Pakistan’s short history of seventy five years has been marked by two remarkable periods of progress, hope and promise. Unfortunately, the periods were short, and were thwarted by wily and unscrupulous politicians and lawyers. The first was under the Prime Minister ship of Liaquat Ali Khan, who was brutally shot to death at a public meeting in Rawalpindi, where he was expected to announce important changes marking an independent course in the orientation of the country’s foreign policy. Liaquat Ali Khan had raised the country aloft in in spite of predictions and machinations by ill-wishers that the country would collapse within a few months of its creation. The murder mystery was never solved; the perpetrators had played the dirty game of “shoot the victim, and then shoot the shooter”.
The second period of progress and hope was provided by General Parvez Musharraf, who was the president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. For the first time in Pakistan's history, Musharraf established and empowered democracy at the grassroots - the cradle of democracy in all truly democratic countries - through the Nazim System, paid off the expensive, high-interest IMF loans, and opened up the electronic media, which made the advent of a new dawn possible in Pakistan . Unfortunately, this second attempt to bring better times to Pakistan was thwarted by Musharraf's successors: unscrupulous and wily politicians who set upon his character assassination during and after and quickly reversed the reforms which Musharraf had brought about.
This book is a selection of articles published by the author in different newspapers and magazines before and after Musharraf's tenure. It highlights Musharraf's character as an honest, peace-loving and patriotic president, unlike what his critics would have us believe.
