The Grand Old Duke of Pakistan

I love the English

The English can be so wicked; dressing up the most scathing criticism with the novelty of a nursery rhyme exemplifies that kind of pretend kindness that is equivalent of taking long knives in the back whilst seeing everyone smile at the event.

The debacle that Pakistan has settled into is not only puzzling but farcical; a tin-pot general who thinks his incumbency would be threatened by the judiciary imposes emergency rule and sacks the bench and puts his puppets on the bench.

Pulling all stops

He stops people from gathering to protest his megalomania as the constitution is caught between the limbo of being suspended and being the basis of the rule that is martial law in everything but name.

The election date became a moveable feast that moved from January to February and then back to January, but nobody is free to campaign for elections that would take place in less than 60 days if they do.

The khaki-thug who commands an air of grudging respectability from the West because of the perverseness of the war on terror might just find that his firstname Pervez is really a colloquial corruption of perverse as people get corralled into prison with impunity and house arrest orders get imposed and removed; the cordons and barricades swung in and out of place like a matador coaxing a bull – and I am in Spain – Pakistan might well run out of prison space as the brigands in police uniform mob the public with sticks and staves and slaps.

Drunk with intoxicating power

When he said imposing this rule which seems to have no focus apart from whims that seem to chart the course of a completely inebriated man on his way home in the witching hour was the hardest thing he had ever done – one can see how power-drunkenness that lead one to do foolish things.

However, enough of this and let us see how history would remember the Grand Old Duke of Pakistan and notice that history just has a way of repeating itself location not withstand – the similarities are left for you to note.

The nursery rhyme

O! The Grand old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up

And when they were down, they were down

And when they were only halfway up

They were neither up nor down.

This is as I remember it, we marched, stood up and sat down to the events depicted in the nursery rhyme none the wiser about the fact that we were making fun of an army general.

I would not pen the Pakistani version, there are literary proponents ad poets in that country better talented to give us a nursery rhyme that depicts the events in Pakistan today for posterity.

General Pervez Musharraf would be remembered well maybe not the way he would want to be remembered but that shows how much control we have of the present and none particularly of the future and history.

Preferences

Pakistan’s Political Crisis

Musharraf cannot fool us again

Guns to the rule

That Pakistan is caught in the throes of those who wield power through the comfort and support of the barrel of the gun rather than popular political mandate is an unfortunate development.

However, that would not have mattered to me because the regime of General/President Pervez Musharraf has thrived on the basis of America and the West putting the war on terror above real democratic reform in Pakistan.

Despite that, there is still trouble in Afghanistan; Osama bin Laden still sends us videos of home life and the Northwest of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan is still as ungovernable as it ever was – terror has visited the main cities as self-interest amongst the leading politicians leaves carnage in their wake.

General Musharraf believes that imposing emergency rule which is in fact martial law in everything but name would stop Pakistan from committing suicide.

We would be fools no longer

Regarding Pakistan, we have been taken for fools for a long time and this would have been believable if Musharraf had just come round to clean out a seething mess, but he is the one who has presided over Pakistan over the last eight years and to pretend he is not only instrumental and central to the problems of today is dishonest to say the least.

To then address the world and contend that our expectations of democracy in Pakistan are too lofty since the democracies in the West have had centuries to mature is to pull the wool over our eyes – Is India’s democracy not the same age as the time Pakistan got its independence?

Pakistan, Bangladesh (East Pakistan until 1971) and India used to be part of the same entity of the British Empire – British India - up until the independence in 1947; India has made the greatest progress in democratic maturity whilst the other two countries have vegetated into quasi-religious militancy with fragile political frameworks that pander to the cult of political dynasties.

General Musharraf has no answers to the problems in Pakistan and egregious exercise of military-backed executive remit in dismissing judges who contend with how the constitution is being abused; the arresting of political minds who would question this power-grab and the suspension of the constitution are only going to make matters worse.

Accepting the unacceptable

Unfortunately, the war on terror would prevent a proper condemnation of these extra-constitutional developments and it sets no template by which other military juntas around the world can be de-politicised.

The people of Pakistan would have to rise up and demand that they be given the right to decide who presides over their nation; it is unlikely that General Musharraf in his uniform or Mr. Pervez Musharraf in a Taliban tunic would win any popular support.

History and case studies all around the world where soldiers have marched rough-shod over the yearnings of real democratic reform show that they only have the terrifying effect of the fear of gun-borne retribution; they bring nothing of political progress to their countries, rather, they entrench corruption, impunity and human-rights abuses.

That is not to say democracy has all the answers, but Pakistan does need to be put back on the road to real representative democracy without some tin-pot General trying to lecture us on government having lost all credibility as a leader that can be trusted.

The sham of civilian government we are told still exists when the political leadership have been placed under arrest, restrictions exist on news reporting and the usurpation of powers that belong to the judiciary and legislature leaves much to be desired – as any government without a popular mandate always finds itself at variance with the judiciary that it tries either to subsume or emasculate that branch of government.

At no time has it become so necessary for General Musharraf to seek political asylum in some far-flung land and allow for Pakistan to be delivered from the throes of suicide that he and him only has created and fostered.