Adil Najam
Having just completed the poll on who, amongst Pakistan’s recent leaders, did the most good to the country, the obvious followup is to do a second installment of the ATP Poll on “Who Did the Most Harm to Pakistan?”
We had conducted a poll on this question back in August 2009 and repeating the question now will give us a sense of whether our readership’s opinion on this question has shifted in this time.
Please focus on the negative actions these leaders were themselves responsible for, and not as much on things that might have been out of their own control.
The Question: Focusing primarily on what you consider ‘negative’ actions taken by them during their stint(s) in power, who, amongst the following, do you think did the most ‘harm’ to Pakistan?
We ask, as before, that you please respond to the question with the same care with which it has been structured. As we had done in our last poll, we have structured the question carefully to focus only the harm that these leaders might have caused (all leaders do bad things as well as good, some more and some less).
As in the last poll, the current leadership is not included (although we have been conducting separate polls grading them) and only those whose tenure is now behind us are included, from Ayub Khan onwards. As before, for Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif consider the combined impact of two stints they each had in power.
Do also please tell us which of their actions you think had the most harmful and lasting impacts on Pakistan’s well-being as a nation, and why.
It would be good if you correlate personalities and take a comparison between; e.g. Who is/was more ……
Zia or Bhutto
Benazir or Nawaz
Musharraf or ……. Zardari :(
Would ask for a done good/harm survey of living leaders i.e. Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari. I think would reveal that among educated, thinking Pakistani i.e. the ones who frequent the web — Musharraf will be the clearer leader in terms of doing good.
Yahya, for being in control yet let the debacle of East Pakistan happen. Bhutto, for doing away with One unit, Zia for trying to downscale PPP and allowing a liguistic based party to form as an opposition to PPP. BB and Nawaz Sharif for wasting the opportunites given and allowing corruption uninterrupted. Musharraf, for literelly sitting in the lap of the US and allowing trigger happy CIA agents to roam freely in Pakistan. Now Mr Zardari and his co-hort, continue on the same path. The army generals are all pithu of the Pentagon.
This is a boring poll. Just because the only real answer to this question has to be Zia ul Haq. Everything bad in Pakistan today leads back to him. And his staying in power leads back directly to USA and US support for him. Ironically, he would never have stayed in power except for US support and his actions have today led to so many of the US’s worst problems!
My vote is Divided between Zia & Mush , in fact all military dictators were responsible of our today’s situation but these two did what only an ENEMY can do !
In the name of Discipline the institute of Army Obey these ANTI PAKISTANI dictators but I call that kind of discipline “DIRTY DISCIPLINE” !