Pakistan's new Parliament on Wednesday made history by electing the country's first female speaker from the party of late Benazir Bhutto.
Fehmida Mirza, 51, a businesswoman and medical doctor from a political family in Sindh province, elected to Parliament three times, won 249 of the 324 votes cast in a ballot in the National Assembly, or lower house. Her only challenger received 70 votes. Dr. Fehmida's husband, Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza, is a close friend and ally of Asif Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto.
"I am honored, I am humbled and happy," Mirza told reporters shortly before voting began. "It is one thing to sit in opposition but this chair carries big responsibility ... I am feeling that responsibility today and will, God willing, come up to expectations," she said.
In addition to the election of the first female speaker of parliament in Pakistan, the inauguration of new parliament is historic in another way: There are no burqas in sight with the defeat of the cleric alliance MMA. The real question now is whether these "history-making" events represent a real change or they are just cosmetic?
Writing in a prior post "Are Women in Pakistan Better Off Today?" I wrote as follows: "Most of the women represented in Pakistani parliament are from the same privileged, feudal class that is largely responsible for discrimination against women in Pakistan. The women in parliament have not been particularly vocal in raising the women's issues in parliament and they have not offered any serious legislation other than the Women's Protection Bill that was offered and passed because of President Musharraf's personal intervention. The word "feudal princess" often used to describe late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto applies well to the majority the women members of parliament in Pakistan. There is a continuing large literacy gap of as much as 45 percent between men and women and the opportunities for rural women's education remain elusive."
Though articulate and accomplished as a politician and a medical doctor, Dr. Fehmida Mirza fits the description of a feudal princess in the same way that Ms Bhutto did. Only time will tell if Dr. Mirza will break this stereotype and ring in real fundamental changes in the political process by being a positive and practical role model for women.
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Here's an interesting rundown on women members of Pak parliament that I found on http://opf.overseaspakistanis.net/wp/874/pakistan-politics-feudals-politicians%E2%80%99-kins-dominate-women-reserved-seats/
Majority of the elected women have either a feudal background or they are daughters, sisters or wives of the political stalwarts or former National Assembly members, or members of the former provincial assemblies or Senate. Begum Ishrat Ashraf is wife of Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal, a former National Assembly deputy speaker. Similarly, Farzana Raja is sister-in-law of Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq who has been nominated as the parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assembly and wife of Pir Mukaram Ali. Marvi Memon is daughter of Federal Information Minister Nisar A Memon while Sameena Mushtaq Pagawala is also sister-in-law of former MNA Mushtaq Pagawala. Mehreen Anwar Raja is daughter of Raja Mohammad Anwar, a veteran politician and lawyer. A late PPP leader Sheikh Rashid was the former secretary general of the party and close aide of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. His wife Shakeela Khanum has also been elected on reserved seats.
Yasmeen Rehman is wife of Mian Misbah-ur-Rehman and sister of Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayum and Pervaiz Malik, a leader of the PML-N. Sumaira Malik is niece of former president Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari. Nafisa Shah is daughter of Qaim Ali Shah, a future chief minister of Sindh. Mamoona Hashmi is the daughter of Javed Hashmi and elected on the PML-N reserved seat.
Palwasha Muhammadzai is a niece of former parliamentarian Fauzia Behram. Farah Naz Ispahani is wife of Hussain Haqqani who was the former ambassador and important figure in the PPP. Similarly Kaneez Fiza Junejo is daughter of Muhammad Khan Junejo, a former prime minister. Asma Arbab Alamgir is wife of Dr Arbab Alamgir and daughter-in-law of late Arbab Jahangir.
Shazia Naheed is a daughter of MPA Atta Ahmad Maree. Nargis Khan is daughter of former law minister ND Khan. Samah Perveen Magasi is wife of Balochistan Governor Zulfiqar Magasi. Safina Saima Khar is wife of former MNA Malik Ghulam Arbi Khar. Nargis Parveen Awan is wife of former minister Malik Mukhtar Ahmad Awan. In addition, Sheher Bano, Sherry Rehman, Tehmina Daultana, Rukhsana Bangash, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Fkhar-un-Nisa Khokhar, Attiya Inayatullah have also been elected.
Some 17 female candidates who won on the reserved seats from both the national and the provincial assemblies will have to quit one seats when they take oath. The Election Commission has notified the success of 17 female candidates on the reserved seats for women in the national and provincial assemblies. It is worth mentioning that five female candidates of the PML-N and six of the PPP won from both general and reserved seats and they will vacate one seat.
Farzana Raja, Fakhr-un-Nisa Khokhar, Fauzia Habib, Yasmin Rahman, Shakila Khanam and Samina Mushtaq Paganwala of the PPP were also declared successful. The successful PML-N candidates include Tahira Aurangzeb, Nighat Parveen Mir, Tahira Mansoor, Shahnaz Salim and Parveen Masood Bhatti. Farah Naz Esphahani, Shagufta Jamani and Mehreen Razaq Bhutto won from the PPP platform in Sindh. Likewise Asma Arbab Alamgir, Mir-un-Nisa Afridi and Farhat Begum were elected from the NWFP on the PPP’s platform.
According to the final results, Zobaida Jalal (independent) and Zaib Jafar Iqbal (PML-N) have been elected on women reserved seats as NA members. Zobaida lost from NA-272 Gwadar as independent to Mir Yaqoob Bazenjo but on reserved seats she has returned on the PML-Q ticket. Zaib Jafar Iqbal lost on NA-193 Rahimyar Khan-II to Mian Abdul Sattar of the PPP.
Here's a Reuters report on feudal excesses and case for land reform in Pakistan:
Dotted around Pakistan are vast estates run by feudal landlords who command enormous economic and political power, condemning their tenants to poverty, reform activists charge.
On some of these estates, debt bondage has forced 1.8 million people to work the land for no pay, generation after generation, according to the campaigning group Anti-Slavery International. On others, sharecropping systems are practised, under which landless tenants hand over between two-thirds and half of the crops they produce to the landowner.
Unlike other countries in the region, including India, Pakistan did not carry out land reforms after 1947, and attempts in the 1950s and 1970s to reduce the size of land holdings had limited impact.
"Land reform has not taken place because the lawmakers in many cases themselves have large land holdings and will never want to transfer ownership to tenants. There will be no land reform until [the] people are in control of governance," Mubashir Hasan, a former finance minister and social activist, told IRIN.
About 2 percent of households control more than 45 percent of the land area. Powerful farmers have also taken advantage of government subsidies in water and agriculture, and benefited from technological improvements which have boosted yields, according to the World Bank.
By 1977 the biggest estates had only surrendered about 520,000 hectares, and nearly 285,000 hectares had been redistributed among some 71,000 farmers. Around 3,529 landowners have 513,114 holdings of more than 40.5 hectares in irrigated areas, and 332,273 holdings of more than 40.5 hectares in non-irrigated areas, according to the government's annual Economic Survey.
"We manage to earn a little for ourselves by selling the surplus corn and wheat that we take from the land. It is hard work, but despite this we have not been able to escape poverty. None of my four sons is educated beyond the eighth grade. We needed their labour on the land," said Kareem Muhammad, a landless tenant on a farm near the town of Okara, about 110km south of Lahore.
In Punjab, both sharecropping and fixed-rent contracts - where a rent per acre farmed is paid to the landowner by tenants - are practised. In Sindh, about one third of the land falls under fixed-rent contracts and about two thirds of the land is sharecropped, government surveys show.
The sense of injustice created by the continued hold of feudal landlords and the poverty this gives rise to has been a key factor in rising social discontent - aided and abetted by militant groups.
"I am a landless farmer. Last year my teenage son was persuaded by members of an organization engaged in jihad [holy war] to come away with them. They told him it is better to wield a gun and learn to use it than eke out a miserable existence tilling land," Riazuddin Ahmed, from Vehari in southern Punjab, told IRIN.
"My son is only 17. He saw no hope ahead of him, and therefore went away with these people. His mother and I are distraught. But we believe he has gone to the northern areas and we have no means of finding him," he said.
Former finance minister Hassan blamed this on oppression and misery. "Today, governance has collapsed. Extremism has grown and weapons have proliferated," he said.
Farming contributes 21 percent to gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 44 percent of the workforce, according to the government's annual Economic Survey. Of the total land area of 80.4 million hectares, about 22 million are cultivated, according to official data. Nearly 65 percent of this cultivated area is in Punjab, about 25 percent in Sindh and 10 percent in the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
Here's a 2008 Guardian story by Dilip Hiro on Pak feudal power:
The roots of feudal dominance lie in history. The Pakistan Muslim League, the parent of its present two versions, is the descendant of the All India Muslim League (AIML). Formed in 1906 to promote loyalty to the British Crown while advancing Muslim interests, the AIML was led by Muslim grandees and feudal lords. It was not until 1940 that it demanded partition of the Indian sub-continent, with Muslim majority areas constituting independent states. Unlike the anti-imperialist Indian National Congress, it lacked an economic programme favouring small and landless peasants, and trade unions for industrial workers.
Given the traditional peasants' servitude to landowners, and almost universal illiteracy in rural Pakistan, where most people lived, electoral politics became the privilege of large landlords, who controlled vote banks. During elections their choice of a party depended on self-interest: which one will supply or raise government-subsidised irrigation water and/or fertiliser; or build roads to the villages they owned.
This continues. A recent report in the Observer from Old Jatoi (population, 3,000) in Sindh is illustrative. While the peasants working for the local grandee, Mustafa Jatoi, live in shacks, his spacious house is surrounded by green lawns and high white walls, with its driveway chocked with Toyota SUVs and Suzuki Mehrans, now deployed to transport him to drummed-up rallies.
His electoral rival, Arif Jatoi, too has similar assets. But he takes time off to fly to Islamabad to seek extra development funds for his area from the prime minister, allied with the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
In the more populous Punjab province, the Lahore-based Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, a PML-Q candidate, charters a helicopter to campaign in his rural constituency, promising to bring a gas pipeline to the villages. The family's fortunes have come from textile factories. Likewise, Nawaz Sharif and his brother, the leaders of the opposition PML-N, have amassed millions from their industrial assets.
It would be naïve to expect such super-affluent Pakistanis to advance the interests of landless peasants or poorly paid factory workers.
The near-monopoly of power by the Pakistan Muslim League was broken in 1967 when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir, established the Pakistan People's Party. He coined a catchy, all-embracing slogan: "Islam is our faith, democracy our polity, socialism our economy; and all power to the people." It won him the sobriquet of "a socialist demagogue".
While advocating socialist economy, he never uttered the term "land reform". He could not. He possessed 12,000 acres of rice-growing land. He behaved as haughtily as any other feudal lord. So too did his daughter, Benazir. The corruption and the affluence of her and her polo-playing husband, Asif Zardari, are widely known.
Just as with the Jatois elsewhere in Sindh, any electoral rivalry is between competing estate owners. In the Bhutto-Zardari case, it is Benazir's cousin, Mumtaz. Owner of 15,000 acres of arable land worth £12 million, he earns an annual tax-free income of £345,000 in a country with per capita income of £350 a year.
In a recent interview, Mr. Bhutto waxed eloquent about his last summer holiday at Hotel Splendido in Portofino on Italy's Amalfi coast while his peasants suffered the humid heat needed for rice to grow. It was a break from his normal summer forays to apartments in London's posh Mayfair or Knightsbridge.
The glaring scandal of the present election campaign is the total absence of the long-overdue debate about land reform, where the state takes over the land above the legal ceiling and distributes it among landless peasants.
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