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| July 19, 2002 | Friday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 8, 1423 |
End to agencies’ role in politics sought
PESHAWAR, July 18: Masood Sharif Khattak, a former Intelligence Bureau chief and PPP central executive committee member, has underlined the need for doing away with the political role of the secret agencies once and for all “in the larger interest of the state”.
Speaking at a press conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, he denied that any particular person was responsible for bringing secret agencies into politics for the advancement of his political interests.
The role of secret agencies in political manoeuvrings had become an open secret as Gen Mirza Aslam Beg and Hameed Gul played a part in the creation of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, he added.
“During my three-year tenure as IB chief, I had tried to keep the agency away from the political shenanigans.
In this volatile period, we had channelled all our energies into combating the anti-state elements in Karachi,” he added.
Mr Sharif held all the power brokers, the establishment and its stake-holders responsible for dragging the secret agencies into politics to keep in place the status quo.
He said it was the duty of the present government to end secret agencies’ political role and divert their efforts towards national security targets, he said.
He said only the people of Pakistan were the fountainhead of political power in the country and this fact must be recognized as such.
Mr Sharif said the present rulers were repeating the blunders of 1985 by tinkering with the consensus constitution.
He said the constitutional amendments would further aggravate the already polarized situation. If Nawaz Sharif was doing wrongs by doing away with the 8th amendment, the present government was committing the same blunder by introducing constitutional packages, he added.
He said if the politicians were responsible for the past 12 years’ mistakes, the generals were also to blame for the follies of the successive military rulers.
Despite the dismemberment of Pakistan, Gen Yahya Khan was manoeuvring to run the rest of the country by bringing another provisional constitutional order, he added.
The civilian governments, he said, had not been delegated the same powers being exercised by the present rulers. “The rulers do not believe that the real power originates from the people,” he added.
Had the people cast their vote in the referendum, Gen Pervez Musharraf would certainly have no need to remain in the uniform. “It showed that the people were not with him.”
He said the armies had never ever kept nations intact as in the 1980s the mighty Soviet Union collapsed and 12 independent states came into being despite their military power. Yugoslavia went quite the same way to disintegrate into five different countries and the Pakistan army too could not keep the former East Pakistan from becoming Bangladesh when it came to the crunch, he added.
To a question, he said PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto would return to the country when the government would announce the election schedule.
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