The civilian authorities are found busy thrusting responsibilities of their innate incompetence and corruption on the successive military takeovers that have clipped the flying feathers of the bird called democracy. On the other hand, the armed forces gloat over the civilian leader’s inability to deal with the number of emerging crisis and national emergencies.
This mindset that interprets us ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’ can be linked to the culture of intolerance that disables us to perform effectively in any form or capacity. Living in a perpetual fear of being overtaken by the other more dominant forces, the national interest takes a poor second seat, thus amplifying the misery of the masses.
How, in this background, does one justify the emergency call made by the government to the armed forces to deal with the latest flood disasters that are being amplified by the aftermath of the 2010 episode and an increasing threat of the dengue epidemic as an inevitable consequence of stagnant water and unhygienic conditions?
The role played by the army in Pakistan is unlike that played in any other country where it handles every affair of both military nature and of political nature too at the behest of the government and gets criticised for doing it too. One needs to ask who plays the winning game in this context? The army or the civilian government that does everything apart from governing?
An opinion poll by the Gallup survey a few months back had confirmed that despite the mass media campaign against the extra influential role of the army, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani enjoyed more popularity among the people as compared to the elected representatives who came to power after almost a decade of long spell of miserable military dictatorship.
PROFESSOR KABIL KHAN
Peshawar
