Sir,
It was interesting to read Letters to the Editor lamenting the demise of demise of democracy in Pakistan .
One wonders if one is aware that there has never been a real democracy in Pakistan .
The Pakistan movement was based on the theory that the Muslims of India were a nation.
Those not 'fashionable' and with a short memory will recall that the country's founder and first Governor-General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah started the murder of democracy which has hounded Pakistan ever since. He dismissed the Congress-led government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) by decree, and instead of ordering fresh elections, appointed a Muslim League leader as the chief minister with the mandate to whip up parliamentary support for himself.
Thereafter following the leader, the Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad, a former bureaucrat, dismissed the country's first civilian government in 1953. Governor-Generals, Presidents and army chiefs have dismissed as many as ten civilian governments that together ruled the country for 27 years. The remaining 33 years have seen direct military rule.
It maybe noted that Pakistan was without a formal, written constitution until 1956. The democratic myths that so often sustain a system were thus only weakly instilled, and precedents were created that undermined those few parliamentary and democratic norms that could be drawn upon. It did not help that in the early years non-party prime ministers were appointed by the head of state rather than by those who had to appeal to an electorate.
In so far as the ‘heroic’ Chief Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed is concerned, it is worth noting whether a nine-judge bench headed by him can be "stunned" that the government in August 2006 by scrapping the privatisation of the Pakistan Steel Mills, was an act that sold it in "indecent haste". Since when has the Supreme Court started deciding how govts should conduct normal business of State? Interestingly, I believe, Mittal was the highest bidder! So, is the Chief Justice is also the sole custodian of Pakistan ’s economy and ‘security’?! What is the government there for? The Chief Justice has reduced himself to nothing better than a political hack, chasing personal glory!
From the internet and even from Musahrraf's book, it is amply evident that even in Pakistan's 'democratic" hiccups, the shadowy arm of the military was never far as the final arbiter!
Hardly, a democratic precedent to rave or lament about!
The Indian lament on Pakistan ’s democracy and the ‘heroic’ Chief Justice, if I may say so, is misplaced, even though very fashionable!
Compare these lotus eaters with Musharraf.
Musharraf is no bosom friend of India . He cannot be. He is a Pakistani and he has the chip on his shoulder as a Mohajir, who in any way are still treated as ‘outsiders’. Even though he has to show that he is more loyal to the King than the King himself, he has been the co-partner in building bridges with India , which no other Pakistan “democratic” leader or military martinet has done! From the Pakistani point of view, he has salvaged Pakistan from being a ‘failed state’ with an economy scraping the bottom of the barrel to where Pakistan is! And he has controlled militancy to a great extent - feat that is an impossibility in the wave of Pan Islamic ummah post 9/11.
Given the recent events of Lal Mazjid, killing of the Chinese engineers, revolt by the military to fight the Taliban in NWFP, the total chaos in the Swat Valley, regular bomb blasts including near the Presidential area, total turmoil created by the Chief Justice and his lawyer goons, what option did he have?
Does India want Benazir, the corrupt individual who has only personal interest or the ineffectual Nawaz Sharif, who claimed that the military alone created the Kargil War?
It is immaterial if Armitage calls Benazir, “ America ’s girl”. She is no one’s girl excepting Mr 10 per cent’s!
And Nawaz Sharif is too much of a wimp. Imran Khan is but the Anglicised voice of Osama!
Really?
