Periscope on Pakistan

Mufti vs Khaki ...If it is accepted Pakistan will be around till the final trumpets sound, it follows that when with every change of gover...

Mufti vs Khaki

…If it is accepted Pakistan will be around till the final trumpets sound, it follows that when with every change of government Pakistanis shout that this is their last chance, they stand guilty of collective stupidity. If Pakistan is going to be around till global warming gets the better of all of us, how can Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif or General Musharraf be our last chance?

The abiding tragedy
What then is Pakistan’s abiding tragedy? It is simply this that the guardians of its flame, whether chosen by accident or design, have been unequal to the task entrusted to them. Countries, even the most advanced and developed, get good rulers and bad. Life goes on. But political power in the hands of the military is a distorting influence, an aberration, because in no respect is it consistent with the spirit which underlies the creation of Pakistan. How can we close our eyes to our own history wherein military rule is remembered more for the enduring damage inflictedthan any good achieved? We must suffer from a strange death-wish to want to go down the same paths again.

Last 90 days
Those who, struck by a loss of memory, say that this government will be different should look at its performance over the last 90 days. No one says it should have wrought miracles. But at least it should have been able to get its direction straight and, if asked, been able to point out the difference its coming has made. For most people the initial burst of euphoria with which the advent of the military was greeted is over because the realization has dawned, that replacing mufti with khaki has made no difference to their lives.

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True, under the aegis of the army’s monitoring teams, encroachments have been removed and some roads cleaned up. An accountability drive of sorts is also sputtering along. For the rest, all the glowing characteristics of subcontinental administration bribery, work-shirking, inefficiency remain. What justification then for rolling up the baggage ofdemocracy? The army is getting more embroiled in civilian affairs: WAPDA, railways, district monitoring, canal desilting. What if it becomes an expert in everything else and gets rusty about its primary function for which the nation feeds and clothes it? That would be a bit like the crow in the old fable who wanted to walk like a peacock and could not but in the process forgot how to walk like a crow.

This is no reflection on the fighting qualities of our officers and jawans but a reminder of what happens to army commands when they pile up too many extraneous things on their plate.

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