Can Democracy Work in this Country?
AS I KEEP telling you, they, which are to say our politicians, will never learn. Look at some of the headlines in Monday's Urdu papers:
This assembly is a four-letter word.
The pygmies of Martial Law have been foisted (on us) again.
He who comes to a settlement with Nawaz Sharif will be stupid.
I'll fight Nawaz Sharif to the last: I haven't seen a more shameless House than the Punjab Assembly.
The courts don't make or break governments; it is the people's prerogative to do so.
The people of Sindh want to know why these double standards (The reference is obvious).
There is no rule of law in the country.
There has been no settlement with the Government.
The President should dissolve the National Assembly once again (Who else but Nasrullah Khan?)
The crisis is not over. Someone very close to the President has threatened that the Assembly may be dissolved once again.
Nawaz Sharif is a businessman. He has got to go.
The peoples have lost faith in the judiciary.
We don't recognise the bogus assembly (My dear friend Aitzaz Ahsan ).
People have been hurt by the restoration of the bogus assembly.
Nawaz Sharif should be taken to task.
I won't negotiate with Nawaz Sharif .
Talks can't be held at gunpoint (Mrs. Bhutto ).
And this isn't even half the fun, if you can call it that. It has been a matter of constant wonder to me as to how, people with little or no following at all, have been holding the lowing at all, have been holding the country to ransom all these years. I mean, who is Nasrullah Khan? And who are Balkh Sher Mazari and Iqbal Haider and Zahid Sarfraz and Asghar Khan and things like that?
All these johnnies are agents of chaos. They have polluted the political atmosphere beyond the maximum limit allowed by constitutional propriety. Why are they in the business of politics? Because they have nothing else to do. And why are they so desperate?
Because they know that if Mian Nawaz Sharif completes his term, he would have accomplished so much that they would lose even their "statemental" credentials. Incompetence always leads to intolerance. Come 1995 and there will be only two forces left in the field-one led by Mrs. Benazir Bhutto and the other by Mian Nawaz Sharif. All other fossilised relics from our sorry political past will then become fit for exhibition in a museum.
Long years ago, I received an offer from Radio Pakistan to become one of their cricket commentators, why? I asked, taken aback. Because I understood the game better than most, they said. I was not entirely unhappy at the compliment but I told them that I would never make a commentator in the next hundred years. You follow me? A man should realise and respect his limitations. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan has been in politics for more years than anyone can remember. Can't he realise, or is he incapable of realising it, that he is not the stuff presidents or prime ministers are made of? And he is not the only one. I think developing countries such as ours should have an age-limit for politicians and it should be no higher than 60 years of age or 30 years in the game or whichever is earlier. This is the rule for journalists and similar retirement rules are in operation for judges and generals and civil servants. Why exempt the politicians?
And now another but related subject. On May 31, almost all major newspapers commented editorially on the post-restoration situation, especially in regard to the President . The Muslim minced no words. In a front-page indictment, it demanded President Ghulam Ishaq Khan 's impeachment. Excerpts:
Let there be no mistake about the status of Mr. Khan after the historic day when the Supreme Court found him guilty of having acted unlawfully in dissolving the country's sovereign law-making body and its government established by law. . . .
For all practical purpose, the Supreme Court convicted Mr. Khan of having unlawfully destroyed two institutions of the State . . . the National Assembly and the National Government.
He has instigated what amounts to political treachery in different parts of the country. . . .
Enlightened citizens must realise that Mr. Ishaq Khan's lust for power at any price has brought the country face to face with what looks very much like the grimmest political crisis in its history. . . .
This simply means that he is hell bent upon subverting the democratic order . . . if at this stage Mrs. Bhutto fails to rise and join the fight against a monstrous conspiracy, the nation will never forgive her. Not fighting a grave peril is tantamount to inviting it; not fighting high treason is to be privy to it. Mrs. Bhutto and her People's Party, no less than Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan , stand warned. . . . Now his tentacles are wringing the necks of the remaining democratic institutions in the country. The stage has arrived when a person with the record of Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan should be impeached by parliament. . . . Let the National Assembly deal with this problem here and now. Tomorrow may be too late. . . .
The Nation holds equally strong views on the President :
"Clearly, Ghulam Ishaq Khan has lost all sight of morality or dignity which his high office enjoins upon him. He has lost the right to continue in that office and should simply provide much needed relief to the country by packing his bags and leaving."
The News warns: "Yet the various players in this frenzied game of survival and denying their opponents any political gain, have operated in utter disregard for the people they claim to serve or represent. We are concerned . . . that the situation may snowball to a point from which there is no return. . . . Pakistan 's own history has much to offer by way of lessons if anyone cares to learn from them."
The Frontier Post : "Perhaps it is time that the demand for mid-term polls was given more serious consideration . . . without recourse to the electorate in free and fair elections; it is unlikely that we can get out of the serious predicament in which we find ourselves."
Do any of our politicians read newspaper editorials; you bet they don't. They only read their own repetitive statements and throw the rest of the paper away. Someone somewhere is tying to disabuse us of the idea that democracy can work in this country and the politicians are helping him like the devil.
Tuesday, June 8, 1993
