Pakistan - News and Discussion 6

[Naresh]

<b>Delusions of grandeur</b>

Our rulers often suffer from strange delusions of their own grandeur. In a recent TV interview, General Musharraf said he wants to be remembered as the ‘saviour of Pakistan’ in the history ‘for saving the country from the brink of an economic collapse and for introducing real democracy’.

He also said that the entire army, down to the last soldier, was right behind him. This is pure rodomontade for remand from the popular opinion. Until the day he toppled the civilian government, very few people had even heard his name. He passed 35 undistinguished years of his life in army barracks and, though he rose to be the army chief, it would be unfair to equate him with any accomplished politician, much less to a visionary economist. What has he done during the seven years of authoritarian rule to merit a place in history?

An overwhelming majority of people hold him responsible for destroying the entire spectrum of our political, social and moral values, whatever little we had, before he gate-crashed on the political scene. Like all intractable dictators of his kind, he has created cracks in fissures in our polity, which have put the very integrity of the country, especially the bondage of Balochistan and NWFP with Islamabad, at risk. In the realm of the foreign policy, he has diminished the honour of the country by making it a surrogate of the US, India, even Afghanistan.

His economic policies for which he does a feckless horn-tooting at every opportunity, are mere government statistics (which are worse than white lies). His given ‘prosperity’ has had a multiplying effect on the poor of this country who have increased manifolds, in tens of millions, during his reign. If the entire army is perceived by him to be on his side it is because of our military system which is based on abject loyalty and extreme servility to the superior ranks and not because he is an able or popular leader. -<b>SEEMAB ABBASI, Rawalpindi, May 9.</b>

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