Adil Najam
Back on August 18, 2008 – right before Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation – we conducted an ATP Poll asking our readers what Pakistan would look like after Musharraf. Now, two months after the event, it seems like a good time to repeat the question. So, here is our new ATP Poll. Do tell us what you think? We have tried to match the wording of the questions to those asked last time so that one can have better comparison.
The results of our previous poll on the subject, were interesting, but not surprising.
Partisans on each side dominated the discussion, and the numbers (these are respresentative of no greater truth than the readership of this blog and the passions of those on any side). Around a third of the respondents (34 percent) felt that things would generally become better; somewhat more (42 percent) felt things would generally get worse; some 22 percent felt that only faces will change and no other real change would materialize.
So, now that we have two months under our belt, what can we say? Or, and maybe, it is still too early to say anything? If so, we can always do this again in a few months and see how and if opinions change.
With the lack of confidence by investors and business community in Zardari and Sharif, things started to deteriorate immediately after the February elections. But the decline significantly accelerated when President Musharraf was finally forced out months later. What people sense is not just a feeling; it is backed by real data. The fact that Pakistan may be forced to return to the IMF money for bailout speaks volumes for how bad things have become within a very short time. It’s all about the crisis of confidence in leadership.
#3 is a subset of #5, hence the most votes.
Alveena:
if indeed open media is no choice, how come your neighbors in China and Iran dont have open media ?
The answer is that opening up of media is a political decision.
Looking at the 11 years of the 1990’s, your civilians did a piss poor job running PIA, WAPDA and Pakistan Steel. There was nothing wrong in giving retired military folk a try as well.
After Musharraf’s Departure I thought, Pakistan would get into lot of trouble, but after the appointment of International criminal Zardari as President of Pakistan, I really have lost hope for the better future of Pakistan.
The wrath of US had to come sooner or later, but Musharraf kept it to as minimum as possible, now US drones fly freely in Pakistani airspace.
Pakistani awam deserves whatever bad is happenig to them. Less than 40% turnnot was recorded during the elections, and most of the people who voted were iliterate and poor people, whose votes were bought by these political thugs or these poor people were threatened to get kicked out from their lands by these feual thugs. Most of the educated people do not vote, so this had to happen.
I would just simply say,
Jaisay Awam Waisay Hukmuran.
We deserve these thugs and the beginning of end has started after the Mushharaf’s departure.
Though things has gone worse after him but even then an elected government is always better than the dictatorship. They have to go back to the people again. What Musharaf has done, destroyed the institutions. He appointed all the army personnel as head of every institution who knew nothing about those areas just to get their favour. Specially as head of educational institutions.
Once I got a chance to attend a meeting with vice chancellor of Peshawar University, his only capability was that he was retired general knowing nothing about education. This meeting was how to improve the education standards and his only opnion was that if we put a ban on the students with poor english from taking admission in university we can improve its standard.
So this is one example think of all other institutes. There is no doubt that Musharraf made every effort to detariot this country as much as possible.
About the open media this was requirement of time as technology has improved so much that there are so many ways to access the media so he had no choice.