Saturday, August 30, 2014

Nawaz Shariff should respectfully resign for the sake of orderly democratic Pakistan

Nawaz Shariff should respectfully resign for the sake of orderly democratic Pakistan.

By Mike Ghouse
The Ghouse Diary.com

Shariff was elected by the people and the same people are asking him to step down - and that is indeed a genuine democratic thing to do. He should remember that peaceful demonstrations earn respectable name for Pakistan in the world, and if he honors the peaceful people, he will have a place in history.

Pakistan turmoil, courtesy Rueters
On the other hand if Nawaz Shariff goes berserk, he will cause Pakistan to go violent and endanger his own existence.
What does he think of himself, a Netanyahu or Al-Baghdadi that he can silence the people by brutal force?

If he were any smart, he would go on the national TV and appreciate the people and welcome them for peacefully exercising their democratic right to protest, and do what the people ask; to recount the ballot or resign. Is that a problem?   More than likely, the demonstrations would have been called off and he would have remained respectable and would have won another landslide victory, but the he did not have the brains to do that. 

Every peace loving person should be outraged at this dude for deploying 10,000 Special Forces to disperse the peaceful non-violent crowds seeking political solutions. On the top of it, he ordered firing at nearly 200 injured women, which reminds me of Jalianwala Bagh incident where British forces did the same thing and women jumped into the wells and died. I am proud of these women who stood and took the bullets. But, this is outrageous and unacceptable, he ain’t no Baghdadi. 

When the bad guys were killing fellow Pakistanis be it Shia, Christians, Ahmadies and others, Shariff let it happen, and now when his days are numbered, he deploys 10,000 forces to squelch the peaceful demonstrators. It does not work that way.

What kind of non-sense is he talking about when he says he wants to protect democracy? If he steps down respectfully, he will have a chance to continue in some form of governance, if not, he knows her kuttay ke din hotay hain, he has seen every dog had his day, and he will be one too if he goes against the will of the people.

Its time for Obama to ask Shariff to step down, it is in our (American) interest and the interests of the people of Pakistan to have stability in the region, we cannot have more than one Afghanistan.  I hope Obama will not wait until it becomes messy to ask Shariff to step down; as he did the right thing with Mubarak in asking him to step down by siding with the people of Egypt. Obama made the same mistake with that Idiot Maliki in Iraq, had Maliki formed an inclusive government, we would not have seen this mess. Of course, all these problems stem from Bush's criminal adventure in Iraq. Obama is a good guy, but he needs to be a bully to deal with the bullies.

It’s time for Obama to be on the side of the Pakistani people and not with the guys who are desperate to remain in power. Be smart and be with the people and not with the transients.  All Obama has to do is ask Nawaz Shariff to announce recounting, or announce a date for re-election. It will restore calmness. The people of Pakistan deserve that.


Nazia Khan, Aqeel Qureshi and a few others are out there witnessing the mayhem first hand, and I hope to incorporate their quotes in the piece, I am writing on our goofy foreign policy about nurturing democracies.

Mike Ghouse is a public speaker, thinker, writer and a commentator on Pluralism at work place, politics, religion, society, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, food and foreign policy. All about him is listed in several links at www.MikeGhouse.net and his writings are at www.TheGhousediary.com and 10 other blogs. He is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

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