Pakistan at the Doorsteps of a Revolution
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburgh, CA
Nature, meanwhile, had something else in store for Teddy Roosevelt. After the assassination of President McKinley, he became the most powerful President of America. So powerful was he that his successor, President Taft, once had to confess, "When I am addressed as Mr. President, I turn to see whether you are not at my elbow"
" A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous." - Mao Tse Tung,1927 In August, 2008, in one my articles titled "President Zardari: Pakistan's Destiny or Disaster" I had written, "It is our earnest hope and prayer that Zardari succeeds where others have failed.
And he better, because failure this time would not be a simple change of leadership". Alas! Why it became so hazardous to be a Zardari in so short a period?
Near the end of the article, I had surmised, "He should not let himself be fooled by the notion that he got the highest office because he was clever, exceptionally intelligent or a highly pious man. God wished this to happen, and it happened so". My second sort of warning was wrapped in the example of a mule. William Faulkner once said, "A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once". Public and the press, like the mule in the saying, `just lie in waiting when to get the opportunity to kick. Avoid that moment". The third pearl of wisdom was; avoid being arrogant, and desist from mocking others; the fourth, and the most important piece of advice given then was, "Appoint some creative, highly professional and intelligent people in the foreign office and other departments. You never win by just buying a referee". The fifth was, "...your success will be how often you look into the mirror of your performance, and see how you look like", by which I certainly did not mean that he should start dyeing his hair every day and begin wearing some very expensive suits.
After all we are not made by tailors.
In all earnestness like the legendary short-story writer Krishan Chander, what I had meant was "self-accountability". To say the least, President Zardari himself worked overtime to make this dignified job, the Presidency, as his own poison.
In America, people while electing their number ONE man, The President, (whom they elect only after having him pass through the eye of a needle), do not look in him as much for wisdom, honesty or education as they look for some sterling leadership qualities. For them, a successful president is not one who only stands on principles, but the one who has the knack to manage conflicts. Managing conflicts basically involves all the rest.
President Zardari could have earned a place for himself in the pages of history, had he "resolved and not germinated," some of the conflicts he is embroiled in. Thomas Fuller in 1732, was right when he said, "If you command wisely, you will be obeyed cheerfully". Clearly no such thing happened in Pakistan under Zardari's rule.
Democracy as was maintained by Adlai E. Stevenson, cannot be saved by heavy-weights and supermen alone. At least, people are made to believe so in Pakistan. The late Ms. Benazir, and now President Zardari, Mian Nawaz Sharif or Mr.
Altaf Hussain, and add, if you will, Mr. Asfandyar Khan, they all are like the bottles in a pharmacy with labels, showing their contents, stuck on them. Only the goodness and well-being of little, ordinary people is what guarantees democracy. These leaders of Pakistan shamefacedly have turned the honorable people of Pakistan into worms, crawling for a loaf of bread; or a tea-spoon of sugar, or running for a place of shelter and security like a weather-beaten dog.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1884) could not have been more correct when he said, "In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called Kings".
While the army is fighting its war against the kind of terrorism that the country had never faced in its entire history, Mian Nawaz Sharif is heard saying, "The rich crop of terrorists grows only in martial law regimes". This may be true, but is it the whole truth? The country's short-sighted clergy can be heard on TV, denouncing America, India and Israel for every thing taking place in Pakistan or in the world. The point of discussion here is not how much blame can be assigned to these countries for Pakistan's ills. The most urgent issue is: how can the nosedive flight of Pakistan into destruction be stalled?
How should a patient suffering from cancer in the last stages, take that physician's advice who keeps on telling him every time he visits him for treatment, " Your cancer is bad. You got it from the chemical factory in whose vicinity you have been living. That factory is the main source of cancer. Its removal precedes your cure. It is all coming from there". An unfortunate and ill-starred Pakistan is like that patient. The country's leadership and its mullahs are the diagnosing physicians and the likeness of the factory is too obvious to warrant any explanation. Even if the arsenic factory is removed, the real question still remains unanswered. Will the patient's disease go away automatically and he will survive? The irony becomes more complex because the factory in the parable remains disputed: some call it arsenic; a good majority terms it as a medicine-producing, life-sustaining factory. It is like weather; everybody complains about it, but few can do much about it.
The record-high number of foreign students who came to American universities for even their undergraduate studies last year, had been from four countries: namely, India, China, South Korea and Vietnam.
In Pakistan, the terrorists forced the Zardari government to close all the educational institutions in the entire country. Did it ever happen so anywhere in the world? The anchor persons openly appear to be siding with terrorists in the country by bringing forth only those people for discussion who are good at shifting the blame on others. For them, it is always the absent one who is the culprit - never the one sitting in front. Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote, "There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over soul.
There is the despot who tyrannizes over soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince (Rulers); the second is called the Pope (the Clergy); and the third is called the People".
Pakistan is a victim of all the three.
The footsteps of a French Revolution can be heard from a nearby distance in Pakistan. This bloody Revolution (1789-1799) started as a result of bad governance of the monarch, Louis XVI, and of his two main clients, namely the nobility class and the clergy. Substitute the three with President Zardari's bad governance; the feudal- mill-owning class of the parliamentarians, and the disruption-loving Toola of the religious people. The Transparency International puts Pakistan on number 42. Last year it was on 47.
What a performance! Heavy taxes (Corves), levied to serve the King and the military, and the indecisiveness of the King as to what to do, and the mismanagement of the institutions virtually had driven the French people to the edge of a precipice. They felt deprived, hungry and angry. Seven years war with neighbors, and heavy involvement in the Independence of America had bankrupted France. Add to it the weather factor. Bad weather led to bad harvest which resulted in the high prices of the flour. Food riots broke out. The slogan of the age of `Enlightenment, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity', sounded like music to the ears of the crawling people of France. Lawyers and politicians like Maximilien Robespierre and Danton, began sanctifying terror, like the terrorists did in Afghanistan and Pakistan, contenting, "Virtue without terror is powerless and weak".
So the "reign of terror" was initially conceived of as an emergency measure, a temporary remedy - "strike straight fear in a way that people live in fear". But, terrorism like a dammed river, picks its own momentum when let loose. Robespierre himself became its victim. Rebels and priests came to be tied together with heavy boulders so that they sank without a chance of escape. Even the softness of ones hand (a hand without callus meant the man had never worked) was deemed enough justification for his killing. Pakistan is passing through that period of reign of terror. The only difference is that so far only the innocent and the harmless are its victims. Next could be, as it was during the French Revolution, the elite, the nobility, the clergy because terrorism knows no religion and it follows no restraints.
Pakistan right now needs a President or Prime Minister as powerful and robust as was Theodore Roosevelt who was thrust into Presidency in 1901 because "his political bosses" had wished to sideline him.
He, as governor of New York, was too hot for them to handle. Nature, meanwhile, had something else in store for Teddy Roosevelt. After the assassination of President McKinley, he became the most powerful President of America. So powerful was he that his successor, President Taft, once had to confess, "When I am addressed as Mr. President, I turn to see whether you are not at my elbow". Hollow men can't be strong.
Wearing a lion's skin, one does not become a lion, be it President Zardari or his henchman Mr. Gilani.
What did Teddy Roosevelt do?
He tamed the big guys as he went after them boldly and defiantly and earned for himself the title of a "Lion-Tamer". "It is the duty of the President to act upon the theory that he is the steward of the people... to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless prohibited by the Constitution or the law". Two of Pakistan's four provinces are virtually without the government writ.
The main party leaders are seeing normalcy by handing over the province of Baluchistan to the same Sardars or to their children who are in open revolt. Mian Nawaz Sharif likens the military action to the one taken in East Pakistan. If Sardars and feudal lords, Maliks and Khans and Vaderas are so indispensable for the country, then why have democracy.
Let them run their fiefdoms the way they have been running since ages.
Re-naming Pakistan as "Awami Jamhoria Pakistan", as suggested by the ANP, and as endorsed quickly by the MQM, is an anomaly, a basic contradiction in the character of the main party leaders. There is a Louis XVI sitting in them.
The Zardari government could not reign in the sugar-mill owners.
President Theodore Roosevelt regulated the food and meat industry because he believed in hitting hard at the problem. He once said, "In life as in a football game, the principle is: Hit the Line Hard". He conserved land and wildlife for the future generations by enacting laws. He introduced a progressive, activist pattern of Presidency. He appointed specialists and experts and technocrats to investigate the malpractices, and brought those in fault to book. Future presidents try to emulate him.
A Pakistan cabinet minister prides himself for wearing a 300,000 rupees pair of shoes; and the prime minister allegedly decks his wrist with a $55K wrist-watch, not to talk of the fancy suits and ties, while the people of Pakistan crawl like animals for a sack of flour or sugar. They provided the best means to these leaders to live like or even better than the kings. They also did not expect from these Zardaris and Gilanis and Sharifs to gallop a distance of 100 miles on horse back, like Teddy Roosevelt did, to prove that they are tough; nor did they expect from them to have boxing bouts in the PM/President House, like President Roosevelt did... he even lost his left eye in such a bout; all in all, what they expected from them was that they should make good the promises they made at the time of the elections of 2007. They could not unite the nation even on such a matter as terrorism of which the people are a daily victim. Their "Ifs", "Buts" and "Therefores" never allowed the people to know the difference between, "terrorism", and their "legitimate demands". It is all messed up there.
Leadership is all about keeping the hopes and dreams of people alive: in one's being strong enough to see them getting realized. This can happen only when a leader has a vision and the thrust of a personality and popularity, which is backed up by a venerable past. Is there any such stuff present in Pakistani leadership? Perhaps Homer was right when he said, "It is not possible to fight beyond your strength, even if you strive". Vacate please as you cannot deliver.
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