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By M.A. Niazi
The coalition partners finally seem to have reconciled their positions, as is supposed to be done in all good coalitions. The PML-N insisted that its core position included the restoration of the judiciary to its pre-Emergency position.
The PPP did not spell out, but made clear from its behaviour, that it did not want the president to suffer any embarrassment, which he insisted he would suffer in the event of a full restoration, so it avoided the restoration, leaving the PML-N to do its second worst and leave the Federal Cabinet (the worst was leaving the Punjab government, which it did not do).
The solution was to impeach the president, which has not just been announced, but has been recommended by three provincial assemblies, and will be recommended by the fourth. The equation was simple: find a president who will not be embarrassed by the restoration of the judiciary. For that, it was necessary to create a vacancy in the office, which meant the removal of the incumbent.
Since the incumbent had been re-elected only last year and thus had virtually the whole of the five years of his second term to run, this meant impeaching him. The PPP decided purely according to the logic of the situation, and there is no malignity towards the president visible in the move, at least from the PPP.
This is not the case with the PML-N, which on the other hand, saw an opportunity to fulfil another of its agenda items. The removal of the president is actually on the PPP to-do list, and after the February 18 election, which was more or less a referendum against Musharraf, it probably made sense to the PPP to place itself at the head of the movement for his removal.
It appears that the foreign powers and the military have decided to remain neutral, but the president is determined to tough it out. He has to ensure the semblance of support from them, not necessarily actual support, if he hopes to defeat the move.
The foreign powers have a historical record of letting down their Third-World allies when they lose support among their own people, and thus the number of American surveys appearing, that showed Musharraf as enjoying little support, assume significance, as does Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's meeting both with the British PM and the US President. The Americans in particular will not support anyone who does not enjoy a plurality in a survey after being in power and office since 1999, yet it is American support that Musharraf has been courting ever since 9/11.
The president appears determined to go through with the impeachment, which follows a quasi-judicial procedure, as in the American model on which it is based. The big difference is in the voting. In the USA, an impeachment's framing is done by the lower House of Congress, the House of Representatives, but the impeachment itself is heard by the Upper House, the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the United States presiding.
In Pakistan, there is no role for the chief justice, and the charges are determined by the federal government, or the movers of the motion of impeachment, in the shape of the motion itself. The joint committee tasked with drafting is working on this motion, and once their work reaches the House, the 'bill of impeachment' becomes public property, just as does any bill in the USA.
Unlike the USA, where there is a clear Representatives-Senate division, Pakistan allows the impeachment to originate in either House moved by half of that House, and then for it to come before a joint sitting for consideration.
At the joint sitting, there may be an investigation, but only if there is, will the president get the right to legal representation. The motion of impeachment must be passed by two-thirds of the senate (in the USA, and the chief justice does not have a vote) or two-thirds of the total membership of the joint sitting (in Pakistan).
In short, considering that American senators and Pakistani members of parliament (both MNAs and senators) are both political animals, this vote is devoted to whether they like the face of the president or not. They are supposed to apply their minds to whether the incumbent violated the constitution or not, but they will not bother. In the USA, they will vote according to how it will sound in their next election, and in Pakistan, according to the party whip, which is crucial for the National Assembly and all-important for the senate.
Yet Musharraf has a way out, though only if the agency chiefs cooperate. If members abstain, they are voting for the sitting president.
The motion does not require a majority-against to be defeated, but will be defeated if it fails to attract the requisite number of votes, which is two-thirds of the total membership. Since the agencies have ensured the election of many of those on the Treasury benches (at least, to them), the agencies can make them abstain, and thus vote for the president.
Such a presidency would be double-edged. Already, Pervez Musharraf is going to set a record, as a president who was the first to be impeached. Both of the presidential impeachment's in the USA that went to the senate, that of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 and of Bill Clinton in 1998, failed, while Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment, in which he was a virtual certainty to be convicted, not because he was guilty (which he was), but because the senators were under constituency pressures.
Impeachment is no defence against further trial, and it is not clear in Pakistan what the status is of the evidence adduced. The pension rights of the president are sacrificed, though it is hoped that Musharraf would avoid this loss of what is a generous package, including free accommodation and transport by resigning. However, even if he loses these rights because he has been impeached, as a former chief of army staff, he gives up nothing, and this is a sufficiency for him.
It must be said that the nation is going through a trauma as severe as the president, who is a mere channel. Just as a president is impeached only once, a nation witnesses a presidential impeachment for the first time only once. Pakistan is undergoing a stressful time, and it is to be hoped that it comes through successfully.
E-mail: maniazi@nation.com.pk
Showing posts with label Musharaf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musharaf. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
A right jolly mess, what
A right jolly mess, what
By Kamran Shafi
SO then, the Commando has got us into all sorts of trouble, what, by continuing to hang on to the President’s Lodge (née Army House) by his manicured fingernails! Well, what did you expect of someone who wrote (allegedly, for the authorship of that absurd farce seems to rest more on someone else’s shoulders according to Musharraf himself — stand up Humayun Gohar) In the Line of Fire!?
Throughout the debate that has raged between the transitionists and the transformationists (among the latter’s number I proudly count myself) I have begged people to please, please read the book. “Please read the book to really know the extent of the trouble we are in,” I begged everyone.
For in it you see an adolescent in a full general’s uniform — I detest this new Americanism of one-star, three-star and so on — still proud of once being a 12-year-old young thug leading a gang of other urchins and beating people up on the streets of Karachi.
Or, indeed, of doubling up with laughter (alongside his cousins and brothers) when his “Uncle Haider”, allegedly once-upon-a-time an Air Force Academy “sword-carrier” i.e. a cadet under officer, slapped a bald man on the head, not once but twice in Frere Gardens pretending it was someone else. As an Indian reader informed me this was one of the scenes in an Indian film of the day!
Or indeed, in later years being proud of not giving a damn about the rules of behaviour under which gentlemen cadets at the Pakistan Military Academy conducted themselves, the very first being the honour system under which you ensured you did the right thing by yourself.
The instances the man quotes are gob-smacking to say the least. He even congratulates himself for having got away with cheating and taking a shortcut on the infamous nine-mile endurance test in which you had to run/walk nine miles in light FSMO (Field Service Marching Order) in under 90 minutes.
It was a cardinal sin to cheat at PMA, yet he felicitates himself for having been spared relegation to the next lower term, or indeed, being dishonourably discharged from the PMA for the very great crime he committed.
I write this on the early morning of Monday and have already seen some very interesting stories in this same newspaper; exactly the kind of stories you would expect in matters Musharraf. The first is that Rashid Qureshi, his press secretary, has said he is not resigning; no way. Vintage Macho Musharraf!
On the same page there is a long story on how the Americans want him to stay in the country in an “honourable” way after he resigns/is thrown out of office. Now, whilst the Americans are much practised in protecting their stooges who do their bidding — Nuri Al-Maliki in Iraq and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, both of whom rely on American security contractors, read under-cover CIA operatives, to provide them close security — why in God’s name should the Americans be concerned about where in the world Musharraf lives after he is made to relinquish his vice-like hold on Pakistan’s jugular?
Could it be possible that the request for “honourable” stay in Pakistan was made by Musharraf himself to his tight buddy Dubya and that the Americans were demanding of the Pakistanis to provide the man the same level of security comprising regular army troops, three diversionary motorcades and so on, as a price of his leaving office? So he can play ‘president, president’ with his buddies forever?
That is, to continue being ‘presidential’ without the responsibility?! Is this Dubya’s parting gift to his “tight” buddy whose “tightness” became ever tighter as more and more Pakistanis (and poor Afghans as reports HRW, one of them a farmer who had a dispute with his neighbour) were sold to the Americans for bounty money at $5000 per?
But why should we the people allow that? Have we forgotten how every single elected leader was seen out of office by the establishment with the active support of the Pakistan army? Have we forgotten that every single time the “bloody civilian” leaders went home they went home via jail, even the hangman’s noose? If they weren’t assassinated and the whole thing shoved under the rather humungous Pakistani carpet, that is?
Why should we forget Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan’s murder in Liaquat Bagh; then Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s judicial murder in Rawalpindi jail; then Nawaz Sharif’s incarceration in Attock Fort and trial in an anti-terrorism court and then exile under the pressure of those whose $s are so valuable to any Pakistani dictator; then Benazir Bhutto’s cruel murder in Liaquat Bagh again with the crime scene being so carefully sanitised within minutes of her killing?
Which reminds me. Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Ron Suskind’s just-published book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism says President Musharraf phoned Benazir in Dubai and told her, “Your security is based on the state of our relationship.”
What sort of threat was that? And are we to read into it that Benazir was murdered precisely because she had become distanced from Musharraf in so many ways, even telling friends that she was a marked woman and had been “betrayed”, not only by Musharraf but by the Americans too?
Why then are they asking Musharraf be allowed to have an “honourable” stay in Pakistan? Shouldn’t the charges enumerated above not form part of the 100-page chargesheet the coalition is preparing against the man? Charges ranging from cheating as a so-called ‘gentleman cadet’ to threatening a murdered leader that she would be murdered if she strayed too far from the straight and narrow?
Stop press: on a TV programme called ‘Such to Yeh Hai’ on Monday one of the participants said that parliamentarians would vote according to their zameer on Musharraf’s impeachment motion, and another asked if they would not vote according to ‘General’ Zameer, referring to the infamous former director general of the ISI’s internal wing who was instrumental in manufacturing the PPP Patriots and other such dastardly stuff.
When it came my turn I asked a question of the present government that if it was serious about the impeachment why was it that the chief of the ISI, a man considered close to the general’s family, was still in his job. Especially when it was more than well known that the ISI buys/threatens people to change their political loyalties. The entire reference to the ISI was edited out of the programme.
So much for a free media.
P.S. What was the bounty on Dr Afia Siddqui’s head and who pocketed it please? Could someone tell us?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
SO then, the Commando has got us into all sorts of trouble, what, by continuing to hang on to the President’s Lodge (née Army House) by his manicured fingernails! Well, what did you expect of someone who wrote (allegedly, for the authorship of that absurd farce seems to rest more on someone else’s shoulders according to Musharraf himself — stand up Humayun Gohar) In the Line of Fire!?
Throughout the debate that has raged between the transitionists and the transformationists (among the latter’s number I proudly count myself) I have begged people to please, please read the book. “Please read the book to really know the extent of the trouble we are in,” I begged everyone.
For in it you see an adolescent in a full general’s uniform — I detest this new Americanism of one-star, three-star and so on — still proud of once being a 12-year-old young thug leading a gang of other urchins and beating people up on the streets of Karachi.
Or, indeed, of doubling up with laughter (alongside his cousins and brothers) when his “Uncle Haider”, allegedly once-upon-a-time an Air Force Academy “sword-carrier” i.e. a cadet under officer, slapped a bald man on the head, not once but twice in Frere Gardens pretending it was someone else. As an Indian reader informed me this was one of the scenes in an Indian film of the day!
Or indeed, in later years being proud of not giving a damn about the rules of behaviour under which gentlemen cadets at the Pakistan Military Academy conducted themselves, the very first being the honour system under which you ensured you did the right thing by yourself.
The instances the man quotes are gob-smacking to say the least. He even congratulates himself for having got away with cheating and taking a shortcut on the infamous nine-mile endurance test in which you had to run/walk nine miles in light FSMO (Field Service Marching Order) in under 90 minutes.
It was a cardinal sin to cheat at PMA, yet he felicitates himself for having been spared relegation to the next lower term, or indeed, being dishonourably discharged from the PMA for the very great crime he committed.
I write this on the early morning of Monday and have already seen some very interesting stories in this same newspaper; exactly the kind of stories you would expect in matters Musharraf. The first is that Rashid Qureshi, his press secretary, has said he is not resigning; no way. Vintage Macho Musharraf!
On the same page there is a long story on how the Americans want him to stay in the country in an “honourable” way after he resigns/is thrown out of office. Now, whilst the Americans are much practised in protecting their stooges who do their bidding — Nuri Al-Maliki in Iraq and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, both of whom rely on American security contractors, read under-cover CIA operatives, to provide them close security — why in God’s name should the Americans be concerned about where in the world Musharraf lives after he is made to relinquish his vice-like hold on Pakistan’s jugular?
Could it be possible that the request for “honourable” stay in Pakistan was made by Musharraf himself to his tight buddy Dubya and that the Americans were demanding of the Pakistanis to provide the man the same level of security comprising regular army troops, three diversionary motorcades and so on, as a price of his leaving office? So he can play ‘president, president’ with his buddies forever?
That is, to continue being ‘presidential’ without the responsibility?! Is this Dubya’s parting gift to his “tight” buddy whose “tightness” became ever tighter as more and more Pakistanis (and poor Afghans as reports HRW, one of them a farmer who had a dispute with his neighbour) were sold to the Americans for bounty money at $5000 per?
But why should we the people allow that? Have we forgotten how every single elected leader was seen out of office by the establishment with the active support of the Pakistan army? Have we forgotten that every single time the “bloody civilian” leaders went home they went home via jail, even the hangman’s noose? If they weren’t assassinated and the whole thing shoved under the rather humungous Pakistani carpet, that is?
Why should we forget Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan’s murder in Liaquat Bagh; then Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s judicial murder in Rawalpindi jail; then Nawaz Sharif’s incarceration in Attock Fort and trial in an anti-terrorism court and then exile under the pressure of those whose $s are so valuable to any Pakistani dictator; then Benazir Bhutto’s cruel murder in Liaquat Bagh again with the crime scene being so carefully sanitised within minutes of her killing?
Which reminds me. Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Ron Suskind’s just-published book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism says President Musharraf phoned Benazir in Dubai and told her, “Your security is based on the state of our relationship.”
What sort of threat was that? And are we to read into it that Benazir was murdered precisely because she had become distanced from Musharraf in so many ways, even telling friends that she was a marked woman and had been “betrayed”, not only by Musharraf but by the Americans too?
Why then are they asking Musharraf be allowed to have an “honourable” stay in Pakistan? Shouldn’t the charges enumerated above not form part of the 100-page chargesheet the coalition is preparing against the man? Charges ranging from cheating as a so-called ‘gentleman cadet’ to threatening a murdered leader that she would be murdered if she strayed too far from the straight and narrow?
Stop press: on a TV programme called ‘Such to Yeh Hai’ on Monday one of the participants said that parliamentarians would vote according to their zameer on Musharraf’s impeachment motion, and another asked if they would not vote according to ‘General’ Zameer, referring to the infamous former director general of the ISI’s internal wing who was instrumental in manufacturing the PPP Patriots and other such dastardly stuff.
When it came my turn I asked a question of the present government that if it was serious about the impeachment why was it that the chief of the ISI, a man considered close to the general’s family, was still in his job. Especially when it was more than well known that the ISI buys/threatens people to change their political loyalties. The entire reference to the ISI was edited out of the programme.
So much for a free media.
P.S. What was the bounty on Dr Afia Siddqui’s head and who pocketed it please? Could someone tell us?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Go for it, Gents
By Kamran Shafi
WHY in God’s name should Asif Zardari go to the White House to beg Dubya’s indulgence to impeach Musharraf?
And why in heaven’s name should Nawaz Sharif accompany him so that Dubya is moved enough to allow the elected government of Pakistan to impeach Musharraf?
If Asif Zardari’s ‘aides’ are to be believed — they leaked such stories to the press two days running last week — Asif had asked Nawaz Sharif to accompany him to DC so that they could, the both of them, stand in The Presence of possibly the most inept, most dangerous leader the US has ever had, and ask his permission to impeach Musharraf.
If the ‘aides’ are to be believed, NS has refused to go. Well, bully for him. What does Dubya have to do with this matter anyway? The ‘aides’ also let slip that Asif Zardari is upset that Nawaz Sharif let him down in the past too: that when Asif Zardari asked him to accompany him to Saudi Arabia to plead for oil on deferred payment, Nawaz Sharif said he would go but refused at the last minute.
Hang on a minute though. A source extremely close to Raiwind told me a month ago that whilst Asif Zardari had mentioned to Nawaz Sharif that they would go to Saudi Arabia together, when the time came Asif Zardari marched off on his own. I believe this version of events because my source is more than impeccable.
This is not the way to do business, sirs, it just is not. The coalition will simply not be able to take the pressures being put on it by irresponsible ‘leaks’ to the press by ‘aides’. As it is, the coalition that most Pakistanis including I fervently hope will stay together and defeat the dictatorship once and for all is already under huge pressure, especially, you guessed it, because of the PPP’s one step forward, five back approach to the impeachment and the judges issue.
Critically, this wishy-washy, neither here nor there, approach by the PPP is hurting itself far more than it is hurting the coalition. A little anecdote: walking three days ago in the Bagh-i-Jinnah, even now known to most Lahoris as Lawrence Gardens, a group of walkers stopped me and asked if I was I.
When told that it was indeed, one of them suggested a live DawnNews show about what they called the ‘retired hurt’ members of the PPP — a group of middle-aged and ageing gentlemen sitting under one of the gazebos in the gardens cooling off after their walk. I walked across to them and talked of this and that and it wasn’t long before it all came spilling out.
It broke my heart to see these 60- and 70-year-old men literally cry tears for what they thought was entirely the wrong path their party was taking. Their anguish was heightened by the publication just that day of the survey by the IRI that told us that fully 86 per cent of Pakistanis thought the country was headed in the wrong direction; 85 per cent demanded the ouster of Pervez Musharraf and 83 per cent wanted the restoration of the judiciary.
“Why can’t Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto’s party do what the people of Pakistan want it to do and move the country forward,” they asked almost in unison. They were a forlorn lot, those good men, but the one positive that came out was that they still had time for democracy and said so too. There was another: a grudging respect for Nawaz Sharif and his sticking by his word. For those who remember that the PPP and the PML-N were daggers drawn in the past this is a refreshing change.
But back to Yousuf Raza Gilani’s trip to the mecca of all Pakistani ‘leaders’, Washington DC (wasn’t China always the first port of call for ‘new’ occupants of our highest offices in the past?): why is Asif Zardari tagging along? Well, if he is going, it will be Gilani who will be tagging along.
But why? After all Yousuf Raza Gilani is the purported prime minister of this luckless country. Is there no thought at all that because Asif is the real power behind Gilani’s chair, Gilani might be completely overshadowed? Also, governments work with governments, not with political party leaders.
Look at India where whilst Sardar Manmohan Singh sits where he does only because Sonia Gandhi wants him to sit there, Sonia Gandhi does not sit in on meetings of Mr Singh with the representatives of foreign governments. Neither does she accompany the prime minister on his foreign tours.
Critically, the Americans have shown their teeth, as it were, where the Commando is concerned. They want him right where he is, if only they can cajole and wheedle Nawaz Sharif from his firm stand that the man be impeached and tried in a court of law. So what is the point of genuflecting to them on this count? Shouldn’t the PPP do the right thing and be done with it?
If the PPP knows what is good for the country and for itself, it will immediately do what the people of Pakistan want it to do. The bells are tolling for democracy one more time, which by the way is fine and dandy as far as I am concerned because that will be the last foray of the Pakistan Army-led venal Establishment into politics.
So go on, Gents, go for it. An important aside: my pal, the good Tahira Abdullah, berated me just last evening, despite the fact that she knows me so well, for using the term ‘Sirs’ — indeed ‘Gents’ — when I refer to the Establishment. She says this is “sexist” of me.
No, not at all. I use the terms with extreme prejudice, because it is men who have brought the country to near ruin, not women. Which woman heads a corps of the Pakistan Army, Tahira? Which woman was ever military dictator of Pakistan?
So, Gents, go for it.
Bushism of the Week: “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people” — President George W. Bush; Charlottesville, Virginia, July 4, 2008
P.S. And, Sirs, be hugely ashamed at what My Lord Ramday said about you on live TV two nights ago.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
WHY in God’s name should Asif Zardari go to the White House to beg Dubya’s indulgence to impeach Musharraf?
And why in heaven’s name should Nawaz Sharif accompany him so that Dubya is moved enough to allow the elected government of Pakistan to impeach Musharraf?
If Asif Zardari’s ‘aides’ are to be believed — they leaked such stories to the press two days running last week — Asif had asked Nawaz Sharif to accompany him to DC so that they could, the both of them, stand in The Presence of possibly the most inept, most dangerous leader the US has ever had, and ask his permission to impeach Musharraf.
If the ‘aides’ are to be believed, NS has refused to go. Well, bully for him. What does Dubya have to do with this matter anyway? The ‘aides’ also let slip that Asif Zardari is upset that Nawaz Sharif let him down in the past too: that when Asif Zardari asked him to accompany him to Saudi Arabia to plead for oil on deferred payment, Nawaz Sharif said he would go but refused at the last minute.
Hang on a minute though. A source extremely close to Raiwind told me a month ago that whilst Asif Zardari had mentioned to Nawaz Sharif that they would go to Saudi Arabia together, when the time came Asif Zardari marched off on his own. I believe this version of events because my source is more than impeccable.
This is not the way to do business, sirs, it just is not. The coalition will simply not be able to take the pressures being put on it by irresponsible ‘leaks’ to the press by ‘aides’. As it is, the coalition that most Pakistanis including I fervently hope will stay together and defeat the dictatorship once and for all is already under huge pressure, especially, you guessed it, because of the PPP’s one step forward, five back approach to the impeachment and the judges issue.
Critically, this wishy-washy, neither here nor there, approach by the PPP is hurting itself far more than it is hurting the coalition. A little anecdote: walking three days ago in the Bagh-i-Jinnah, even now known to most Lahoris as Lawrence Gardens, a group of walkers stopped me and asked if I was I.
When told that it was indeed, one of them suggested a live DawnNews show about what they called the ‘retired hurt’ members of the PPP — a group of middle-aged and ageing gentlemen sitting under one of the gazebos in the gardens cooling off after their walk. I walked across to them and talked of this and that and it wasn’t long before it all came spilling out.
It broke my heart to see these 60- and 70-year-old men literally cry tears for what they thought was entirely the wrong path their party was taking. Their anguish was heightened by the publication just that day of the survey by the IRI that told us that fully 86 per cent of Pakistanis thought the country was headed in the wrong direction; 85 per cent demanded the ouster of Pervez Musharraf and 83 per cent wanted the restoration of the judiciary.
“Why can’t Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto’s party do what the people of Pakistan want it to do and move the country forward,” they asked almost in unison. They were a forlorn lot, those good men, but the one positive that came out was that they still had time for democracy and said so too. There was another: a grudging respect for Nawaz Sharif and his sticking by his word. For those who remember that the PPP and the PML-N were daggers drawn in the past this is a refreshing change.
But back to Yousuf Raza Gilani’s trip to the mecca of all Pakistani ‘leaders’, Washington DC (wasn’t China always the first port of call for ‘new’ occupants of our highest offices in the past?): why is Asif Zardari tagging along? Well, if he is going, it will be Gilani who will be tagging along.
But why? After all Yousuf Raza Gilani is the purported prime minister of this luckless country. Is there no thought at all that because Asif is the real power behind Gilani’s chair, Gilani might be completely overshadowed? Also, governments work with governments, not with political party leaders.
Look at India where whilst Sardar Manmohan Singh sits where he does only because Sonia Gandhi wants him to sit there, Sonia Gandhi does not sit in on meetings of Mr Singh with the representatives of foreign governments. Neither does she accompany the prime minister on his foreign tours.
Critically, the Americans have shown their teeth, as it were, where the Commando is concerned. They want him right where he is, if only they can cajole and wheedle Nawaz Sharif from his firm stand that the man be impeached and tried in a court of law. So what is the point of genuflecting to them on this count? Shouldn’t the PPP do the right thing and be done with it?
If the PPP knows what is good for the country and for itself, it will immediately do what the people of Pakistan want it to do. The bells are tolling for democracy one more time, which by the way is fine and dandy as far as I am concerned because that will be the last foray of the Pakistan Army-led venal Establishment into politics.
So go on, Gents, go for it. An important aside: my pal, the good Tahira Abdullah, berated me just last evening, despite the fact that she knows me so well, for using the term ‘Sirs’ — indeed ‘Gents’ — when I refer to the Establishment. She says this is “sexist” of me.
No, not at all. I use the terms with extreme prejudice, because it is men who have brought the country to near ruin, not women. Which woman heads a corps of the Pakistan Army, Tahira? Which woman was ever military dictator of Pakistan?
So, Gents, go for it.
Bushism of the Week: “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people” — President George W. Bush; Charlottesville, Virginia, July 4, 2008
P.S. And, Sirs, be hugely ashamed at what My Lord Ramday said about you on live TV two nights ago.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Really, sirs!
By Kamran Shafi
I mean, really sirs! What is all this about the whole shebang being in imminent danger of collapse through another intervention by the men on horseback, some would say in our case, on donkey back? Several op-ed writers are going blue in the face reminding us of the ‘danger’ that lurks.
Some of them, aghast at our stupidity, ask if we did not know that the Pakistan Army considers Pervez Musharraf the legitimately elected President of Pakistan! And that it would therefore do what it had to do to ensure that he stays president for all of his (so-called) term! They do not explain, of course, why the army should be in so exalted a position, and if indeed it is, why it should be allowed to maintain it so that it is the arbiter of what is constitutional or not, legitimate or not.
Others tell us that if there was any move at impeaching the man/hauling him up before a court of law, the army would consider it was being tried as an institution, and would therefore, ‘act’! They leave the rest to our imagination as Pakistanis who have seen army intervention all of our miserable lives. They do not explain how the army would have the gall to go against as clear a verdict as that delivered against Musharraf on Feb 18, 2008.
What utter tripe and nonsense! In so many ways, that it isn’t even funny. For, just look at the four army interventions and what state the country was left in after respective dictators left the scene. Ayub Khan laid the foundation stone of corruption and of the break-up of Pakistan; Yahya Khan saw the job through — boy did he! — in the process making it convenient for the army to be humiliated as few armed forces have been humiliated.
Then came the beauty Ziaul Haq who brought the country drugs and the Kalashnikov and obscurantism and sectarianism and hate and strife; followed by the general who drove a knife into the very heart of Pakistan by his macho and swaggering attitude towards the smaller provinces: “They won’t know what hit them”, when he engineered, say, the murder of Nawab Bugti and the tamasha in Fata.
And towards politics in general, speaking down to the main political parties and their leaders and putting in his lot with what he thought would be more pliable partners, the Chaudhrys. In view of the above, how many times should one have to say that the sooner the army acts and overthrows our emerging democracy the better for democracy and by extension, for the people of the country? For we shall then be rid of any last vestiges of respect some Pakistanis still have for the army.
For, quite apart from the fact that martial laws in Pakistan have always been dismal failures in every way and in every single department of governance, this last experiment takes the cake for being The Mother of Inept Governance. As our American friends would say, Gen (retd) Musharraf spectacularly failed, ‘every which way’, to provide the country even a semblance of governance.
Whether it is the food crisis with flour virtually unavailable, and when it is, at exorbitant prices; to the lies told to the nation re: its economic health by shamelessly massaging the figures; to not one new electricity generating plant set up in the nine very long years that he held the country by its throat; to delaying a hike in POL products and therefore in every consumer item just to help the King’s party in the elections, his rule was an unmitigated disaster.
Indeed, reflect upon the disastrous way in which Pakistan’s relations with America were/are going if only because of his thoughtless and self-serving subservience to American dictates in virtually every department of statecraft.
Indeed, many of us writing in the press cautioned Musharraf repeatedly that America would not stand as a silent spectator while he went about running with the hare and hunting with the hounds as re: the way he was handling Fata: now running hot, now running cold, and standing the whole political system there, on its head.
But wait. Did one of the ‘official sources’, read the President’s Lodge (once Army House), not say as recently as April 6, that Musharraf was only staying on in the President’s Lodge because if he were to leave office the Americans would attack Fata?! So what was this attack all about then? Could it have been a warning from Dubya that his buddy should be let alone, or else?
No sirs, no. If the English, under orders of parliament could dig the corpses of Oliver Cromwell who overthrew parliament in his coup as a warning to other wannabe dictators, why can we not try Musharraf in a court of law?
To the matter of the judges restoration now: how is it that Aitzaz Ahsan is now being vilified by op-ed writers mentioned above, and who side openly and subjectively with the dying (or is it?) dictatorship and its henchmen? I thought Aitzaz stood up for what is right and moral and constitutional when he opposed the acts of a uniformed general to sack the superior judiciary! A general, mark, who admits he acted illegally and unconstitutionally!
I have oft said, in these very pages, that Pakistan is indeed a ‘unique’ country, and we a very ‘unique’ people. I must be right!
As to the behaviour of the People’s Party, silly constitutional package and all, all one can say is that it is shameful beyond words; and that unless its downward spiral is halted immediately if not sooner the party will simply disintegrate.
Finally, even if you take Sherry Rehman’s assurances that the government of the Citadel of Islam had nothing in the world to do with the re-banning of two talk shows as the truth, shame on the federal government for allowing the Dubai authorities to do what they have done, and therefore giving the PPP a bad name.
What sort of government is it that, unbeknownst to it, any Tom, Dick or Harry can get up and telephone someone in Dubai and two popular shows go off the air?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
I mean, really sirs! What is all this about the whole shebang being in imminent danger of collapse through another intervention by the men on horseback, some would say in our case, on donkey back? Several op-ed writers are going blue in the face reminding us of the ‘danger’ that lurks.
Some of them, aghast at our stupidity, ask if we did not know that the Pakistan Army considers Pervez Musharraf the legitimately elected President of Pakistan! And that it would therefore do what it had to do to ensure that he stays president for all of his (so-called) term! They do not explain, of course, why the army should be in so exalted a position, and if indeed it is, why it should be allowed to maintain it so that it is the arbiter of what is constitutional or not, legitimate or not.
Others tell us that if there was any move at impeaching the man/hauling him up before a court of law, the army would consider it was being tried as an institution, and would therefore, ‘act’! They leave the rest to our imagination as Pakistanis who have seen army intervention all of our miserable lives. They do not explain how the army would have the gall to go against as clear a verdict as that delivered against Musharraf on Feb 18, 2008.
What utter tripe and nonsense! In so many ways, that it isn’t even funny. For, just look at the four army interventions and what state the country was left in after respective dictators left the scene. Ayub Khan laid the foundation stone of corruption and of the break-up of Pakistan; Yahya Khan saw the job through — boy did he! — in the process making it convenient for the army to be humiliated as few armed forces have been humiliated.
Then came the beauty Ziaul Haq who brought the country drugs and the Kalashnikov and obscurantism and sectarianism and hate and strife; followed by the general who drove a knife into the very heart of Pakistan by his macho and swaggering attitude towards the smaller provinces: “They won’t know what hit them”, when he engineered, say, the murder of Nawab Bugti and the tamasha in Fata.
And towards politics in general, speaking down to the main political parties and their leaders and putting in his lot with what he thought would be more pliable partners, the Chaudhrys. In view of the above, how many times should one have to say that the sooner the army acts and overthrows our emerging democracy the better for democracy and by extension, for the people of the country? For we shall then be rid of any last vestiges of respect some Pakistanis still have for the army.
For, quite apart from the fact that martial laws in Pakistan have always been dismal failures in every way and in every single department of governance, this last experiment takes the cake for being The Mother of Inept Governance. As our American friends would say, Gen (retd) Musharraf spectacularly failed, ‘every which way’, to provide the country even a semblance of governance.
Whether it is the food crisis with flour virtually unavailable, and when it is, at exorbitant prices; to the lies told to the nation re: its economic health by shamelessly massaging the figures; to not one new electricity generating plant set up in the nine very long years that he held the country by its throat; to delaying a hike in POL products and therefore in every consumer item just to help the King’s party in the elections, his rule was an unmitigated disaster.
Indeed, reflect upon the disastrous way in which Pakistan’s relations with America were/are going if only because of his thoughtless and self-serving subservience to American dictates in virtually every department of statecraft.
Indeed, many of us writing in the press cautioned Musharraf repeatedly that America would not stand as a silent spectator while he went about running with the hare and hunting with the hounds as re: the way he was handling Fata: now running hot, now running cold, and standing the whole political system there, on its head.
But wait. Did one of the ‘official sources’, read the President’s Lodge (once Army House), not say as recently as April 6, that Musharraf was only staying on in the President’s Lodge because if he were to leave office the Americans would attack Fata?! So what was this attack all about then? Could it have been a warning from Dubya that his buddy should be let alone, or else?
No sirs, no. If the English, under orders of parliament could dig the corpses of Oliver Cromwell who overthrew parliament in his coup as a warning to other wannabe dictators, why can we not try Musharraf in a court of law?
To the matter of the judges restoration now: how is it that Aitzaz Ahsan is now being vilified by op-ed writers mentioned above, and who side openly and subjectively with the dying (or is it?) dictatorship and its henchmen? I thought Aitzaz stood up for what is right and moral and constitutional when he opposed the acts of a uniformed general to sack the superior judiciary! A general, mark, who admits he acted illegally and unconstitutionally!
I have oft said, in these very pages, that Pakistan is indeed a ‘unique’ country, and we a very ‘unique’ people. I must be right!
As to the behaviour of the People’s Party, silly constitutional package and all, all one can say is that it is shameful beyond words; and that unless its downward spiral is halted immediately if not sooner the party will simply disintegrate.
Finally, even if you take Sherry Rehman’s assurances that the government of the Citadel of Islam had nothing in the world to do with the re-banning of two talk shows as the truth, shame on the federal government for allowing the Dubai authorities to do what they have done, and therefore giving the PPP a bad name.
What sort of government is it that, unbeknownst to it, any Tom, Dick or Harry can get up and telephone someone in Dubai and two popular shows go off the air?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Benazir is no more: understand that
By Kamran Shafi
DID I say last week that I was on an up because the news was that the country was progressing towards the restoration of the illegally and unconstitutionally removed judiciary? This despite the fact that we Pakistanis were still strapped to the rickety roller-coaster that we have been tied to ever since the birth of our country? A roller-coaster that has given us the ride of our lives for every one of those 60 years, losing us half our country during its mad progress?
Well, one week later I am on a down because the roller-coaster is hurtling downwards so fast that it can only spell doom for all the hapless souls trapped in it. We must note that whilst the controls were in the hands of the establishment heretofore, they are today in the hands of the newly-discovered leadership of the PPP made up mainly of Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari’s personal lawyers.
These people simply do not understand, and if they do they surprise one with their attitudes, that the astute politician Benazir Bhutto is no more. That there is not much time left for little pranks and littler too-clever-by-half moves. That if they let the Commando off the hook on which the people of Pakistan have strung him up the country would have lost and they will have won a very short-term, very Pyrrhic victory.
They simply must understand that the main aim and objective of the establishment for the last four decades has been, and remains to this blessed day, the destruction of the People’s Party. That it was only the popularity of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and of his beloved daughter that has thus far prevented its unravelling despite dictators doing their damnedest.
That by playing their foolish little games they are playing right into the hands of the Commando who retains the position of grand-daddy of the establishment (read army) because of overt American support. They simply do not realise that in the absence of the truly benazir Benazir they are sure to fall flat on their faces, taking the party down with them. That for them it will only be a short joyride enjoying government planes and plush limos and fragrant offices before they are kicked off/out of them.
They should be made to realise by those who have been with the party for far longer that the present time is a great time for the PPP with the second-largest party in the country, the PML-N, a former adversary, sincerely on its side. The parties together can get a lot done, especially with the country in the mess it is in. Just look at one aspect: the lies told by the previous government about the economy and the fact that subsidies granted just to win votes have now to be withdrawn. Is it not a boon for the PPP to have Ishaq Dar as finance minister who is not only a brilliant man but also has to take all the hard decisions?
Let’s see this another way: what happens if, say, the new brilliances of the People’s Party succeed in scuttling the judges’ full reinstatement according to the Murree/Bhurban accord? What happens if, as a consequence, Nawaz Sharif walks out of the coalition because he has a promise to keep? Does the PPP think it will be able to stay on in power by coming to an arrangement with the PML-Q and the MQM?
Think again, boys. Quite apart from the fact that it will be well nigh impossible to run any kind of halfway government with a large, and by then an even more popular party like the ‘N’ sitting outside the government, do the bright sparks who are taking the party to the edge think the PPP/PML-Q/MQM/Commando combine will last long? That the MQM will not demand its several kilograms of flesh in Sindh, to the chagrin of the majority, for support in Islamabad?
No sirs, no. Get off that cloud you are riding and realise that the brilliant Benazir who might have pulled the party out of the problems into which you are forcing it has departed this earth, she is no more. Don’t, for God’s sake, try and become cleverer than half. Keep the promise made in the Murree/Bhurban declaration; for, after all, you did sign it!
While all this argy-bargy goes on with new and ever newer PPP tamashas being reported every single day, the PML-N goes about doing the right thing. The Punjab government is already feeling energised: as you get off the motorway at Thokar Niazbeg you see the petrol and CNG stations being moved back from the land they had encroached upon.
Apparently, these encroachments prevented the contractor from working on the flyover that was to connect to the motorway. It took the new government just one night and one day to remove the encroachments and get the work going, but at a high cost to the exchequer. Construction delays cost more money due to escalating prices and Punjab will now have to fork out Rs800m more to complete the project just because of the corruption of the previous government. And yet the Commando has the gall to say things are bad because the present government is not giving the country good governance!
By the way, there was no earthly reason for Gilani throwing a lavish dinner for the army’s formation commanders, and then to add insult to injury, to regale his guests with a musical evening. Is this the time for fancy banquets and music when the poor are struggling to survive? Why, I bought flour for the house five days ago for Rs980 per 40 kg, up Rs340 inside of three months.
There was even less reason, or call, for Gilani to say that the army also had to defend the ‘ideological frontiers’ of the country. For God’s sake, prime minister! Fifty years have we tried to disabuse the army of its arrogating this duty to itself! And yet you go and do this! What the devil are ‘ideological frontiers’ anyway? Seeing the ugly, hateful place our country has become, hasn’t it had enough of ‘ideology’? An aside here. It appears Sharifuddin Pirzada is still a frequent visitor to the presidency. Asked quite recently why he represented military dictators, he replied that he was a lawyer (gun?) for hire, simple as that. So, who is paying the man now? Has the Commando apportioned massive funds for the presidency’s ‘secret fund’ of which there is no accountability? Or is one of Musharraf’s wealthy arms-dealer friends footing Sharifuddin’s surely considerable bills?
Bushism of the week: “The United States has suffered terrorist attacks on its soil, as have Russia” — President George W. Bush; Sochi, Russia; April 6, 2008
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
DID I say last week that I was on an up because the news was that the country was progressing towards the restoration of the illegally and unconstitutionally removed judiciary? This despite the fact that we Pakistanis were still strapped to the rickety roller-coaster that we have been tied to ever since the birth of our country? A roller-coaster that has given us the ride of our lives for every one of those 60 years, losing us half our country during its mad progress?
Well, one week later I am on a down because the roller-coaster is hurtling downwards so fast that it can only spell doom for all the hapless souls trapped in it. We must note that whilst the controls were in the hands of the establishment heretofore, they are today in the hands of the newly-discovered leadership of the PPP made up mainly of Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari’s personal lawyers.
These people simply do not understand, and if they do they surprise one with their attitudes, that the astute politician Benazir Bhutto is no more. That there is not much time left for little pranks and littler too-clever-by-half moves. That if they let the Commando off the hook on which the people of Pakistan have strung him up the country would have lost and they will have won a very short-term, very Pyrrhic victory.
They simply must understand that the main aim and objective of the establishment for the last four decades has been, and remains to this blessed day, the destruction of the People’s Party. That it was only the popularity of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and of his beloved daughter that has thus far prevented its unravelling despite dictators doing their damnedest.
That by playing their foolish little games they are playing right into the hands of the Commando who retains the position of grand-daddy of the establishment (read army) because of overt American support. They simply do not realise that in the absence of the truly benazir Benazir they are sure to fall flat on their faces, taking the party down with them. That for them it will only be a short joyride enjoying government planes and plush limos and fragrant offices before they are kicked off/out of them.
They should be made to realise by those who have been with the party for far longer that the present time is a great time for the PPP with the second-largest party in the country, the PML-N, a former adversary, sincerely on its side. The parties together can get a lot done, especially with the country in the mess it is in. Just look at one aspect: the lies told by the previous government about the economy and the fact that subsidies granted just to win votes have now to be withdrawn. Is it not a boon for the PPP to have Ishaq Dar as finance minister who is not only a brilliant man but also has to take all the hard decisions?
Let’s see this another way: what happens if, say, the new brilliances of the People’s Party succeed in scuttling the judges’ full reinstatement according to the Murree/Bhurban accord? What happens if, as a consequence, Nawaz Sharif walks out of the coalition because he has a promise to keep? Does the PPP think it will be able to stay on in power by coming to an arrangement with the PML-Q and the MQM?
Think again, boys. Quite apart from the fact that it will be well nigh impossible to run any kind of halfway government with a large, and by then an even more popular party like the ‘N’ sitting outside the government, do the bright sparks who are taking the party to the edge think the PPP/PML-Q/MQM/Commando combine will last long? That the MQM will not demand its several kilograms of flesh in Sindh, to the chagrin of the majority, for support in Islamabad?
No sirs, no. Get off that cloud you are riding and realise that the brilliant Benazir who might have pulled the party out of the problems into which you are forcing it has departed this earth, she is no more. Don’t, for God’s sake, try and become cleverer than half. Keep the promise made in the Murree/Bhurban declaration; for, after all, you did sign it!
While all this argy-bargy goes on with new and ever newer PPP tamashas being reported every single day, the PML-N goes about doing the right thing. The Punjab government is already feeling energised: as you get off the motorway at Thokar Niazbeg you see the petrol and CNG stations being moved back from the land they had encroached upon.
Apparently, these encroachments prevented the contractor from working on the flyover that was to connect to the motorway. It took the new government just one night and one day to remove the encroachments and get the work going, but at a high cost to the exchequer. Construction delays cost more money due to escalating prices and Punjab will now have to fork out Rs800m more to complete the project just because of the corruption of the previous government. And yet the Commando has the gall to say things are bad because the present government is not giving the country good governance!
By the way, there was no earthly reason for Gilani throwing a lavish dinner for the army’s formation commanders, and then to add insult to injury, to regale his guests with a musical evening. Is this the time for fancy banquets and music when the poor are struggling to survive? Why, I bought flour for the house five days ago for Rs980 per 40 kg, up Rs340 inside of three months.
There was even less reason, or call, for Gilani to say that the army also had to defend the ‘ideological frontiers’ of the country. For God’s sake, prime minister! Fifty years have we tried to disabuse the army of its arrogating this duty to itself! And yet you go and do this! What the devil are ‘ideological frontiers’ anyway? Seeing the ugly, hateful place our country has become, hasn’t it had enough of ‘ideology’? An aside here. It appears Sharifuddin Pirzada is still a frequent visitor to the presidency. Asked quite recently why he represented military dictators, he replied that he was a lawyer (gun?) for hire, simple as that. So, who is paying the man now? Has the Commando apportioned massive funds for the presidency’s ‘secret fund’ of which there is no accountability? Or is one of Musharraf’s wealthy arms-dealer friends footing Sharifuddin’s surely considerable bills?
Bushism of the week: “The United States has suffered terrorist attacks on its soil, as have Russia” — President George W. Bush; Sochi, Russia; April 6, 2008
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The vultures have landed
By Kamran Shafi
ANYONE who has any doubts that the Commando has really lost his marbles, and that those who surround him — his toadies and flunkies and sycophants and hangers-on — live in cloud cuckoo land should read a story in this newspaper of April 7 instant. ‘Official sources’ are the source of the story.
‘Americans to attack Fata if Musharraf steps down’ says among other things that only Musharraf’s ‘strong personal links’ with Dubya are keeping the Americans from attacking Fata and taking Dr A.Q. Khan ‘away’ for interrogation. Also that if Musharraf hadn’t worked ‘behind-the-scenes’ the ‘positive change’ in the MQM’s ‘outlook and role in national issues’ would not have happened.
While one will leave it to the MQM to answer the grave charge that it would have behaved negatively had the Commando’s sobering influence been absent, the point about the Americans not attacking Pakistan only because the Commando has ‘strong personal links’ with Dubya should get the moron (Dubya, here) impeached even now.
For the American voter would be much incensed if it became known to him or her that the commander-in-chief was not taking a certain action to the benefit of the United States (if a completely mad exercise such as an all-out attack on Pakistan could ever be considered a beneficial action for the US) merely because of friendship. They would physically kick the fellow out of the White House.
The story makes other silly assertions too, such as if the Commando resigns China would be annoyed because Gwadar (which the Americans didn’t want anyway!) would not be completed, etcetera. And of course that the Commando’s decision “to stay in office was more in ‘national interests’ than in his own”.
All one can say is that the man’s shamelessness quotient is higher than one thought. Which reminds me. Why in the world is he going to China on an official visit at all when the elected government in Islamabad already, and in ALL the provinces soon, will not even give him the time of day?
The Chinese are of an ancient culture; they are wise and courteous to a fault; and of course they will roll out the red carpet for him because of China’s long friendship with Pakistan. But why does the Commando insist on embarrassing them when they know perfectly well that he is a much despised person in the country he will pretend to represent? And, that time has moved on for him?
Indeed, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has taken a principled stand and is not accompanying him because the PML-N wants to have nothing to do with him, a fact not unknown to the Chinese. (Why is Shah Mahmood Qureshi going, may one ask?). So why is the Commando going at all? Even now a convenient bout of ’flu should save all and sundry loads of embarrassment.
And now for the vultures. You can see them in every five-star hotel, and some wannabe five-star hotels; the vultures who land in Islamabad the Beautiful at every change of government dressed to kill in their designer suits, their feet adorned in Ferragamo shoes, Tumi briefcases held in beautifully manicured hands.
They move into suites that cost in the hundreds of dollars and hang around the hotel lobbies being obsequious, and trying to attach themselves to whomever they think has a chance of being thrown some scraps from the high table.
The faces are the same, with some few exceptions, as those one saw operating under the last lot, their modus operandi scarcely changing. These are the shysters and the deal-makers and the commission agents; these are the vultures out to make a quick buck or two (millions and trillions if possible, but anything will do).
They meet you with much familiarity even though you might never have met them, ever. Some who you might recognise from days gone by will say things like, “Yaar, you never call me when you come to Karachi”, as if they had called you whenever they were in Islamabad the Beautiful, every single week, making deals with the previous lot.
Their antennae are sensitive, so sensitive that they would put cockroaches to shame. For in no time at all — give them a night or two — they know who is who; who will be what; and who will not. Who they should give time to and who deserves the immediate cold shoulder. For time is of the essence to them and who knows what tomorrow might bring?!
I am reminded here of an amusing incident. I was the late and much lamented Benazir Bhutto’s press secretary in 1989 when a friend of a friend called from the airport to say he had just come in from Karachi and wanted to see me. I said sure, and sent my office person downstairs to the kitchen to get some hors d’oeuvre the PM House bakery used to provide for special occasions.
He came in, sat down, and asked if I could do him a ‘favour’. The request was not quite proper so I said that I did not think I could help him. “Achha,” he said, “to Bhai mein chalta hoon,” and walked right out of my office ignoring my pleadings to him to at least have a cup of tea that had just been brought in!! He wasn’t about to spend an extra minute with a useless character, so off he went!
May I end by saying that while Attorney-General Malik Qayyum’s shamelessness is almost, but not quite, at par with the Commando’s, he should be sacked forthwith. Not only is he an insalubrious character, his staying on is sending entirely the wrong signals.
Bushism of the week: “I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today … he married a Texas girl, I want you to know. A West Texas girl, just like me” —President George W. Bush; Nashville, Tennessee; May 27, 2004. n
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
ANYONE who has any doubts that the Commando has really lost his marbles, and that those who surround him — his toadies and flunkies and sycophants and hangers-on — live in cloud cuckoo land should read a story in this newspaper of April 7 instant. ‘Official sources’ are the source of the story.
‘Americans to attack Fata if Musharraf steps down’ says among other things that only Musharraf’s ‘strong personal links’ with Dubya are keeping the Americans from attacking Fata and taking Dr A.Q. Khan ‘away’ for interrogation. Also that if Musharraf hadn’t worked ‘behind-the-scenes’ the ‘positive change’ in the MQM’s ‘outlook and role in national issues’ would not have happened.
While one will leave it to the MQM to answer the grave charge that it would have behaved negatively had the Commando’s sobering influence been absent, the point about the Americans not attacking Pakistan only because the Commando has ‘strong personal links’ with Dubya should get the moron (Dubya, here) impeached even now.
For the American voter would be much incensed if it became known to him or her that the commander-in-chief was not taking a certain action to the benefit of the United States (if a completely mad exercise such as an all-out attack on Pakistan could ever be considered a beneficial action for the US) merely because of friendship. They would physically kick the fellow out of the White House.
The story makes other silly assertions too, such as if the Commando resigns China would be annoyed because Gwadar (which the Americans didn’t want anyway!) would not be completed, etcetera. And of course that the Commando’s decision “to stay in office was more in ‘national interests’ than in his own”.
All one can say is that the man’s shamelessness quotient is higher than one thought. Which reminds me. Why in the world is he going to China on an official visit at all when the elected government in Islamabad already, and in ALL the provinces soon, will not even give him the time of day?
The Chinese are of an ancient culture; they are wise and courteous to a fault; and of course they will roll out the red carpet for him because of China’s long friendship with Pakistan. But why does the Commando insist on embarrassing them when they know perfectly well that he is a much despised person in the country he will pretend to represent? And, that time has moved on for him?
Indeed, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has taken a principled stand and is not accompanying him because the PML-N wants to have nothing to do with him, a fact not unknown to the Chinese. (Why is Shah Mahmood Qureshi going, may one ask?). So why is the Commando going at all? Even now a convenient bout of ’flu should save all and sundry loads of embarrassment.
And now for the vultures. You can see them in every five-star hotel, and some wannabe five-star hotels; the vultures who land in Islamabad the Beautiful at every change of government dressed to kill in their designer suits, their feet adorned in Ferragamo shoes, Tumi briefcases held in beautifully manicured hands.
They move into suites that cost in the hundreds of dollars and hang around the hotel lobbies being obsequious, and trying to attach themselves to whomever they think has a chance of being thrown some scraps from the high table.
The faces are the same, with some few exceptions, as those one saw operating under the last lot, their modus operandi scarcely changing. These are the shysters and the deal-makers and the commission agents; these are the vultures out to make a quick buck or two (millions and trillions if possible, but anything will do).
They meet you with much familiarity even though you might never have met them, ever. Some who you might recognise from days gone by will say things like, “Yaar, you never call me when you come to Karachi”, as if they had called you whenever they were in Islamabad the Beautiful, every single week, making deals with the previous lot.
Their antennae are sensitive, so sensitive that they would put cockroaches to shame. For in no time at all — give them a night or two — they know who is who; who will be what; and who will not. Who they should give time to and who deserves the immediate cold shoulder. For time is of the essence to them and who knows what tomorrow might bring?!
I am reminded here of an amusing incident. I was the late and much lamented Benazir Bhutto’s press secretary in 1989 when a friend of a friend called from the airport to say he had just come in from Karachi and wanted to see me. I said sure, and sent my office person downstairs to the kitchen to get some hors d’oeuvre the PM House bakery used to provide for special occasions.
He came in, sat down, and asked if I could do him a ‘favour’. The request was not quite proper so I said that I did not think I could help him. “Achha,” he said, “to Bhai mein chalta hoon,” and walked right out of my office ignoring my pleadings to him to at least have a cup of tea that had just been brought in!! He wasn’t about to spend an extra minute with a useless character, so off he went!
May I end by saying that while Attorney-General Malik Qayyum’s shamelessness is almost, but not quite, at par with the Commando’s, he should be sacked forthwith. Not only is he an insalubrious character, his staying on is sending entirely the wrong signals.
Bushism of the week: “I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today … he married a Texas girl, I want you to know. A West Texas girl, just like me” —President George W. Bush; Nashville, Tennessee; May 27, 2004. n
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The last whimper
By Kamran Shafi
SO then, the Pakistan Day Parade was held after all, within the confines of the Sports Complex, Islamabad the Beautiful.
Never mind that athletics and sports camps set up there for several upcoming international games including the Olympics had to be closed down, never mind that the Tennis Academy admirably run by Mushaf and where my Zainab and tens of other children go was displaced.
The last whimper of a dying dictatorship simply had to be sounded, and what a last whimper it was! There were, as predicted, something like two thousand spectators, mostly officers, JCOs and their families trucked in from Rawalpindi and of course the caretaker ‘prime minister’, he reminding us all of the iniquity of appointing the sitting chairman of the Senate and a member of the (now deceased) King’s Party to this post.
The funniest was the sight of the hugely truncated mechanised columns, hiding behind the curve of the main stadium waiting for their turn to roll past the dais. Parades are noisy, colourful, hugely (and widely) attended affairs held in the open; not, as I wrote in this same space last week, held cowering in fear, behind fences and barbed wire.
The Commando too was a much-subdued commando: just going through the paces of what his advisers must have told him was a most essential part of telling all and sundry who is boss. Gone was the swagger and the jaunty flick of the shoulders; gone was the petulant, stern glare.For the days of swagger are long gone, indeed. With everyone and Charlie’s aunt including please note, Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain, ready to axe 58-2(b), what else? And this is only the beginning of the end. What if the government only extends the Commando the security and protocol laid down in the Blue Book, no more no less?
There is news too that, as suspected by everyone AND Charlie’s aunt, the barricades (much shame on you, sirs, the lot of you — even those who acquiesced to the illegal, shameful orders) around the judges’ colony will be lifted. What then, especially after My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry starts to tour the Bars around the country, and the expected fallout of those visits?
There is still time. Yes there is. But is there no one who has made use of Musharraf’s stay in absolute power to his/her own benefit who will now talk some little sense to him? Is there no one to tell him that there is still time to say sorry for his government’s heavy-handed and completely shameless and highly stupid actions against the superior judiciary?
And to reinstate it with honour, the Commando saying he did not want the confrontation to go on any longer; that he wanted Pakistan to embark upon its democratic journey unfettered with his baggage, and that he would always wish the country and its people well.
So saying he could resign his so-called ‘office’ and drive his Humvee to Chak Shehzad and his upcoming villa. We are a highly emotional lot; I can bet people will come out onto the streets in joy and wish him well (and good riddance!). Even now.
However, the Commando is a great big commando and the epitome of machismo. I do not think he will listen, but can his friends at least give it a try?
And now to the future. First, a big welcome to the newly elected members of the National Assembly; and to Madam Speaker for being elected by a thumping majority of votes which should have sent several shivers down the spines of those that inhabit the house next door.
It was great to see this woman politician who has been in successful electoral politics for many years take the Speaker’s chair in the National Assembly. It was as if a breath of fresh air had blown through that glittering chamber. More strength to her.
It was good to see too that the one or two times that she spoke, she spoke strongly and with conviction, and in no uncertain terms. It seems that Madam Speaker will not mince her words; will not shilly-shally and utter inanities such as those we are used to hearing. And will always do the right thing.
Because of which I address her first in this my first piece after her election.
Madam, first off please require members of the National Assembly to not carry plates announcing ‘MNA’ on their cars and SUVs. These plates not only look cheap, they add nothing to the fact that the owner of the vehicle has been elected by the people, a very great honour in itself.
Announce that, leave alone slapping policemen, you will immediately suspend any member who is reported for having been rude to the police, any committee’s investigations notwithstanding.
Require that all members use the normal check-in and arrival procedures, and departure and arrival lounges, whenever they are travelling. And ask PIA to remove the check-in counters that are solely for the use of parliamentarians and say so too. (I have seen one at Karachi airport.)
For the coming prime minister and chief ministers I have the following to say:
If you MUST have flags on your cars — not flying flags takes nothing away from the British prime minister and those of European countries, or indeed from members of the US cabinet — please ban their use on motor cars for all but the president, prime minister, the governors and the chief ministers.
Voluntarily give up the executive jets that are in the use of all the provincial chief ministers and governors and take commercial flights instead. It may be essential to use helicopters to get to remote areas now and again, so the money that will come from selling the jets could well be used by the Cabinet Division in beefing up their helicopter fleet.
It was great reading just yesterday that Shahbaz Sharif has announced that the Chief Minister’s House, extended hugely and tarted up in bad taste by Pervaiz Elahi at great public expense, will be given over to an IT university.
This is excellent, but may one request Mr Sharif to please also order the opening of Club Road where it meets Golf Road, and which was closed off and included in the grounds of the CM’s House, before the House is handed over? Where in the world would anyone close off existing roads by fiat but in the Land of the Pure?
While one is on the subject, there is another property in Rawalpindi known as the DCO’s House abutting Fatima Jinnah Women’s University which too could be handed over to the university with the DCO finding alternative accommodation elsewhere. It will give the university another hostel.
We will have a new prime minister today. Here’s wishing him well. I pray that the Almighty keep him on the right path and to guide him to always do the right thing.
Bushism of the Week: “And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq” — President George W. Bush, meeting with Army Gen Ray Odierno; Washington, DC, March 3, 2008.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
SO then, the Pakistan Day Parade was held after all, within the confines of the Sports Complex, Islamabad the Beautiful.
Never mind that athletics and sports camps set up there for several upcoming international games including the Olympics had to be closed down, never mind that the Tennis Academy admirably run by Mushaf and where my Zainab and tens of other children go was displaced.
The last whimper of a dying dictatorship simply had to be sounded, and what a last whimper it was! There were, as predicted, something like two thousand spectators, mostly officers, JCOs and their families trucked in from Rawalpindi and of course the caretaker ‘prime minister’, he reminding us all of the iniquity of appointing the sitting chairman of the Senate and a member of the (now deceased) King’s Party to this post.
The funniest was the sight of the hugely truncated mechanised columns, hiding behind the curve of the main stadium waiting for their turn to roll past the dais. Parades are noisy, colourful, hugely (and widely) attended affairs held in the open; not, as I wrote in this same space last week, held cowering in fear, behind fences and barbed wire.
The Commando too was a much-subdued commando: just going through the paces of what his advisers must have told him was a most essential part of telling all and sundry who is boss. Gone was the swagger and the jaunty flick of the shoulders; gone was the petulant, stern glare.For the days of swagger are long gone, indeed. With everyone and Charlie’s aunt including please note, Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain, ready to axe 58-2(b), what else? And this is only the beginning of the end. What if the government only extends the Commando the security and protocol laid down in the Blue Book, no more no less?
There is news too that, as suspected by everyone AND Charlie’s aunt, the barricades (much shame on you, sirs, the lot of you — even those who acquiesced to the illegal, shameful orders) around the judges’ colony will be lifted. What then, especially after My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry starts to tour the Bars around the country, and the expected fallout of those visits?
There is still time. Yes there is. But is there no one who has made use of Musharraf’s stay in absolute power to his/her own benefit who will now talk some little sense to him? Is there no one to tell him that there is still time to say sorry for his government’s heavy-handed and completely shameless and highly stupid actions against the superior judiciary?
And to reinstate it with honour, the Commando saying he did not want the confrontation to go on any longer; that he wanted Pakistan to embark upon its democratic journey unfettered with his baggage, and that he would always wish the country and its people well.
So saying he could resign his so-called ‘office’ and drive his Humvee to Chak Shehzad and his upcoming villa. We are a highly emotional lot; I can bet people will come out onto the streets in joy and wish him well (and good riddance!). Even now.
However, the Commando is a great big commando and the epitome of machismo. I do not think he will listen, but can his friends at least give it a try?
And now to the future. First, a big welcome to the newly elected members of the National Assembly; and to Madam Speaker for being elected by a thumping majority of votes which should have sent several shivers down the spines of those that inhabit the house next door.
It was great to see this woman politician who has been in successful electoral politics for many years take the Speaker’s chair in the National Assembly. It was as if a breath of fresh air had blown through that glittering chamber. More strength to her.
It was good to see too that the one or two times that she spoke, she spoke strongly and with conviction, and in no uncertain terms. It seems that Madam Speaker will not mince her words; will not shilly-shally and utter inanities such as those we are used to hearing. And will always do the right thing.
Because of which I address her first in this my first piece after her election.
Madam, first off please require members of the National Assembly to not carry plates announcing ‘MNA’ on their cars and SUVs. These plates not only look cheap, they add nothing to the fact that the owner of the vehicle has been elected by the people, a very great honour in itself.
Announce that, leave alone slapping policemen, you will immediately suspend any member who is reported for having been rude to the police, any committee’s investigations notwithstanding.
Require that all members use the normal check-in and arrival procedures, and departure and arrival lounges, whenever they are travelling. And ask PIA to remove the check-in counters that are solely for the use of parliamentarians and say so too. (I have seen one at Karachi airport.)
For the coming prime minister and chief ministers I have the following to say:
If you MUST have flags on your cars — not flying flags takes nothing away from the British prime minister and those of European countries, or indeed from members of the US cabinet — please ban their use on motor cars for all but the president, prime minister, the governors and the chief ministers.
Voluntarily give up the executive jets that are in the use of all the provincial chief ministers and governors and take commercial flights instead. It may be essential to use helicopters to get to remote areas now and again, so the money that will come from selling the jets could well be used by the Cabinet Division in beefing up their helicopter fleet.
It was great reading just yesterday that Shahbaz Sharif has announced that the Chief Minister’s House, extended hugely and tarted up in bad taste by Pervaiz Elahi at great public expense, will be given over to an IT university.
This is excellent, but may one request Mr Sharif to please also order the opening of Club Road where it meets Golf Road, and which was closed off and included in the grounds of the CM’s House, before the House is handed over? Where in the world would anyone close off existing roads by fiat but in the Land of the Pure?
While one is on the subject, there is another property in Rawalpindi known as the DCO’s House abutting Fatima Jinnah Women’s University which too could be handed over to the university with the DCO finding alternative accommodation elsewhere. It will give the university another hostel.
We will have a new prime minister today. Here’s wishing him well. I pray that the Almighty keep him on the right path and to guide him to always do the right thing.
Bushism of the Week: “And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq” — President George W. Bush, meeting with Army Gen Ray Odierno; Washington, DC, March 3, 2008.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Catastrophe? What catastrophe?
By Kamran Shafi
FIRST things first then, and straight to two statements that came out of the Pakistan Army within the past week, the first by the COAS himself who said that the Pakistan Army was “committed to the Kashmir cause in line with the aspirations of Pakistani [sic] nation”.
What was that please? How would GHQ know by itself what the aspirations of the Pakistani nation are, regarding anything at all? What mechanism does GHQ have to ascertain the aspirations of the Pakistani nation other than to follow in letter and spirit the directions and orders of the properly constituted Government of Pakistan?
For is it not a fact that the Pakistani nation has just last month gone to the polls and elected its representatives who will sit in parliament, throw up a government from amongst themselves, and get on with the business of governance? Should the Pakistan Army as just another department of the Government of Pakistan not hold itself at the disposal of the properly constituted government in which the Pakistani nation has reposed confidence and which therefore is the only arbiter of the people’s will and aspirations, no more no less?
The other statement was by the DG of the ISPR who said: “We have lodged a very strong protest with the coalition forces across the border” when asked about the death of two women and two children in an artillery/missile strike on the Pakistani village of Kangrai, North Waziristan.
Who is the “we”, please? Excuse me, but has the Pakistan Army now formally taken over running the country’s foreign relations? Is it not absolutely inappropriate for the army to be doing the protesting to a foreign entity, when the recognised convention is that the country’s government, in its foreign ministry, handles matters of state which have to do with other states?
Who are “coalition forces” anyway if not the US Army and the British Army augmented by barely token participation of some NATO countries? So why weren’t the ambassador of the United States and the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom summoned to the FO and a protest handed over to them?
Indeed, if the mere thought of summoning the American ambassador gives heart attacks to the ‘core-professionals’ who loll about in the Hotel Scheherezade, a third secretary of the American embassy could have been summoned to the FO. The point should have been made. The ‘coalition’, in its turn, should have apologised for the loss of innocent life.
But no; all Major Chris Belcher, its spokesman, had to say was: “We can confirm a precision-guided ammunition strike on March 12 on a compound connected with [the] Haqqani network 1.5 kilometres across the border in Pakistan…. I do not have any information on any casualties that may have occurred … the information I have is that the Government of Pakistan was notified immediately following the strike.” Full stop.
Clinical, cold, arrogant. But why doesn’t the ‘coalition’ understand that this kind of behaviour only makes America more enemies? How, indeed, does contriteness for a wrong committed in America’s name take anything away from it? Does one have to be an Einstein to understand that the Commando is today a much-reviled man for precisely this sort of behaviour?
And now to catastrophe. The Commando said in an interview with The Washington Times, again during the last week, which should go down in the history of the country as a week in which some of the most ludicrous statements were made: “Can you imagine what the effect would be on the business community, both foreign and domestic, or in the capitals of nations allied with us in the war on terror if the first thing they saw after this election was a political war between the presidency and the government? I think it would be catastrophic.”
Strong words, what!? Catastrophic for whom? For the Commando if parliament impeaches him? Or for the country if the Commando dismisses the assemblies if they attempt to impeach him? Does he even know the meaning of the word catastrophic?
Variously: disaster; calamity; upheaval; devastation; ruin; misfortune; tragedy; cataclysm! Is the Commando in such desperate straits that he will lead the country to ruin and misfortune if he is impeached? That he will devastate it? And bring tragedy upon our heads? Well, what about his oft-repeated mantra of ‘Pakistan First’? Or was that a load of nonsense as we always thought it was?
No sirs; if you simply refuse to read the writing on the wall, please look into your Turkish coffee cups more intently. Or read your tea leaves more carefully. Time is up, sirs, surely and truly. Anything you do hence-forwards: try and break up the People’s Party by activating your not so sleepy sleeper cells within it; try to bad-mouth the Sharifs to the Americans; use 58-2(b), nothing’s going to work.
This brings me to the matter of the Americans again, and their quite foolish leaks to the effect that they don’t really trust Nawaz Sharif when it comes to battling terror. Indeed, media organs allied to them are insidiously leaking stories to the effect that Osama bin Laden was known to Nawaz, etcetera.
Well, the bin Ladens were also known to the Bushes, enough for tens of them to be spirited out of the United States just one day after 9/11 despite there being a complete ban on air traffic all across the country. Osama himself was known to every CIA and ISI chief worth his salt. So where’s the problem?
And who was trying to cosy up to the Lal Mosque cleric just prior to the election to solicit his support? Not Nawaz Sharif but Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the Commando’s fellow traveller who, hand in glove with him, misruled this country for well on six very long years during which terrorism went through the roof.
It is also known that they are going about trying to find out what others opposed to the Commando, Aitzaz Ahsan for one, think about the war on terror. Is this a silly question or is it a silly question! What else would any Pakistani think about the need to uproot terrorism from our country but that it should be uprooted yesterday? But not in the foolish and self-defeating ways adopted by the Commando and his tight buddies, the American administration. Terrorism will only be defeated when tackled in an intelligent way, as humanely as possible.
In the end may I ask that the March 23 parade be cancelled? What is the point of holding it, cowering in fear, inside the Sports Complex where last year’s tamasha was also held and held badly? It was a joke, actually, as this one will be, with just some armed forces officers and their families attending. In any case this is a time fraught with suspense and fear and suspicion as the Commando’s dark shadow looms over and out of the President’s Lodge, Rawalpindi Cantt, (once Army House), the Lord only knowing how his knee will jerk the next time round.
Bushism of the Decade: “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda” — President George W. Bush; 2004.
Stop Press: A detailed Pentagon study, reported in the press on March 13, 2008: “confirms there was no direct link between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda network, debunking a claim President George W Bush’s administration used to justify invading Iraq”. So there! This is our Commando’s ‘tight’ buddy! A liar, through and through.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
FIRST things first then, and straight to two statements that came out of the Pakistan Army within the past week, the first by the COAS himself who said that the Pakistan Army was “committed to the Kashmir cause in line with the aspirations of Pakistani [sic] nation”.
What was that please? How would GHQ know by itself what the aspirations of the Pakistani nation are, regarding anything at all? What mechanism does GHQ have to ascertain the aspirations of the Pakistani nation other than to follow in letter and spirit the directions and orders of the properly constituted Government of Pakistan?
For is it not a fact that the Pakistani nation has just last month gone to the polls and elected its representatives who will sit in parliament, throw up a government from amongst themselves, and get on with the business of governance? Should the Pakistan Army as just another department of the Government of Pakistan not hold itself at the disposal of the properly constituted government in which the Pakistani nation has reposed confidence and which therefore is the only arbiter of the people’s will and aspirations, no more no less?
The other statement was by the DG of the ISPR who said: “We have lodged a very strong protest with the coalition forces across the border” when asked about the death of two women and two children in an artillery/missile strike on the Pakistani village of Kangrai, North Waziristan.
Who is the “we”, please? Excuse me, but has the Pakistan Army now formally taken over running the country’s foreign relations? Is it not absolutely inappropriate for the army to be doing the protesting to a foreign entity, when the recognised convention is that the country’s government, in its foreign ministry, handles matters of state which have to do with other states?
Who are “coalition forces” anyway if not the US Army and the British Army augmented by barely token participation of some NATO countries? So why weren’t the ambassador of the United States and the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom summoned to the FO and a protest handed over to them?
Indeed, if the mere thought of summoning the American ambassador gives heart attacks to the ‘core-professionals’ who loll about in the Hotel Scheherezade, a third secretary of the American embassy could have been summoned to the FO. The point should have been made. The ‘coalition’, in its turn, should have apologised for the loss of innocent life.
But no; all Major Chris Belcher, its spokesman, had to say was: “We can confirm a precision-guided ammunition strike on March 12 on a compound connected with [the] Haqqani network 1.5 kilometres across the border in Pakistan…. I do not have any information on any casualties that may have occurred … the information I have is that the Government of Pakistan was notified immediately following the strike.” Full stop.
Clinical, cold, arrogant. But why doesn’t the ‘coalition’ understand that this kind of behaviour only makes America more enemies? How, indeed, does contriteness for a wrong committed in America’s name take anything away from it? Does one have to be an Einstein to understand that the Commando is today a much-reviled man for precisely this sort of behaviour?
And now to catastrophe. The Commando said in an interview with The Washington Times, again during the last week, which should go down in the history of the country as a week in which some of the most ludicrous statements were made: “Can you imagine what the effect would be on the business community, both foreign and domestic, or in the capitals of nations allied with us in the war on terror if the first thing they saw after this election was a political war between the presidency and the government? I think it would be catastrophic.”
Strong words, what!? Catastrophic for whom? For the Commando if parliament impeaches him? Or for the country if the Commando dismisses the assemblies if they attempt to impeach him? Does he even know the meaning of the word catastrophic?
Variously: disaster; calamity; upheaval; devastation; ruin; misfortune; tragedy; cataclysm! Is the Commando in such desperate straits that he will lead the country to ruin and misfortune if he is impeached? That he will devastate it? And bring tragedy upon our heads? Well, what about his oft-repeated mantra of ‘Pakistan First’? Or was that a load of nonsense as we always thought it was?
No sirs; if you simply refuse to read the writing on the wall, please look into your Turkish coffee cups more intently. Or read your tea leaves more carefully. Time is up, sirs, surely and truly. Anything you do hence-forwards: try and break up the People’s Party by activating your not so sleepy sleeper cells within it; try to bad-mouth the Sharifs to the Americans; use 58-2(b), nothing’s going to work.
This brings me to the matter of the Americans again, and their quite foolish leaks to the effect that they don’t really trust Nawaz Sharif when it comes to battling terror. Indeed, media organs allied to them are insidiously leaking stories to the effect that Osama bin Laden was known to Nawaz, etcetera.
Well, the bin Ladens were also known to the Bushes, enough for tens of them to be spirited out of the United States just one day after 9/11 despite there being a complete ban on air traffic all across the country. Osama himself was known to every CIA and ISI chief worth his salt. So where’s the problem?
And who was trying to cosy up to the Lal Mosque cleric just prior to the election to solicit his support? Not Nawaz Sharif but Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the Commando’s fellow traveller who, hand in glove with him, misruled this country for well on six very long years during which terrorism went through the roof.
It is also known that they are going about trying to find out what others opposed to the Commando, Aitzaz Ahsan for one, think about the war on terror. Is this a silly question or is it a silly question! What else would any Pakistani think about the need to uproot terrorism from our country but that it should be uprooted yesterday? But not in the foolish and self-defeating ways adopted by the Commando and his tight buddies, the American administration. Terrorism will only be defeated when tackled in an intelligent way, as humanely as possible.
In the end may I ask that the March 23 parade be cancelled? What is the point of holding it, cowering in fear, inside the Sports Complex where last year’s tamasha was also held and held badly? It was a joke, actually, as this one will be, with just some armed forces officers and their families attending. In any case this is a time fraught with suspense and fear and suspicion as the Commando’s dark shadow looms over and out of the President’s Lodge, Rawalpindi Cantt, (once Army House), the Lord only knowing how his knee will jerk the next time round.
Bushism of the Decade: “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda” — President George W. Bush; 2004.
Stop Press: A detailed Pentagon study, reported in the press on March 13, 2008: “confirms there was no direct link between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda network, debunking a claim President George W Bush’s administration used to justify invading Iraq”. So there! This is our Commando’s ‘tight’ buddy! A liar, through and through.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
What don’t we know?
What don’t we know?
By Kamran Shafi
WHAT is it that Gen (retd) Musharraf knows that we don’t? There must be something, lots of something actually, considering his actions and that of his junta of the past few weeks. Consider:
It’s been a full fifty-three days since His Lordship the Chief Justice of Pakistan and sixty other judges of the Supreme and High Courts were thrown out of office by the chief of the army staff using emergency powers bestowed upon himself by abrogating whatever we had left of the Constitution.
Fifty-three days later, with the exception of a few judges, the majority of them including the CJ continue to remain under house arrest. The arrest is so all-encompassing that even their children — the CJ has a young family — are not allowed out of the house lest they indulge in nefarious activities such as going to school, taking exams, etcetera.
Fifty-three days later, Islamabad the Beautiful still gives the look of a city under siege: there are barricades everywhere you look, manned by rude and offensive and loutish personnel of some ‘agency’ or the other.
Fifty-three days later, Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice Tariq Mahmood and Ali Ahmad Kurd are under arrest in their own homes, Munir Malik only getting his release when his health deteriorated to such an extent that the junta had to get him off their hands lest it be charged with murder. The latest on Aitzaz is that he was manhandled and re-arrested on the motorway while on his way to Islamabad the Beautiful with the approval of the authorities.
The worst moments during the re-arrest of this eminent barrister, former many-time member of both houses of parliament; former interior minister; presently president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, came when the goons in civvies pointed a cocked weapon at his young son’s midriff. Way to go, Gen (retd) Musharraf!
It’s been 53 days since he ‘sorted out’ the CJ, and yet Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf does not tire of saying the nastiest things about him, his latest tirade coming at a dinner thrown by PAK-PAC, going to the extent of accusing the CJ of common theft and repeating the ludicrous charges that were laughed at by most of the country when the reference was being heard.
For example about the CJ summoning “senior officials” of the government to appear before him for little infringements. The retired general little realises that for a populace that has been kicked about by government officials for well on 60 years it is sweet revenge to see someone, in the instant case the CJ, kick the “senior officials” about for a change.
He has also carped again about how the CJ was conspiring against him. The facts of the matter are that the CJ recused himself from the bench hearing the petitions against Gen (retd) Musharraf and appointed a judge considered ‘friendly’ to him and who has now, by the by, been appointed Chairman of the Press Council or whatever it is called, with salary and perks commensurate with that of a judge of the Supreme Court. So let’s get off that one!
Gen (retd) Musharraf should take a quick course in the judicial history of Pakistan. He will find that judges have sat on benches despite the accused declaring no confidence in them as in Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s case before Maulvi Mushtaq.
When Mr Bhutto complained about Maulvi’s partiality, Maulvi addressed the former president and prime minister of this luckless country in words to the effect: “Shut up, you are an accused” and when Bhutto protested: “I can even have you whipped in jail.” “Remove his chair,” Maulvi thundered to the court staff. He then made Mr Bhutto stand for two days during his hearings before the LHC bench which subsequently sentenced him to hang. This is what Pakistani justice is about, General Sahib (retd). My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry proved his impartiality as a judge by removing himself voluntarily from all the cases to do with you.
May I, in passing, make a suggestion? Since the CJ has so got under Gen (retd) Musharraf’s skin, why doesn’t he challenge the CJ to a TV debate, no holds barred, on any TV channel, even PTV? Why, even a foreign channel, say CNN, could be requested to host it (which any of them would give their right arm for!).
Gen (retd) Musharraf is very well spoken; he looks extremely well-presented and handsome in his designer suits as Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain has always assured us. Let him then level any accusation he might, and let the CJ defend himself. Most people including my readers and I are simply up to here with hearing the same, tired allegations over and over again.
This reminds me. Whenever I refer to Mushahid Hussain as ‘Mandela’ I get a huge number of emails castigating me for even taking the man’s name in the same breath as the great Nelson Mandela’s. Every time that happens I explain that it has nothing to do with the man sharing any of Nelson Mandela’s great attributes of head and heart.
The reason I refer to our own ‘Mandela’ now and again is because he had the temerity to compare his own three-month imprisonment after Nawaz Sharif’s government was overthrown, in what could only be an Army Officers Mess, with Nelson Mandela’s long incarceration. In his own words:
“About a year earlier, I had been assigned as minister-in-waiting to Nelson Mandela … I had asked him, as the 20th century’s most celebrated political prisoner (Mushahid being the second-most?), what were the most difficult moments of his 27 years in detention. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, ‘solitary imprisonment’.
“My time in solitary imprisonment would be much shorter, my experience far less harrowing. But I was to learn something of what he meant … I scheduled my day. I would study the Quran with concentration for a stretch of two hours, take a break, walk the 22 paces I had marked out in my room, do some stretching and then resume my Quranic reading”. Twenty-two paces marked out in his “room”? I ask you!
What effrontery is the man’s! For 20 years, the over-six-foot Nelson Mandela was kept imprisoned in a six-foot by seven-foot cell on Robben Island with barely enough space to lie down. He was supplied just one bucket in which he defecated, and after cleaning it out, in which he had to wash too. All day, every day, he was put to work in a rock quarry breaking rocks. And Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain “marked out” 22 paces in his “room”? By golly the man has brass.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Mushism of the Week: “We issued a code of conduct and asked them to sign it. It’s as good as you have in your own country.” And when told that there was no ‘code of conduct’ for the media in the US, “No, the code of conduct is there in most countries of the world. Why should we compare the United States to Pakistan?” — Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf; Washington Post, Dec 16, 2007
P.S. Musharraf has even held on to Army House — what does he know that we don’t?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
WHAT is it that Gen (retd) Musharraf knows that we don’t? There must be something, lots of something actually, considering his actions and that of his junta of the past few weeks. Consider:
It’s been a full fifty-three days since His Lordship the Chief Justice of Pakistan and sixty other judges of the Supreme and High Courts were thrown out of office by the chief of the army staff using emergency powers bestowed upon himself by abrogating whatever we had left of the Constitution.
Fifty-three days later, with the exception of a few judges, the majority of them including the CJ continue to remain under house arrest. The arrest is so all-encompassing that even their children — the CJ has a young family — are not allowed out of the house lest they indulge in nefarious activities such as going to school, taking exams, etcetera.
Fifty-three days later, Islamabad the Beautiful still gives the look of a city under siege: there are barricades everywhere you look, manned by rude and offensive and loutish personnel of some ‘agency’ or the other.
Fifty-three days later, Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice Tariq Mahmood and Ali Ahmad Kurd are under arrest in their own homes, Munir Malik only getting his release when his health deteriorated to such an extent that the junta had to get him off their hands lest it be charged with murder. The latest on Aitzaz is that he was manhandled and re-arrested on the motorway while on his way to Islamabad the Beautiful with the approval of the authorities.
The worst moments during the re-arrest of this eminent barrister, former many-time member of both houses of parliament; former interior minister; presently president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, came when the goons in civvies pointed a cocked weapon at his young son’s midriff. Way to go, Gen (retd) Musharraf!
It’s been 53 days since he ‘sorted out’ the CJ, and yet Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf does not tire of saying the nastiest things about him, his latest tirade coming at a dinner thrown by PAK-PAC, going to the extent of accusing the CJ of common theft and repeating the ludicrous charges that were laughed at by most of the country when the reference was being heard.
For example about the CJ summoning “senior officials” of the government to appear before him for little infringements. The retired general little realises that for a populace that has been kicked about by government officials for well on 60 years it is sweet revenge to see someone, in the instant case the CJ, kick the “senior officials” about for a change.
He has also carped again about how the CJ was conspiring against him. The facts of the matter are that the CJ recused himself from the bench hearing the petitions against Gen (retd) Musharraf and appointed a judge considered ‘friendly’ to him and who has now, by the by, been appointed Chairman of the Press Council or whatever it is called, with salary and perks commensurate with that of a judge of the Supreme Court. So let’s get off that one!
Gen (retd) Musharraf should take a quick course in the judicial history of Pakistan. He will find that judges have sat on benches despite the accused declaring no confidence in them as in Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s case before Maulvi Mushtaq.
When Mr Bhutto complained about Maulvi’s partiality, Maulvi addressed the former president and prime minister of this luckless country in words to the effect: “Shut up, you are an accused” and when Bhutto protested: “I can even have you whipped in jail.” “Remove his chair,” Maulvi thundered to the court staff. He then made Mr Bhutto stand for two days during his hearings before the LHC bench which subsequently sentenced him to hang. This is what Pakistani justice is about, General Sahib (retd). My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry proved his impartiality as a judge by removing himself voluntarily from all the cases to do with you.
May I, in passing, make a suggestion? Since the CJ has so got under Gen (retd) Musharraf’s skin, why doesn’t he challenge the CJ to a TV debate, no holds barred, on any TV channel, even PTV? Why, even a foreign channel, say CNN, could be requested to host it (which any of them would give their right arm for!).
Gen (retd) Musharraf is very well spoken; he looks extremely well-presented and handsome in his designer suits as Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain has always assured us. Let him then level any accusation he might, and let the CJ defend himself. Most people including my readers and I are simply up to here with hearing the same, tired allegations over and over again.
This reminds me. Whenever I refer to Mushahid Hussain as ‘Mandela’ I get a huge number of emails castigating me for even taking the man’s name in the same breath as the great Nelson Mandela’s. Every time that happens I explain that it has nothing to do with the man sharing any of Nelson Mandela’s great attributes of head and heart.
The reason I refer to our own ‘Mandela’ now and again is because he had the temerity to compare his own three-month imprisonment after Nawaz Sharif’s government was overthrown, in what could only be an Army Officers Mess, with Nelson Mandela’s long incarceration. In his own words:
“About a year earlier, I had been assigned as minister-in-waiting to Nelson Mandela … I had asked him, as the 20th century’s most celebrated political prisoner (Mushahid being the second-most?), what were the most difficult moments of his 27 years in detention. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, ‘solitary imprisonment’.
“My time in solitary imprisonment would be much shorter, my experience far less harrowing. But I was to learn something of what he meant … I scheduled my day. I would study the Quran with concentration for a stretch of two hours, take a break, walk the 22 paces I had marked out in my room, do some stretching and then resume my Quranic reading”. Twenty-two paces marked out in his “room”? I ask you!
What effrontery is the man’s! For 20 years, the over-six-foot Nelson Mandela was kept imprisoned in a six-foot by seven-foot cell on Robben Island with barely enough space to lie down. He was supplied just one bucket in which he defecated, and after cleaning it out, in which he had to wash too. All day, every day, he was put to work in a rock quarry breaking rocks. And Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain “marked out” 22 paces in his “room”? By golly the man has brass.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Mushism of the Week: “We issued a code of conduct and asked them to sign it. It’s as good as you have in your own country.” And when told that there was no ‘code of conduct’ for the media in the US, “No, the code of conduct is there in most countries of the world. Why should we compare the United States to Pakistan?” — Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf; Washington Post, Dec 16, 2007
P.S. Musharraf has even held on to Army House — what does he know that we don’t?
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Welcome home
Welcome home
By Kamran Shafi
BUT we shall go there later. Wow! What a surprise that the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) Supreme Court has ruled overwhelmingly, and in every respect, in favour of the Commando’s election as ‘president’ of the Islamic Republic!
Never mind, of course, that a precedent has been set for other Bonapartists, other usurpers in army uniforms working the American agenda of the time, to knock on the court’s door and demand that their ‘election’ as president of the Islamic Republic by another rigged assembly be ratified, otherwise martial law/emergency!
Never mind too that respected newspapers such as The Guardian have called the PCO Supreme Court a ‘kangaroo court’. Who cares, however? If an institution is on the side of the establishment and its Daddy of the time it is fine and dandy, but doomed be its eyes if it so much as tries to be even a little bit objective. Oh yes!
And what a ludicrous defence of their flawed stand by the transitionists when they say that the transformationists are to blame for Musharraf’s knee jerking as hard as it is! What the devil did we do other than ask the political parties and civil society to completely isolate the dictator?
The news is bad, however, with Benazir backing off from the tough stand she took before that architect of many a Latin American coup, Negroponte Sahib Bahadur visited the Land of the Pure and picked up the telephone to her. Did he read the riot act to her rather than to Musharraf?
Has the PPP softened its stand to negotiate a few more seats under the president’s kind control — as we subcontinentals are wont to say when applying for jobs — who will reportedly allocate them according to a plan already hatched in a special cell reportedly set up somewhere in the vicinity of Aabpara if you see what I mean? Go on; surely you know what I mean!
I am just back from a trip to Karachi and the gup there is that the major political parties, the PML-N and the PPP, will be allowed from between thirty to forty seats each, depending on who is the army’s flavour of the month; 90 or so to the PML-Q and the rest divided among the Mullah-Military Alliance (aka the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal) and others under the umbrella of something akin to the Chand Sitara (Moon and Crescent) Party that we saw emerge in 2002 out of, you guessed it, near Aabpara!
Which be as it may, readers will recall that I have often referred to our country as being a most unique place, peopled by a most unique lot, specially our leaders.
It would not surprise me therefore if the president for whom it is Pervez Musharraf first, second, and last, has decided to pull the rug from under the feet of the House of Zahoor, Gujarat Sharif.
Who and their cohorts and gofers such as the most lovely Wasi Zafar and Sher Afgan might well not be missed now that he has to defend him none other than Barrister Shahida Jamil. Polished while she is, the lady is as mindlessly stout in her defence of the Commando and all that he does as the two beauties above named.
I quite frankly fell off my chair when, defending the emergency (read martial law) she said it was quite alright to act unconstitutionally and illegally when the situation demanded it. I wondered if she would not only resile from her stand against them, but actually defend the alleged extra-judicial killings in Karachi of yesteryear.
Yet there is an upside in all of this that I can feel in my bones. And that is the arrival of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, and Begum Kulsoom Nawaz and family, who are back in their country after a long exile.
Welcome home to them and here’s hoping the opposition will now be united on a two-point agenda: robbing the dictator and his junta of any legitimacy at all and vociferously demanding the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 superior judiciary.
Let the Gujaratias, the Mullahs and all and sundry referred to above win what will then be a non-election and pack the assemblies. Let them form the next governments. There is such a thing as doing what is right, and which will elevate the PPP and the PML-N onto a very high pedestal indeed.
Incidentally, I have always believed that the PPP’s boycotting the 1985 elections was the right thing to do. It was this act and this alone that saw the party win the 1988 elections, and which it would have swept had the ISI not engineered the IJI into place using hundreds of millions in state funds.
And now for Amreeka Bahadur. If anyone thinks I am running a campaign to expose the American administration’s insalubrious hand in our travails, he/she is right! Of course I am! For I want my American friends, and I have many, to understand that if they have an ‘American Dream’ so do we Pakistanis want our own ‘Pakistani Dream’.
One in which we are free to choose our governments and then have the freedom to vote them out. One in which we too have a fiercely independent judiciary. One in which there is not the dark shadow of the army looming over us.
So, buddies, stop micro-managing us — we don’t exactly live in the trees you know.
Bushism of the Week: “I don’t particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it.” —President George W. Bush - Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007.
P.S. May I express my outrage at the continued incarceration of Munir Malik, Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood and Ali Ahmad Kurd. All good men. None of them terrorists.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
BUT we shall go there later. Wow! What a surprise that the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) Supreme Court has ruled overwhelmingly, and in every respect, in favour of the Commando’s election as ‘president’ of the Islamic Republic!
Never mind, of course, that a precedent has been set for other Bonapartists, other usurpers in army uniforms working the American agenda of the time, to knock on the court’s door and demand that their ‘election’ as president of the Islamic Republic by another rigged assembly be ratified, otherwise martial law/emergency!
Never mind too that respected newspapers such as The Guardian have called the PCO Supreme Court a ‘kangaroo court’. Who cares, however? If an institution is on the side of the establishment and its Daddy of the time it is fine and dandy, but doomed be its eyes if it so much as tries to be even a little bit objective. Oh yes!
And what a ludicrous defence of their flawed stand by the transitionists when they say that the transformationists are to blame for Musharraf’s knee jerking as hard as it is! What the devil did we do other than ask the political parties and civil society to completely isolate the dictator?
The news is bad, however, with Benazir backing off from the tough stand she took before that architect of many a Latin American coup, Negroponte Sahib Bahadur visited the Land of the Pure and picked up the telephone to her. Did he read the riot act to her rather than to Musharraf?
Has the PPP softened its stand to negotiate a few more seats under the president’s kind control — as we subcontinentals are wont to say when applying for jobs — who will reportedly allocate them according to a plan already hatched in a special cell reportedly set up somewhere in the vicinity of Aabpara if you see what I mean? Go on; surely you know what I mean!
I am just back from a trip to Karachi and the gup there is that the major political parties, the PML-N and the PPP, will be allowed from between thirty to forty seats each, depending on who is the army’s flavour of the month; 90 or so to the PML-Q and the rest divided among the Mullah-Military Alliance (aka the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal) and others under the umbrella of something akin to the Chand Sitara (Moon and Crescent) Party that we saw emerge in 2002 out of, you guessed it, near Aabpara!
Which be as it may, readers will recall that I have often referred to our country as being a most unique place, peopled by a most unique lot, specially our leaders.
It would not surprise me therefore if the president for whom it is Pervez Musharraf first, second, and last, has decided to pull the rug from under the feet of the House of Zahoor, Gujarat Sharif.
Who and their cohorts and gofers such as the most lovely Wasi Zafar and Sher Afgan might well not be missed now that he has to defend him none other than Barrister Shahida Jamil. Polished while she is, the lady is as mindlessly stout in her defence of the Commando and all that he does as the two beauties above named.
I quite frankly fell off my chair when, defending the emergency (read martial law) she said it was quite alright to act unconstitutionally and illegally when the situation demanded it. I wondered if she would not only resile from her stand against them, but actually defend the alleged extra-judicial killings in Karachi of yesteryear.
Yet there is an upside in all of this that I can feel in my bones. And that is the arrival of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, and Begum Kulsoom Nawaz and family, who are back in their country after a long exile.
Welcome home to them and here’s hoping the opposition will now be united on a two-point agenda: robbing the dictator and his junta of any legitimacy at all and vociferously demanding the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 superior judiciary.
Let the Gujaratias, the Mullahs and all and sundry referred to above win what will then be a non-election and pack the assemblies. Let them form the next governments. There is such a thing as doing what is right, and which will elevate the PPP and the PML-N onto a very high pedestal indeed.
Incidentally, I have always believed that the PPP’s boycotting the 1985 elections was the right thing to do. It was this act and this alone that saw the party win the 1988 elections, and which it would have swept had the ISI not engineered the IJI into place using hundreds of millions in state funds.
And now for Amreeka Bahadur. If anyone thinks I am running a campaign to expose the American administration’s insalubrious hand in our travails, he/she is right! Of course I am! For I want my American friends, and I have many, to understand that if they have an ‘American Dream’ so do we Pakistanis want our own ‘Pakistani Dream’.
One in which we are free to choose our governments and then have the freedom to vote them out. One in which we too have a fiercely independent judiciary. One in which there is not the dark shadow of the army looming over us.
So, buddies, stop micro-managing us — we don’t exactly live in the trees you know.
Bushism of the Week: “I don’t particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it.” —President George W. Bush - Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007.
P.S. May I express my outrage at the continued incarceration of Munir Malik, Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood and Ali Ahmad Kurd. All good men. None of them terrorists.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Ah so!
Ah so!
By Kamran Shafi
THE General to the BBC just before that great friend of Latin American dictators, John Negroponte, came a-calling: “Before March I was very good. Suddenly did I go mad after March or suddenly my personality changed, am I a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde or what is it? Am I such a person? Please go into the details, the causes. What am I doing? Have I done anything unconstitutional, illegal? Yes, I did it on 3rd November. Did I do it before? Not once.”
And: “They (our nuclear assets or bums in the vernacular!) cannot fall into the wrong hands if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there – as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything to them.”
Three things here. One, he did not do anything ‘unconstitutional illegal’ (hello, what’s this?) before 3rd November when he imposed emergency on the country, suspending whatever human rights we had? Er, the actions of Oct 12, 1999 when an elected, constitutional government was kicked out were not ‘unconstitutional illegal’?
Two, ‘suddenly’ he did not go mad; nor did his personality change; and neither is he Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. (Lord, how many nights did I lie awake, shivering in fear after seeing the film in, if memory serves, Delhi in 1955). And three, he is not clinging to power come hell or high water just because he wants to cling to power; he is only clinging to power to ensure that our bums do not fall into extremist hands. Ah so! And here we were thinking all he really wanted were the pelf and privileges that come from his position of pre-eminence that he and his toadies are so used to by now. Silly us! Traitors the lot of us, actually, to impute motives to him.
Be which as it may, let us get down to serious matters and first ask what in the world he means when he says our bums are safe “as long as we are in charge”? Who is “we”? Why is he making himself synonymous with the army when he has announced repeatedly that he would retire from his army post just as soon as the ‘revamped’ Supreme Court validates his so-called ‘election’ to the presidency? Is he suggesting that he will stay on as COAS till Kingdom Come? Or that the army will continue to call the shots?
Might one also ask what will happen to the military (read army) in the unlikely event that a fair election is held in the country and a properly constituted government takes over? Will the army (which today guards our bums) disappear into thin air, leaving them unprotected to be grabbed by all comers, specially (shiver, shiver) Al Qaeda?
The Commando will do what he will to cling to power, and no one has any control over that, probably not even he himself. The question to ask once again is what Ms Bhutto will do. While her answer to the same question last week was to say to Musharraf that he was no longer acceptable to her as President, in or out of uniform, Negroponte’s telephone call to her (he did not deign to see her) seems to have done the trick. What did he say to her? You are with us or you are against us?
I seem to have lost one hundred rupees, the maximum that I bet, to my old friend Zahid Zaman who said she would relent vis-à-vis Musharraf. He was right; I, who pretend to know her these twenty years, was dead wrong.
But leave alone that the ‘elections’ will be held under virtual martial law, what will she achieve by going into them after all that The Commando has said: variously that the House of Zahoor-led PML will win; the next prime minister will be from the Kings Party; and that Benazir is only the ‘Darling of the West’ but doesn’t really have any popular following?
It is very bad news indeed that the leader of what was Pakistan’s only anti-establishment party has acquiesced to the demands of the US administration that she not upset their tight buddy’s apple cart. An apple cart, I might add, with two wheels missing and the third in utter disrepair.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As said earlier in these very columns, there seems to be only one way for all democrats who believe in the rule of law and constitution. To demand that emergency (read martial law) be lifted immediately; the Honourable Supreme and High Courts return to status quo ante Nov 3; truly neutral caretaker governments and an election commission approved by all the stakeholders be installed; and every political party and its leaders including Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to take part in the elections.
There is strength in unity, every politician must understand. Otherwise, the Establishment will pick them off one by one. When it comes to ‘Aksariat’ we haven’t seen anything yet.
Afterthought: At a recent demo against muzzling the TV channels I carried placards saying ‘Yankee go Home’ and ‘Negroponte Out!’ I, of all people!! For the Americans must be told that they are increasingly being looked upon as those described in The Ugly American, the great late-50’s book by Lederer and Burdick: arrogant, rude, and downright stupid.
Some years ago I asked then Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain (in print) to make this classic compulsory reading for her staff. Looking at the bigger mess we are in I don’t think she listened to me but before it gets any messier may I suggest to the present Her Excellency to please do so?
Bushism of the Week: “In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he has acted on that advice.” — On President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007. (Reader, please note the date).
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
THE General to the BBC just before that great friend of Latin American dictators, John Negroponte, came a-calling: “Before March I was very good. Suddenly did I go mad after March or suddenly my personality changed, am I a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde or what is it? Am I such a person? Please go into the details, the causes. What am I doing? Have I done anything unconstitutional, illegal? Yes, I did it on 3rd November. Did I do it before? Not once.”
And: “They (our nuclear assets or bums in the vernacular!) cannot fall into the wrong hands if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there – as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything to them.”
Three things here. One, he did not do anything ‘unconstitutional illegal’ (hello, what’s this?) before 3rd November when he imposed emergency on the country, suspending whatever human rights we had? Er, the actions of Oct 12, 1999 when an elected, constitutional government was kicked out were not ‘unconstitutional illegal’?
Two, ‘suddenly’ he did not go mad; nor did his personality change; and neither is he Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. (Lord, how many nights did I lie awake, shivering in fear after seeing the film in, if memory serves, Delhi in 1955). And three, he is not clinging to power come hell or high water just because he wants to cling to power; he is only clinging to power to ensure that our bums do not fall into extremist hands. Ah so! And here we were thinking all he really wanted were the pelf and privileges that come from his position of pre-eminence that he and his toadies are so used to by now. Silly us! Traitors the lot of us, actually, to impute motives to him.
Be which as it may, let us get down to serious matters and first ask what in the world he means when he says our bums are safe “as long as we are in charge”? Who is “we”? Why is he making himself synonymous with the army when he has announced repeatedly that he would retire from his army post just as soon as the ‘revamped’ Supreme Court validates his so-called ‘election’ to the presidency? Is he suggesting that he will stay on as COAS till Kingdom Come? Or that the army will continue to call the shots?
Might one also ask what will happen to the military (read army) in the unlikely event that a fair election is held in the country and a properly constituted government takes over? Will the army (which today guards our bums) disappear into thin air, leaving them unprotected to be grabbed by all comers, specially (shiver, shiver) Al Qaeda?
The Commando will do what he will to cling to power, and no one has any control over that, probably not even he himself. The question to ask once again is what Ms Bhutto will do. While her answer to the same question last week was to say to Musharraf that he was no longer acceptable to her as President, in or out of uniform, Negroponte’s telephone call to her (he did not deign to see her) seems to have done the trick. What did he say to her? You are with us or you are against us?
I seem to have lost one hundred rupees, the maximum that I bet, to my old friend Zahid Zaman who said she would relent vis-à-vis Musharraf. He was right; I, who pretend to know her these twenty years, was dead wrong.
But leave alone that the ‘elections’ will be held under virtual martial law, what will she achieve by going into them after all that The Commando has said: variously that the House of Zahoor-led PML will win; the next prime minister will be from the Kings Party; and that Benazir is only the ‘Darling of the West’ but doesn’t really have any popular following?
It is very bad news indeed that the leader of what was Pakistan’s only anti-establishment party has acquiesced to the demands of the US administration that she not upset their tight buddy’s apple cart. An apple cart, I might add, with two wheels missing and the third in utter disrepair.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As said earlier in these very columns, there seems to be only one way for all democrats who believe in the rule of law and constitution. To demand that emergency (read martial law) be lifted immediately; the Honourable Supreme and High Courts return to status quo ante Nov 3; truly neutral caretaker governments and an election commission approved by all the stakeholders be installed; and every political party and its leaders including Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to take part in the elections.
There is strength in unity, every politician must understand. Otherwise, the Establishment will pick them off one by one. When it comes to ‘Aksariat’ we haven’t seen anything yet.
Afterthought: At a recent demo against muzzling the TV channels I carried placards saying ‘Yankee go Home’ and ‘Negroponte Out!’ I, of all people!! For the Americans must be told that they are increasingly being looked upon as those described in The Ugly American, the great late-50’s book by Lederer and Burdick: arrogant, rude, and downright stupid.
Some years ago I asked then Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain (in print) to make this classic compulsory reading for her staff. Looking at the bigger mess we are in I don’t think she listened to me but before it gets any messier may I suggest to the present Her Excellency to please do so?
Bushism of the Week: “In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he has acted on that advice.” — On President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007. (Reader, please note the date).
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Back to square one
Back to square one
By Kamran Shafi
I WRITE this on the second day of the emergency imposed by the Commando on the very country he has ruled unchallenged for eight whole years, citing all sorts of reasons mainly ranging from a loss of the state’s writ across the land (as if its our fault!) to blaming the judiciary for hampering the government’s anti-terrorism efforts.
Before we go any further let me here explode this particular myth. One of the gravest charges against the judiciary (read Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry) is that the Supreme Court subverted the government’s anti-terrorism efforts by ordering the handing over of the Lal Masjid back to the same group of clerics who took the law into their own hands and which resulted in the horrific July bloodbath.
It most expediently ignores the fact that it was the government’s own ineptness, some say abetment, that exacerbated the problem in the first place when it looked away and pretended all was well even when the mosque’s hard-line and extremist clerics took over the state’s assets. When they killed its own agents and kidnapped Pakistanis, acting only when China sent a strong message after its citizens were kidnapped.
More critically, it glosses over the fact that the two judges who ruled in the Red Mosque’s (read terrorists!) favour were the two judges who have taken oath under the new PCO. So there.
So then, we now live under yet another martial law, for that is what it is because the COAS has imposed it, not the government. The last martial law I should have said, for after the dust of this one has settled after the difficult days that lie ahead which will call for difficult decisions by ordinary people, no other general will enter politics. Ever again.
Let me tell you why. Look at the mess created over the last eight years. Look at Swat, its people, and just see what a horror has been made of that once idyllic place where I went for my honeymoon in March 1969. We stayed at what was then the Swat Hotel, now the Serena, an elegant art-deco building with well-kept lawns and a dining room that had just stepped out of a picture-book on the Raj.
Its beautiful furniture; its waiters in their starched pugrees (turbans); its wonderful bone-china crockery and silver. I remember the two of us going to play golf at the well-designed and manicured golf course situated some miles away in the beautiful valley. I so vividly recall the gentle and cool breeze soughing through the poplar trees that were just turning green, and the blossom-laden apricot and plum trees. I wander, my friends, forgive me, but how can you and I not recall the Pakistan we knew? And for which we pine, eyes brimming with tears.
And now see what has happened to it? See what incompetence and foolishness and placing self-interest above national interest — if I hear ‘Pakistan First’ one more time I’ll scream — has done to our country. I mean enough! The last six years, particularly the last two have been spent in working out ways and means for the Commando to be either elected or reelected! The people will not easily forgive the army brass its trespasses this time around. Consider:
A quick recap on the Swat/Malakand situation. Maulana Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Maulana Radio, the present rebel leader in Malakand Division, is the man who took hundreds of innocent young boys into Afghanistan as ‘Mujahideen’ to fight the infidel, just prior to and during the US assault on that country. Took them to their deaths surely.
His methodology was simple. He would take a truckload or two of young boys including his own sons into Afghanistan, drop the rest there and bring his own back. And do the same again, and again. As the Americans intensified the bombing and put an end to Taliban rule, Sufi Mohammad’s young ‘Mujahideen’ either got their heads blown off or disappeared into the torture chambers of Bagram or Guantanamo or Mangla or wherever.
Back home the relatives of those poor young men began to bay for Sufi Mohammad’s blood. Instead of letting him face justice at the hands of his peers what does the government do? It locks him up in Dera Ismail Khan jail, thus affording him protective custody.
Nothing to be too surprised about, for this is yet another example of the government’s ineptitude.
No article, no piece these days can be complete without most fulsome praise of My Lords, Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his brother judges who have refused to take oath under the new PCO. Which judge before him had the gumption to face down the chiefs of the most frightening of the state’s agencies? Who before him extracted some of the ‘disappeared’ from the clutches of the cruel men who run these agencies and care not for the pain they cause to fellow beings?
While his endeavours to, at the very least, locate the ‘disappeared’ were brought to an abrupt halt by his second dismissal, he is to be saluted for at least giving some hope to the relatives of some whose custody the ‘agencies’ had to admit.
Which Chief Justice was as hard working as him? His Lordship reducing the cases pending before the court for decades from 32,000 when he took over to 7,000 when he was dismissed the first time around? Who heard the cries of the poor and the defenceless more than Iftikhar Chaudhry, and then proceeded to provide them succour?
Very few judges in Pakistan’s history were as correct as Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Though it is an aberration to take his name in the same breath as Maulvi Mushtaq’s (for the younger of my readers, Justice Maulvi Mushtaq headed the LHC bench that sentenced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to death) who did not recuse himself despite ZAB’s strenuous appeals that he do so because Maulvi bore Bhutto a grudge, Justice Iftikhar recused himself when the Commando’s case came up for hearing before the SC.
I can only pray that other judges model themselves on this good man; and more than that, that he is restored as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
Bushism of the week: “I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States’ military says, that you can’t win this military.” — President George W. Bush on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, DC, Oct 17, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
I WRITE this on the second day of the emergency imposed by the Commando on the very country he has ruled unchallenged for eight whole years, citing all sorts of reasons mainly ranging from a loss of the state’s writ across the land (as if its our fault!) to blaming the judiciary for hampering the government’s anti-terrorism efforts.
Before we go any further let me here explode this particular myth. One of the gravest charges against the judiciary (read Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry) is that the Supreme Court subverted the government’s anti-terrorism efforts by ordering the handing over of the Lal Masjid back to the same group of clerics who took the law into their own hands and which resulted in the horrific July bloodbath.
It most expediently ignores the fact that it was the government’s own ineptness, some say abetment, that exacerbated the problem in the first place when it looked away and pretended all was well even when the mosque’s hard-line and extremist clerics took over the state’s assets. When they killed its own agents and kidnapped Pakistanis, acting only when China sent a strong message after its citizens were kidnapped.
More critically, it glosses over the fact that the two judges who ruled in the Red Mosque’s (read terrorists!) favour were the two judges who have taken oath under the new PCO. So there.
So then, we now live under yet another martial law, for that is what it is because the COAS has imposed it, not the government. The last martial law I should have said, for after the dust of this one has settled after the difficult days that lie ahead which will call for difficult decisions by ordinary people, no other general will enter politics. Ever again.
Let me tell you why. Look at the mess created over the last eight years. Look at Swat, its people, and just see what a horror has been made of that once idyllic place where I went for my honeymoon in March 1969. We stayed at what was then the Swat Hotel, now the Serena, an elegant art-deco building with well-kept lawns and a dining room that had just stepped out of a picture-book on the Raj.
Its beautiful furniture; its waiters in their starched pugrees (turbans); its wonderful bone-china crockery and silver. I remember the two of us going to play golf at the well-designed and manicured golf course situated some miles away in the beautiful valley. I so vividly recall the gentle and cool breeze soughing through the poplar trees that were just turning green, and the blossom-laden apricot and plum trees. I wander, my friends, forgive me, but how can you and I not recall the Pakistan we knew? And for which we pine, eyes brimming with tears.
And now see what has happened to it? See what incompetence and foolishness and placing self-interest above national interest — if I hear ‘Pakistan First’ one more time I’ll scream — has done to our country. I mean enough! The last six years, particularly the last two have been spent in working out ways and means for the Commando to be either elected or reelected! The people will not easily forgive the army brass its trespasses this time around. Consider:
A quick recap on the Swat/Malakand situation. Maulana Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Maulana Radio, the present rebel leader in Malakand Division, is the man who took hundreds of innocent young boys into Afghanistan as ‘Mujahideen’ to fight the infidel, just prior to and during the US assault on that country. Took them to their deaths surely.
His methodology was simple. He would take a truckload or two of young boys including his own sons into Afghanistan, drop the rest there and bring his own back. And do the same again, and again. As the Americans intensified the bombing and put an end to Taliban rule, Sufi Mohammad’s young ‘Mujahideen’ either got their heads blown off or disappeared into the torture chambers of Bagram or Guantanamo or Mangla or wherever.
Back home the relatives of those poor young men began to bay for Sufi Mohammad’s blood. Instead of letting him face justice at the hands of his peers what does the government do? It locks him up in Dera Ismail Khan jail, thus affording him protective custody.
Nothing to be too surprised about, for this is yet another example of the government’s ineptitude.
No article, no piece these days can be complete without most fulsome praise of My Lords, Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his brother judges who have refused to take oath under the new PCO. Which judge before him had the gumption to face down the chiefs of the most frightening of the state’s agencies? Who before him extracted some of the ‘disappeared’ from the clutches of the cruel men who run these agencies and care not for the pain they cause to fellow beings?
While his endeavours to, at the very least, locate the ‘disappeared’ were brought to an abrupt halt by his second dismissal, he is to be saluted for at least giving some hope to the relatives of some whose custody the ‘agencies’ had to admit.
Which Chief Justice was as hard working as him? His Lordship reducing the cases pending before the court for decades from 32,000 when he took over to 7,000 when he was dismissed the first time around? Who heard the cries of the poor and the defenceless more than Iftikhar Chaudhry, and then proceeded to provide them succour?
Very few judges in Pakistan’s history were as correct as Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Though it is an aberration to take his name in the same breath as Maulvi Mushtaq’s (for the younger of my readers, Justice Maulvi Mushtaq headed the LHC bench that sentenced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to death) who did not recuse himself despite ZAB’s strenuous appeals that he do so because Maulvi bore Bhutto a grudge, Justice Iftikhar recused himself when the Commando’s case came up for hearing before the SC.
I can only pray that other judges model themselves on this good man; and more than that, that he is restored as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
Bushism of the week: “I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States’ military says, that you can’t win this military.” — President George W. Bush on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, DC, Oct 17, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
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