MNA M P Bhandara analysis some things and Mus very well. :k:
http://dawn.com/2007/10/04/ed.htm#4
Against the tide
By M.P. Bhandara
GENERAL Musharraf’s legal and so-called democratic credentials may be poor but his probity for good governance is superior to that of his political opponents. Consider: Transparency International, the highly respected Berlin-based institute, which measures the Corruption Perception Index worldwide, rated Pakistan as the second most corrupt nation in 1996.
This was the mid-point in our decade of democracy during the 1990s; the same institute in 2007 ranked 41 countries as more corrupt than Pakistan. This is not a glamour statistic but a measure of better governance. But, this breaks no news or headlines in a country that professes Islam as its lodestar.
Corruption is a hydra headed monster. If the ruler is corrupt or perceived as such, every minion of state has more or less the right to set up his own bazaar. An international polling entity conducted a survey between Aug 1 and Aug 5 this year questioning 680 persons in Karachi, 287 in Rawalpindi/ Islamabad and 168 in Lahore — a total of 1,135 persons from all strata of society.
One of the questions asked was: which ruler in your perception misused his office most for corrupt endeavours? Nawaz Sharif topped the list with 55 per cent, followed by Ms Bhutto 37 per cent, and Musharraf eight per cent!
Again, this is no news in a country where hypocrisy and bogus sanctimony is a substitute for religion; where slogans and slander masquerade for politics.
The question arises: why are rulers who built palaces from Surrey to Raiwind and from Saudi Arabia to Spain welcomed by the suffering masses? In the name of the stupidity of the many and the superior wisdom of the few, we forget the many insults they inflicted on democracy and the depredations they visited on the treasury during their day of power. Indeed, the slogan of democracy in Pakistan is a mirage, truly the opiate of the masses.
To err is human. General Musharraf has erred badly since March this year. One grievous mistake after another — the sacking of the Chief Justice, followed by temporising on Lal Masjid (why was the law not enforced when lathi-wielding burqa-clad women took over a children’s library?), the events of May 12 in Karachi and finally permitting a foreign power to midwife the evolution of political events in our country.
Perhaps the most grievous error was for General Musharraf to have broken faith. He had promised to doff his uniform by Dec 31, 2004. Had he done so, this ugly September in the Supreme Court could have been avoided. Perhaps, some day General Musharraf may realise that his fixation on the uniform and two offices was unnecessary — a mere red rag to the legal bull.
Prior to March 9, the general was high up in opinion polls; he could have defeated any politician in or out of the country if our Basic Law had permitted a presidential election based on adult franchise. So, why did the general devalue the latent strength of his achievements between 2001 and 2006? Consider: a rising economy, which averaged seven per cent plus in GDP growth over this period. A middle class was truly born in this period.
Consider: nearly as many motorcycles, television sets, mobile phones, domestic washing machines and fans, will be sold this year, as in the entire ‘democratic’ decade of the 1990s. This middle class is liberal by conservative standards, send their girls to schools, and aim for professional education for their sons. The rural areas received more access to piped potable water last year than in the entire decade of the 1990s. The rise in new electricity and gas connections has been likewise astronomical.
Equally impressive was the freeing of the press and the media since 2001. Never in our last 60 years has the press and media been as free as it is today, barring a few recent hiccups. What sort of a ‘dictator’ is he who allows himself to be lampooned on television, abused in the National Assembly, traduced in the press, and allows the judges to overrule his fiat?
On Kashmir and relations with India, Musharraf has earned the undying hatred of the right wing but most of us do realise, that there is no such thing as a ‘1,000-year war with India’, as once promised by the late Bhutto. A flexible approach on Kashmir has put India on the defensive.
Cross-border jihadism which only made life more miserable for the Kashmiris in the valley — caught between two infernos — swayed world opinion violently against Pakistan and sullied the Kashmir liberation movement. It required courage to free the economy from bureaucratic constraints, free the press and give India an honourable opportunity to come to terms on Kashmir. General Musharraf’s is a profile in courage.
As a politician, Musharraf has been less than adroit; he failed to appreciate that after eight years of power, any ruler must reinvent himself, if he wishes to continue in office. The road to reinvention would have been to go to the opposite extreme i.e. seek the mandate of the nation but this was not to be, and is now history.
On Saturday, Oct 6, the electoral college consisting of the members of the National Assembly, the Senate and provincial assemblies will vote in a president, among three contestants.
The voters of this country can only vote vicariously. What should be the criteria for consideration?
To my mind, the debate should be on measurable units of benefits given to the nation by the previous governments in the decade of democracy in the 1990s and the current era. For example, new rural dispensaries and hospitals and no qualified doctors in these, girl students receiving primary and secondary education, number of new safe drinking water outlets, new energy connections, comparison of prices of key commodities in Pakistan compared to the countries in the Saarc region, delays in lower and higher courts.
Instead, the entire focus in this election is on legal issues such as Article 58-2(b) or the uniform question.
This is not to say that constitutional issues are irrelevant. The need is merely to prioritise issues. Constitutional issues concern at best 0.1 per cent of the population, while the government’s ability to reach out and provide social, legal and health benefits to the common man concern 99.9 per cent of the population. Television and other debates should bring about a balance among the concerns of the many and the demands of the eclectic few.
Any comparison between the social and economic benefits received by the nation in the 1990s — the Bhutto-Sharif decade — and the period 2000-2007, makes the former come out so poorly, as to make one wonder why the nation wishes to inflict on itself ‘another decade of democracy’. If the 1990s are a guide, we will be buying again poverty, cronyism, corruption, cheating and a reversal back to ‘ground zero’. Should this be our fate? #
The writer is a member of the National Assembly