| December 02, 2007 | Sunday | Ziqa’ad 21, 1428 |
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Finite wisdom
IN his finite wisdom, the most powerful man in the world, President George W. Bush of the USA, has maintained, as I and a few others have done for over eight years, that the president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, under the given circumstances, is the best of the worst available lot to lead this country.
Apart from the fact that it is an impossible country to successfully lead, it has to its credit a population of some 170 millions, totally uncontrolled and galloping off into the rising sunset.
To quote once again my old friend, former police person turned historian, Zafar Rathore, to control hundreds of millions of ‘subcontinental monkeys’ is a nigh impossible task – though it has to be admitted that over our southern borders our very large neighbour has managed it to an extent that is admirable when compared with us. That success, it is universally acknowledged, lies in the fact that India has never been subjected to the slightest form of military intervention.
Now, yesterday, on a cloudy cool Saturday morning, we read that President Musharraf in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America has informed the informed world that, as far as he and Pakistan and its elections go, “If the situation develops in a manner which is absolutely unacceptable to me, I have a choice of leaving.” He has always had the choice, and of course always will have the choice at any time convenient to him.
But at this stage of the game is this not a somewhat ridiculous statement? Under the guise of an emergency, he virtually promulgated martial law — and what is this in the words of a far greater statesman? It is “no law at all. Martial law is brute force. Of course all martial law is illegal, and an attempt to introduce illegalities into martial law, which is not military law, is like attempting to add salt water to the sea.”
The general brought in his own provisional constitution order, rid himself of the meddlesome judges of the Supreme and High Courts, deprived the people of what little law was left to them, shed them of their fundamental rights, and rode rough shod over all and sundry – and now, after he has retired from the post of chief of the army staff, become a civilian president, had himself sworn in as one, given a date for the lifting of the emergency-cum-martial law, with elections scheduled, he opts for a ‘choice’ if circumstances become more unacceptable. How much more unacceptable, one must ask?
At the moment, the legal fraternity is up in arms, some students have risen with them, and the minority that has recently become known as ‘civil society’ has joined in. The beloved awam remain supine and comatose. For them to rise the circumstances will have to be extraordinarily dire and, importantly, there will have to be some sort of leadership. Right now, there is no leadership, there is not one man or woman who can (even employing the renting, feeding, enticing, threatening methods) persuade the larger mass of the masses to get up and protest (though heaven knows they have more than enough against which to protest).
Apart from the admitted undesirability, can this country once again afford the leadership of Benazir Bhutto? Can it afford to be sat on by a man, who wishes to declare himself an Amir-ul-Momineen? Does it need the Pir of London and his strange ways, or the unintelligible Chaudhrys of Gujrat, or, heaven forbid, the Fuzzy-Wuzzies of the Frontier?
As for other remarks and home truths made by Musharraf to ABC, we must stand firmly with him. “We are fighting terrorism everywhere…We have gone through 30 years of turmoil. We cooperate very well. So if there’s a failure, it’s not Pakistan’s failure.” And on bin Laden, “Please don’t accuse us. We handled the situation up to 9/11 for 12 years all alone. Nobody else. And when the Osama bin Laden factor came in and the world wanted him to be shuttered out of the place, who was doing anything?”
And one cannot deny that “You have to understand, we don’t want agitation here…Agitation means breaking down everything, burning things. That cannot be allowed. So, therefore, if anyone is trying to do that we will stop it. That is the way it is in Pakistan.”
Sensible also is his plea to the western powers that they should understand that the imposition of their mores, traditions and democratic credentials upon the nation that is Pakistan is, right now, somewhat unrealistic and impracticable. For a decade, the governments of the US paid Pakistan to train the Taliban, to produce violent bigots, and they armed them for us. Then one fine day, they upped and left us, drowned in a sea of bigotry and violence. Now, post 9/11 with a world largely in turmoil this government of the US wants turmoil ended in Pakistan and they want Musharraf and his men to transform the violent bigots into rational human beings. This is hardly an easy task.
But yes, we too want an end to violence, hatred, intolerance and all that goes with them. We want stability, economic progress and democracy. But we will not get them through street fighting, through breaking and burning, through killing and maiming. The end can only come through reasoning with each other, by talk and discussion rather than unintelligible shouting.
Like it or not, as we find ourselves today, it is the retired General Pervez Musharraf who will have to do the balancing act, not of a dictator, but also not quite that of a democrat – somewhere happily between the two until things settle down. Despite hanging up his uniform, his hold on power, whatever his detractors may say, remains undiminished and unchanged. He still, for the time being, has the support of a very powerful army. There being no visible available alternative, he needs support from somewhere.
We are at yet another difficult stage in our life, perhaps not life-threatening, but undeniably we find ourselves veritably in what is known as dire straits. To repeat myself, such will be the case until we learn to talk to each other and not at each other.
As a recent editorial in The Times (London, Nov 30) so neatly puts it:
“[Musharraf] must now live up to his pledge to allow parliamentary elections to take place, in freedom, in January. Meanwhile, no one should assume that Pakistan’s future is either assured, or likely to be entirely peaceful and prosperous. Indeed, the country may only now be embarking on the most difficult phase of its transition. If it is to mature into a fully fledged democracy, complete with the best that civil liberties and human rights can bring, supporters of progress must be ready to make sacrifices for a cause whose significance resonates far beyond Pakistan.”
The typically British way of saying what I am trying to convey.
arfc@cyber.net.pk
