The other day the honourable Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan had got so disgusted with the course of events, that he hadn’t minced his words while condemning this SYSTEM as rotten.
Let us define the SYSTEM he was referring to. Quite obviously he didn’t mean DEMOCRACY. Quite clearly he meant the FORM OF GOVERNMENT that is in vogue right now-the one whose beneficiaries call it democracy but which in spirit is the rule of elected oligarchy. It is ironic that when the country is not being run under Military Dictatorship, the only alternative is a system in which, under the supervision of a dubiously formed Election Commission manned by personnel of doubtful credentials and character, an exercise of polling and counting of votes takes place to send a certain number of ambitious fortune-seekers or privileged oligarchs into parliament which on the basis of give-and-take (and personal loyalties) elects the country’s ruler. This system quite conveniently is dubbed as democracy.
In the post-Musharraf era, we have witnessed the farce of having three out of four prime ministers who have been mere proxies or dummies—motored by the WHIMS of their bosses in the Party Hierarchy. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Prime Minister Pervez Ashraf were Asif Zardari’s, proxies— and right now Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is Mian Nawaz Sharif’s proxy.
No wonder Justice Saqib Nisar has called this system rotten.
Among those who constitute the parliament of the country in this ‘rotten system’, there are some genuine public representatives too, but in general this parliament is a parliament of the custodians of vested interests.
On the 19th of December our military leaders headed by General Qamar Javed Bajwa the COAS made an unprecedented presentation to the Senate— one of the two houses of the Parliament. This presentation on the Security issues was an admirable exercise in taking the parliamentarians into confidence regarding the ground realities that are shaping the policies and actions of the country’s military. But fundamentally it was intended to quash the rumours (and the propaganda) that the Military had any ulterior designs against Democracy.
The crux of the Army Chief’s message was: “Our job is to make secure the country’s freedom, and that of the politicians is to ensure good governance.”
Whereas the job being done by the military is there for the Nation to commend and feel proud of, the job being done by the politicians has best been described by the Chief Justice of Pakistan in his eye-opening statements.
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