Opinion

(Once again, the brilliance of the lilies of the fields lights up the mountains and the valleys,

Last January, Dr Tahirul Qadri, spiritual leader of Pakistan Awami Tehreek, led an historic long march on Islamabad aimed at tackling the malaise in Pakistan’s body politic. It was aimed at putting a stop to the flouting of constitutional provisions and paving the way for true democracy, which has eluded the people of Pakistan for several decades.

For five days in mid-January this year, his supporters braved the icy weather while the whole country sat riveted to their TV and radio sets, enthralled by the voice of truth and irrefutable logic. The hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan were won over, and their hearts were beating in consonance with Dr Tahirul Qadri and his brave band of men, women and children. The only voices of discord were raised by jealous politicians who felt threatened, and the upstart media moguls of Pakistan, conspiracy-theorists who try to character-assassinate the singer, without even listening to his song. His march shook the corridors of power.

Unfortunately, the onward march floundered owing to a misplaced trust in a corrupt judiciary and a Machiavellian scheme hatched by politicians to have the march called off, by false pretences.

It is heartening to note that Dr Qadri is keeping on his struggle, and his “Awami Tehreek” is spreading his message across the electronic media through articles and hard-hitting talk show interviews, notably on those of truth-talking journalists such as Dr Danish and Mubashir Luqman of ARY TV. His “haq goyee” (speaking the truth) and rhetoric is reminiscent of the great leaders of the sub-continent in the past, such as Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali.

What is more heartening is the fact that he is the only public figure in Pakistan who has diagnosed the real disease in our body politic: a parliamentary system of government which, in Pakistan, has become a government of the MNAs, by the MNAs and for the MNAs (of the ruling party) based on bribery and corruption, and an uneven division of the country without devolution of power to the grassroots.

In an article published in the Pakistan Link on August, 11, 1995, under the title “The Problem and the Solution”, I had pointed out that the political problems and lack of stability in Pakistan could be traced back to two root causes:

in spite of the fact that forty-eight years (now 66 years) had elapsed since its independence, the country had not been able to forge a national identity, and
neither the parliamentary system of government nor the military dictatorships, under which the country had been governed, had been able to deliver the goods.

a re-division of the country based on the twelve former divisions of West Pakistan under One Unit (Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Sargodha, Dera Ismail Khan, Quetta, Kalat, Multan, Bahawalpur, Khairpur, Hyderabad and Karachi) plus Azad Kashmir, and
a tripartite system of government with a popularly elected president, and autonomous and independent administrative, legislative and judicial arms acting as checks and counter-checks upon each other.

Since then, I have written on the subject from time to time in a number of articles in the Link, Newsline and the Nation, Pakistan. I had the opportunity to submit the article to Lt. General Tanvir Naqvi, architect of the brilliant Nazim System, which restored power to the people at the grassroots for the first time in Pakistan’s history, before the succeeding politicians started messing around with it, without any resolution in sight. Lt. Gen. Naqvi was kind enough to read the article, but said that President Musharraf’s government was bound to stay with the 1973 Constitution.

This will be Dr Tahirul Qadri’s biggest challenge: how is he going to bell the cat, the “holy cow” of the 1973 Constitution? He has proposed a system based on 35 provinces and a popularly elected prime minister or president, who would select an administration of technocrats based on the best brains in the country. Godspeed to Dr Qadri’s movement. Hopefully, it will acquire enough momentum so that the powers that be are forced to have a referendum on this issue, so that necessary constitutional changes can be made to make this dream a reality.

The need of the hour is for Dr Qadri’s party to commission a panel, consisting of experts such as Justice (R) Nasir Aslam Zahid and Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, to debate the issue and give form and substance to his proposals in the form of a draft, so that it could be put before the people at the appropriate time.

This is the only way that a free and prosperous Pakistan could emerge, shake off the curses of ethnicity and feudalism, and join the comity of forward-looking, truly democratic countries.