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Sifting Musharraf’s good points

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  • Sifting Musharraf’s good points

    Tuesday, May 30, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

    EDITORIAL: Sifting Musharraf’s good points


    The PMLN and the PPPP got together with sundry other opposition parties in Lahore on Sunday to remember the day Pakistan tested its nuclear device in 1998. Speaker and after speaker “predicted” the downfall of the PML government in the face of a popular uprising engineered by the parties present on the occasion. Former president Rafiq Tarar, who was one of the causes behind the split in the original PML, actually asked the people to rise and take to the streets to “topple the dictator”. Much hyperbole was expended on Nawaz Sharif’s act of exploding a number of nuclear devices at Chagai and how that had made the country safe (sic!) from all kinds of dangers. The PPPP similarly remembered Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the initiator of the programme that climaxed in the nuclearisation of the country.

    One may be critical of General Pervez Musharraf on many aspects of his domestic political strategy — as we are — but some of his achievements in the face of this broad sweep of allegations must be mentioned. General Musharraf is not a dictator in the sense that General Zia was with martial law courts and whippings under Islamic law. Press freedom, which was given to the country by an interim government, has not been curtailed; in fact, the Musharraf regime has demonstrated greater confidence in allowing freedom of expression by permitting a number of new private TV channels to project the opposition in the act of savaging his claims to legitimacy and negating what are clearly his achievements in the economy and foreign policy. Therefore, while calling him a “dictator”, one should include the rider that he held the 2002 election within the stipulated period unlike General Zia, which was as good or as bad as elections in the past, and he let the politicians run the show, even though his referendum, even according to him, was not the proudest thing he had done.

    Yom-e-Takbir is a propaganda overkill. Going nuclear is not something that we should be doing cartwheels about. Our bomb threatened the world just as the Indian one did and, in the case of Pakistan, it ruined the national economy. It was purely Mr Sharif’s gambit of becoming Pakistan’s ruler forever, but what he got instead was an economy that just would not stand up. As opposed to India, whose economy was growing at the rate of over eight percent of GDP when it tested, Pakistan’s was in an unprecedented trough. The following day the stock exchange had to be locked up and the country’s dollar accounts had to be frozen because citizens just didn’t feel safe with their money in a nuclear Pakistan. What one needs to say here is that possessing a nuclear deterrent is a good thing if you want to live in peace in a tough neighbourhood with a bully on the block, but to boast about it and celebrate it as if it was some kind of religious festival is wrong.

    Pakistan’s two exiled former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have signed a Charter of Democracy which will be implemented only if President Pervez Musharraf is removed and the next general election in Pakistan is held under a “national government”, and that too under a revamped election commission. This is a good first step towards evolving a policy of live and let live by the Big Two, the absence of which in the past has brought Pakistan to this pass. But it is also tantamount to a boycott of the next election because it doesn’t explain the kind of conditions that are supposed to bring about the dismissal of President Musharraf and the putting together of a “national government”. Will the two leaders return and fight it out with him, which might mean going to jail for it, or will they wait till the people have done the job for them? There is a resolve by both to return to Pakistan “before the election” but that is too vague for the people to get fired up about, especially since the credibility of such promises has been undermined by similar declarations on a yearly basis.

    Some of the problems being tackled by President Musharraf don’t have much to do with whether there is greater or lesser democracy in Pakistan. They relate to the “flaws of the state” which democracy will have to resolve in the long run but might conceivably postpone because of a lack of national consensus as in the past. No matter who comes to power he will have to face the following issues: the rocky relationship with the United States, which the opposition has dubbed slavery, thus tending to scare off the international opinion willing to accept Pakistan’s return to full-dress democracy; the process of “normalisation” with India, which the opposition has dubbed “capitulation without a quid pro quo”; the winding up of the Kashmir jihad, which the mainstream parties have joined the clergy in condemning as harmful to the Kashmir cause (the Charter of Democracy has significantly gone back to UN Resolutions on Kashmir.); the “de-buffering” of Balochistan and the Tribal Areas where the writ of the state doesn’t run; the resolution of the crisis of water reservoirs for irrigation and power generation; and the problem of the de-Islamisation of society to root out seminarian rejectionism and violence, etc. At least General Musharraf is trying to do all of these things, even though he hasn’t notched up too many successes in some of them.

    There is no doubt that General Musharraf is a controversial figure of transition, but he should be properly assessed — unless we want to hurt ourselves by setting our face against everything that he has done. Politicising issues takes a little bit of de-intellectualisation, but let us not go back to the Stone Age by hating everything he has done and personalising such hate. General Musharraf belongs, as a starter, to the phase of Pakistan’s “self-correction” after two decades of jihad and Islamisation. Just as we forgive Mr Sharif for wanting to establish a caliphate in Pakistan after 1998, we have to be careful in sifting the bad from the good in General Musharraf. Indeed, given the fact that in the coming days Pakistan will have to face up to its economic and foreign policy challenges with flexibility and deftness, we need more of some of General Musharraf’s qualities than the “honour-based” pledges which some politicians are making to the people of Pakistan. *

    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...0-5-2006_pg3_1


    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA

  • #2
    So sad.

    So many days have gone by since this thread has been posted and there is not even one reply!

    It does prove no one believes that Musharraf has any good points!

    Poor Musharraf.


    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA

    Comment


    • #3
      No one cares about your rants anymore.

      Comment


      • #4
        what it means is that we agree and don't wish to pick arguements with the writer...

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by UnitedPakistan
          No one cares about your rants anymore.
          What rants, my Mr Oneliner without anything profound to state? ;)

          Comments from you isnot worth the tuppence since it is a wishy washy meaningless oneliner that is neither here nor there.

          Do exhibit some profound thoughts somewhere at least and stop being a campfollower with the oneliners!


          "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

          I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

          HAKUNA MATATA

          Comment

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