For eight years from 1980 to 1988, the world’s ears were bombarded with the name Reagan— the President of the United States. Then he became a non-entity. Then for eight years from 1992 to 2000, the world echoed with the name Clinton, before he passed into history. Bush dominated the headlines from 2000 to 2008. He exists now only on the pages of history. Then came Obama’s turn to hit the headlines the worldover for eight years.
He too will pass into history this year.
That is democracy. Eight years are deemed more than enough for any person to remain in political line-light in a genuine democracy. Even in autocratic China, the maximum political life of a leader in recent history does not exceed a decade. A decade was the period Degualle ruled France. The three military dictatorships in Pakistan too had a life span of around a decade each.
Blair of Britain too survived for only that much period. In India, during the last three decades, there has been a parade of prime ministers. It is Pakistan’s present ‘democracy’ in which people have no respite from the names Mian and Zardari since three decades. This reality infact is the malady that has afflicted this country’s overall health.
Pakistan needs to get rid of this malady and this affliction sooner than later.
These names have become dynasties pregnant with seeds of disaster for this nation. The 18th amendment that was engineered between the two names mentioned above sought effectively to ensure the rule of the above dynasties in separate regions of the country. Sindh was to be forever the power-area of one dynasty, and Punjab of the other dynasty. The rest of Pakistan was to be ‘up for grabs’.
It is time the cancer of the eighteenth amendment be removed through surgery, and the two names mentioned above made part of past history. That is the only way Pakistan of Iqbal’s dreams and the Quaid’s vision can come into being.
Can this goal be achieved without a major surgical operation?
