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10 March 2011 By Saeed Qureshi
The erstwhile jail bird and
currently the president of Pakistan his Excellency
Asif Ali Zardari hovers over the globe in the
presidential aircraft, like a bewitched midget,
touching one capital after another. The Prime Minister
Gilani is busy in his frantic efforts to make unworthy
compromises for remaining in power. His beloved son is
so far successful in blunting all judicial and
executive efforts to nab him in one of the stupendous
money making scams. The Defense minister Rahman Malik
is in the lead for his inimitable skill of compulsive
lying. With his unremitting falsifications, he
reinforces the belief in the reincarnation with
Goebbels' soul in him. The crime is mushrooming as a way
of life. The people in the streets, markets, public
places and even in their homes are being targeted and
killed for a host of insidious reasons. The law
minister Babar Awan is successfully breaking and
defying the law by not taking the judiciary's decision
with an iota of seriousness and reverence. President
has appointed a person as governor of Punjab who is
involved in a big bribe case. The dauntless and superbly
professional GEO reporter Wali Khan Babar laid down
his life in the line of duty. His case is allowed to
become irrelevant and cold as to lose its urgency. The
two dutiful individuals who witnessed the gruesome
murder have also been killed in mysterious
circumstances, understandably, to erase the evidence
against the heinous culprits, more power than the
state of Pakistan. The Federal Minister for
Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, an illustrious, liberal and
patriotic Pakistani from the Christian community was
gunned down evidently by the same assassins who
assassinated the governor of Punjab Salman Taseer.
These are high profile murders that have come to the
public limelight. Those common folks who are murdered
for ransom, or in gang wars or for extortion money, or
for sectarian reasons are countless. The country
called Pakistan is gradually or rapidly turning into
the killing fields of the citizens. The internal and external
outcries for catching the murderers of these slain
marvelous Pakistanis are cries in the wilderness. If a
political party in power has failed to vigorously and
promptly pursue the murder of its own chairperson -
the daughter of the founder of the party Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, how it can be expected to be serious, earnest
and prompt on other murder cases. We have a government that looks
like the scarecrow or a phantom or a weathercock,
utterly docile or unfit to determine which way to go
and what to do and how to do. The recent cabinet
reshuffle patently was an exercise in futility as the
change or reshuffling crooks with crooks is not going
to improve the horrendous situation. There is no check
on the fast deteriorating law and order situation in
Pakistan. Pakistan is paralyzed by
sectarian divide, political factionalism, a teetering
economy, the broken and obsolete civic system,
malfunctioning institutions, bad governance,
widespread corruption, glaring patronage and swelling
violence. The ineptitude, incompetence, apathy and
indifference of the people in power and also
themselves becoming part of the melee of plunder are
taking Pakistan to a situation of a failed state. The government has lost its moral
rudder to steer the country out of dire straits. It is
trying desperately against all its disqualifications
to cling to power. Its performance is as useless as
the fleeting clouds after a downpour. The government
was brought into power by the consent of the people
and by their representatives in an unprecedented show
of support, unanimity and solidity. And watch what
they have done to the nation and the country. They are
bleeding it white by their ravenous avarice and
interminable lust for money through every conceivable
channel and means. They overlook the crimes,
murders, dacoities, rape, kidnapping, poverty, power
outrages, paucity of potable water, the filth
spattered on every wall of Pakistan, perfidious mal
-nutrition, the dwindling educational standards, the
plummeting economy, sky rocketing prices, the odious
nepotism, and the dreadful drift that is tearing apart
the already fragile cohesion and frail fabric of
national unity. Asif Ali Zardari is a replica of
Col Mummar Qaddafi of Libya. Qaddafi is tenaciously
hanging on to power and seems to be unmoved despite a
civil war situation brewing up in his country. Qaddafi
has no place around the world to seek asylum or
shelter. He would, therefore, fight to the last
because he has no other option to fall back upon.
Either power or death is the message that he is giving
by his shrewish behavior. Zardari on the contrary, has
roots and considerable clout in Sindh. He is not a
ruthless dictator but a pliable greedy plutocrat whose
hunger for wealth never recedes. But like Qaddafi, he
would resort to all machinations to remain in power.
It is his sham timidly or cunning that has so far kept
him in the highest office and his party in power. He
has the knack of making most humiliating compromises
if such a behavior helps him to rule the roost. He
would simultaneously ditch his closest cohorts and
allies if he visualizes that their alliance was less
advantageous or of no avail. Precisely for this shrewdness, he
has accepted the separation of PMLN and accompaniment
of MQM, although the later is turning into an
albatross in the neck of PPP by opposing various
critical decisions such as taking back the petroleum
price hike. Zardari very well knows that, on its own,
the MQM was not in a position to form its own
government at the center and in provinces. He is also
mindful that, in comparison, the PMLN poses a greater
challenge to the PPP"s government. What Qaddafi and Zardari commonly
share is the insatiable desire to remain in power,
although they employ different tools and tactics to
retain it? Qaddafi believes in the use of uninhibited
brutal force and repression. Zardari believes in
chicanery, duplicity, deceit, cajoling and low lying
compromises. The objective of both is to hold on to
the power. But in the longer run, both theses
stratagems and maneuvers back fire. And this is what
would be happening to both these contemporary heads of
Islamic states.
The writer is a senior journalist
and a former diplomatTo
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