It is
By Saeed Malik
For
a little over a fortnight almost all the "intellectuals one hears on TV
have been making the point that a few thousand agitators holding
Islamabad hostage should not be allowed to bring down the government.
This is absolutely correct and no one can argue with this position.
But equally, there is another position, in two parts, against which no argument can stand viz:
a.
If a government closes down all avenues to legal remedies against a
charge of rigged elections from which such government draws its
legitimacy, such legitimacy MUST be considered spurious, and therefore
non-existent.
b. If a government kills 14 of its citizens who are unarmed and
wounds and hospitalises another 80, and then consistently bars every
legal remedial door to the aggrieved, such government loses its
legitimacy, and must leave [and be tried].
When a government is guilty of the above crimes and attempts to
gain immunity through deployment of state power, it leaves no door open
to its its citizens to get justice but to overthrow such power.
The
present government of Pakistan, by denying the legal right of a
plaintiff to have an electoral audit of four constituencies, and when
such plaintiff has exhausted every legal avenue of redress, is guilty of
leaving such plaintiff with no other option but to take law into his
own hands to get justice. The very aim of law is to have an ordered
society. Implementation of law MUST ensure justice and redress so that
there is no recourse to violence. When a government subverts the law to
serve its own narrow interests, it invites violence from those whose
rights it usurps.
The Punjab government, has also followed suit to deny justice to
the families of those innocents it killed out of hand, and those it
hospitalised. But it went further. It charged the victims with the crime
it perpetrated itself!
After that this government chose to hide behind the convenient
cover of a sham democracy, and a subverted constitution which facilitates rigging by the party in power, and thus its perpetuity.
There
was
a chance that the current situation could be stopped short to
reaching the present pass. and the PM took the correct decision in
this regard when he requested the Army Chief to defuse this situation,
because he was the only one whom the aggrieved parties thought they
could trust. After invoking the good offices of Gen Raheel Sharif for
this purpose, and after the Chief had held his first round of meetings
with Imran and Qadri, the very next morning the PM declared that he had
given no such mandate to the General.
Though the ISPR contradicted this
assertion by the PM, this was really not needed, because in this case
the circumstantial evidence giving a lie to the PM's statement was
sufficient in and of itself--for a good 15 hours EVERY TV channel of
Pakistan kept repeating at intervals, that the government had requested
the Army Chief to act as a mediator and guarantor vis a vis the
aggrieved parties and the government to defuse the situation. Surely the
PM and EVERY one of his ministers must have heard these broadcasts. If
these broadcasts were indeed incorrect why did NONE of them find it
convenient to issue an immediate contradiction to these news outlets??
The PM, by his flippancy, did indeed let the army down, but by the
same token he confirmed to the Chief that both Imran and Qadri were
entirely correct in not putting their faith in the word of the man
ruling Pakistan.
Nawaz Sharif and his cohorts have now left the army with only two
options. It must either move to save the country, or save a constitution
the only purpose of which seems to be, to afford a place behind which a
criminal gang can hide and despoil Pakistan.
I hope, the army chooses to save Pakistan. And while doing so, I
hope it eschews any impulse to rule the country. The army has done this
four times earlier and made a mess of it each time it tried. If the army
culls the rotten eggs from the system and fattens them for trial for
gouging out the country of its wealth, and gives to Pakistan a totally
free and fair elections, the generals will have immortalised themselves.
I started this piece with a reference to our "intellectuals" who
have sought to educate us on what has gone wrong, and where. Sadly, and
most unforgivably,not ONE of them thought it worthwhile to bring to the
attention of the people of Pakistan a fact that should have been obvious
to ALL of them i.e it is not for thieves to run a family, much less a
democracy. The motivation of a thief is only to fatten his bank
accounts,and this has nothing to do with the welfare of the people whose
wealth he is dedicated to steal.
And now I leave the readers with just one question which they must
answer honestly to themselves I.e which one among Nawaz Sharif, Zardari,
Altaf hussain, Mulla Fazal, Asfandyar Wali Khan, Aftab sherpao, and
Achakzai is NOT a dedicated thief?
A truthful answer to this question will be an answer to a myriad others.
Saeed A Malik
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