Adil Najam
The Lawyer’s Long March from Lahore to Islamabad is literally hours away as I write this. Arrests of activists continue and a number have just been arrested in Lahore. As if things were not complicated enough, the unseating of the Shahbaz Sharif government in the Punjab and subsequent political developments have added new fuel of Pakistan’s many political fires.
The Zardari government, already losing some important allies from within its own ranks, has gone all out to make sure that the Long March does not succeed. The Lawyer’s movement and Nawaz Sharif (for rather different reasons) are going all out to make sure that it becomes a game changer. In the next many hours we will begin to get clues about which it will be.
Meanwhile, there can be no better commentary about where we have been and come from on this then these clips from now blocked GEO TV. It shows before and after ‘power’ comments from Farooq Niaq – until recently the PPP’s Law Minister and now Speaker of the Senate (and, therefore, next in line to the Presidency).
I think people power is speaking again. ANd my hats off to the lawyers movement and civil society.
But I am worried that thsi movement is being highjacked by Nawaz Sharif and I hope Aitizaz Ahsan will not let that happen.
I want to see a President or Prime Minister Aizizaz Ahsan in a PPP government of real PPP for whom people voted.
We have to be pragmatically optimistic. There is a mass political movement. That in itself is a good thing. It’s better than being a moribund, comatose nation… which we never were, really… as we even agitated against martial law regimes. That this is a middle class movement is good. It includes religious fascists like Qazi Hussain Ahmed, and unimpeachable democrats like Asma Jehangir and Tahira Abdullah. While the middle class is learning about rule of law and some concept of democracy, it is yet to even begin to address its entrenched religiosity. The equivocation that allows us to tolerate the intellectual and social rape of the female population of Swat is, in many ways, the bigger threat. We must steadfastly remain optimistic that neither these politicians nor military adventurists will get the better of us and our new found political virility. To help remain pragmatic you may wish to read http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content %20Library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/who-can-t olerate-an-independent-judiciary
I hope NS has not overplayed his hand. I am more scared than hopeful. I hope and pray that this does not go terribly terribly wrong.
This long march is a march for the Quaid’s Pakistan. It is one based on securing a Pakistan that values principle over profit.
It must succeed, it is led by the lawyers who have sacrified beyond all expectations. At times like these, Faiz, Faraz and Jalib are never far away, indeed this is Ahmed Faraz’s long march too, for more details see the links below:
http://blog.otherpakistan.org/
http://blog.otherpakistan.org/2009/03/15/ahmed-far azs-long-march/
Feimanallah Pakistan
Wasim
Shame on him. He referred Quranic verses and now he is making fun of these ….. I guess he can do and say anything for political gains