

Even critics admit crime has fallen noticeably since she took over as chief minister in 2007 from Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former wrestler many remember for presiding over a surge in gang violence, with gun-wielding goons threatening shopkeepers.

POLICE ON THEIR SIDE

In the mainly Dalit village of Bhaddi Kheda, an hour’s drive from Lucknow, families have been given grants to build modest new houses to replace mud-walled hovels. New toilets improve sanitation, and muddy lanes have been paved.

Most importantly, said villager Saptruhan Das, Dalits who for generations were terrorised by higher castes now feel protected because the police are on their side.

“Yadav people would come and misbehave with the women,” Das said, referring to former Chief Minister Yadav’s caste. “In some places, they’d give us work but beat us. Now with Mayawati in power, nobody dares.”

According to an opinion poll conducted in Uttar Pradesh for India Today magazine last November, 69 percent said that Mayawati had fulfilled the expectations of Dalits.

But nearly 9 out of 10 voters said competence mattered more than the chief minister’s caste, two-thirds wanted a change of guard, and the poll showed that Yadav was more favoured than Mayawati as the best person to lead the state.

Indeed, Yadav’s Samajwadi Party could well emerge from the election with more seats in the 403-member state assembly than Mayawati, though probably not enough for a majority, forcing him to ally with Gandhi’s Congress for a return to power.

ELEPHANTINE AMBITIONS

It is too soon to write off the wily Mayawati. She has outwitted every opponent who has crossed her path since the 1990s, first forming several short-lived coalition governments and then storming home with a single-party majority in 2007.

She still pulls in crowds of easily 100,000 at election rallies, far more than her opponents, including Gandhi. And she has a knack for turning adversity into advantage.

Take the flap over the life-sized elephant statues Mayawati had erected in a sprawling Lucknow park, which she opened in 2008 and named after the untouchable leader who wrote India’s constitution, Dr. B.R Ambedkar.

The Election Commission this month ordered all statues of Mayawati and of elephants — her party’s electoral symbol — to be covered during the campaign. So now, dozens of hulking elephant statues are clad in yellow plastic sheeting, and plyboard boxes have been built around bronze Mayawati statues.

“I thank the Election Commission for this order,” she said. “It is going to benefit the party and has given us free publicity.”

Despite her bravado, Mayawati is likely to lose the votes of millions who believe that corruption has gone from bad to worse and the fruits of economic growth have been unevenly spread both across the sprawling state and its castes.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one businessman in the state described a well-organised system of bribe-paying to bureaucrats and constant harassment of companies for pay-offs.

“You have to be really desperate to do business in Uttar Pradesh. You have to pay for virtually everything,” he said. “Since you have to pay out even if you follow the law — why follow the law?”

NO INDUSTRY, NO JOBS

Apart from a couple of companies seen as close to her administration including Jaypee Group, which built the track used for India’s first Formula One race last year, Uttar Pradesh has missed out on India’s industrial growth of the past decade.

Construction, particularly state-funded building of roads, has been the main driver of the state’s economy, along with agriculture. Manufacturing has stagnated, hobbled by regular power cuts, high taxes and corruption.

Dalit villager Chote Lal, 28, says life has improved for his caste under Mayawati, but he still does not have enough food to feed his seven children properly. “There are no jobs, no factories — she should have brought in industry,” he said.

This may be Mayawati’s undoing: not the statues and the personal extravagance, but the sense she has not done enough to lift living standards evenly across so vast a population.

“Overall, her performance is a mixed bag,” said Bose, her biographer. “She has clearly been disappointing. She had a great chance to do more.”

This is especially felt among higher castes and Muslims, whose votes helped propel Mayawati to power with a majority in 2007 but who now feel her pro-Dalit policies have not taken them into account.

“We want a government that works for development, not one that works for one particular caste or religion,” said Mohammed Ahmed Khan, a Muslim farmer in the village of Dharai Mafi. AGENCIES

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