A Rhyme for Fools -- 2

Ferozk,
In many respects you have revealed your contradictions within, qouting the half eaten cake.
Over 80% people of this country are not empowered to play a meanigful role in the national polity. Yet you dwell in a sweeping statement blaming all.

To the contrary, the state apparatus occupies too much space and leaves no room for others to function.

As for discussion, I have already given an explanation based on the trinitarianism. It involves a paradigm shift and as a scholar, you know how difficult it is.

Cheerios

Feroz,

While I agree with Rozaiba that you are beginning to sound more and more like an establishmentarian of the Ayub Khan mindset who puts the cart before the horse... there is some logic to what you say... after all representative democracy has its own evolution and it is a process. Each passing military dictatorship has to make new concessions to civil society, press etc... each passing military dictatorship is forced to seek more legitimacy from the people and constitutional gymnastics instead of the gun.

Re: # 6

Mantolives, there is no cart or horse in Pakistan; the cart is broken and a wreck and the horse is dead - has been for a long time!

There is no money to buy a new horse, because all the money has been stolen!

Those, who had the skills to repair the cart, had the good sense to migrate out of Pakistan with their skills and the those left, are too unskilled to know how to repair the cart!

Ciao

in a few years, military will go back to barracks, ``analysts`` who are too hung up over their own bs and in love with the word Pakistan(``pakistan`` word count here is > 100) will trip over to find the lamest metaphors to hype the whole thing then a few years later military will do a couple of operation midnight jackals, a few kargils here and there and got itself back into the driving seat. a new general will revitalize a new muslim league to authenticate quaid`s ML and his various oxymoronic farmoodaats.

rhyme of fools? circus of jackasses posing as analysts and intellectuals is more like it.

Re: # 5

Raw_Dust, the intent of the article was to offer a reason, why the military will never ``get out of the driving seat`` in Pakistan.

The military has ingrained itself so deeply into the Pakistani national fabric that there is no solution left, short of tearing the fabric itself in order to remove the stain, which blights Pakistan.

There is no peaceful or legal or constitutional or institutional way left to remove the influence and dominace of the military from the non-military spheres of Pakistan and one option, which is left suggests that there has to be a final solution. In the paraphrased words of Abraham Lincoln, this nation cannot continue to exist half civilian and half military and sooner rather than later, the issue will have to be decided.

A time for a hard choice is fast approaching and this nation will have to decide what it wants, because it can no longer postpone the envitable.

Ciao

Feroz:

this sounds more like another rhyme of beating around the bush...

there is this and a thousand other academic arguments. at the end everyone comes down to the same thing: what rules will we all agree to follow. Be it any rule. Constitution of 1973 is one set of rules. The mutation of it in 1999 is another set of rules. Further mutations of it are the LFO.

Select one set of rules, any rules- unless the faujiz do not accept a set of rules they too have to follow, all this education first, or economic development first is garbage.

An agreement that everyone abides by the same set of rules, with an independent election commission and judiciary is something everyone agrees to - other than the Faujiz.

To dismiss it simply because it is not 100% `foolproof` was quite a childish argument. What`s even more childish is to imply that institutions like the judiciary or election commission are `developing` and maturing. Institutions are never perfect, but through error develop self-correcting mechanisms. These mechanisms reflect maturity. When you change the rules every other day as per the men in uniform, there is no chance for the self-correcting mechanisms to develop.

Re: # 4

Even though I am in a holistic agreement with your suggestions, I would have to disagree with them, and you, in principle.

The overall situation in Pakistan is too paradoxical to be neatly and effortlessly placed within any given solution. The basic nature of the problem in Pakistan is the lack of a civic commitment, by the people of this nation, towards the betterment and welfare of this nation itself. The people of Pakistan do not want, and they do not favor, any form of an organized accountability, which can prevent them from being above the law. This is a nation of people, who relish and exult with unmasked pride in breaking the law and feel socially ashamed, when they obey the law.

The existence of a law; any law or an institution in Pakistan is seen by the Pakistani society as a threat to its own interests and these interest groups cover the entire gambit of social, political and cultural spectrums in Pakistan. Hence, there is a national consensus in Pakistan, within all interest groups, to make certain that any organized or institutionalized accountability will be a failure in Pakistan.

The problem in Pakistan is not a lack of independent institutions and neither is it a problem of a non-implementation of any constitutionalism. The problem in Pakistan is the character of the Pakistani people. Institutions in any nation reflect the people who administer them and therefore, no institution will succeed in Pakistan, regardless of how independent it is, because the Pakistanis who will administer them will be generally corrupt themselves and hence, they will corrupt the institutions in order to seek the perpetuation of their own self-interests over any institutional or national interest in Pakistan.

The weakest link in any independent institutional chain in Pakistan, is and, will remain the Pakistani people and unless, the Pakistanis develop a respect for institutionalism, no independent institution – no matter how pious or excellent, will ever succeed in Pakistan. Therefore, the problem in Pakistan is much deeper than merely wishing that an independent institution or working within a dysfunctional constitutional legalism and seeking to improve it, will solve the problem; because it will not solve the problem.

The question before us is not how to create and sustain an independent institution or how to agree on a set of constitutional rules that everyone agrees upon but how to remove our common national faults, whose existence for last sixty years has contributed towards the development of a flawed Pakistani national character. The final and ultimate reform of Pakistan has to start with its people and any reform or idea, which ignores this reality, is destined for a spectacular disaster. As long as this nation and its people are not willing to put their a limit on their self-interests, they will not agree on anything which does not cater to their own sense of individual avarice and they will not agree on anything; constitution or LFO or an independent election commission.

The fault, my dear Rozaiba, is not in our stars but in ours selves and again; the words of the Greeks remind us – physician, heal thy self!

Ciao


P.S.:

Allow me to share an antidote of Pakistani respect for others’ rights with you. There was a cake in the fridge, with a note asking people not to eat as it was for some one’s birthday, and when a person went to get the cake out of the fridge, the person discovered the cake half eaten, with the note still present and untouched!

A nation in which a simple cake is not safe from our self-interest, what makes you think that a people of a nation, who steal a simple cake, will respect any independent election commission or any thing else for that matter?

Independent in Pakistan means self-interest and everything and everyone here is independent! ROFL

Military interventions in Pakistan are a well researched subject. Some of the scholars who have done a painstaking job are Dr Askari, Bilal Hashmi, Sayyed Ali (late), David Oldlinger, Morritz Jannowitz, Stephen P Cohen and Amos Perlmettur.

I disagree with this hypothesis on the pretext, that democracy in India has worked from day one, where pockets of poverty are more widespread than Pakistan. Also it is recent that new genre of educated people have begun to contest elections in India and that introduction of BA in Pakistran should have brought better results.

The paradigm of praetorianism in Pakistan revolves around the three elites. Political, Bureaucratic and Military. The political were right there even in 1913 to write off Sir Salim Ullah. The controlled the political process in cahoots with the bureaucrats and later the military. The bureaucrats learned to behave like the Brown Sahibs. The military intervened not to safegaurd its economic corparate interests but rather to fill vacuums on the beck and call of politicians and behind the scene manouvering of the bureaucracy. Over time all acquired a taste of their own.

So what we need a paradigm shift.

How? We could discuss

Re: # 3

Please, lets discuss!

Please make a hyopthesis, and lets see where we go from there.

Ciao

A very important article that exposes the reasons why the army is so entrenched in the economy of PAkistan.

- use their clout to determine the direction of liberalization and align themselves with private corporations to stifle competition and create entry conditions for their favourites. take the cuts in Swiss accounts.
- use the new economic opportunities in stock trading to push their dirty laundry into the stock exchage. We need to see the recent KSE rallies with great concern.
- keep the financial resources in their hands and milk the country.
- change the Commerce and Taxation policies in connivance with the favourites and their relatives in the industry.
- get as much aid as possible and divert the aid amounts elsewhere by fudging the accounts.

It is all about money........and Army knows how to make it when in power...............now there is no possibility of any civilian government coming back since the army has tasted the big kickback bucks...............

``The evolutionary process of democracy suggests that once the civilian political institutions are strong enough, they will challenge the primacy of the military’s interests in Pakistan, which are not so much political as they are corporatist``(author)

my dear FR Khan if I may be excused for saying this -- yours is a banal chicken-egg statement as to who came first --

how ``the evolutionary process of democracy`` will grow from a sapling in 1947 to a mature healthy strong tree in 2006 in Pakistan (like it did in neighboring India) if the process is interrupted almost every 5 years by the Pakistan army dictators --

no Prime minister has been ALLOWED to complete his or her tenure -- except that pathetic Shujaat`s bizarre 3 months -- in the almost 67 years history of turmoil in Pakistan.

this army of yours is 100% political -- and like politicians, 100% corrupt -- like no other army in this civilian ruled world -- except may be Indonesia`s Suharto or those monkey Generals of Burmese Jungle.....

.....that through the CORRUPTION of grabbing the civilian governments every so often -- and then installing all its army cronies retired or unretired in all positions civilian -- it has looted Pakistan treasury repeatedly -- and FATTEND itself into a monopolistic corporatist eagle...

.....holding all aspects of Pakistani life hostage in its TALONS.

I am sure you are NOT -- but at times you do sound in a round about way like a verbose apologist -- for Musharraf and Musharraf`s army......

Re: # 1

I think, you must be reading from a Pakistani history text, because you seemed to be misformed!

Pakistan is nearly 60 years and not 67 years old! ROFL

Ciao