(This Column of mine was published on 29-09-2007, but almost a decade latter the basic issue remain the same. There is a pivotal role of foreign in the making and unmaking of our governments. I am repeating this column for general interest.)
I feel like writing today about a subject which has never failed to crop up in my mind time and again despite my best efforts to keep it dormant in the backyard of my thinking processes. It is a subject that, far from confirming my status as a free citizen of a free country, actually contributes to the erosion of my faith in Pakistan being a sovereign state and its citizens being truly free and self-determining.
It is a subject linked with the making and unmaking of our governments, and consequently ‘rise to power’ of some leaders and ‘fall from authority’ of the others.
Who chooses our governments and leaders?
From the democratic standpoint the obvious answer should be ‘THE PEOPLE’.
But when we judge this obvious answer by the yardstick of the ground realities fathered by the forces of history, we can’t avoid coming face to face with some bitter truths. Z.A Bhutto the first leader to be Voted to Power could not see himself voted out, and infact ended up on the gallows. Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif were both twice voted into power but failed to earn the democratic right to be voted out.
The ‘People’ factor thus is not central to the mechanism that determines the making or unmaking of governments. This ‘mechanism’ occasionally does use ‘the People factor’ to create a much-required aura of democratic process. But ‘People’ simply do not happen to be the real constituency.
In general perception, the Military is widely regarded as the deciding and the decisive Constituency. By most counts, the Military does have a pivotal role, and certainly can be regarded as a near-to-decisive Constituency. But let us not ignore and dismiss the number of visits the likes of Richard Boucher and John Negroponte pay to our ‘sovereign’ country whenever there is a situation of, either transition, or change in the power structure here—-or in simple terms when power is up for grabs.
