[The government extended
the current session of Parliament through Thursday to provide time for
lawmakers to debate and vote on the Lokpal bill. The Lok Sabha, or lower house,
must first vote on the legislation before it can advance to the upper house, or
Rajya Sabha. If approved, the Lokpal would be created as a nine-person board
empowered to investigate corruption allegations against bureaucrats and elected
officials, including the prime minister.]
By Jim Yardley And Vikas Bajaj
Gurinder Osan/Associated Press
|
The issue of official
corruption has dominated India’s political year, making the fate of the
proposed anti-corruption agency, known as the Lokpal, the year’s capstone
political fight. On Tuesday, India’s all-news television channels carried
continuous live footage on split screens, contrasting Mr. Hazare’s protest in
Mumbai with the parliamentary arguments under way in New Delhi.
The Lokpal fight poses a
critical challenge for the Indian National Congress party, which leads the
national coalition government and has been sharply criticized for an
ineffective response to corruption. For months, Mr. Hazare and leaders of the
political opposition have lacerated the Congress party over corruption scandals
and are now attacking the government’s Lokpal legislation as too weak.
But Congress party
leaders appeared determined to use Tuesday’s parliamentary debate to place the
political onus on their opponents. Kapil Sibal, a powerful government minister,
signaled a tougher tone by arguing that opposition leaders were deliberately
trying to defeat the government’s bill so that the political status quo would
remain unchanged.
“The whole country wants
Parliament to pass this law as quickly as possible,” Mr. Sibal argued.
The government extended
the current session of Parliament through Thursday to provide time for
lawmakers to debate and vote on the Lokpal bill. The Lok Sabha, or lower house,
must first vote on the legislation before it can advance to the upper house, or
Rajya Sabha. If approved, the Lokpal would be created as a nine-person board
empowered to investigate corruption allegations against bureaucrats and elected
officials, including the prime minister.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hazare’s
renewed political agitation presents an unpredictable wildcard.
Last summer, Mr. Hazare fasted for 12 days in New Delhi in a
campaign that brought hundreds of thousands of supporters into the streets and
forced the Congress party to agree to certain key demands about the shape of
the Lokpal. Mr. Hazare’s movement tapped into widespread public anger over
corruption and managed to awaken India’s usually politically apathetic middle
class.
On Tuesday, Mr. Hazare’s
new hunger strike in Mumbai began with fairly modest crowds of several thousand
people, while a handful of his top advisers held a simultaneous rally in New
Delhi. Mr. Hazare has vowed to fast for three days in Mumbai before traveling
to New Delhi, where he has promised to “court arrest” by protesting outside the
home of Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress party. Mr. Hazare’s aides
say that more than 130,000 supporters have volunteered to participate in
similar civil disobedience campaigns intended to force mass jailings.
“The government has
betrayed the people,” Mr. Hazare told the crowd on Tuesday. “One day, the
people will teach them a lesson.” He also said that he and his team would
campaign against the parties that form the current government in elections that
will start at the end of January and run into early March.
Mr. Hazare has been
weakened in recent days from a viral fever and one of his advisers, Kiran Bedi,
a former top police official, told the crowd in Mumbai that he should at least
eat some fruit so that he can recover from his illness. By midday Tuesday, the
crowds in Mumbai were fairly modest. Mr. Hazare’s staff had divided seating
arrangements by gender, separating men from women.
Amit Jani, 38, a doctor
of homeopathy, said he was attending the rally because of the frustratingly
slow pace of change in India. “Every election, at every rally, Sonia Gandhi speaks
about corruption,” Mr. Jani said. “But nobody does anything about it.”
Mr. Hazare and his
advisers have attacked the government’s legislation on several points, while
focusing much of their criticism over the Central Bureau of Investigation. Mr.
Hazare has argued that the C.B.I. should be placed under the control of an
independent Lokpal. Under the government’s bill, the agency would remain under
the government’s control.
.In Parliament on
Tuesday, a leading opposition leader, Sushma Swaraj, said that the Lokpal, as
drawn up by the government, would be unconstitutional. Under the government’s
bill, the Lokpal would be created through a constitutional amendment, as a
constitutional body, rather than as part of the broader government bureaucracy.
The bill also establishes quotas for minority groups on the Lokpal board. Ms.
Swaraj argued that such quotas exceed the mandate of India’s Constitution,
which has no such provisions for quotas in constitutional bodies.
But Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, rising to speak late in the day, argued that the government’s
bill “lives up to the promise” made by lawmakers to the Indian people to pass a
Lokpal bill. Mr. Singh noted that the government is also moving forward
simultaneously on other anti-corruption measures and called on Parliament to
pass the Lokpal bill.
“I urge all my
colleagues in Parliament to rise to the occasion and look beyond politics to
pass this law,” Mr. Singh said.
Jim Yardley reported from New Delhi and Vikas
Bajaj from Mumbai. Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.
@ The New York Times
THE PAKISTANIS HAVE A POINT
By Bill Keller
As
an American visitor in the power precincts of Pakistan, from the gated
enclaves of Islamabad to the manicured lawns of the military garrison in
Peshawar, from the luxury fortress of the Serena Hotel to the exclusive
apartments of the parliamentary housing blocks, you can expect three
time-honored traditions: black tea with milk, obsequious servants and a
profound sense of grievance.
@ The New York Times
THE PAKISTANIS HAVE A POINT
[There are, of course, other reasons that Pakistan deserves our attention. It has a fast-growing population approaching 190 million, and it hosts a loose conglomerate of terrorist franchises that offer young Pakistanis employment and purpose unavailable in the suffering feudal economy. It has 100-plus nuclear weapons (Americans who monitor the program don’t know the exact number or the exact location) and a tense, heavily armed border with nuclear India. And its president, Asif Ali Zardari, oversees a ruinous kleptocracy that is spiraling deeper into economic crisis.]
By Bill Keller
Talk to
Pakistani politicians, scholars, generals, businessmen, spies and journalists —
as I did in October — and before long, you are beyond the realm of politics and
diplomacy and into the realm of hurt feelings. Words like “ditch” and “jilt”
and “betray” recur. With Americans, they complain, it’s never a commitment,
it’s always a transaction. This theme is played to the hilt, for effect, but it
is also heartfelt.
“The thing
about us,” a Pakistani official told me, “is that we are half emotional and
half irrational.”
For a
relationship that has oscillated for decades between collaboration and
breakdown, this has been an extraordinarily bad year, at an especially
inconvenient time. As America settles onto the long path toward withdrawal from
Afghanistan, Pakistan has considerable power to determine whether the end of
our longest war is seen as a plausible success or a calamitous failure.
There are,
of course, other reasons that Pakistan deserves our attention. It has a
fast-growing population approaching 190 million, and it hosts a loose
conglomerate of terrorist franchises that offer young Pakistanis employment and
purpose unavailable in the suffering feudal economy. It has 100-plus nuclear weapons (Americans who monitor the program
don’t know the exact number or the exact location) and a tense, heavily armed
border with nuclear India. And its president, Asif Ali Zardari, oversees a
ruinous kleptocracy that is spiraling deeper into economic crisis.
But it is
the scramble to disengage from Afghanistan that has focused minds in
Washington. Pakistan’s rough western frontier with Afghanistan is a sanctuary
for militant extremists and criminal ventures, including the Afghan Taliban,
the Pakistani Taliban, the notorious Haqqani clan and important remnants of the
original horror story, Al Qaeda. The mistrust between Islamabad and Kabul is
deep, nasty — Afghanistan was the only country to vote against letting Pakistan
into the United Nations — and tribal. And to complicate matters further,
Pakistan is the main military supply route for the American-led international
forces and the Afghan National Army. ( Read full article clicking here)