Barely 72 hours after rewarding Pakistan with F-16s, the Bush administration on Monday noted that its post-September 11 ally’s human rights record is poor, its political parties weak and its military is still engaged in politics.
Constitutional amendments passed by the Pakistani government have strengthened the powers of the President at the expense of the National Assembly, the State Department noted in its report, “Supporting Human Rights and Democracy.”
“The military remains heavily engaged in politics, and President [Pervez] Musharraf’s decision to continue as Chief of Army Staff has spurred a political debate,” the report said, adding, “Political parties are generally weak, undemocratic institutions centered on personalities instead of policies. The judiciary is corrupt, inefficient, and malleable to political pressure.”
Peppered with questions on Washington’s incongruous policy of resuming the sale of F-16s to Pakistan while at the same time criticizing its human rights record, Michael Kozak, Acting Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour, described Pakistan as a “really difficult case.”
“Sometimes you can say that by being more engaged and helping a government in trying to accomplish some of its aims, that you find it to be more responsive in opening things up,” Mr Kozak said.
Washington has put pressure on its European allies not to lift an arms embargo on China citing Beijing’s poor human rights record. “This issue of F-16s needs to be seen in that broader context. And, it’s a very different reality, a very different reality than the China reality, where, you know, the human rights — Tiananmen. There hadn’t been much of a change there since 1989,” State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli explained, referring to the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that were brutally crushed by the government in 1989.
The State Department’s congressionally mandated report details the ways the United States is working to advance the cause of freedom worldwide.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the State Department on Monday, asserted the United States was on the “right side of freedom’s divide and we have an obligation to help those who are unlucky enough to have been born on the wrong side of that divide.”
“We have reached this simple conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land is dependent on the growth of liberty in other lands,” Miss Rice said.
In December 2003, the national and provincial assemblies in Pakistan passed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which transferred a number of powers from the office of prime minister to the president and exempted Gen. Musharraf from a prohibition on holding two offices of state until the end of the year, allowing him to remain as Chief of Army Staff. In October, over opposition protests, Parliament passed another bill, which extended this exemption until 2007.
The State Department report noted that the Pakistani government had committed that new local elections would be scheduled for 2005 and the national elections, to be held no later than 2007, would be free and fair.
“The United States will continue to encourage the government to adhere to this commitment and will provide needed support. Both contests will be important indicators of the political will for democratization,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the leaders of three major Pakistani political parties continue to live outside the country.
“The United States believes that the success of Pakistan’s democratization efforts is critical to the strength of our long term relationship and will positively contribute to its effective participation in the global war on terrorism,” the report said, adding Washington was continuing to encourage the Pakistani military to play an appropriate role in the emerging democratic set-up and to refrain from interfering in domestic politics.
