A Democracy In Deeds
Everyone’s Need

By Prakash Dahal

WHAT did Winston Churchill mean when he said, "Although democracy has its flaws, it is the least bad political system"? Did he mean, one can have rights to go berserk and sound belligerent to anyone, be it an individual or an institution, that doesn’t agree to your ways and style! Or, he meant that one can rig an election in the pluralistic democracy and uphold the doctrine ‘end justifies the means’. Or, he meant that one can coerce Judiciary to have decisions in one’s favour! Or he meant that in democracy, the more one can deceive the longer one has chances to survive!

System

The recounting of one of the Nuwakot constituency’s ballots loudly speaks that ballot boxes alone don’t ensure democracy. Elections, in fact, can help a given system appear democratic.

But, they alone can’t make a real democracy. What can make a system functionally democratic is the arrangement and an affordable access to provisions like freedom to chose, freedom to express oneself, rule of law and an independent judiciary whose verdict is upheld by all. And such provisions are supervised and monitored by judiciary and enforced by law.

It may be intriguing to judge Nepal by placing it within these democratic parameters.

The democratic indicators don’t sound that frustrating.

As for instance, unlike Putin’s democratic Russia, no private press is throttled in Nepal, though free press have mostly mortgaged their freedom only to perversely erode their credibility. They are free to write anything for which they are held accountable to none.

To many Nepalese, rule of law still remains a distant and deceptive phenomenon. At least half of the country’s 24.6 million people think that they are ruled not by law but by fate. Many can’t afford and those who can afford are hardly a law-fearing fellows. In Nepal, most of tax-dodgers/evaders are those who hold the silver spoon in their mouth.

Political thunderbolts have quite often struck the supposed-to-be an independent judiciary. No Court’s decisions on political issues have remained immune from controversy, igniting political protests. The supposed-to-be democratic politicians and political parties don’t only disagree but they make attempts to bully the Court, at times. There are cases where people remain largely skeptic towards the Court’s decisions which they think are not rationally built on evidences but might have been influenced.

Still, Nepal remains a democratic country by the definition of the Freedom House. Because, it has what they call freedom of speech ( speak any nonsense for which you are never held accountable!) , free press ( financially dependent press barter away freedom for petty personal gains), independent judiciary and rule of law.

And, still we are in the list of 120 or so countries which the American think tank agency likes to call democracies.

We have still been successful in hiding our 10 long years’ of follies under the smoke screen of optimism and we tell the world, "we are still in transition".

The problem with us is we are not democrats in deeds but by definition only. Earlier, we needed a democratic mask to hide our benighted behavior and anarchic attitude, and no sooner we had it the mask is torn and we are exposed.

By definition, we are indeed a democratic country because we have people’s assembly called House of Representatives, their members are chosen through ballots inserted into boxes. And, this is what perfectly appears to be democratic.

No Freedom House or any other custodians of democracy would ever care whether the ballots are earned by showering voters with largesse; are collected through strong-arms tactic; pork-barrel tactic; blackmailing or showering menace! No one is there to say no even if the electoral results are manipulated by means of money and muscle power, and the winner becomes loser and the loser winner as in the case of Nuwakot, in Nepal.

Constitutionally, the rule of law is very much there; but the agency enforcing laws have jaws without canines. They can tighten the noose around the neck of those who have no option other than holding their neck voluntarily, and the no-law-fearing fellows have necks bigger than the noose.

The Judiciary is there to monitor and supervise rule of law in our democracy.

Notwithstanding these, we are still comfortably a democracy.

But no, every cloud has a silver lining! And, in our case, the silver linings are visible around the clouds of Nuwakot. If only those silver linings could spread around the dark clouds looming large in other parts of the region, this might help our democracy to move along the right path. A positive symptom it is though, to discourage and to punish the caterpillars of democracy, this should be the beginning of the end of the ills infesting our ailing democracy.

Transformation

More of such precedents can only transform our democracy by definition into a democracy in deeds.

Protected Areas Or Paper Parks?

By Claude Martin

MOST of the news we read about the environment is bad. Almost every day, it seems, come reports of disappearing forests, the destruction of wetlands, the death of coral reefs and so on. We hear repeatedly of threats to the tiger, the whales, the elephants, this or that plant or bird—and we know that every year species most of us might never have heard of fade into extinction.

Not Bad

These are serious matters, of course, and we need to be concerned about them, to try to reverse unhealthy trends and to stop the growing toll of damage we so carelessly do to the world about us. Yet when we look at our planet, the news really is not all bad. Sometimes, human endeavour and intervention in the natural world do yield positive results and—while we must never be complacent and always remain aware of our destructive power— we could perhaps once in a while allow ourselves a little pat on the back for the wonderful natural inheritance we are taking into the new millennium.

This was brought home to me a few weeks ago when I attended a conference in Bangkok. During my visit, I discovered for the first time the magical wildlife sanctuary of Huay Kha Khaeng, in western Thailand. It is a sizeable tropical moist forest close to the Myanmar border, covering 2,500 square kilometres of hilly terrain that is barely accessible by road. The sanctuary, where the conservation organisation WWF runs an education project with young Buddhist monks, may well be the only hope for the Indochina tiger in Thailand. It also harbours a notable Asian elephant population and, among much other wildlife, no fewer than three different large bovine species: the gaur, the banteng and the Wild buffalo.

Huay Kha Khaeng is a place we can be proud of, a rare intact sample of the former jungles of Indochina we have managed to preserve. And it is not alone. At this moment in history the world has 44,000 protected areas, covering in all a surface greater than the combined territories of India and China, or a total of almost 10 per cent of the land area on the planet. What is more, 45 per cent of this total—that is, about six million square kilometres—is classified as nature reserves and national parks, which means it is strictly protected.

Even during the past decade, alongside steady growth in environmental anxiety and accumulating evidence of the risks of climate change, the area classified under the six categories of protected areas recognised by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) has increased exponentially. This fact prompts two thoughts.

First, it is a clear indication of the increasing pressure on land from agriculture, forestry, mining and other forms of exploitation and of the multiplying threats to ecosystems. Second, though, comes the realisation that our efforts to protect what are have not yet destroyed are something of a success story, because they show a willingness among many governments to think of what we will leave to future generations.

Of course, this does not mean that everything in the garden is lovely, so to speak. The gap between the aspiration behind protected areas and the reality of their management is often embarrassingly wide—there is ample evidence that many protected areas are falling far short of the expectation placed upon them. Economic and social pressures, pollution, poor management techniques and sometimes a lack of political support all continue to leave protected areas vulnerable to degradation.

So even if we can celebrate our relative success in establishing protected areas, we cannot afford to be complacement about their survival. And, such places will be of greater importance in the future than they have been in the past. Protected areas fulfil a crucial role in the preservation of biodiversity and as a pool of animal and plant species— not least those species that have medicinal properties. They also contribute greatly to the maintenance of fresh water resources an protection against flooding, with even big cities relying on them for the integrity of their water supplies.

How often do you see the practical services of protected areas listed as assets in national accounts? Destruction is often measured in terms of the value accruing when, say, a forest is cut, but protected areas are most commonly considered as a kind of sacrifice, a financial burden on humanity rather than an asset. It is true that the livelihoods of indigenous people may be affected by the establishment of a protected area—and very many of them are in inhabited regions—but this is a difficulty that can be overcome by sensible management and should not be seen, as it so often is, as an argument against protection. There are plenty of examples round the world of conservation measures that actually improve the economic position and the livelihood of native and indigenous peoples.

Good Start

We may take comfort from the fact that we have made a good start, but if protected areas really are to serve the purpose for which they are intended, we must learn to understand them, promote them and care for them. In short, we need to see them positively and value them properly . Otherwise, we risk being left with nothing more than "paper parks", protected areas that we piously declare but then neglect.

WWF Feature
Afghan Refugees Return To Ravaged Homeland

By Mazhar Abbas

It will be a strange sort of homecoming for teenager Amir Jan, one of about 1,000 Afghans due to return to their motherland Saturday after up to 20 years in Pakistani refugee camps.

Jan, 16, was born in Pakistan and grew up in an Afghan camp in this southern Pakistani port city. He knows nothing of Afghanistan other than what his parents and other refugees have told him.

"My father told me it is where my family used to live before they were forced to leave," he said as he boarded a truck for the journey "home."

Despite the hardships of life in the camp, Jan has grown up in a bustling city with all the trappings of modern life.

On Saturday he will find himself in a country ravaged by two decades of war, where television and sport are banned and where executions of criminals are the main form of public entertainment.

Jan’s parents were part of the exodus which followed the Soviet invasion in 1979, but there have been any number of reasons to flee Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

After the Soviets pulled out in 1989, war erupted between the Moscow-backed government in Kabul and anti-communist guerrillas.

The guerrillas captured Kabul in 1992, but by then Afghanistan was divided along ethnic lines or between powerful warlords and gangsters who fought for control of the rich smugging routes to Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

In 1994 a new militia force, known as the Taliban (Islamic students), emerged from among the Pashtun ethnic majority and within two years had rocketed Kabul into submission once again.

They ruthlessly imposed an ultra-conservative version of Sharia law which quickly restored law and order but alientated ethnic minorities, who now support resistance forces loyal to ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Many of the refugees returning Saturday know little of the Taliban or the reality of life under their secretive theocracy, but as fellow Pashtuns they sympathise with the militia’s cultural values.

"I am not afraid of the Taliban although I know little about their politics," said Bismillah Khan, who will be returning to his hometown and now Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

"As long as they are bringing Islamic law to the country there is nothing to be scared of," he said, adding that he had nowhere else to call home.

"I am Taliban and happy to return to my country," said 50-year-old Bismillah (eds: one name), who arrived in Pakistan 20 years ago.

The families will be given five thousand rupees (about 100 dollars) each and 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of wheat from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan.

UN officials say women make up some 70 per cent of the refugees who have volunteered to return to Afghanistan under the repatriation drive launched earlier this year.

Their last days in Pakistan could be their last chance to walk alone down the street with their faces uncovered, to look for work or go to school — all outlawed under the Taliban’s strict policies on women.

Many of the women seen boarding the repatriation trucks in Karachi were wearing the full-body veil which is mandatory in the roughly 90 per cent of Afghanistan under Taliban control.

But others were dressed in the more casual Pakistani style with a light scarf over their hair.

UNHCR representative in Pakistan Hasim Utkan said the situation facing the female returnees was a major concern, but they had still volunteered to go back.

Pakistan is keen for the refugees to leave as soon as possible, hoping to rid itself of the social end economic problems arising from the sprawling camps dotted along the border.

But so far this year only some 35,000 out of an estimated two million Afghan refugees have agreed to go back.

And with southern Afghanistan currently facing its latest disaster — a severe drought which is driving millions of people to the brink of starvation — UN officials warn Pakistan must prepare for another inlux from its troubled neighbour.

AFP