What an eerie silence? Musharraf and all his spokesmen, military and civilian, are conspicuously and strangely mum about the stunning defeat Bush administration has received at American voters' hands in the midterm elections on Nov. 7. Whole world is abuzz with greetings, jubilation or a sense of relief. But not a whispering sound uttered by political spin masters of Musharraf. Not even a comment on the defeat after deafeat: the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bush had fired him and by doing so had implicitly admitted that he had followed failed policies for six long nightmarish years.
Does the absence of any sound from any government quarter in Pakistan also mean an implicit admission of its own failed policies? He was, as he has admitted after denying first, coerced into adopting those anti-Pakistan policies by American president. After all you don't need to be threatened to be bombed back to stone age if you want to do good to your own people and country.
Bush arrogance, belligerence and cockiness melted overnight in the heat of American people's votes. Sacking Rumsfeld was the first thing he did after his party lost both houses of Congress. Before the elections Bush had stubbornly refused to show him the door. But once the votes were counted and Bush found out that the people had rejected his coercive ways to wage wars in Iraq and in other parts of the world he was sensible enough to at least make suitable noises and go through appropriate motions to ensure Americans that he had gotten the message.
But then America is a democratic country and American people have the constitutional right to voice their opinions through ballot at regular intervals already determined by the constitution. They wait for elections and use them to force their leader to change the course if they don't like it. Or change their leaders.
And Pakistan is in the life-threatening grip of dictatorship - military dictatorship: the worst kind imaginable. The people constitution has been mutilated and mangled. The poverty is pushing people to ever diminishing circle which starts at hand and ends at mouth and does not leave any energy or time for voicing their opinion. The whole society is polarized into preys and predators. Extortionism has become the best business. Thugs and murderers, protected by those in high places, are running rough shod scaring citizens into paying ransom or face death. Those who have wherewithal to leave Pakistan for those places where they think their lives, lives of their loved ones and their hard earned money are safe have already left, or are at the verge of leaving.
They can neither change the course of the country nor the leaders who have usurped power to empower the powerful and kill the powerless and those who speak up and try to expose their deeds. Their voice are stifled, their votes denied, or rigged. The only way out of their miserable lives is death by suicide, death by starvation.
Do you wonder why the otherwise vocal spokespersons have lost their voices all of a sudden? They want the people of Pakistan to get infected by the ballot virus. They don't want them to know that in the same world they live in there are some nations which have un-mangled constitutions. They have the right to vote. The most powerful man on earth cannot them their votes or rig them.
The glib spokespersons of military government are mute because they don't want the people of Pakistan to rise up for their rights. They know if people power can prevail in America, if given chance it will also prevail in Pakistan and then dictator and his cronies has to go.
What a dream! May be not!!
