I found an interesting article about crisis in Punjab. I hope people who are concerned with situation in Pakistan will read it and understand the dynamics of democracy.
The article was published in The News International.
A Concerned Pakistani
The battle for Punjab |
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| The News Thursday, March 12, 2009
Ali Malik
I feel like writing so much on the Lahore attack but will hold my peace till the investigations are completed. For now I will focus on what is happening in Punjab and why, in my view, it is happening now. Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mr Shahbaz Sharif were disqualified by the Supreme Court from holding any public office. They have since then been on the warpath invoking all kinds of dire threats for the government and President Asif Ali Zardari. That terrorism is a threat to Pakistan does not even factor in the rhetoric of the Sharifs.
The PPP should not have acquiesced in the PML-N forming government in Punjab in the first place. The ideological gulf between the two parties is perhaps unbridgeable. The PML-N probably represents the single biggest segment of the Pakistani polity that is still not convinced about the urgency of the threat of religious extremism and terrorism to Pakistan. In this it remains the party that was launched in the era of General Ziaul Haq and considers the extremist Islamist sentiment as a manifestation of Pakistani nationalism.
Benazir Bhutto thought she could bring the PML-N to the national fold and away from its semi-fundamentalist stance. She was wrong. It is instructive that following the disqualification decision, almost all incidents of violence have been in constituencies of those MNAs of PML-N who started their political lives in Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba.
On the one hand Nawaz Sharif says he does not want to undermine democracy or destabilise the government. On the other hand his party’s government in the Punjab would have provided support and safe passage to agitators embarking on the long march as far as the boundary between Punjab and Islamabad. These agitators are headed for Islamabad for nothing less than taking the government hostage. If this is not destabilisation, what is?
Despite the avalanche of vitriol directed at him, Zardari still speaks of reconciliation with Sharif. However this effort at reconciliation will fail if Sharif does not display similar sagacity and flexibility. Sharif wants all of his demands to be met without realising that for all its size and strength, the PML-N after all is a smaller and more regionally circumscribed party than the PPP. In politics demands are supposed to be congruent to political strength. The PML-N, limited to Punjab and smaller in numbers federally, is trying to negate this fact. Its inflexibility does not make sense, unless its real goal is to disrupt the system.
One also gets the feeling that the PML-N has a soft corner for the extremist elements in Pakistan. Its leaders fail to give an unequivocal answer whenever they are asked to clarify their position on the Taliban. (This happens with Imran Khan too). All else aside, this tolerance if not acceptance on the part of the PML-N of the Taliban in itself is extremely destabilising not only for the political system but the country. It is pertinent to remember that the recognition of the Taliban government in Kabul came under the second Sharif government while the civil war in Afghanistan, with all its consequences for Pakistan, began during the first Sharif government soon after the fall of the Najibullah regime in 1992.
However, to get to the bottom of the entire Punjab affair, let us ask ourselves why it happened now? There are three reasons for it. First the threat from the long march and PML-N’s destabilisation drive. On the one hand, the PML-N was in alliance with the PPP and on the other, its Information Cell was giving files to media men to throw mud at Rehman Malik, Siraj Shamsud Din, Salman Faruqui and Zardari himself. One can justifiably make the argument that the PML-N has not missed a single opportunity to undermine the present system.
The second reason of course is PPP’s legitimate desire to rule Punjab which has been denied to it by hook or by crook for the last 31 years. The February 2008 election did not give either major party a clear mandate to govern in the Punjab. Coalition politics allow any combination of parties to form the government when one party does not have a clear majority. The PPP has the right to identify coalition partners as much as the PML-N especially if the PML-N refuses to be a good partner for the PPP at the Centre.
The biggest reason for the PML-N’s agitation, however, is not local but relates to the realm of international politics. The PML-N derives sustenance from those international players who support a more obscurantist way of life for Muslims as against the more progressive and modern outlook of the PPP.
Many Pakistanis have apprehensions about Zardari. His countrymen seem to hold him to a higher standard of probity than other Pakistani leaders. So far to his credit he has met that standard. It was thought that vesting too much power in the office of the president would make the system autocratic. This has not happened yet and doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. However should Zardari venture down the path of autocracy, that is a problem we Pakistanis can fight and address. Pakistan’s biggest problem right now is extremism and terrorism and here the PML-N seems to be part of the problem rather than the solution. The vast majority of Pakistan’s citizenry, peace loving and moderate, needs to tell the PML-N that in this fight for the soul of Pakistan it can be with them or be left out.
Sharif can still play a role in Pakistani politics. But he needs to come out and stand for this fight for Pakistan. It is a fight for our country, our society, our culture, our way of living. We need to answer a few questions as a society:
Can we let someone stop us from shaving or having haircut?
Can we let someone dictate to our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives, what to wear and how to behave?
Can we let someone dictate to us what entertainment we deserve and what we don’t?
Can we let someone run a spree of beheadings and lashings in our streets and keep acting as a moral watchdog?
Can we let our freedom be taken over by fanatics?
Can we let someone stop us from praying at the shrine of the local saint?
Can we let someone take away our Data Sahabs and Shahbaz Qalandars and Rehman Babas?
Can we let someone ban Qawali and recitation of Heer?
Can we let an 18-year old brain washed child beat our elder on the streets for “improper conduct”?
Can we let someone stop our women from working in the fields and going to markets?
These are serious questions. It is an issue we need to deliberate on as society. These transcend politics. This is the biggest issue facing us. At stake is not only our state but our society. Let us stand behind the government and security forces in fighting this menace. It is also the time for Sharif and other right-wingers to decide whether they are with us or with the Taliban.
(Ali Malik is an MBA student at Boston University and writes for demopak.blogspot.com since November 2004. aalimalik@gmail.com) |
