The APC on the issue of the Economic Corridor has brought to light the biggest shame this country has been facing for years in the name of democracy. The shame I am mentioning is that the family that is supposed to be running this country is also running its largest province i.e Punjab which constitutes well over half the country’s population. The shameful nature of this shame was highlighted in a recent remark by the KPK Chief Minister Pervez Khattak who in an interview said: I wish I too had the luxury of having my brother as Prime Minister.
This statement more than ‘lays bare’ the sinister nature of ‘the democracy’ that is being run by the country’s ruling first family. The other ruling family is in the political ownership of the country’s second biggest province i.e Sindh. In an ironic way the two families— i.e Mians and Zardarised Bhuttos— don’t fail to bring to memory the Mafia families of Mario Puzo. The only difference is that they were crude crime-managing families, whereas our families are sophisticated & politicized ones that provide only indirect and clandestine protection to the Crime Industry.
This APC on the dispute that has surfaced on the preferences in the planning and execution of work connected to the Chinese Economic Corridor, is fundamentally a protest against the domination of the Mians-run Punjab in the overall economic planning of the country. Even the allies of the PML (N) are not comfortable with this domination. The Chinese too have expressed their displeasure at the disputes that have cropped up. Whatever be the actual facts behind the conflicting claims, the bitter fact is that the organized efforts that Mians make in staying away from the requisites of transparency in decision-making as well as execution of these decisions are the biggest threat to this façade of democracy. Sooner or later, some general is going to ask himself. “Why is one of my brothers not ISI chief, and the other not Chief of General Staff? Why isn’t my son conducting all the purchases of the Military? Is only democracy entitled to provide such luxuries?”