Our Responsibilities as Citizens
By Misbah U. Azam, PhD
Phoenix, AZ
After the exit of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from the political scene, the country was either controlled by megalomaniac dictators who ruled it with an iron hand or governed by visionless politicians who were never given the chance by the king makers to really rule the country. After almost 30 years, a real sovereign parliament has made its way to the corridors of power in Pakistan.
Contrary to what the ex-rulers are whining about, the leadership of the major parties has demonstrated tremendous maturity and vision in resolving differences to form the coalition.
Political analysts who are appreciative of these developments, are also serving a note of warning: the elected leadership should be fully cognizant of their responsibilities to the people, who voted them into the parliament. Mushahid Hussain very rightly said that the Establishment has already taken the back seat and the assembly is fully sovereign to make its own decisions. However, history tells that to sustain a viable democracy, it is not only the leaders who bear the burden of responsibility; it is also the people and the institutions, which have to shoulder a significant degree of responsibility. One of the first and foremost duties of the new parliamentarians is to keep their eyes and ears open and serve as a mirror to the people who are in power and control the destinies of millions. It should be fully realized that in a democratic dispensation, the politicians’ accountability is done by the people and not by agencies like the NAB, created by self-acclaimed ‘messiahs’ to try only those who refuse to collaborate with them.
Although, the electronic media has already initiated the debate about the much-needed reforms in political parties, it is absolutely imperative that the debate should be progressively enlarged and heated and gutsy politicians who believe in reforms, boldly air their views. They should not be fearful of an internal backlash and speak their mind, like Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, who courageously supported such reforms in his own party the day he came out of the prison. Instead of getting into an irrelevant debate on how the coalition will fulfill its promises, people should help them by looking into the future - not past -- to make sure that our new leadership will be successful in delivering what they had promised and hence the resulting win-win situation for both, the new leadership and the people.
The opposition seems to be uniting, which is a very welcome development; however, the opposition parties should redefine themselves as independent entities instead of expecting to work under the Establishment’s umbrella or associating themselves to some dictator to be in power.
