A Tribute to Musharraf
By Dawar Naqvi
Torrance, CA
Recently people of Pakistan were witness to one of the most successful and fair elections in the history of the country. We Pakistani Americans feel very proud and happy to see our country moving towards democracy. Regardless of the disconcerting situation in some parts of our country, the elections saw a good turnout.
It was one of the fairest elections ever held in the history of Pakistan. Everyone around the world acknowledged the fairness of the election. Mushrraf and his allies should be given credit for holding a fair election.
Mushrraaf has done a great deal for the country and for sustaining democracy. The previous government finished its five-year tenure. It was for the first time in the history of Pakistan that any democratic government had completed its full term.
Another very good thing that General Musharraf introduced in our system is creditability. This feature had been lacking in the past. He lived up to his promise and during the time of most of our Musharraf removed his uniform to fulfill his promise. He handed over charge of his COAS post to another General. In other words he transferred his power to another general. It was not an easy decision.
All of us should recall the statements of leaders of the PPP, PML (N), Therik-Insaf, Jamat Islami etc who raised serious doubts about the possibility of fair elections. Nawaz Sharif said on several occasions that Mushraf would never hold fair elections. His statement was published in all national newspapers. Nawaz Sharif's comments were also telecast by different TV channels. But his own party got most of the seats in Punjab, thereby disproving his claims about the fairness of the elections..
It is the duty of our politicians to support and strengthen democracy. The new government will face the formidable challenges that Musharraf had faced in the last eight years. The biggest challenge would be to deal with the extremists.
It is very easy to criticize and blame an individual for everything that goes wrong. This is what the PPP and the Muslim League (N) have been doing in the last eight years. Now we need to see they put an end to suicide attacks, how they deal with the extremists, how they protect the civilians, and how they deal with the opposition.
We all know very well that it was the Nawaz Sharif government in 1992 that called the Pakistan Army in the urban areas of Sind to crack down on a democratically elected government. They wrongly blamed it. They misguided the Pakistan Army and launched an operation against the elected government and its supporters.
Due to this short-sighted approach Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N) has been only successful in Punjab. It did not get any seats in Sind and Baluchistan and got only five seats in the NWFP. On the other hand, the PML (Q) got seats in all the provinces of the country.
