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.
I feel really frustrated when people try to make one party the “holy” party and the other one as “evil” party. May be it is time for us to stop putting all the blames on the party that we don’t like and praising endlessly the other party that we are associated with or have sympathies for .
I personally don’t like to see the military running the government and never had any sympathy or praise for Musharaf government. They (Musharaf and company….he did not acted alone) came through the back door and sacked the democratically elected government (no matter how flawed it was). But during his unconstitutional tenure he did made the media more independent and that’s what he did. We should stop justifying that what he did was the need of hour then and any body in his place would have done the same. The truth is previous governments were afraid of the independent media (and still are) and they did not promote independent media. So we should give credit to Musharaf that he did this incredible job.
If we start saying that even independent media was not his achievement then no one would take the other real criticism of Musharaf seriously, because people would think that what anti-Musharaf people are saying is just a biased view.
We should be putting Pakistan first and not our parties, ethnicity or “bradari” first. We must be able to judge every government critically even if it is of our own party. If they do some thing good for the country and people then we should praise them and if they harm the country or go against the wishes of the people then we should be able to criticize them.
Without a doubt, Musharraf’s regime was unconstitutional but the fact remains that his regime was still 100 times better than the so-called democratic regimes of BB and Nawaz Sharif during the 1990, that was the ‘lost decade’ of pakistan as put by many economist of the country and worldwide. On one hand India opened up its economy and became an IT hub, our political parties were busy in overthrowing each other and looting the country with both hands. Poverty jumped from 17% in 1988 to 32% in 2000 while in 2007 the same was around 22-24%. Musharraf did committed blunders but he was able to give Pakistan economic stability, although the money to fight war on terror played a very important role in this but economic policies during his regime were better (during his time it was easier to do business in Pakistan as compared to India and even China). Investors had confidence in the govenment and I guess he was the only military person in Pakistan who held country wide party based general elections twice in his regime and was the one who made media independent (none of the regimes of 1990s did so though they are the ones who got the fruits of this independent media) which ultimately went against him just to support the old goons for the sake of Democracy (media shuld hv played a responsible role and enlightened the ppl to elect someone else rather than supporting the old robbers). I do agree that we need democracy and army needs to be in barracks and not in the corridors of power but people of Pakistan should open their eyes and try to elect some one else rather than repeating the mistake again and again by electing the same parties
Pakistan is on the verge of bankruptcy.The president is dancing around the globe begging for money with zero success.Even the traditional friends have refused to bail the country out of its misery.They don`t want to baby sit anymore and have given a clear message that if you want to survive, tighten up your belts and start making money instead of begging for it. Foreign exchange reserves have depleted to less then 5B$.The power crises have gone from bad to worst, there is water and acute food shortages. The Yanks are attacking the north, local thefts and muggings have increased, the lawyers are still working on the streets,the mullas are making the trains march again between Peshawar and Karachi.Asfander Wali has taken cover in London. The country is again marching into the open arms of the IMF. It is borrowing from Harry to pay Joe.Yup things have sure improved.
“Saudi Arabia has refused to give Special Oil Facility to Pakistan
China has refused to give the requested US$3BN aid to Pakistan
Both of the countries above were not present at the so called Friends of Pakistan conference
USA has lumped Pakistan
I think things have gone worse, but that is BECAUSE MUSHARRAF LEFT THEM IN A MISERABLE STATE and they have to go worse before they get better. So, I voted honestly on the question to say things are worse but I blame MUSHARRAF for that even more than Zardari.