| May 28, 2007 | Monday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 11, 1428 |
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
Victims of ‘war on terror’
Double standards
Broken dreams
Anti-Muslim bias in Denmark
Greatness squandered
Canadian migration
The infallible message
A free media
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
A NEW resolve to deal with a new problem is waiting for the president of Pakistan. Although he is not as alone as he had been on various previous occasions, it is still the time to check the statesmanship of the general. For the state of Pakistan the crises are not a new theme, the same is true for the masses of Pakistan. Right from the beginning they are trained to stare daringly in the eyes of difficult situations.
As far as the judiciary is concerned, the first major crisis appeared in 1954, with the Law of Necessity as its outcome. So we see that in the judicial-political history of Pakistan fortune favours the vigorous. In the musical chair play of power between the armed forces and political parties, those who could convince people about their fitness for the control of inevitable situations were granted the diploma of investiture to rule over the state by the respected courts and subsequently accepted by the masses.
In all this background, judiciary never acted as a participant of power game. No judge has ever exercised his influence or established his hegemony over parliament or GHQ. It seems that the indifference of the judiciary to this ruthless power play was one that temporarily stabilised the state of affairs in Pakistan but basically weakened the roots of democracy and justice.
As in the last 60 years no permanent system could be adopted and no standard was established as a criterion, it was the judicial tutelage which legitimised every system of government. It built an impatient temperament of the Pakistani nation which is always ready to welcome new systems, perhaps in the hope of some improvements of its circumstances and living standards.
The recent judicial crisis is only a new emergence of old ghosts. There is a long list of these who were used by the politicians and then cornered. The list not only includes esteemed bureaucrats, judges and other government officials but a few generals as well.
Gen Musharraf never seemed to be used by politicians in the country but after thrusting his weight in favour of political reply to the opposition, he has lost his impartial status.
Generally, opposition movements in Pakistan are launched on a one-point agenda, i.e., change of government and securing power for themselves. They often show drastic change in their demands if their objectives are not achieved. It depends on rulers how they take timely actions to turn the tables in their favour.
Principles and views are just secondary in this game. This is the point which should be considered by the chief justice leading the opposition crowds and the army chief symbolised as the master of the ruling PML.
In fact, a person may be wrong in his views and even a ruler can commit mistakes. The Supreme Court is the best place to resolve the controversial issues. No doubt that the government was a champion of the constitution when it adopted the judicial way of issuing a reference against the chief justice. But the PML could not help its nerves from breaking down when it saw the popular respect for the chief justice in its own power centre.
The suggestion for the same power show by the government literally won the place of equivalent national hero for the chief justice.
Power show by the government, especially in Karachi, indicates its weak grip over the law and order situation. The citizens were taken hostage by political parties while security forces were paralysed. No one could carry out their routine work and it was not due to his sympathy for the group, but it was the fear at last realised by the murder of 35 people.
The power show by the government establishes that the chief justice is as important a figure in the opposition court as the army chief is in the PML court. It ascertains that if the army chief can claim for the president’s seat in his uniform in the view of national interest, the chief justice can do the same for the same reasons.
But in the whole scenario the Quaid’s tomb in Karachi, the parliament house in Islamabad and the Supreme Court are meaningfuly staring at each other with the slogan ‘Pakistan First’.
AYESHA ZAHIDI
Karachi
APROPOS of the report, ‘Tough times for victims of war on terror’ (May 20) by Ms Zofeen T. Ebrahim, about the suffering of Farhat Paracha, one found it very touching and would like to offer some comments.
First, it may be pointed out that no proof of involvement in terrorism could be found against most of the inmates of Guantanamo Bay – where her husband Saifullah is also housed without being charged of any crime – and they had to be released by the US government due to internal and external protests. As far as Mrs Paracha’s 26-year-old son Uzair is concerned, he was reportedly picked up by the FIA on his business trip in 2003, right after his graduation from the very same Institute of Business Administration (IBA), of which Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is also an alumnus. The young Paracha is now undergoing a 30-year sentence in the US.
Second, having attended this very professional and prestigious institution myself, I am quiet sure that its graduates would not be getting involved in the kind of activities of which Uzair is accused. Hopefully, after the change of the Bush administration, the paranoia in the US will subside and the two Parachas may be able to return, God willing.
Third, regarding the lady’s depression and demoralisation, that is something very natural under the circumstances. However, as her son wrote, she is the centre of gravity of the family and must remain patient, strong and hopeful.
She must not feel upset about the behaviour or attitude of her youngest son and daughter and not try to make them feel in a particular way about the separation and incarceration of their father and elder brother. It is very understandable for teenagers to be like that. Feeling guilty won’t do them any good and they should be allowed to grow up in their natural way through gentle guidance.
It would also make it easier for the Parachas to bear the pain if they realise that there are many other Pakistanis whose family members have disappeared but they don’t even know whether they are alive or dead. There was this young woman, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who was absolved of any involvement in terrorism by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. However, she was then kidnapped along with her three children aged between one and seven years and taken to the US a few years back, presumably by an American agency, but haven’t been heard of, ever since.
It may be a good idea that Mrs Paracha has now hired the services of the same lawyer, Joshua Dratel, for her son, who had been fighting the case of the Australian convert to Islam, David Hicks. According to the BBC (May 20), Hicks has finally been repatriated to his country from Guantanamo Bay to serve out the remaining seven months of his sentence. This was probably facilitated by the strong voices raised by some Australian political leaders and rights workers.
However, it wasn’t a good idea for the lady to go public with her complaints against her husband’s employees, if I may say so. She will have to learn to deal with that. In the end, one prays for the early release of her loved ones and all the other Pakistanis held unjustifiably and for the health and peace of mind for their families.
K. CHAUDHRY
Karachi
THE government and its sycophants are blaming the chief justice for playing politics. If an army chief can be a politician, then why should it bother people if the chief justice likes to copy his style? If the army house and the general headquarters can be the centre of politicking, why can’t the chief justice's residence? Why are there two standards for the army chief and the judiciary chief?
I have seen Gen Musharraf's interview to Aaj TV and he was on the defensive for the most part. He said the "masses of Karachi demonstrated their political mandate in favour of the MQM, which would not tolerate the dominance of opposition parties at any cost."
If we go by his logic, does this mean that people in other parts of the country where other parties are dominant should not tolerate advances of the MQM and stop them by force? On May 12, the MQM lost its moral high ground for good. The MQM has proved once again that it is merely a pressure group that can only play the politics of agitation, chaos and violence. By aligning himself with the MQM, the army chief has embarrassed his office. Is there a supreme military council where we can send a reference against the army chief ?
The MQM has once again proved itself to be a pawn of the military establishment. It is irrelevant what linguistic group the army chief belongs to. The military's survival depends upon divide and rule. Both the MQM and the MMA are perfect apparatus in the hands of the military and they dance to GHQ's tunes every time.
It is time for General Musharraf to start looking for an exit strategy, something they don’t normally have in the DGMO office. For the past couple of months, there are articles in major US newspapers to prepare for life after Musharraf.
What Musharraf calls the art of walking the tight rope is considered ‘munafiqat’ in every part of the world. When you walk in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic from both directions.
Only time will tell whether Musharraf's fate will be similar to Ayub’s or Zia’s. In the meantime, as an Urdu-speaking person, I hang my head in shame at the leadership of Altaf Hussain and Pervez Musharaf.
ASIM ALAVI
Southfield, MI, USA
HONOURABLE Minister Zubaida Jalal, minister for social welfare and special education, your whole ministry is in effort for 100 per cent education in Pakistan and this is the result of your efforts that I also completed my MSc in sociology from UAAR.
The only purpose of my education was that one day I will be an educated person with a decent job. But this hasn’t happened and today my dream remains unfulfilled. I ever used to say to my parents: "Look Papa, Pakistan is growing and developing very fast nowadays, and many NGOs and organisations have much more need for educated people".
After uttering these words, I would ever see a lot of shining stars in my father's eyes and rays of happiness on my mother's face. It looked like I would get a job and the dreams of their life would be fulfilled and they would return to their childhood.
Today I feel as if I am a thief who has stolen the shining stars from my father's eyes, who has snatched rays of happiness from my mother's face.
Today I think how much better it would have been for me if I was a motorbike mechanic who worked the whole day and in the evening when he returned home he put some coins on his father's palm, and then looked into his eyes to see how happy he was.
Dear Minister, I have a degree but unfortunately I do not have a job to make my parents happy. I belong to Rajanpur (Punjab) but live in Rawalpindi with my friends as a guest, and am in search of a job. But how long will I be a burden on my friends while I search for a job, I do not know? But it is a burden on my conscience. Had I been an unlettered person, I would have taken up some menial job, but education has made me a coward.
ABDUL RAUF
Rawalpindi
THE plans for getting elected to the Danish parliament by a 25-year-old social worker and former television host, Palestine-born Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, has sparked a heated debate because of her intention to wear her veil in parliament, if elected in 2009. Reacting to this news, a spokesman for the far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) called her headscarf a “totalitarian symbol” similar to “the Nazi Swastika.” A DPP member of the European Parliament said Abdol-Hamid “needed psychiatric treatment.”
Meanwhile, the head of this party said she “feels pity” for the woman and that the headscarf is “often imposed on very young innocent girls by authoritarian men.”
In contrast to this, a former culture minister and member of the opposition Radical Party, who was scandalised by far right attacks, recently greeted journalists and press photographers wearing a headscarf. She stressed the importance of freedom of expression and need to counterbalance the “nationalist and closed -minded” far right which “demonises Muslims who wear headscarves.”
Ms Nielsen also very rightly said: “What’s important is not what we have on our head but the opinions we express.”
It is incorrect to accuse “authoritarian men” for making the girls or women wear headscarves, although some may be doing it. However, these critics would know that millions of Muslim and Sikh men wear turbans: is anyone forcing them to do so? Similarly, orthodox Jewish men wear hats or skullcaps, besides whom there are others, who use such headgear.
Apart from that, the Christian nuns wear a dress very similar to that of the veiled Muslim women, but nobody advises them to see a psychiatrist or expresses pity for them.
It is amazing that nobody questions men or women in the West who disrobe themselves publicly on nudist beaches, but a woman is seen as a mental case if she wears a headscarf. An American tourist started walking around stark naked in a German town, saying he thought it was acceptable in that country (May 23). People didn’t ask him to have his head examined but merely said this wasn’t acceptable behaviour.
There still are tribal people in some parts of the world who hardly cover themselves at all. The differences in the modes of dressing up should not be seen as an affront to anyone but, like different foods and languages, only as an expression of humanity’s diversity.
Most oriental folks eat very hot and spicy foods, which many others may deem to be a form of self-torture, but it isn’t. There also are Christian women in Russia, Eastern Europe and the Americas who use headscarves but the detractors of Islam don’t slam them.
S. QADRI
Karachi
IN October 1999 the masses of Pakistan accepted a military takeover with a sense of relief and optimism. Such was the state of affairs of our democratically-elected government at the time and such was the level of despondency with democratically-elected governments over the past decade that the people of this nation welcomed dictatorship. The feeling of optimism grew as technocrats instead of wadera-style politicians were inducted for policy- making and implementation, as accountability courts genuinely appeared to be going after those who had plundered national wealth, and as the public was promised fresh concepts such as devolution of power, grassroots democracy, and societal reforms.
If he had achieved half of what he had set out to, General Musharraf would most likely have gone down in history as one of the greatest and most revered leaders of this country. If Mohammad Ali Jinnah is referred to as the Father of the Nation, perhaps, at some point, historians might have referred to General Musharraf as the Saviour of the Nation or the Architect of Pakistan’s Recovery.
What a lost opportunity it has turned out to be. Instead of achieving a level of greatness very few have the opportunity to, General Musharraf finds himself firmly placed as one of the politicians this country’s citizens have come to despise and feel cheated by. With each passing day, especially in the last couple of years, his credibility has eroded to the level of the average shallow career-politician in this country.
By losing sight of what he had promised and what the public supported him for, General Musharraf has the distinction of squandering the best opportunity ever presented to a leader of this country to achieve true greatness -- one that can’t be gained by writing expensive books, visiting the Oval Office, addressing the UN General Assembly, or flying kites in Lahore.
A. A. AHMAD
Lahore
THIS has reference to M. R. Qureshi's letter (May 23) about Canadian immigration. He is not the only one to have suffered like this; there are many (like myself) who have been victims of the Canadian high commission’s inefficiency. However, he should realise that it is a blessing in disguise that he did not get the immigration as he would have been doing some 'odd' job in Canada like security guard, cashier and sales persons. The Canadians need educated people from abroad to do such kinds of jobs.
TEHSEEN RAZA
Mississauga, Canada
“IN a clear message to the government, the visiting Italian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, on Tuesday expressed the hope that the rule of law and civil rights would be safeguarded in Pakistan to ensure free and fair elections” (May 23).
The message was more explicitly conveyed through the accompanying photograph on page one which showed Mr D’Alema being escorted out of the foreign office by a tough Italian army officer in a bullet-proof jacket, armed with a sophisticated machinegun with a fully loaded magazine attached to the breech of his weapon.
Mr D'Alema reportedly stressed on several important issues covering the social and political aspects of life in Pakistan. The description of his joint press conference reads like homework for our government.
But for the Pakistan foreign minister, whom we rarely see or hear, the entire episode covering law and order situation, civil rights, orderly political process, free and fair elections, consolidation of democracy and political forces, etc., was anything but necessary.
Indeed, it is a difficult task for our foreign office to explain the change in the political scene, particularly with the foreign minister being a man of a few words.
He could intervene only at one point to say that as far as the elections were concerned, we had declared that we would welcome foreign observers. But we invariably do as the elections in this country are always ideally transparent — an attribute which renders an object almost invisible.
S.ABRAR HUSSAIN
Lahore
IT IS disappointing to see that President Musharraf believes that he has “given freedom” to the media instead of seeing it as something that is a peoples’ inherent right which he intends to protect (May 25).
Also, his advice to the media to project a positive view of Pakistan and to refrain from "lowering the nation's morale" (even if some of the news about the nation's political health is negative) contradicts the very purpose of press freedom.
Media freedom is a true force for good when it provides honest checks and balances against government excesses. Perhaps General Musharraf should be reminded of Lord Northcliffe's insightful dictum: "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising."
FAWAD ZAKARIYA
Palo Alto, California
You can also send letters to the Editor
Just send your message to the following address: letters@dawn.com
Make sure you include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, and in the case of Pakistan your day-time telephone number.