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Invitation to disaster ULFA’s shadow |
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Return of Harry Potter Living in the wonderful world of fantasy July promises a fantastic treat for the lovers of fantasy. First is the release of the latest Harry Potter film — Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — this week. This is to be followed, next weekend by the worldwide release of J.K. Rowling’s seventh book on the boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The caste cauldron
At the reservation counter
Dateline Washington Chandra Shekhar: a principled politician Inside Pakistan
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Invitation to disaster AL-QAIDA has asked Pakistanis to revolt against General Pervez Musharraf for ordering the storming of Lal Masjid in Islamabad in which, officially, 75 people, mostly militants, were killed. The outfit, founded by Osama bin Laden, has called for a jehad against modernity, including democracy. It sees the military regime as subservient to the crusaders and the Jews. To those accustomed to the terminology Al-Qaida is fond of using, the message from its second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri is not at all surprising. Al-Qaida sees everything in black and white. Anything that is modern and that has an element of individualism and that is eclectic has to be opposed and destroyed. Hence it cannot stand anything that is remotely Western in origin. Small wonder that Al-Qaida sees General Musharraf as a lackey of the West. Whatever Zawahiri and his ready-to-die followers who ram aircraft into high-rise buildings and cars into airport terminals in pursuance of their ideology may believe, the clerics who controlled Lal Masjid and who sought to control social life in Pakistan by forcibly enforcing their own brand of sharia were opportunists who used semi-literate boys and girls from poor families as pawns in their game plan. It did not bother them that thumbing their nose at the government would one day invite retribution and the poor students and their families would have to suffer. All that they had to offer to the students was a “ticket” to paradise. And when it came to the crunch, one of the clerics found it convenient to escape donning a burqa. As the ongoing protest against the General over the dismissal of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shows, the people are not particularly enamoured of General Musharraf. Nor are they inspired by what the clerics who called the shots in Lal Masjid and their patrons in Al-Qaida have to offer. Political parties who may rejoice over the discomfiture of the General do not realise that even Al-Qaida-brand of Islamism — like the General — has little to offer to those who believe in democracy, pluralism, equality of man and woman and social and scientific progress. Talibanised Afghanistan, where women were prevented from coming out of the four walls of their homes and the centuries-old Buddha statues were smashed to pieces is the ideal state for Al-Qaida. The danger of falling into its hands is what should bother Pakistanis as they come to terms with the unfortunate incidents at Lal Masjid. Together they should aim at creating a modern Pakistan where people live and prosper without fear. |
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ULFA’s shadow The tragic death in a crossfire of senior FCI official P.C. Ram, kidnapped and held by ULFA militants since April, points to the fact that the North-East remains as troubled as ever and counter-insurgency operations are nowhere as effective as they should be. A look at the figures collated by organisations like the South Asia Terrorism Portal and the Institute for Conflict Management show that ULFA, far from being de-fanged, continues to use quiet periods to regroup and rearm, before unleashing their trademark attacks. Army operations have unearthed more arms and ammunition, even as arrests and killings of the militants continue. Official figures show that in the first half of 2007, there were 156 insurgency related incidents in Assam alone, a figure that is comparable to the 211 in Jammu and Kashmir for the same period. ULFA, in this period, carried out 68 attacks including 31 bomb explosions, killing 81 civilians besides security personnel. For all of the Army’s operations, and the government’s periodic, misguided attempts at so-called peace talks, with the involvement of the ULFA-constituted People’s Consultative Group, ULFA has shown no signs of a change of heart. While the biggest blow to ULFA came in 2003 with their terror camps being ousted from Bhutan in December 2003, latest reports that ULFA is again using Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh for launching attacks and training new recruits, is worrying. Though Bhutan has denied it, reports of new camps there and renewed recruitment efforts point to a major regrouping programme by ULFA. ULFA has managed to effectively use the dense reserve forests in the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh-Myanmar border for retreat in the face of the Army’s thrusts. Para-military forces have not been able to hold their own consistently in the area. A determined operation, along with diplomatic pressure on recalcitrant neighbours, is a must, if the security situation is to be improved. ULFA cannot be allowed to have its way. Enough is enough. |
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Return of Harry Potter July promises a fantastic treat for the lovers of fantasy. First is the release of the latest Harry Potter film — Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — this week. This is to be followed, next weekend by the worldwide release of J.K. Rowling’s seventh book on the boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Both the real and virtual worlds are agog with the wondrous adventures of the kid who has stormed the literary and the film world. Rarely has an author, and every one of her books, been greeted with such stunning success after success. Predictably, the Harry Potter phenomenon has raised questions about what has made the boy with magical powers such a runaway hit, and inculcated in astonishing manner the book-reading habit among the young. It is irrelevant to attempt judgment of the merits of the book in terms of good or bad. Equally, it would be futile to wonder how many stars the movie earns in the reviews. The simple fact is that the book and the movie represent a cult with a stupendous fan following across the globe. The film is the visualisation of a fantasy that has already been rendered in J.K. Rowling’s prose. The phenomenon compels reflection on the power of fantasy: Why are filmgoers held in such thrall by the unreal and the imaginary? Is it merely for the film-length time of escape from the grim realities of their daily life? Or, does it suggest a deeper yearning for life in a world other than this one? Does fantasy serve a purpose in enabling people to cope with the harsh realities of life and living from which there is no real escape? Sociological and psychological studies interpret and explain why this happens but have no answer as to how the power of fantasy can be diminished. That is, perhaps, because it cannot be. The world of fantasy involves the voluntary surrender of the faculty of reason. Yet, even the most rational people cannot avoid the pull of fantasy. And therein lies the answer to why the dream merchants of Bollywood and Hollywood will never go out of business. After all, reality can only be a check, not a straitjacket which leaves no scope for imagination and flight of dreams. |
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The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. |
The caste cauldron
The
events in Rajasthan which have now come to be known as “the Gujjar agitation” are an inevitable consequence of actions that have been taken over the last 60 years under the name of social justice, empowerment of the dispossessed, and so on. The framers of the Constitution were not wrong in putting a time limit on the special treatment to be given to the deprived sections of society — 10 years — and clearly specifying the intended beneficiaries in two schedules to the Constitution. What they were clearly wrong in was in assuming that it will be people like them who will run the country in the years to come. The Indian genius, particularly the political one, has certainly evolved over the last 60 years and bears no resemblance to what it was at the time of independence and the assumption of the framers of the Constitution has not turned out to be true. The discovery of caste as tool for political mobilisation is now threatening to be almost the undoing of India as a noble idea and a nation as we have known it and tried to build. A reflection on what happened in Rajasthan and why, may help us draw lessons which may be of use in avoiding similar situations from developing in other parts of the country. This is necessary because the chances of similar situations developing in other parts of the country and with other communities are extremely bright, with members of different communities competing for the diminishing pool of secure and not-too-demanding government jobs. How and why has the nation gone wrong? There was a time soon after Independence when a lot of people, particularly in north India, stopped using their caste names as surnames. Most of the people had names ending with caste-neutral last names such as Kumar, Lal, Chandra, and so on, at least in north India. The motivation behind this was to underplay caste distinctions. But then the political establishment found that it was easier to persuade voters to vote for a candidate of their caste rather than convince them to vote for a candidate of another caste even with better credentials, and thus caste got a fresh lease of life as a tool for political mobilisation, and caste divisions started becoming sharper and sharper. Further, driven by the first-past-the-post system of elections that we have chosen to follow, a vast majority of political parties started the process of giving their party nominations to candidates belonging to that particular community which had the largest vote share in a constituency, so that the candidate could be elected by getting votes only of her/his caste. This resulted in the consolidation of caste groupings. With greater focus on reservations in the post-Mandal years, caste groupings found another reason for consolidation. More and more castes and communities started demanding reservations either as OBCs or as SCs or as STs. The height of this possibly occurred in Rajasthan when in 1999-2001 when Rajputs and Brahmins joined together to demand OBC status for themselves. It seemed to be an extreme case of what might be called de-sanskritisation— the opposite of the sociologist, M.N. Srinivas’ concept, sanskritisation, wherein a community is supposed to aspire to go the next higher level of the four-varna classification. The “Gujjar agitation” in Rajasthan needs to be seen in the context of such a struggle for the fruits of reservation that different castes and communities have been vying for. Gujjars live in 11 states of the country: Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. They transcend religion and language, two of the most divisive forces in the country as they can be Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs, and speak a variety of languages depending on the state they live in. They have the status of ST in Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. They had and continue to have the status of backward class, a part of OBCs, in several states including Rajasthan. In 1999, possibly in anticipation of the elections, the state government of Rajasthan and the Central government decided to give the OBC status to Jats in Rajasthan. That is when the Rajputs and Brahmins got together, formed a common platform/group called Samajik Nyay Manch and demanded OBC status for themselves. Their agitation fizzled out after struggling through a couple of years but the simmering remained. The Meenas are the only scheduled tribe in Rajasthan and have been so since the original list was drawn up in 1951. They have actually benefited immensely from this and their socio-economic and political status has improved very significantly. This is one example of the reservation system having worked the way it was supposed to. Why did this lead the Gujjars to agitate? With Jats, the socially, economically, and politically dominant caste reportedly acquiring 25-90 per cent of the government jobs reserved for several other, reportedly over 80, categories of OBCs, and Meenas improving their lot due to being the sole scheduled tribe in the state, and their clansmen having ST status in two states, Gujjars thought of getting the ST status for themselves, and of course they were very willingly obliged by all hues of political groupings in the excitement of getting their votes. But when it came to actually giving the ST status, the political parties demurred, suddenly remembering the adverse impact that decision will have on the votes that they could get from the Meenas. When this demurring—in the form of on again, off again—went on way beyond the patience of this essentially down-to-earth community, a very significant, actually major, part of the population of Gujjars in Rajasthan decided that enough was enough and something needed to be done. The so-called agitation of course began peacefully but then several factors intervened and violence ensued. Violence obviously cannot be condoned but the context and the responsibility for starting and then fuelling the violence also has to be seen. Gujjars have generally been a pastoral and subsistence agriculture community; levels of education and professionalisation have been generally low, with exceptions, of course. While their origins are shrouded in mystery and they are supposed to be related to the Huns, the Cassocks, the valiant Gurji tribe in central Asia, in recent history their role in the 1857 movement was noteworthy. A major reason for their current state of under-development can be correctly attributed to the targeted retribution by the British during the years following the 1857 uprising when the lands of the Gujjars were confiscated and they were even notified as a “criminal tribe”. The criminal tribe stigma was attempted to be removed when the government of independent India decided to ‘de-notify’ them but that has not really helped them to catch up with the economic, social, and political deprivation so far. The Gujjars’ struggle to get the ST status in Rajasthan and the violent opposition to it by the Meenas is not the first case of inter-caste confrontation and unfortunately and sadly, this also does not appear to be the last. The media has been periodically reporting demands by several community groups in Rajasthan and other states for specific status, be it OBC, SC, or ST, and such demands are likely to increase. Giving in to any of such demands is likely to infuriate other communities who may be enjoying that status already and retaliatory actions such as that by the Meenas cannot be ruled and, as a matter of fact, is quite likely. The solution does not lie in appeasing one community or the other since that is not likely to solve the issue, but in taking a comprehensive look at the affirmative action scheme as we have been following for the last 60 plus years. It may well be the right time think of providing equal opportunity to all citizens to better their lot in life rather than limiting the affirmative action to caste-based reservations. Unless we do that, the caste cauldron will keep boiling over from time to time. And if we do move away from caste-based reservations to a comprehensive system of providing equal opportunity to all, the Gujjars would have done another service to the nation at considerable cost to themselves, just like in 1857!n The writer is a retired professor from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and also works on electoral and political reforms.
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At the reservation counter
There
was no direct train to Pune at that time and one had to travel via Bombay. The difficulty lay in securing reservations for the return journey. Computeri-sation was still a long way away and reservation could only be made at the station of embarkation. I made my way to the reservation counter in a building outside Church Gate station. When I finally reached the counter the lady peered over her glasses and said: “You will be 37th on the waiting list, tikra”. I was taken aback. “Is there any chance?” “No, I don’t think so.” I turned away and stood helplessly. “Is there a problem?” He had a kind, sympathetic face so I told him of my predicament. “I have contacts. I can help.” He took my form and the money. As he turned and walked away I realised I needn’t have given him the money. “Hey, wait!” He glanced back at me, a glance that told me everything, and broke into a run. I knew that with my artificial leg, pursuit would be futile. I retrieved my bag. “What happened?” the lady called out. “He’s taken my money and absconded.” “Oh Baba, why do you people do this — with all these warning signs posted everywhere. He cheats people all the time.” And yet she had done nothing about it. On the train to Pune one of my fellow passengers asked me how I had liked Bombay. I laughed. “I was cheated at the Railway Reservation Counter,” he said and gave me a blow-by-blow account of the incident and I could have sworn that he had been an eyewitness. “It happens all the time. The modus operandi remains the same and yet the police and the authorities do nothing about it.” Five years later I was in Bombay and was invited to lunch by a former student, now an officer with the Railway Police. I could not keep my story from him. “And it’s rankled for five long years?” “Yes”. “Then we must do something about it, sir,” he said with a smile. It was a swift, neat operation. I scanned the reception area. He was there and I indicated him with a movement of my head. A decoy went to the counter. Obviously he was told what I had been told. He moved away and the trickster sensing a kill, moved up to him, spoke a few words, took his form and money, turned and walked straight into the arms of the waiting police. After a brief altercation he was led away. He passed me at the door and as he glanced at me, recognition came slowly into his eyes and he paused and looked closely at me. Then he shrugged his shoulders, smiled and allowed himself to be led away. I knew that he would soon be back, if not at the Railway Reservation then at some other place — the world is full of suckers like me, just waiting to be
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Dateline Washington A bloody standoff this week between Pakistan’s military and Islamic militants holed up in a mosque in the heart of Islamabad has prompted calls for a wider crackdown on militants in Pakistan. Nearly two days of fighting ended on Tuesday with the death of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, one of the militant clerics in Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and more than 50 of his supporters. The militants had purportedly used women and children as human shields, however, there has been no word on whether they were among the dead. Applauding the operation, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper noted, “There is no room for complacency, and the government must relentlessly pursue terrorist and criminals masquerading as ‘soldiers of Islam.’” Stephen Cohen at the Brookings Institution thinks Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has come under increased criticism in Washington for not delivering enough in the U.S.-led war on terror, could use this opportunity to impose martial law and “mop up the bad guys.” Polls in Pakistan found that a large number of Pakistanis supported military action against the militants in Lal Masjid. Analysts say this support should strengthen Gen. Musharraf’s position. But the Musharraf administration has also come under fire for not acting sooner against the militants who for months had taken over the mosque barely a mile from Pakistan’s parliament building. Pakistan’s News newspaper said plenty of questions will be asked once the dust settles, including, “Why were the Lal Masjid elements allowed so much leeway that the complex became almost like a state within a state, complete with a moral policing force which acted with impunity enforcing a rigid interpretation of Islam on the city’s residents?” The abduction last month of Chinese nationals by militants in the mosque elicited a strong reaction from China, a close ally of Pakistan, and spurred Gen. Musharraf to act decisively. Mark Schneider with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says the situation at Lal Masjid was in part a consequence of Pakistani policy. “The mosque is state-run, state-funded. These extremist madrassas are getting government money,” he said. Both the Bush administration and members of Congress have been urging General Musharraf to crack down on these madrassas, which are widely thought to be a source of Islamic militants. Pakistan has received billions of dollars from Washington since it signed up as an ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, but many in Congress now want to know what the U.S. is getting in return. “The Bush administration is unlikely to change its policy, but there has been a change in mood in Congress,” said Schneider. “It’s not just Democrats, but Republicans as well who are concerned Pakistan is not doing enough.” There is legislation working its way through Congress that seeks to impose conditions on military assistance to Pakistan. Frederic Grare with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says that of approximately $10 billion in assistance given to Pakistan since September 11, 2001, only $900 million has gone to development – the bulk being channeled to the Pakistani military. Michael Krepon with the Henry L. Stimson Center describes Lal Masjid as the tip of the iceberg of Islamic extremism in Pakistan. “Problems have grown during previous governments, and they have accelerated under Musharraf,” he said, adding, “The lessons that the army leadership take way from this sorry episode will be crucial. Passivity in the face of religious extremism compounds dangers.” Gen. Musharraf’s reluctance to act sooner has been attributed to his concern not to alienate his Islamist supporters. “The Islamists will be angry, but he’ll gain support from the ‘moderate’ middle classes, except that he’ll be accused of doing this on behalf of the U.S.,” said . Cohen of the Brookings Institution. “If he wants to increase his influence, he should take on other extremist organisations, as he’s promised to do time and time again; I would not hold my breath, unless he has a revelation.” A hard-hitting paper released on Tuesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace suggests Pakistan’s military is complicit in fomenting terrorism in Kashmir, the resurgence of the Taliban and the growth of jihadi extremism and capabilities. Frederic Grare, the author of the report, blames current Western policies for reinforcing Pakistan’s political weakness and contributing to regional instability by allowing Pakistan to trade democratisation for its cooperation on terrorism. He contends that Pakistan’s army has inflated the threat of religious sectarianism and jihadi extremism outside its borders, particularly in Afghanistan and Kashmir, for its own self-interest. “Faced with this seeming instability and a perceived lack of alternatives, the West adopted a more lenient attitude toward Pakistan’s military regime as a moderate stalwart against Islamic extremism,” he said. Echoing this criticism of Western support for General Musharraf’s regime, Schneider said being in an alliance with a repressive regime has hurt the United States’ credibility with average Pakistanis. In a word of advice to Washington, Grare said it should cease its campaign against political Islam in Pakistan. “It has proven counterproductive and made U.S. policy dependent on Pakistan’s military, which claims to be the strongest rampart against religious extremism,” the report says. The report was released on a day President Bush reaffirmed his support for General Musharraf. Speaking in Cleveland, Mr. Bush called the general “a strong ally” in the war against extremists. “I like him and I appreciate him,” Mr. Bush said, adding he was also “constantly working with him to make sure that democracy continues to advance in Pakistan.” |
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Chandra
Shekhar: a principled politician In
the passing away of Chandra Shekhar, the nation has lost an outstanding leader, who could have served the country much better if provided with the opportunities. He took the wrong turns at various crossings in political life and found it difficult to compromise as far as principles were concerned. As such his Prime Ministership lasted only four months in addition to a caretaker period of three months. Chandra Shekhar headed a minority Government. Besides the faction of the National Front, he had to depend on the support of the Congress from outside for survival. But he led the Government and the administration with great confidence. When he took over as the Prime Minister, the wounds inflicted by the agitation following the government’s acceptance of the Mandal Commission recommendations were still fresh. The Ayodhya controversy was live. Using astute leadership skills, he managed to defuse the controversies. He even called Khalistan activists from Punjab for discussions and tried to find a solution to the crisis. The first crisis that the Government had to face was the need to send gold reserves abroad to overcome the foreign exchange crisis. A report had appeared in the media and the government had to respond. I recall a detailed brief that was sent to him. He had a quick look at it before responding to a question asked by the television interviewer. There was no attempt at hiding facts. In effect, he said India did not want to fail in paying back the loans it had contracted, and promised that the gold would be brought back, when the country had the money. Almost immediately after, another controversy erupted when the United States planes bound for Gulf operations landed at Indian airports. Again, there was no effort to obfuscate the facts. He said that India did not want to participate in the Gulf war and it was true that the planes had landed to refuel – but they were routine transport flights and not armed aircraft. I remember traveling with him when he visited Kancheepuram and Madras as Chennai was known then. We had flown to Chennai and changed into a helicopter to visit Kancheepuram. At the Madras airport, the press correspondents told me that Jayalalithaa was going to ask him to dismiss the Karunanidhi Government. After visiting Kancheepuram, where he met the elder Shankaracharya , we returned to Chennai to call on Jayalalitha at her Poes Garden residence. The Prime Minister had a brief one-to-one meeting with her on the first floor, while the rest of his team was given coffee in silver tumblers. On the return trip, he said the Centre would recommend to the President the dismissal of the State Government, the ostensible reason being its support for the LTTE. The last crisis to which I was a witness to happened when he was visiting Bihar. On the forward journey, we had read in newspapers that the Congress had conveyed that the Government should not present a budget and only a vote-on-account should take place. He saw the item, and told me that he would react later in the day. In the evening he told the media that the Government would be presenting a vote-on-account and not a full-fledged budget. He asked me to get further briefings on the subject from Yashwant Sinha, who was then the Finance Minister. Yashwant Sinha was himself surprised, but the decision was a political one. If the Congress, which was the supporting party, did not extend support for a full-fledged budget being presented, there was no point in pleading for it. The budget, he felt, had to reflect the policies of his Government. Soon, the controversy over two spies being noticed around the residence of Rajiv Gandhi erupted. That was the signal that the Government was living on sufferance. Chandrashekhar decided to resign, and the announcement was made in Parliament, to the surprise of all. The last interaction I had with him as Prime Minister was the occasion when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at Sriperumbudur. Chandra Shekhar was away on tour that night. The world was keen to know as to what information the Government had about the assassination. After a core group meeting at the Cabinet Secretariat, I held a briefing at the Press Information Bureau at midnight in which I said that the available information suggested that the assassin was a foreigner, most likely of Sri Lankan origin. The government was keen that there should be no backlash inside the country, like the events that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi. I briefed Chandra Shekhar in the wee hours of the morning. He told me then to make all arrangements for the media during Rajiv Gandhi’s funeral. The writer is a former Principal Information Officer, Government of India.
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Inside Pakistan “ Will the government “now hold the heads of the intelligence services accountable for their abject failure to monitor the Lal Masjid complex and inability to even report to the government the massive stockpile of weapons that the clerics and militants had stored over the past few months? How did so many foreign and other hardened militants, including from the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad, find sanctuary in a mosque that is situated a stone’s throw from the seat of government? “How was the mosque’s administration able to build tunnels under the complex, without being noticed by an otherwise ever-prying intelligence apparatus? And what was Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil doing helping out in the negotiations (before Operation Silence began)? Who asked for his intercession and why? “More importantly, will the government now seriously re-examine and review the whole gamut of ties between its intelligence apparatus and the jihadi/militant network? Or will it wait for another Lal Masjid and Operation Silence before it does that?” The News said in an editorial on Thursday. According to Business Recorder, Pakistan’s most respected financial daily, all the questions being asked “need to be answered to avert the possibility of another Lal Masjid saga”. These questions mostly “relate to the genesis of the problem, in that how a mosque became the hub of extremist activities, who allowed it to function with immunity from the prying eye of intelligence agencies, and who did not care as its compound expanded beyond its boundary in a city where removal of illegal encroachments is the order of the day”, the daily pointed out. Doubtful intentions Dawn in an editorial questioned the very intention of the government to root the problems relating to madarsas. It said, “Countering the rise of extremism and religious bigotry requires a strong will and honesty of purpose – qualities that are sadly not the hallmark of the government in Pakistan. It is all very well for the prime minister to declare, as he did on Wednesday, that illegal activities in madarsas will not be tolerated. The question is: what specific steps is he planning to take to deliver on this promise? “The government’s track record on this count is far from heartening. Given the resources and expertise of the state’s intelligence apparatus, it is unlikely that these ‘illegal activities’ – including the stockpiling of heavy weaponry – went unnoticed all these years.” So, another Opposition alliance has come into being in Pakistan, with a view to working for an end to the rule of General Musharraf. Called the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), it is the brainchild of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Significantly, Benazir Bhutto’s PPP has been kept out of it though her party was among the invitees to the London conclave that resulted in the formation of the APDM. According to The Frontier Post, “The forming of the APDM was not on the conference’s agenda. Yet, he (Mr Nawaz Sharif) brought it up in the select meeting of the Opposition leaders, knowing full well that the PPP would not agree to a grouping that has the religious conglomerate of the MMA as its member. As expected, her party delegates did not agree and walked out. So while the MMA is in, to her (Benazir’s) great chagrin, her party is out. Count on Fazlur Rehman’s tricks. While she wanted to isolate the MMA, standing isolated is her PPP.” Reports suggest that the PPP has been isolated because of the contradiction in its approach: trying to be a part of the Opposition movement against the military-backed regime and yet looking for a “deal” with the ruling General. But, according to Dawn, “the PPP is behaving no differently from the way the APDM parties have done in the past and would not mind doing so again if it served their interest. The religious parties now in the forefront of the opposition to President Musharraf’s government are exactly the ones which gave unqualified support to Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship, joined his Cabinet, collaborated with him in his suppression of political dissent, signed on the dotted lines to disfigure the 1973 Constitution, and accepted him as president and army chief for 11 years. They also played a collaborative role in the passage of the 17th Amendment giving President Musharraf a five-year term.” |
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