The Guardian of London writes in its editorial on August 30, 2007, "Pakistan's fundamental problem is that it is dominated by a military establishment" that has "a vice-like hold on the extensive privileges it has built". It toggles in and out of direct power when it needs to. It has strong bonds with corrupt politicians, drawn from the landlord class or from religious circles, who allow an easy manipulation, when they are taking their turns in office or in opposition. Behind toggling "lies a surprising continuity of interests". The industrial, military, landowning, and bureaucratic elites are all interrelated and look after one another and share power with little reference to the electorate.
Now once estranged bed fellows, a general and a polititian, are being cheered on to negotiate a deal so that the west could have at least another five years of free hand in its war of terror. None of them are concerned that a slew of constitutional hurdles stand in the path to such a deal.
He cannot be a candidate because he is on payroll as an on duty military general. He has to wait two years before he can run. He cannot have oath of the president for the third time that he has already done. He has presided over growing human rights violations and abductions by state intelligence agencies - an estimated 600 activists have "disappeared" since 2002. A bloody shooting spree by his supporters in Karachi left scores of people dead.
No doubt the constitutional changes Musharaff and Benazir require for the deal to go through will end up before a revitalized supreme court which is showing amazing sensitivity to popular feeling. This "mood of popular empowerment" will determine the fate of this or any other future deal. Pakistan has been ruled by an elite for too long now. Benazir Bhutto's return would only perpetuate the old order.
Benazir Bhutto is asking a blanket pardon of the crimes she, her husband, and her and Musharraf cronies have committed since 1988. In 1994 with her support the police shot and killed three of the retainers of Bhutto family when Begum Bhutto with a convoy wanted to visit Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's grave. Soon afterwards, her brother Murtaza Bhutto, who had just returned to Pakistan to try to oust his sister from control of the Pakistan Peoples Party, was killed along with six of his supporters, by police bullets, yards from his front door. Many, including Murtaza's family pointed the finger of suspicion at Benazir who was prime minister then. Her husband, Asif Zardari was later charged with complicity in the murder.
Suddenly, taking a cue from their governments, the western media have suddenly made her the face liberal democracy in Pakistan. She got her chance at the helm, twice.
During her first 20-month long premiership she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation. Her reign was marked by massive human rights abuse: Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world's worst records of custodial deaths, extrajudicial killings and torture. Her second term in power was only distinguished by epic levels of corruption. In 1995, Transparency International named Pakistan one of the three most corrupt countries in the world. Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari - widely known as "Mr 10%" - faced allegations of plundering the country. Musharraf spent millions of dollars to investigate those cases.
The Americans like her because she speaks against Taliban (even though she was the one who raised them as a political force), against madrassas, against bearded mullas, she "stayed" her followers away from mass rallies, she stoppped them from chanting anti-American slognas. They don't care if she speaks Urdu with a strange accent and grammer, and speaks no Sindhi at all.
All they want to do by cobbling this deal together is taking Pakistan to what the Guardian calls a "strange variety of democracy - really a form of elective feudalism". Real democracy has never been allowed to thrive. Unlike India where the educated middle class gained control in 1947, in Pakistan middle class leadership from non-feudal backgrounds who represent the grassroots is still largely excluded from the political process. It is this as much as anything else that has fuelled the growth of the Islamists. For the great majority of poorer Pakistanis life remains intolerably hard and access to justice or education is a distant hope. Healthcare and other social services, even necessities such as clean water and electricity for the poor have been neglected. Money is spent only on the public services that benefit the wealthy.
But what is in this deal or system for the Pakistani people? Nothing, as long as they stay on the side lines. But if they decide to get involved and get fucused as they did six months ago after Musharraf sacked the Chief Justice they can deliver a potentially fatal blow to this system once and for all. They have to show once again that they will not tolerate how their country is run. They have to say a collective "NO" as Justice Chaudhry did on March 9.
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