Please back off, Benazir! HP

Just curious. Please comment on this scuttle-bug doing the rounds...

How will the KSE react to Benazir Bhutto coming to power?

The rustles from the grapevines suggest that the financial markets and environment of Karachi will not react favorably to Bhutto coming back. The markets, according to the gossip, wants ideas, market reforms and programs for the future and not old failed policies of socialism.

Does Benazir Bhutto have an economic plan for the future, because in following her interviews, all I detect is a tale of foreign policy and no word on the real bread and butter issues, which impact the average person.

Would be interested in reading your comments.

Ciao

Please back off, Benazir! Re: HP # 121

I remember that discussion!

HP, I have had my share of brick-bats thrown at me, when I suggested, on this site, that politics/democracy in Pakistan is all about sharing power, with the military.

When the politicans of this land can imagine politics as existing without the army and are confident enough in their own ideas and accept and honor the fact that political and democratic legitimacy comes from the people and not the military, then maybe can debate the nature of democracy in Pakistan.

Ciao

Beginning of an End I thought that the beginning of end started on December 16, 1971 but then again, it could have started on July 5, 1977 or it might have really started in October 1958. This is not the beginning of the end, as much as it is the end of the beginning.

The idea of judical activism is too immature at this stage to suggest that it will last, because the critical salience to judical activism is not that the courts pass judgements, but if they can enforce them. The writ of the courts in Pakistan will come from its enforcements of its decisions and not from merely passing judgements. In 1954, for example, the United States' Supreme Court passed the landmark judgement in Brown vs. The Board of Education and desegrated the schools.

Had the Eisenhower administration not deployed the National Guard on southern campuses to make sure that the African-Americans could go to previously white only schools, that judgment would be a moot judgment.

Superme Court of Pakistan cannot stand up to the might of the Pakistani military, but the Pakistani military cannot stand up to the might of a nation that refuses to accept its rule. Here lies the rub. This is the end of the beginning, because the beginning in this case was for the people to develop a concept of civic rights, and now thanks to a spirited media, they know their rights and have more politicals awareness than a generation ago.

Mantolives was right, when he said, a long time ago, on this site that this will the last military rule in the history of Pakistan. A new chapter is about to open, which still needs to be written, but the end of the beginning was when this nation reached a new level of political maturity and maybe, when historians write about the evolution of democracy in Pakistan, they will say the end of the beginning started on April 19, 2007.

Ciao

Boots, Beards, Burqas and Bombs Re: Beena

Officially, there was no code-name for the military operation. One of the SSG units, when ordered to attack nick-named the assult as "operation sunrise" since the attack occured around dawn. It was the Pakistani press, which coined the term, Operation Silence and since then, the popular thought has wrongly identified it as the code-name for the operation.

The operational control of the assult was given to Brigade 111 depployed in Rawalpindi and the overall operational command was with the army corps (I forget the corps designation) that is based in Rawalpindi. The SSG unit, which took part in the assult was the Musa Brigade, which is a dedicated anti-terrorist brigade of the SSG.

All this information was printed in Pakistani and international newspapers.

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa re: hamidm2

I was seriously wondering what sort of a role model he was to his students.

Preston University???

What is that? Never heard of it...one of those money making frauds passing themselves of as institutions of higher learning?

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa re: Masadi

Read the read article carefully. I had suggested that governments are not created to bring happiness to the people, but to rule over them. As to the American Declaration of Independence, the saying "life, liberty and happiness" was more of an evocation and does not necessarily represent the realist interests of the United States' government. There is marked difference in what the governments say and in their actions and governments and their intentions cannot be solely judged on the basis of their political rhetoric.

Masadi, do not misquote me and do not put words in my mouth. I have been very patient with your slanders and libel against me. I am not sure, who gave you the power to judge me, but since you have; I have to wonder what sort of example are you setting for your own students by your actions and deeds?

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa re: Masadi

Read the lines very carefully. I had said that despite what American Declaration of Independence had said, governments are not created to bring life, liberty and happiness to their people.

The sentence on life, liberty and happiness in the Declaration of Independence, was more of an evocation and did not, and does not, necessarily reflect the realist interests of the United States' government. In a similar sense, the Magna Carta of 1215 was not about democracy or representative bodies or human/political rights as much as it was about the right of English nobility to tax their subjects without interference from the king.

There is difference between what the governments say and what their actions are inspite of their rhethoric.

Do not misquote me; insult me by all means but do not put words in my mouth.

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa Re: hamidm2

Hamid, please do not peg your Chowk presence to Masadi. As Shandana said, just ignore Masadi and his rants. Masadi's comments are more hyperbole than they are serious interacts. Masadi by personalizing and slandering interacts and interactors, on Chowk, is only showing his own lack of intellectual class.

Masadi said in one of his interacts that I wrote 50 pages of nothing. It would be true had I written 50 pages of nothing, but I did not; I wrote 7 pages of nothing! ;)

For the record, I have never been offended by Masadi's comments, because generally speaking, I have never been offended by ignorance.

Please consider what Shandana has said and keep interacting.

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa re: Ras

Please omit the typo "sahi" and replace it with "sahib".

Sorry for the typo.

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa Re: GT # 2

Chowk readership, generally speaking, will avoid this article not only because of its lenght, but also because it does not deal in any conspiracy theory analysis and neither does it offer a blame analysis on the situation. The article merely makes two points, which the average Pakistani might find a bit difficult to agree.

One; demcoracy requires an active, involved and aware participation by the people and democracy and public accountibility in a democracy is not limited to and does not end with elections. Democracy in Pakistan is still limited to elections and beyond that, Pakistani public is not interested in politics as long as their zones of special status quos are not infringed upon.

Two; Lal Masjid was the culmination of the last 20 years of Pakistani politics, encourged and supported by the people of Pakistan. Militancy, in Pakistan, has to be seen in the context of its environment and had cultural/religious/political environment not existed, militancy might not have taken roots in Pakistan. Pakistani public actively encourged the growth of militancy in Pakistan by not being involved in the process, whereby the governments were given a carte blanche to adopt certain policies.

The mea cupla of the nation is that militancy in Pakistan would not have been possible without its indirect and direct appeasement and support of the militancy.

As to the European terms and references, those were to show that we still live in a world dominated by European structures of international law. These structures are, however, changing as the international system moves from the concept of nation-states into paradigms and metrics of transnationalism influenced not by politics, but by economics.

Ciao

Our National Mea Culpa Re: Ras # 3

Nice to hear from you Ras sahi! The lenght of my articles is an old cliche on Chowk, but it was nice to know that you enjoyed the article.

My crystal ball simply paints a picture of 2007 as being as very bad year for Pakistan, but I do think that after 2007, this nation and its people will see marked improvement. There is a growing awareness in Pakistan, amongst the people, that did not exist five to ten years ago.

Ciao

Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight re: Hoodbhoy

I will defer to MantoLives, on the topic of Jinnah, but I believe that Manto's interact # 1 said it all. The constitution of Pakistan will be decided by the people of Pakistan regardless of what Jinnah may have wanted for Pakistan. The only condition is that it is done in an open and demcoratic manner and is not forced upon the people.

Jinnah was a meritocrat and he was neither an Islamist or a secularist. My inference is made on a telling point by Jinnah, in his August 11, 1947 speech, which was the reference to the religious wars between the Protestants and Catholics in English history. Religion to Jinnah, was a personal affair and it had nothing to do with the affairs of the state. Jinnah must have realized from the experience of the English religious wars that a nation, where two or more religions exist should favor all religions equally and to make sure that it happened this way, the state should not get into the business of deciding religious issues.

Secularism does not make a nation into an atheist, but it does make the tolerance of all religious believes possible and in a nation with multiple religious believes, each religion must be provided with the space to exist without being dominated or persecuted by one particular religion that has the offical patronage of the state.

In the end, one has to look at Jinnah's personal believes on the role of the state and not what his religious believes were in the role of the state to finally decided what form; Islamist or secular he supported for Pakistan. Regardless of his personal opinions, his choice of a Hindu as the first law minister of Pakistan proved that Jinnah favored the latter not because of his western education and liberal intellectual thought, but because he realized the pitfalls for Pakistan if one religion was favored over the rest of the religions in Pakistan and instead opted for a choice based on the qualifications of the person, for a task, and not his religious inclinations.

Much has been said about Jinnah and his reasons for creating Pakistan, but it still does not negate the fact that what made Jinnah great to the Indian Muslims despite his lack of Islamic knowledge or his westernized outlook, was the single minded sincerity of purpose he brought to the cause of the Muslims of India. Having said, one would expect nothing less from Jinnah once Pakistan was created and in the interests of Pakistan, Jinnah would have supported a secular form of government. He would have done so not because he was anti-Islam, but because he must have realized that Pakistan being a multi-religious state could not be single religion dominated state and still endure.

The argument, whether Jinnah was secularist or Islamist only makes sense if point was that Pakistan was created in the name of a religion, but it was not. Pakistan was created to ensure the consitutional, economic and religious, cultural freedoms of Indian Muslims and had Congress agreed to these demands, Jinnah would not have pursued the case of the Indian Muslims to the point of partition in 1947.

Jinnah, then, was neither a secularist or an Islamist as much as he was a meritocrat, who believed that meritocracy in the service of Pakistan was the best option for the new nation.

Ciao

Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight re: Hoodbhoy

Jinnah's hand tailored suits were from Saville Row and not as you mentioned, "Seville Row". Seville is a city in Spain and there is, to the best of my knowledge, no Seville Row in London.

I will comment on the rest of the article later.

Ciao

The New Bedfellows Re: # 86

The nightmare never ends; one has to learn to live with it.

Pakistani politics have seen this tug of war between a strong Prime Minister's office and a strong presidency since 1947. I have been raked over the coals, by an old Chowkwallah and a good friend, for suggesting this but I believe that Jinnah's tenure as the Governor-General of Pakistan and the importance of that office in constrast to a weakened prime minsterial office, was responsible for the diminishing of the powers belonging to the prime minister's office.

Since that day, Pakistan has relived the struggle of political power between a strong presidency and a prime minister's office that would like to increase its importance. The word "increase" is used in the sense that a prime minister's office never had power and thus, it cannot "regain" it but only increase/add to its limited powers.

The point of contention is that Pakistan, due to these power struggles, has not been clearly able to spell out, whether it is a parliamentary form of government or a presidential form of government. If Pakistan wants to be a parliamentary form of government, then the powers of the presidency will have to be clipped and the Constitution of Pakistan amended because the manner in which it has been amended in the past and the powers it gives the president, suggests that it supports/favors a presidential style of government.

The army in Pakistan has always favored a presidential style of power and the civilians have always supported a parliamentary government, with a strong prime minister's office. Therefore, the politics in Pakistan have evolved into a mixture of both and since a presidential and a prime ministerial forms of goverance are different and require different sorts of institutional support, Pakistani institutions have been weakened, as a result of this power struggle, as they were made to support two conflicting political ideas; specially, when those ideas were involved in a zero-sum game with one another.

The solution, and this is open to debate, is that in the present context of Pakistan, a presidential or a prime ministerial system of government will only work after there is a national reconcilation to decide what the nation wants and then to forge that system. However, it will require a national consensus and therefore, it makes a very strong case for the need of a national reconcilation in Pakistani politics in the manner of the national consensus that created the Constitution of 1973.

Ciao

The New Bedfellows Benazir Bhutto would like nothing better than to be the prime minister and see the powers of the presidency limited. Musharraf would like an alliance with Benazir's party and still retain his presidential powers, i.e. a weak prime minister's office.

How these issues are accomodated, will decide the future of Pakistani politics and the rhetorical justifications for this act as an explanation to the people of Pakistan.

Ciao

Governance and Human Security Interesting.

Ciao