Pakistan News And Discussion-10

Naresh · 04-29-2007, 08:00 PM

The Truth is out. Ardeshir Cawasjee â the Doyen of Pakistani Columnists-Commentators Aptly and Succinctly describes the 170 Million Terroristanis!

[center]Of hats and shawls and dubious deals[/center]

[center]Ardeshir Cowasjee[/center]

THE expatriate community is all at sea. Its members cannot comprehend or work out exactly what is happening in their homeland. They are puzzled, they are confused â as are most of us right here sitting in the homeland. They are also disgusted. One e-mailer writes : âHaving spent almost all my life as a second class expatriate, I have no home to come back to. The Pakistan that my forefathers created has no room for me as now I am a complete misfit. I cannot lie, cheat, bully or kill â the supreme criteria for being a true Pakistani. I just want to know how long are we going to survive like this as a nation? I just want to know what it is that keeps us going? Each time I visit the country I find my fellow Pakistanis in increased misery.â

What can I tell the man? How long? At the rate we are going, it should not be too long. What keeps us going? Well, who wants us 170 million belligerent, illiterate ânanga-bhookasâ? <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' />

A correspondent from Down Under asks me âfrank questions about the Chief Justice issue.â âIs the clamour of the legal brigade against the suspension of the CJ based on the premise that the CJ is above the law? Is it a politically convenient excuse for them to demonstrate against Musharraf? Is the honeymoon over? Is the suspension justified or is it just a political ploy on the generalâs part?â

Well, the honeymoon may not yet be over. The legal brigade is parading the streets, exercising its membersâ right to violence, to foolish behaviour and to childish pranks â wielding staves and beating up suspected masqueraders, bashing up the car of a senior lawyer appearing for the government, tearing down the signboard outside another lawyerâs office, and removing the Jadoogar of Jeddahâs photograph from the Karachi Bar Associationâs room.

As to whether the suspension is justified, that is for the Supreme Judicial Council to decide. Another thing that is for sure is that the treatment meted out to the Chief Justice of Pakistan on March 9 is, in all ways, unjustifiable. It was disgraceful â and shamed this nation, as was the manner in which he was treated on March 13. It was all wrong, very wrong â and above all, foolish in the extreme. But this does not justify the behaviour of the legal fraternity and their total irresponsibility towards the rights of their clients.

One rather amusing â âgalgenhumorâ as the Germans have it, gallows-humour â message had attached to it a photograph which appeared in the national press earlier this month when President General Pervez Musharraf visited the Petaro Cadet College. It depicts him, in his military uniform, with a Sindhi embroidered hat on his head and a knee-length colourful Sindhi shawl draped around his shoulders, receiving some sort of plaque from two gentlemen in naval uniform.

âWhat Edward VII of Britain wore,â wrote my correspondent, âis no match for our Mr Uniform. Do you note the disgrace to the uniform? And this is not the first time he has deviated. I have seen him in Punjabi and Pakhtoon turbans while in uniform. This can only happen in the God-gifted state of Pakistan. As far as street politics is concerned and the actions of the legal community, I agree with you. But these are pent up grievances and not love for the Chief Justice. He also needs to act like a Lordship and not a politician.â

Sadly, while Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is being conducted around the country to speak in various Bar Rooms. We have also been regaled with a photograph of him wearing a funny hat and draped in a multi-coloured shawl. This he should not allow. He should indeed distance himself from the political antics as practised in Pakistan (and the general would do well to do the same).

There has also been much mailing about what has come to be known as the âdealâ â whatever that may denote. What a sad situation it is that in troublesome times Musharraf has no other choice but to fall back on Benazir Bhutto (if that is what he is doing). It is distressing that Pakistan can offer no other options.

Musharraf is desperate to hang on to power, however it has to be done, and Benazir is as desperate to get her flat foot back in, whatever that may take, even at the risk of undermining her âpolitical credibility,â as she told an audience at the London School of Economics on April 24. The point here is that all things being equal, her political credibility is zero minus, after her two stints as prime minister of this country when she ran it into the ground.

A column in The Times (London) asked earlier this month whether Benazir is the answer to Pakistanâs problems. The writer made a rather pithy understatement : âHer record as prime minister does not give cause for great confidence. In her first stint, from 1988 to 1990, she was penned in by the army and intelligence services and can legitimately claim that her hands were tied. But in the second, from 1993 to 1996, she had fewer excuses. Her government did push through some of the liberal reforms that she intended but was also plagued by a cloud of accusations of financial mismanagement (from which Musharrafâs government has been comparatively free).â

Now that Musharraf reportedly is about to allow Benazir off the hook in the courts of Pakistan and in courts of other land does not speak well for his commitment to justice and the rule of law. If she has committed crimes, she must be held answerable for them in courts of law. The dropping of cases against her merely to satisfy Musharrafâs expediency is another disgrace and a shame for this nation.

According to a member of the audience at the LSE, Benazir spent most of the evening lecturing, not on the âcurrent political situation in Pakistan,â as her lecture was titled, but on the past glories and achievements of her life from1977 to 1996. She apparently made no mention of a deal and sidestepped questions put to her on the subject. She did state her intention to return to Pakistan, in the national interest of course, and as it would benefit the countryâs âdemocratic, constitutional and development interests.â

Avoiding mention of the deal, she touched upon her future cooperation with the military-led government purely in the interest of the ârestoration of democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law ....â.

Two days later, in Ukraine, lecturing before an audience at a conference on Peace and Tolerance, she again expressed her intent to return home after her ten years of self-exile âas part of her search for a representative and accountable society, and to support my countryâs movement for the restoration of democracy through the holding of fair, free and impartial elections.â

What she, or for that matter anyone else, means when they talk about the ârestorationâ of democracy is not clear at all. When has this country ever had democracy? It has not, so there is nothing to restore. We have to start. Musharraf claims he has given us the âessence of democracyâ, whatever that may denote. But there is no democracy now and there has never been. As for free and fair elections, Benazir should know all about that. She has been through four of them and all were stage-managed. What makes her think anything in this troubled and difficult year can be different?

It should be lonely at the top. But the problem with Musharraf is that he seems to be surrounded by imbeciles whom he heeds. His and our bad luck.

arfc@cyber.net.pk

Cheers <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' />

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