Farce after farce after farce …

Farce after farce after farce …

By Kamran Shafi

THIS is how the Es of the Five-E-Manifesto of the Peoples Party are placed presently: Employment, Education, Energy, Environment, Equality. Er, should the E denoting Equality not have been the first?

I mean, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s espousal of the rights of the poor and the dispossessed (read EQUALITY) that 30 years after his judicial murder they are still propelled towards the PPP’s ballot boxes, innit?

I am a soldier too: to put it in perspective, six courses junior to Musharraf and twenty-something senior to the new COAS. I hang my head in shame at the farce that the nation was subjected to in the name of the ‘handing over of command’ of the Pakistan Army.

Not only were the drill movements of the parading troops out of sync, they were so exaggerated and embellished with silly additions that it seemed as if it was the Martian Army drilling badly, not the one I knew and loved.

Far more than this, where in the world does army command change with such pomp and circumstance, military parades and such like? Where in the world, indeed, does the outgoing army chief ceremonially present his successor with an item that is part of his uniform (the Malacca cane is part of the uniform of General Officers of the Pakistan Army)? Did Musharraf also give Kayani a pair of black woollen socks?

This was just one COAS handing over, albeit after nine long years instead of the usual three in most civilised countries, to his successor. This was hardly an emperor handing over the orb and sceptre to his successor. (Or was it?!)

From what I know and have seen in my many years, change of army command is a simple, graceful, quiet affair: at the end of his last working day the outgoing chief inspects a guard of honour drawn up outside his office in GHQ and is seen into his car by the principal staff officers (PSOs) to drive off home.

The next day, the new chief comes to GHQ, is received by the PSOs, inspects the guard of honour, and goes into his office. End of story.

But, as my readers well know, we are a quite unique people and we do quite unique things, even if they make us look silly to the rest of the world. Which can go hang itself as far as our Commando is concerned, for according to himself during his speech at his ‘swearing-in’ as ‘civilian president’ it took the West centuries to get where they are in respect of better human rights, more civil liberties and democracy, and they want us to get there in a few months or a few years? Idiots, these Westerners.

May I here and now suggest to those of my friends who are demanding the rule of law and constitution, and freedom for the media, to prepare for the worst. While I feel in my very bones that the law will reign supreme in the near future, Musharraf or no Musharraf, I know too that the brutal state will become more brutal still.

What Musharraf said was not without reason – he wants to tell us that even if one of his celebrated skins is off, he is still very much the Commando. (Note please, that this was written on Nov 29; the papers on Dec 1 quoted Musharraf saying he would not allow anti-election protests.)

It was sad, nay pathetic, to yet again see him badmouth My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry, this time on the day of his so-called swearing-in, an occasion that he could and should have used to send a message of reconciliation to the country at large.

But no. Pervez Musharraf, the perennial juvenile (please, please read his book I beg you, to really get an idea of the extent of the trouble we are in) kept to his combative and macho best, casting aside any gentlemanly attributes such as not hitting a man who (and his family) has/have already been pummelled mercilessly using naked and vicious State power.

The “former Chief Justice was derailing democracy as part of a well-planned conspiracy” Musharraf said in his petulant diatribe; and further that if he hadn’t acted decisively “chaos, destruction and break down” would have resulted in the rest of the country as it had in Swat. Really?

The Chief Justice was responsible for the ineptness and the lackadaisical attitude of the government atop which sat/sits Pervez Musharraf during all the time that it did not react to what was happening in Swat? He must really think we are a bunch of idiots!

Which reminds me: judging from the levity writ large on the Frontier Caretaker CM’s visage at Musharraf’s swearing-in everything seems hunky dory in the province. I mean, one could almost hear the man guffawing.

We are up the proverbial creek my friends, in a very leaky boat with you-know-what gushing in by the globule; in which state we shall remain unless our political parties get up off their hands and do something about it. Which is to see the back of Musharraf as soon as possible?

The only way to do this, let me repeat myself, is by isolating him completely by boycotting the elections. With the larger of the parties sitting outside the assemblies the whole edifice will come crashing down under its own weight before you can say “Charlie’s Aunt”!

The politicians must beware that if they don’t stick together the Establishment will neuter them one by one. And that to be seen as furthering Musharraf’s (read Army’s) agenda is pure poison: are you listening Benazir Bhutto? You are the key.

By the way, Ghazala Minallah, daughter of that brave and good judge, Ghulam Safdar Shah, has written you an open letter. I wept when I read it, for I was one of those who saw ZAB’s peerless defence of himself in the Supreme Court and well remember an occasion when Justice Safdar Shah could not control his emotions and actually brushed a tear from his eye. Personalities do matter, Ms. Bhutto! As your good father’s did.

Bushism of the Week: “I’m occasionally reading, I want you to know, in the second term.” – President George W. Bush; Washington D.C., March 16, 2005

P.S. May I once again register my dismay and outrage at Aitzaz Ahsan’s and Justice Tariq Mehmood’s and Ali Ahmed Kurd’s continued detentions? Shame on you, Dubya; shame on you, America!

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk