Till October 6

So, how could the October 6 election play out? For starters, the fray could be considerably reduced, if initial statements are anything to go by. Supporters of Wajeehuddin Ahmad, a former chief justice of the Sindh High Court, had said he’d withdraw his candidature if Musharraf were to be disqualified (Dawn, September 25). The PPP’s next steps will be keenly watched, because the party had said earlier in the week that it would field Faryal Talpur as his covering candidate as an option if the Supreme Court (SC) disqualified President Musharraf from contesting the election (Daily Times, September 26). “If the Supreme Court does not disqualify Gen Musharraf, the PPP will consider resigning from the Parliament unless moves are taken towards democracy,” PPP spokesman

Farhatullah Babar said.

American equation

Taking a longer scan, in The Friday Times, Najam Sethi wrote: “Whatever the judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the various petitions against President Musharraf, Pakistan may be entering its most dangerous decade since independence.” Besides the shorter term implications of his bid to be a civilian president, the longer-term challenge comes from Pakistan’s “volatile and unique mix of popular religious nationalism, anti-Westernism and state nuclear-ism”. Explained Sethi: “Consider the central contradiction in Pakistan’s polity. The predominant sentiment in the country is anti-American. It cuts across class, religion, ethnic and political lines. Yet the US is Pakistan’s major aid giver and trading partner by far. Pakistan’s economy has done well only in periods when the US-Pak state partnership has been strong, as in the 1960s, 1980s and since 9/11. Yet those periods are marked by social divisions (as in the 1960s), religious revivalism (as in the 1980s), and political turmoil and anxiety (as in the 2000s) engendered by military rule. Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons and a documented history of nuclear proliferation raises a unique and persistent worry abroad: what if anti-America Pakistan were to… start rattling its nuclear arsenal?… In the longer term, therefore, it seems that ‘control’, ‘religious neutrality’ and ‘accountability’ of the nuclear state of Pakistan may be of far greater importance than the mere revival of ‘democracy’ and the return of discredited political leaders. But there is a realisation that in the absence of mainstream civilian participation in, and control of, the state, the writ of the state has rapidly eroded in large parts of Pakistan.”

Expectedly, then, there was sharp reaction in Pakistan to Benazir Bhutto’s statement that if voted to power a PPP government would give the IAEA access to Dr A.Q. Khan (DT, September 27).

Happiness is 20:20

Cricket is the winner,” exclaimed Kamran Abbasi in Dawn (September 25) after Pakistan narrowly lost the World Twenty20 title to India: “After a year that brought Pakistan cricket face to face with every controversy possible, Shoaib Malik’s young team came eyeball to eyeball with rivals India in a World Cup final.” He took special satisfaction from the visible revival of Pakistani bowling: “This harks back to Pakistan’s best era in world cricket when its bowlers were always capable of keeping the team in any match. The last few years have seen an unsettled bowling attack, unable to adhere to the basics of top-class bowling. With Geoff Lawson’s arrival the bowlers have rediscovered their radar and ensured Pakistan reached the final and created a winning position.”

Bhagat Singh’s Lahore

In an article, ‘Requiem for a freedom fighter’ (Dawn, December 26), Mahir Ali tracked Bhagat Singh’s connection with Lahore and noted: “Earlier this month, in the run-up to Bhagat Singh’s birth centenary this Friday, the governor of Punjab, Khalid Maqbool, announced at a seminar that a memorial would be built to ‘the subcontinent’s first martyr’, where his possessions would be displayed.”