ATP Poll: Who did the most ‘good’?

Posted on August 19, 2006
Filed Under >Adil Najam, ATP Poll, People, Politics
28 Comments
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Adil Najam

In this, the third ATP Opinion Poll (see previous polls here and here) we want to see what you think about what previous Pakistani achieved.

The key word there is ‘achieved.’ We always have plenty of discussions about what leaders have and are doing wrong, but nearly never talk about what they did right. Interestingly, even when we are trying to make a case for someone, we tend to make it by explaining what is wrong with everyone else. After all, if everyone else is bad (and worse) then our guy must be good, at least in ccomparison and by default. The logic makes a perverse sort of sense but tends to take our political conversations towards confrontations (since they are based on ‘attacking’ the other rather than on ‘supporting’ our own). So, here is an experiment to see if we are capable of talking differently about such things.

The Question: Focussing primarily on whatever ‘positives’ might have been achieved during their stint(s) in power, who, amongst the following, did the most ‘good’ for Pakistan?

Ayub Khan
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
Zia-ul-Haq
Benazir Bhutto
Nawaz Sharif

[For Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif consider the combined impact of two stints they each had in power]

I have purposely excluded Liaquat Ali Khan because he is now too far away in the past and because his ‘founding father’ status has meant that we usually do not analyze his tenure in political terms. I have also left out Pervez Musharraf (see ATP poll on him here) because his actions impact us immediately and so the passions ignited are too current. Others who had short tenure, or were leading in name alone have been excluded.

I hope we will have a lively discussion in addition to the polling. I realize that we will disagree about what was ‘good,’ but it seems to be that a disagreement about achievements and what we consider to be good achievements is preferable to mere name-calling and may end up telling us something not only about these leaders, but about ourselves.

As before, you can get to the polling area by clicking on the responses in the sidebar, or directly by clicking here.

If you do want to influence the results, please, by all means ask your friends to also vote. Voting is anonymous; as it should be. This will, of course, not be a very scientific poll, but it will at least give us a sense of what this community � the ATP cohort � thinks. Do vote, but please vote only once (even if you are smart enough to beat the system somehow). You can view the results here. [Polling Closed; 12.25 PM EST, 23 August 2006] Analysis of results available here.

28 responses to “ATP Poll: Who did the most ‘good’?”

  1. bongdongs says:

    I see alot of Pakistani interactors here credit Nawaz Sharif with the nuclear program. Of all Pakistani leaders I feel he played the smallest role in development of Pakistani nuclear program. Instead Pakistani’s should be thankfull to ZAB, who created the nuclear progarm and ZUH who kept it a top priority when negotiating with the Americans over the Afghan war (of course ZUH had a lot more cards in his deck than any Pakistani leader before or after).

  2. Sohaib says:

    Someone still needs to prove to me why the motorway is a benefit and why we now have 2 highways between Lahore and Islamabad when the existing one could’ve been improved upon.

    Also, I remember during Nawaz Sharif’s term we also had that “Qarza Utaro” scheme. Apparently Javed Miandad auctioned his bat off to help remove our debt :P I saw it on TV. I myself donated a few hundred bucks as a child to the ’cause’. I wonder how many people got rich off that.

    Though he showed some real b**** with the atomic tests, and one needs to admire him for that!

    As it said on a poster I owned as a child:
    Qadam barhao Nawaz Sharif
    Hum tumharay sath hein

  3. jugnoo says:

    I vote for Nawaz Sharif coz in his period we get motorway & the mainly we become “Atomic Power” at that time when Pakistan was in avery bad situation.

  4. iFaqeer says:

    Dang, man, mine eyes have glazed over. And that’s before I have even started saying anything. (Na’aray don’t count; that’s not conversation.)

    But.

    But reading the list, one realizes that a lot of good things did happen during each of those eras. However, my own vote went–surprising even myself, and I only voted because I wanted to the the results–to ZAB. I couldn’t vote for the latter three–I lived thru their regimes. And I really didn’t, on principle, want to vote for the person who kicked off the tradition of military coups.

    And the concept of … what was it Adil said? Oh, yeah, “who did the most good for Pakistan” is vague, if not problematic. If you wanted to list the number of specific things that were done during a regime, I can say only one thing: high school curricula were last thoroughly considered during Ayub’s time. When I think of what good any or all of these might have done, I think of all that SHOULD have been done in the last 60 years and am faced with the question: “Which of these least prevented what should have happened?”

    And my last note on this, to me, at least, depressing topic is that to list Nawaz and BB with the other three is an injustice to the former. Those two were just not in the same League.

  5. Adnan Ahmad says:

    forfeited

    ATP MODERATOR COMMENT: This discussion has moved to a new post on the cricket Test, here:
    http://pakistaniat.wordpress.com/2006/08/20/pictur e-of-the-day-forfieted/

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