When I look back into the corridors of the dead past, I find myself welcoming a military intervention with great expectations at one point of time, and then committing all my passions and energies to the cause of winning freedom from the clutches of authoritarian dictatorship of one or the other general at another point of time.
This paradox has shaped my thinking and behaviour for well over half a century now, during which four generals had this country under their ‘command’ for about one-third of a century. There were ‘hurrahs’ for change in one breath, and shouts of “go back to the barracks “in the other breath.
We welcomed Field Marshal Ayub Khan with great fervour. Also General Yahya. And Genaral Zia. And Genaral Musharraf. Then we had to agitate to dislodge them from power. Of course not all of them. General Yahya needed a national catastrophe and Genaral Zia an air crash to become history.
What however has prompted me to write all this is the remembrance of how small I had felt at the realization that a man of as ordinary an I.Q level as Mohammad Khan Junejo, had been ‘elected’ as our prime minister. Even worse shock came at the elevation of MNS to that position. How progressively the ‘quality’ of our prime ministers has deteriorated can be judged from the fact that Pakistan of today finds itself at the mercy of a man of the calibre of Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.
To fly an aircraft, you need a pilot of right credentials, and right experience. But to run a country of the size, the population and the complexities of Pakistan, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has been found more than enough.
Is this the democracy that is eulogized by the sages of the dimensions of Mr Najam Sethi and Ms Asma Jahangir?
(This Column was first published on 30-06-2012)
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