I am not hesitating to state or to confess that I had experienced a huge relief at the overthrow of Mian Nawaz Sharif, by which General pervez Musharraf had registered himself in my mind as a possible saviour, at whose hands, the powerful forces of corruption, misconduct, misrule and unrestrained plunder would be given a well-deserved drubbing and a befitting ‘farewell.
It was not to happen despite some good work that Musharraf’s regime did in its early days. The idea of devolution of power to the local level, and of having empowered city and district governments was pregnant with prospects of a massive transformation in the manner the country had been governed in the past. But when a phoney democratic regime was installed through elections to meet some legal requirements on the one hand and on the other hand to win laurels for the military ruler for his avowed love for democratic governance, the political mafia shot down the idea of making ‘local rulers’ shareholders in not only authority but also in the boundless benefits of having control on funds.
It was a major fiasco for Pervez Musharraf—less disastrous than only his failure to get rid of the Mafias that had given new dimensions to the art of transforming politics from the science of providing leadership and rulership to the country, into an art of building business empires.
Pakistan has paid heavily for these two failures on the part of General Musharraf. When the General was removed from power through a well-hatched plan, and the Mafias staged a triumphant comeback, the country become a hunting ground for the Mafias who, in order to plunder with vengeance, built a towering rock of DEBTS over the cringing helpless mass of the population. The borrowed money has been pocketed by the Mafias, and the responsibility of paying back the debts has been placed ‘conveniently’ on the shoulders of all the future governments and generations.
This is ‘the Pakistan’ that has been handed over for governance to the man who has toppled the Mafias after years of struggle.
To make his task acquire Herculean dimensions, he has to enforce and enact his agenda of reform through the ‘stinkingly corrupt’ bureaucracy that the Mafias installed for the execution of their sinister plans.
The other day I couldn’t resist the urge to send him this message:
Even though the tragedy of the early demise of the Quaid will remain the greatest, your failure (God forbid) too is going to have lethal consequences. The like of you is unlikely to re-emerge any time soon. So you have not to hesitate from taking decisions that can and will lead to the much-required disempowerment of the mafias.
His brisk reply was.
“Don’t worry: Inshallah will succeed.”
