Open Letter to Prime Minister Jamali

``The right wing in India and Pakistan are different.``

hp

Thanks for the comments. Would you be able to clarify the above? Isn`t the term ``right``, ``extreme right`` etc fairly universal describing similar political manifestations?

Ijaz_gul #35 ``impulsiveness is not always correct. All of a sudden you have a heartache for Ata and Hoodbouy. Being actually involved in professional education, I have a true measure of the contributions of both.``

I am surprised you find my remarks impulsive. I have been making these same remarks for ages. I didn`t just start making them. If you get a chance to go back and read my posts, you will notice that I had been saying that Shaukut Aziz (or people like him) should be finance minister, even before the coup occured. Then when the PM was going to be appointed, I had repeatedly suggested that Shaukut Aziz would be the right person. This was three years ago.

I had also stated that Shaukut Aziz, and his team would turn the economy around. Which they did. Faster than I expected. One can make arguments about six out of ten things in the economy still being bad. But it used to be ten out ten things being bad.

As for Ata and Pervez. Are you arguing that they are not good people. Even if they aren`t, wouldn`t you agree that they (or people like them) are more qualified than feudal off-springs like Leghari. I have been making this argument for ages, also. IT is a profession I do know quite a bit about. And I follow off-shore development quite closely. It requires dynamic, and qualified leadership. This cannot be provided by Abida Hussain, Leghari and Nawaz Khokhar.

I don`t know any of the individuals mentioned above. I have nothing to gain from them. However, I think individuals along those professional lines are the best people to lead Pakistan.

``The issue is experimentation with demcracy and dispensibility of institutions.``

I really fail to understand which democracy you are talking about. Where is democracy in Pakistan? I certainly haven`t seen it? Does it exist within the political parties? Does it exist in feudal lands? Does it exist in the social system? Does it exist in university politics? Does it exist in religious shariahs? It obviously doesn`t exist in the Army>

Where is this democracy that we all seem to think will emerge from nowhere, if Jamalis, Legharis, Fahims, Bhuttos, Mehrs, Hussains, Khattaks etc. are allowed to rule over the country for the next forty years. Could you explain exactly how it will emerge. Please do so in detail. Because I ask this question of everyone who makes this argument. They keep making the argument, but never provide an explanation.

The, ``civil`` societies of the world, fought brutal civil wars, or had to grow for centuries to get rid of landed aristocracies and its influence on society, before they could become free of them. The emergence of the Army etc. is only a consequence of such dominance. It is not the cause. In Pakistan, the breakaway of Bangladesh is a consequence of landed aristocracy in Pakistan.

Pakistan, for the next many years, in any kind of leadership, regardless of where it emerges from, will be a game of individuals. Not of instituitons. Insitutions do not arrive from thin air. They don`t arrive by merely making arguments. They are not constructed by individuals, who themselves are harmed by it - this includes the Army, Feudals and maulvis (three groups which dominate Pakistani politics).

It is good to dream and live in a fantasyland. But dreams, unfortunately, do not solve problems.

Pakistan needs a competent, technocratic, urban, honest, leadership with international experience, for a while. This is what got Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and now China out of their respective messes. Once that is done, and people have food to eat, then they can start dreaming.

Those who do have food to eat, are too hung up on names from Musharraf to Jefferson to realize that the average guy on the street would be least bothered by the fact that Jamali is gone. Or what the hell anyone else is doing. He just wants a decent living standard..........

``Shaukat would perform better in select areas. Take my word, Pakistan`s dependency would increase. Note the date and time. 27 june 9:26 AM``

Dependency on what? If he performs better in just a few areas, that is still better than performing terribly in all areas. At least the guy, isn`t afraid to show his wife in public, and doesn`t have sisters married to the Quran. And doesn`t believe in tribal jirgas, and karo-karis, and educates his daughters, and doesn`t consider anyone with the wrong last name, lower than him.........

And if you are bent on making a Constituional argument. His appointment is perfectly legal constituionally speaking.

Dependencies may increase or they may not. But at least it will reduce the chance of the next generation being ruled by Bilawal Bhutto. Musharrafs and Azizs will come and go. But the off-spring of the landed aristocracy will never go, unless they is pushed out of power........and that will never happen democratically..........

There is too much bravo-sierra and too much hand wringing and chest beating going on here. :)

This a mid-term course correction and it should have happened much sooner. Jamali was removed, because he did not seem as the candidate capable of ensuring PML-Q`s victory in the 2007 elections. Jamali was tainted, because he was a little too out spoken, lately, in supporting and making pro-MMA statements on Hudood Ordinances and on the issue of the Islamic verses in the textbooks. Jamali had to be ditched, since he was starting to carve a political support base for himself and that threatened the political constituency of the brothers from Gujrat. Another reason, which hammered the last nail, was that Jamali was losing visable support from PML-Q and as Musharraf was stepping aside from offering aid, Jamail was relying increasingly on MMA for political support. This was unpardonable. Jamali had to exist within the support frame of PML-Q and could not be allowed to create his own political base, with MMA acting as the foundation for such an eventuality.

The most intelligent comment on this whole situation was made by Sadna and I fully agree with her. Pakistanis should not pin their hopes on Jamali, but should be more concerned, whether the parliament exists to finish its entire term. It is time, Pakistanis move away from the politics of personality and think of the politics of institutions. In the larger scheme of things, Jamali and his successor and the successor`s successor are insignificant.

Pakistan is slowly and gradually moving towards a presidential system of government and this is simply an attempt in that direction. After Shaukat Aziz is elected, regardless of the manner, Pakistan will move towards a dyarchy of power; Musharraf dominating foreign affairs and defense (war on terror) and Aziz controlling the economy. This was the truth foretold, when Pakistan was awarded the Most Important Non-NATO ally status and the end result of this would be a quicker pace of privatization and liberalization of economic reforms in Pakistan. Aziz has no political constitutency in Pakistan and that is why he was elected as the prime minister. Aziz will be able to, due to his lack of political support, tackle issues which Jamali was unable to addess. Aziz does not have to rely on the MMA or the religious parties to shore up his support or to make exhortations to Islam in order to seek a political support mechanism. Aziz will hopefully marginalize the influence of religion in Pakistani politics.

This is a very subtle secularization of politics in Pakistan and two things will originate from this situation. One; elections would be fast forwarded to June 2006 after the next budget shows some tangible growth. Second; the 2006 elections would be an opportunity to clean the stables of the MMA elected in 2002 and end the military-mullah alliance, as the establishment makes a military-technocratic alliance in vogue of Ayub Khan. There will be a discernable shift as urban political power will eclipse rural political power and hope to seek an end of feudalism, which will allow agriculture to post healthy gains, thus buffering the overall growth ratios in Pakistan. As mentioned, Pakistan after 2006 or 2007, will emerge as a presidential form of government, where president and the prime minister, acting as a defacto vice-president, will share power. A very superficial glance at the developments will suggest that Musharraf is attempting to correct the mistake of 2002 by gradually replacing the political team that existed from October 1999 to October 2002. A certain tell-tale of this would be the formation of the new cabinet under Aziz.

The key to the future lies in the statement made by Aziz a few weeks ago. Aziz mentioned that the second generation economic reforms will implemented soon. Anyone, with a idea of what that means, will immediately know where the focus of intention will exist. It is all about ensuring that what had started in 1999 does not get derailed by a civilian setup and the end result of that process is a presidential system of government. The future of Pakistan till 2011 or sooner, when the term of Aziz if elected in 2006 will end, has already been decided. This means that Musharraf will have been in power for 11 years; giving him enough years to indelibly influence Pakistani politics for the next few generations.

If Pakistan is truly headed for a presidental form of system, I am really optimistic because Pakistan had no future under a parliamentary form of government. How quaint, when history repeats itelf!

Ciao

Hoping against hopes,

Now the pakistanis are over the moon, they have an urbane president and a similar PM. So what, it has all happ[ened before. The legislation against the ahmadias was passed by bhutto, the real white man of pak politics.
Look at the k for kafir education material, they are all prepared by the educated of pakistan, the civil servants in the pak education department, the so called grade 20 types of the pak beaurocracy.

Look at mushy the great general with the pickenese dogs, a harm for the muslims. he is talking about discussions on honour killings, if that is what all his military training has done to him, there is absolutely no hope for pakistan.
It has been proven time and time again, the jihadisation of pakistan is not driven by the illiterates of pakistan, it is driven by the educated urstrulies of pakistan. The military dictatirship is supported by the educated romairs of pakistan.

The new Pm will only closthe th ejihadic values in safistry, like the works of romair and urstruly. What will eventually drive the policies are what the pakistansi heve learned in their childhood, the k for kafir education.

Since 1947, the change in pakistan had been only in one direction, whether military or civil the rulers were, in the direction of increasing jihadisation of pakistan.

There are certain contradictions need to be pointed out.
First of all I would like to ask gentlemen criticizing ministers x, y & z for heading ministries without formal competence that what formal degrees Mr. Musharraf have to lead the country of 140 million?

What job would a Pakistani general of infantry, armour or artillery would get in any multi-national on the grounds of his academic accomplishments? At the most a head watchman with few guards under his supervision.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to whom most of our fellow countrymen consider an ultimate politician and statesman, was just a barrister- technically undergraduate.
Only a fool would argue about the importance of formal education but in politics it is not (and should not) be the foremost requirement.

We don’t have a political science professor sitting in the Oval office.
Lula of Brazil is a former street vendor.
His minister for environment (a young lady) has not even to college.
Former Polish president was an electrician. I can go on and on.
Why go so far.
Mr. Romair has more than 2000 replies on this forum – without having any degree in essay writing.

There is a huge difference between popular politics and meritocracy or technocracy.
On the contrary, sometimes an outsider with no pre-hand biases is in a far better position to bring about deeper changes.

Please, note what I am writing is also AT THE MOST just another aspect of the much larger story. There are very few, if any hard and fast rules and universal truths in this imperfect world.
The only point is that normally, it is naïve to say the least, to exclude one angle for the other and/or come up with sweeping observations.
All the best
Baba Jee

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Mantolives,
I agree.

Cheerios

........ wha .... what happened ? ............. what`s all this noise about? .... why is manto so upset? ............. mangoes?........ i know, i know ........nobody likes sindhris - we have to wait for tha dosehri season .......... no, it is not the mangoes?......... mutton is over 200 a kilo and chicken went to 75 and it costs 5000 a month to keep one air conditioner running?.......... who cares, the poor can eat daal for all we care and, allah kay fazal say, we have four split units humming day and night ..........who is this awais leghari guy and what`s he doing running s&t? ........ he went to rochester, that is a pretty hard s&t school so he must have learnt something, even though the last time i went to dg khan i didn`t see any evidence of s&t.............

............. so it is the usual suspects playing musical chairs again - this time they are trying to make sure shaukat aziz gets to win when the army band stops playing and the military estate services show up to take away the chairs ................

............. this is a non-event ............. a real sleeper, if you ask me ..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

malik99 -- Romair --
what we don`t know is that ` Awais Laghari` was ( don`t knwo about now) was involved in car smuggling gang and was once caught `red handed` in Bibi`s period where bibi asked him and his father that ` Bhai Saab, bacha acha hai parha likha hai why don`t you ask him to go into politics instead` --
a fact which is often ignored... or people don`t know about!

#32 by stuka

“Can I infer from your comment that Congress is showing MORE maturity then BJP in dealing with Pakistan? If so, why? Also, what is your opinion about the initial missteps by Natwar Singh?”

Doublespeak! Not from me. I am a straight shooter.

Congress and BJP cater to two different constituencies and Congress is far more comfortable in dealing w/Pakistan as its support is in groups that are not dogmatically averse to working with Pakistan. Plus, it has more experience in finding some workable solutions with Pakistan after having years of give and take with the Pakistani army and the Bureaucracy. BJP certainly lacked that insight.

History is full of missteps between Pakistan and India- One more would not hurt that much. The success is in finding channels to quickly recover from the missteps. That happened this time around.

The dream of a civilian dominated society in Pakistan now depends so heavily on India and the US that any maturity Indians can show would be helpful. The right wing in India and Pakistan are different. In Pakistan the right wing is militaristic and the military political. The rhetorical exchanges with India help the rightist in Pakistan, and India can eliminate it w/o jeopardizing its national interests. The US is putting enough pressure on Pakistan to tone down rhetoric to not allow the rightwing to hide behind anti-Indianism.
By continually showing maturity, India can certainly help Pakistan move towards civilian rule in future.

Romair # 31 - I agree with NHK regarding Awais Laghari`s qualifications for minister of S&T. Incidentally him and I went to the same university in upstate New York. I found him to be very ``un-wadera`` like and rather down to earth. He might be inexperienced in IT, but has the right atitude to learn the ropes and perhaps make some bold decisions.

Romair
I totally agree with you. But i would like to add two more names, Humanyon Akhtar and Ijaz-ul-Haq. They all fall in the same category, a club of mediocores who have no credentials to lead these ministries.
Without any legitimate business, these people have millions of dollars in their account, and their only goal in life is to become the prime minister from the back door.
Listen these guys when they talk about public issues, you be laughing.
I am sure there are many great people in pakistan who are more qualified and competent than these yuppies.

Regards.

This talk of how Shujaat will be better for Pakistan, and that he is a self-made ``urbanite`` (whatever that means) is a good omen, reminds me of the late 80s. That was the time when a young Harvard / Oxford graduate woman of good looks became the first elected Prime Minister in the Muslim world. There was talk of how she would turn around the wretched country, how her western education will suddenly prop up the decaying Pakistani society etc etc. There was an excitement in the air.

Merely a decade later, that woman is in exile on charges of extreme corruption, and for siphoning money and historic relics for her Surray Palace.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For 57 years, we have continued t o use a failed methodology to obtain the same failed results.

Leave it to shaheen sebhai and Urstruly to try and make capital out of a bad situation. The chowk staff is right in not printing an article written under the name of a popular personality like Che... We at Chowk are impatient people... including me... we always jump to the conclusion that there is some grand conspiracy that the chowk staff is involved in. Sometimes we assume that they are working for RAW, sometimes ISI, and at other times the CIA...

Let us drop this stupidity.

NHK,

Perhaps you haven`t been following the Pakistani politics... but MQM is in the Government supporting every decision that Musharraf takes... and MMA, that party which owes its existence to the Army`s meddling, is already the King`s loyal opposition. MMA not being bought or ignored is the joke of the century... these Mullahs, these enemies of Pakistan.. have been bought and sold on the international market to destabilize Pakistan for a very long time...

Read Charlie Wilson`s War ... Jamaat-e-Islami, and other religious parties were coopted by the Americans ... the educational system that we don`t tire complaining about was formulated in University of Nebraska.... The roots of this retrograde deobandi and fundamentalist Islam in Pakistan are red blue and white.


These Mullah bast@rds ... the enemies of this country right from the start when they were hand in glove with the Indian National Congress, not out of some ideological similarity (what similarity could they have with the secular congress) but simply their greed and lust for control over the muslim community, these conservative doctors of reaction ... bigoted fanatics.... are the biggest sell outs in this country....

their grand daddy was Maudoodi... who wrote `Ishtrakiat and Islam`... and America bought and published millions .... of its copies... making this narrowminded fanatic a very rich mullah... their chachu was Mufti Mahmood... that B@stard who tried to destabilize Pakistan in the name of Nizam-e-Mustafa, allied with the very suspicious Khan family and the NAP who had been declaring themselves secular but chose to bring down the democratic nationalist government of Bhutto hand in glove with the Mullahs...

and the same Mufti mahmood seered Maulana Fazlur Rahman... another CRIME against Humanity.... the famous `Mullah Diesel` who is more famous for his illegitimate diesel permits in exchange for political support to the ruling party...

These B@Stard mullahs ... who perpetuated ZiaulHaq`s regime... but today are opposed only in name to Musharraf... the same B@stard Mullahs who helped the Government pass the LFO... you think these Mullahs can`t be bought... they can be bought and sold for much less than they have been given. They will probably sell their daughters for even less....


-YLH

Nazarhayatkhan #33,

I wholeheartedly disagree. The minister of S&T has to be able to make decisions. It is not upto his staff to make decisions for him, their job is to provide him with options, the ultimate choices should be his. If he does not know anything about S&T then he is like an 18 year old boy on an island full of lesbians; useless and frustrated. I don`t support this only for the S&T ministry, I believe the law minister should be a brilliant lawyer or former judge, the foreign minister should be a career diplomat, the finance minister should be an acclaimed economist (Shaukat Aziz is a case in point, it`s the same Pakistan, it`s the same bureaucrats under him, why is Pakistan performing better economically under him?) etc.

For example, under Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman (a renowned researcher in chemistry), the government launched highly aggressive measures to train and attract research manpower. If all goes according to plan, Pakistan should be able to feel the difference in the next 5 years, hopefully our research output will start to increase. Put a BA pass pimply-faced kid incharge of the ministry of S&T, who doesn`t know shit from swiss cheese, and you have the recipe for disaster par excellence.

Why you chose to draw parallels with Laloo`s knowledge of railways is simply beyond me. You make two very thin assumptions when you advance that argument:
1) India can do no wrong (or at the very least, its political system can`t)
2) Laloo is beneficial to the Indian railways as its helmsman

Also you claim, rather grandiosely and with no substantiating arguments, that a minister has to be politician and not ``a diploma or degree holder in his field``. I would certainly love to hear your supporting arguments in this favor.

Irfan.

PS: If you are going to use a system as a baseline, why not try the US instead of India, although I`m sure many people would disagree, but on the whole I feel justified in saying that the US is-for the moment-doing better than India. All secretaries in the US Administrations are usually highly educated and regarded professionals in their fields (politician or not doesn`t really matter).