The spate of unrest sweeping the Middle East is a new phenomenon. It has come as a natural and legitimate reaction of people having suffered immeasurably under the authoritarian regimes in some countries. What is being feared is that the Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia and the drive to oust Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, movements that had been burgeoning for long, would spread quickly across the geographical boundaries and impact governments not only in the immediate region, but those countries throughout the world that may have suffered under similar dispensations. Lebanon is already geared for a Hezbollah-backed government that appears unacceptable to the US while an outpouring of anger has also been reported from Yemen. Can Pakistan remain safe for long?
Comparisons are odious, but inherent similarities between the regimes of the impacted countries and Pakistan include rampant corruption and palpable lack of governance. This has been an integral part of a woeful spectre that has haunted this country ever since its inception, but has now assumed proportions quite unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. The amazing fact is that no one who is accused is willing to accept responsibility. Everyone sees the demons of a conspiracy to malign him.
Institutions have been rendered toothless through appointment of inefficient and corrupt cronies as their heads. In the massive scam involving the National Insurance Company limited (NICL), the SC had to order the initiation of probe against the Director General of FIA on being told that one of the principal accused was being protected by him. The enquiry would be supervised by the Additional Director General of FIA, Zafar Qureshi, who had earlier been removed from his post by the DG after he had made speedy progress in the case involving some top guns hailing from the political fiefdoms and the criminal mafias that reign supreme in the current times.
Another odious similarity between the countries that are entrapped in the movement for change is the patronage that they have been extended by the US in exchange for critical support to its demonising policies throughout the world. In the Middle East, this support comes in the shape of protecting its illegitimate child and depriving the Palestinians of their inalienable right to a sovereign country. Elsewhere, it assumes the misnomer of support extended to the US-sponsored war on terror that has already annihilated two states Iraq and Afghanistan. While this collusion with the US has deprived these countries of all trappings to their avowed sovereignty, it has also done incalculable damage to the delicate balance that defines the basis for a peaceful co-existence among the states of the world.
Through some years of the 1970s and most of the 1980s, the US extended patronage to the demonic rule of Zia ul Haq and doled out dollars and arms in return for his support to its holy undertaking in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union. That is what created the spectre of the Mujahidin and the drug mafias. While the drug mafias have expanded their tentacles in multiple ways and directions, it is the Mujahidin who are now popularly dubbed as the terrorists. Why? Because, instead of fighting the former Soviet Unions hegemonic intentions in Afghanistan, the much proclaimed harbingers of freedom of yester-years are now fighting similar attempts by the US in that country.
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the world has been clamouring for a new balance of power. It is not comfortable with its single-power-dominated nomenclature particularly when that one power has grossly abused its brute power to the utter detriment of the interests of the other countries. In the process, it has picked up autocratic states with corrupt regimes for extending servile support and loyalty.
In this post-Soviet Union phase, Pakistan has been one poor recipient of these master-slave dole-outs. First, it was dictator Musharraf who, in his desperate attempts to win legitimacy from the international community, was quite eager to sell off Pakistans interests and sacrificed it at the altar of the war against terror. When the people rose against his dictatorial parlance, the US contrived the induction of a bunch of corrupt politicians through an illegitimate and weird piece of understanding called the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) which, upon not being owned up by the national legislature, has since been declared void ab initio by the SC. People are still bracing for coming to terms with the after-effects of its ultimate demise and the restitution of cases against some of the leading incumbents of the coalition in power. As that happens, the country is being systematically juiced out of all its resources and treasures.
Pakistan, today, is in the throes of the 45-day period that the PPP-led coalition has been given by the PML(N) leadership to undertake drastic reforms in its approach to tackle issues of grave magnitude, clean up national institutions of tainted personnel, bring in transparency and evolve a comprehensive and credible economic strategy to confront the ensuing monetary emergency. The movement towards that goal has been slow, if at all, and the prospects dont promise much either. A leadership that is steeped in the putridity of its corruption has no option but to allow the festering concoction to take it to its grave. As the people watch that happening, they grieve about a country that, once, had all the ingredients of becoming a beacon of progress and prosperity for the region, and they look eagerly to Tunisia and Egypt to ascertain whether they have it left in them to carry the gauntlet of the desired change!
The writer is a media consultant to the Chief Minister, Punjab.