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Winning spree
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Micro success Empowering poor pays rich dividends MICROFINANCE involves giving direct loans to poor people who want to start small businesses. What sets those who provide it apart from the regular banks which also provide credit facilities is that the former does not insist on many formalities. The beneficiaries are not expected to pledge anything but their reputation and, yet, the rate of defaulters is so low that it is virtually non-existent.
Planning for development
Mid-air drama
Courage against tyranny Pakistan’s darkest hour Inside Pakistan
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Winning spree THE voters have handed a handsome victory to the BJP in Himachal Pradesh. Some analysts had made it bold to say that the BJP had an edge. But none had forecast such a clean sweep, where the latter almost reached the two-thirds mark. The BSP bug, too, has proved to be a figment of the imagination, with the party managing to win only one seat. Its chief ministerial candidate Vijay Singh Mankotia has finished a poor third. The BJP victory is doubly sweet, considering that it comes within a week of similar good tidings from Gujarat. Although Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has won, albeit with a diminished margin, many of his Cabinet colleagues have bitten dust. The BJP under Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal returns to power for the first time in Himachal Pradesh on its own after the 1990 assembly elections. As is its wont, the Congress has taken a one-dimensional view of the reverses, by saying that it was done in by the anti-incumbency factor. If this is being said only for public consumption, then it is all right, but if its leaders seriously believe this to be the whole truth, they are only deluding themselves. The main reasons which turned the tide were corruption and the lack of development in some areas. To make matters worse for it, the high command distributed many tickets to undeserving candidates. With only six million of India’s billion-plus population, Himachal Pradesh may not be terribly important on the national radar, but the significance of the BJP victory would not be lost on anyone in Delhi. The party now is in power in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat also. Its alliance partners rule in Orissa, Bihar, Punjab and Nagaland. The dynamics of parliamentary elections are different but when the country goes to the polls in 2009, the resurgence shown by the BJP will count considerably. The Congress will have to draw on every last ounce of its strength to recover from the body blows that it has received of late. |
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Criminals galore POLITICAL parties are not showing any interest in keeping criminals at bay. The Gujarat Assembly election results show that 49 elected MLAs in the 182-member House have criminal cases pending against them. According to a study, 27 per cent of the total elected representatives have criminal antecedents. But then, Gujarat is not the only state where criminals get elected. Almost every state is facing this problem. The situation is no better in Parliament. Moreover, every political party is guilty of fielding criminals in elections. As the study says, 32.2 per cent of the Congress MLAs in Gujarat have criminal cases against them, which is only slightly more than that of the BJP. The increasing criminalisation of politics is a blot on the country and the system. When criminals win elections, they become lawmakers and ministers. The onus of checking the menace lies on the political parties themselves. If they shun criminals and refuse to give them tickets, their march towards the representative institutions can be checked at the starting point itself. The people, too, have a duty and responsibility to reject criminals at the hustings. Unfortunately, successive governments at the Centre have made no sincere attempt to bar criminals from contesting elections. In 2002, the Supreme Court took a commendable decision making the declaration of a candidate’s antecedents mandatory while filing nomination papers. On its part, the Election Commission has forwarded a number of proposals to the Prime Minister to bar criminals from contesting elections. However, there has not been much headway in this regard. The Representation of People Act will have to be amended suitably so that any person convicted for an offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than six months is disqualified. Criminals don’t deserve any mercy and even if one’s conviction is suspended on appeal to a higher court, he should incur disqualification unless the conviction itself is set aside. |
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Micro success MICROFINANCE involves giving direct loans to poor people who want to start small businesses. What sets those who provide it apart from the regular banks which also provide credit facilities is that the former does not insist on many formalities. The beneficiaries are not expected to pledge anything but their reputation and, yet, the rate of defaulters is so low that it is virtually non-existent. It is indeed a matter of pride for India that many Indian organisations have found a place of honour in a list of the top microfinance institutions compiled by a major American business magazine. The variables examined for inclusion in the list included gross loan portfolio, operating expense, the outstanding balance of loans overdue by more than 30 days, return on assets and return on equity, etc. Each microfinance institution earned scores in four equally weighted categories -- scale, efficiency, portfolio risk and profitability. Seven Indian organisations find a place in the list of the top 50 institutions, the highest number for any one country. Bangladesh is in the second position. Pakistan and Sri Lanka, too, register their presence. Microfinance came into public consciousness when Mohammed Yunus, who pioneered the concept in Bangladesh with his Grameen Bank, was awarded the Nobel Prize last year. It speaks volumes about the efficacy of the model that the bank has spawned many such institutions -- 641 were considered for the list and Grameen Bank ranked at number 17.
Ultimately, it was another Bangladeshi entity that bagged the top position. It is well-known that microfinance can transform lives, especially of women in rural areas. Many NGOs in India are already engaged in microfinance. More such organisations need to be encouraged to provide microfinance to the people. Easy finance provided at the right time can change lives and through them society. India needs thousands of Grameen banks so that no entrepreneur suffers for want of finance. |
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Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
— Aristotle |
Planning for development
A
few
days ago, the National Development Council chaired by the Prime Minister passed the Eleventh Plan document. The Plan envisages an average 9 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first four years and 10 per cent growth in 2011-12. Next day, the Prime Minister chaired yet another meeting on internal security. He stated: “Development and internal security are two sides of the same coin. Each is critically dependent on the other”. Socio-economic development of the nation cannot be oblivious to the needs for security. So, the nation would also like to know the state of security and defence planning for this period and “beyond”. The word “beyond” is significant. Building security and defence capabilities is a time-consuming exercise which requires planning and synchronisation of efforts on several fronts. And like all plans, it is a time-bound effort. The impact is more long term than short term. Going by our past practices, one is constrained to point out that despite the ever-increasing defence budgets, India’s armed and paramilitary forces have not been modernised in time for the changing security requirements. In most foreign countries, such forces are modernised on the basis of security threats, challenges, or to build special capabilities for the less predictable future. In India, this has always been an ad hoc exercise, in fits and starts, after we go through a conflict. Examples: 1962, 1986-87, and post-Kargil war in 2000-01. In India, defence plans for modernization of the armed forces are seldom approved by the Cabinet, and almost never implemented as planned. There is now a growing perception gap between the policy makers (political leaders and civil servants) and the security forces. While the security forces remain unhappy about the planning and pace of modernisation, several policy makers feel that they suffer from a continuous equipment deficiency syndrome. We have yet another problem. Security and defence planning in India has always been an exclusive in-house and over-classified exercise. Despite major changes in the geo-political, strategic and technological environment, there is little change in the mindsets. There is lack of political guidance and too much of “precedence”. Most of the security establishments are far too inward looking, parochial, lacking transparency, and therefore unable to accept macro level changes in the organisations, force levels, configuration and capabilities. Perhaps outsider inputs may help them to make the desired changes more easily. A security and defence plan requires a 15-20 years’ horizon. The weapons and equipment, despite rapid technological changes, usually last over 20 years. Introduction of new technologies and developments have a longer time frame. Today, that horizon coincides with major global geo-political and strategic changes expected in this period. If India maintains its expected growth rate, it will become the third largest economy in the world by 2020. That would significantly change its profile of political and economic engagements and commitments in the world. What will be our national security objectives in relation to the then prevailing global and regional picture? Who may be our possible adversaries and what military capabilities would they possess? What kind of reactive or pro-active contingencies can come up where our security policies and decisions would have a role? The strategic horizon will enlarge. While the territorial integrity of the country will remain the primary security concern, our share of international stability and peacekeeping responsibilities and own economic interests on the high seas and abroad will need additional capabilities. An important consideration in security planning would be the assessment of internal security situation in India. In the conference on internal security, the Prime Minister called for “elimination” of Naxalism. But what emerged clearly is the fact that the government has neither a national-level strategy nor a coordinated plan to tackle this growing menace. One wonders whether our civil police organisations and paramilitary forces will be able to cope up with such internal security challenges or become more dependent on the Army! No nation can afford to have forces that can provide a foolproof security umbrella against every conceivable contingency. A nation has to prioritise its military capabilities and capacities. Three points need to be made here. One! In the current global environment, nations seldom threaten each other and then declare a war. A war is waged only when a nation is sure of defeating the adversary in a short period. The possibility of overt and covert conflicts and the likely nature of those conflicts require serious politico-military discussions. Two! The security requirement is not only against likely adversary nations but also against non-state actors who may be surrogate or independent adversaries. The external and internal security is very often meshed, which makes the spectrum of conflict more elongated and the task of the security forces more complex. Three! The role of technology is becoming more and more critical. It is necessary to make a realistic assessment of technologies that are likely to be militarily critical and the prospects of accessing such technologies. We can neither ask for the moon nor afford to be technologically backward, particularly in relation to our likely adversaries. India should also take a lesson from China; of building developmental and security infrastructure in Tibet. By synchronising development and security plans, the Chinese have been able to create an extensive logistic infrastructure which serves both purposes. This is possible only when there is a proper linkage and coordination between national development and defence plans. Despite having fought four wars, several limited wars, and counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations, nearly 70 per cent of our major weapon systems and equipment is still being imported. The DRDO, ordnance factories, and defence PSUs have not been able to cope up with the required pace of modernisation, both in quality or quantity. One cannot imagine India becoming a global player unless this problem is overcome early. In the last three years, the government has taken some important steps. It has encouraged the private sector to participate in defence development and manufacturing efforts, streamlined the procurement systems, and put in place an off-setting policy for defence imports. The offsetting policy has been promulgated not because India needs foreign direct investment but to raise the defence technology threshold and manufacturing capacities. However, the feedback so far is that we have not been able to encourage or provide a level playing field to our world class industrial houses. The CEO of an Indian company which has the world’s largest forging capability told me recently that he had offers to acquire the erstwhile Bofors and some other defence industrial units in Europe. This would have included technological as well as their manufacturing capacities. He declined to follow up, primarily because of the un-encouraging defence industrial environment in India. There is a need to rejuvenate the DRDO, ordnance factories, and defence PSUs also. They do not require mere tinkering but major structural changes to be able to compete and offer high quality weapons and equipment. Units producing non-essential and low-tech items need to be disinvested and money so earned utilised to upgrade other factories technologically. Our public and private industrial units need encouragement to become global players in designing, production and integration of large weapon systems and platforms. They should be given the freedom to form consortia and to go in for cross investment in foreign countries to obtain cutting-edge
technologies. The writer, former Chief of Army Staff, is currently President, ORF Institute of Security Studies, New
Delhi
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Mid-air drama THE
Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) of the Indian Airlines airbus flight IC-607 of March 3 last in which a passenger was seriously injured while coming out of the toilet has been sent to Toulouse in France for de-coding. The Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a Court of Enquiry into the accident in which the plane suddenly lost height and nose-dived and the assessors assisting the court have been provided with a abridged transcript of the de-coded DFDR tape and which has been segmented into time frames.
Herewith excerpts from the tape which throws important light on the accident to IC-607. 9.03.57: Passenger in seat no. 21 on the left aisle who had heartily knocked back several bottles of club soda and foaming mugs of chilled draught beer while waiting in the airport lounge for his flight to be announced suddenly developed a full tank snag. This automatically activated his Pass Water Inertial System (PISS) and he was now in the “when you gotta go, you gotta go” mode. Altimeter reading is 3.6 millibars indicating that the plane is cruising normally at 36,000 feet. 9.01.43: Passenger got up and put his flat feet into the radar glide scope so that it locked him to the homing signal from the rear loo. Visibility being good, he decided to make a visual approach and locked his Instrument Landing System to the gent’s door knob. 8.09.31: Passenger reversed the thrust on his tank engine so that he is able to hold water for a while and rushed towards the gent’s. ILS reading indicates that the loo is occupied and the passenger is heard on the voice tape crying out plaintively, “Hello, is anybody in there?” 7.03.22: Passenger sighted a comely airhostess on the false horizon and that causes a severe yawing and pitching on the horizontal plane. 7.01.18: Passenger activated the alpha floor system so that the gent’s door gets opened due to idle thrust mode and he goes in. 6.00.29: Passenger is engrossed in reading the graffiti scribbled on the gent’s bulkhead. “Indian Airlines serves great in-flight meals. Signed, diarrhoea and dysentry victims” and “Indian Airlines are great people to fly with” and “Yeah, and to go down with.” 5.02.45: Passenger disengages his tank engine and starts the descent mode and receiving the affirmative VOR signal, pulls the rusty chain. Here the DFDR tape has mysterious gaps between time frames and the assessors have had to decipher as best as they could the noises heard on the voice track and their report. The noise is of water rusing into the cistern in the loo as the chain is pulled and IC-607 suffers a catastrophic loss of height from 36,000 feet to 1,000 feet in 5 seconds and the passenger is heard on the voice tape calling out the choicest four-letter oaths and curses (expletives deleted) as he is thrown violently against the bulkhead, his tank engine in idle descent mode and still full. The Court of Enquiry strongly recommends that the Indian Aircraft Act be amended so that pulling chains in lavatories of Indian Airlines planes, like chain pulling in Indian Railways’ unreserved second class compartments, is made a cognisable and punishable
offence.
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Courage against tyranny Violence, assassination and murder have followed the Bhutto family like furies throughout the 40-year history of Pakistan. Every member of the family who has shown any political ambition and entered public life has been killed violently. The one exception was Begum Nusrat Bhutto, Benazir’s mother who, for a brief time during one of Benazir’s several exiles, was the figurehead president of the family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). The violence began three decades ago when her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first Prime Minister to have won power in what was perhaps Pakistan’s only free and fair election since the creation of the country, was toppled in a military-led coup in 1977. He was hanged a year later as a common criminal after a majority of appeal court judges confirmed his conviction for conspiracy to murder a political opponent. Bhutto’s youngest child, Shahnawaz, was poisoned at the age of 27 in his apartment on the Cote d’Azur in 1986 after a family reunion when all the family were exiled from Pakistan. Ten years later in 1996, the eldest son, Murtaza, was shot dead at the age of 42 in a police ambush in Karachi. Eleven years later, on 27 December 2007, Benazir, the first-born in the family, was herself murdered by a terrorist bomb. There is only one surviving child of the family of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and that is Benazir’s younger sister, Sanam. She was 19 when her father was judicially murdered. Traumatised and alone, while her mother and sister were held separately under house arrest, and while her brothers were in exile and out of contact, she hid from politics and vowed never to become involved in what was considered the family’s feudal destiny. Politics has been a tragedy for the Bhuttos and in many ways for Pakistan. The tragedy for the family was that the PPP, the radical – by Pakistani standards – semi-socialist political party which Zulfikar Ali Bhutto founded in the 1960s to replace military rule, became a family fiefdom. Despite the Bhutto family’s commitment to democracy, they would not let go the reins of a party they saw as its own. There were never any elections within the PPP. Benazir was party president for life. She chose and appointed the party’s officials and expected them to do as she told them and, if they failed to whip up support and huge rallies, their jobs were on the line. The tragedy for Pakistan was that, since 1947, corruption and personal gain took hold in a country divided between feudal landlords, peasants, immigrants and displaced intellectuals, with few roots to democracy. The swing-door of civilian government and military rule that followed independence destroyed the country and its institutions. The door is open and waiting for any demagogue, religious or secular, who will choose the right time to step forward. Today, military rule has been discredited by General Musharraf. Tomorrow who? A cross between Mullah Omar and Joseph Stalin, perhaps. Two ruthless extremists who loved their country. The Bhuttos, and Benazir in particular, must take a lot of the blame for the fate of Pakistan. Benazir had a pot-pourri mind. Her ideas were drawn in from every point of the compass. She was tough, quite fearsome, but also whimperingly sentimental. She called herself a daughter of the East, yet she was educated at two of the most important centres of Western learning, Oxford and Harvard. She was determined to be president of the Oxford Union and some might say learned her first political skills there from the amount of money she spent on her first unsuccessful, and then successful, campaign. Her closest friends were from Britain and the United States. Her friends in Pakistan tended to be adoring sycophants, or they were pushed aside. She sought out the cleverest and most influential people wherever she was and built up a network of contacts to the highest level. She was ruthless, and amazingly girlish. In 1987, the setting for her engagement to marry was in London, not in Pakistan. She was to enter an arranged marriage with Asif Zardari, a minor businessman whose family owned a cinema. It was an unlikely mix – the eldest and famous daughter of one of Sindh province’s oldest and most important families, and a little known and undistinguished man. In terms of intellect and influence, it also seemed a mismatch. But the relationship developed into one of deep affection on her part, while it gave him access to power and wealth. One year after the marriage, she scored her greatest political triumph and was elected Prime Minister in 1988. When things went wrong politically, her friends blamed her husband. When stories of corruption in her two governments became difficult to disbelieve, they blamed her husband, who was known then as Mr Ten Percent. Evidence, however, was emerging that she too had her hand in the till. She was forced to leave Pakistan to avoid embezzlement charges. They were later dropped under an amnesty when she returned this year, but anti-corruption cases against her remained in Europe. By the time of her death, she and her husband were living apart, he in the US, and she once more back in Pakistan. For all the sleaze, vindictiveness, arrogance and corruption that marked her in government; for all her gush and fawning of the foreign media, her incompetence as a leader of government and her very strong dictatorial tendencies, she was nonetheless a powerful symbol of unbending strength against tyranny. The choice was clear, military rule or democracy. She stood for democracy and she hated military rule, although at her death she was prepared to compromise. From 1978 through the 10 oppressive years of General Zia ul-Haq’s military/Islamic rule and persecution, she stood alone. Whether isolated and under house arrest, or in exile and abroad, she lived for her country. No one else had the courage to stand up to usurpers and the politicians they plucked from obscurity to help them. And it is for this reason, despite her clear failure in office, that she was a great woman at a time of darkness in Pakistan. For this, she should be remembered. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Pakistan’s darkest hour THE brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a stark and gory reminder that the Frankenstein monster of Jihadi terrorism created by the Pakistan army and the ISI is now completely and inexorably out of control. It is also a stunning blow to and an ominous warning for pro-democracy, pro-West political leaders. The spate of suicide bombings, including a dastardly attack during Eid prayers in a mosque, and several attacks on military convoys and personnel in the recent past clearly highlight the grim reality that the radical al Qaeda and Taliban extremists are steadily gaining ground and the Pakistan army is sinking further into a deep morass. The morale of the extremists is at an all time high, while that of the army and
para-military forces has slumped to the nadir. Since the storming of the Lal Masjid in a military operation to rid it of militant clerics and armed madrasa students in July 2007, suicide bombings have become an almost daily occurrence in all the large cities of Pakistan and have generated a fear psychosis. The people of Pakistan are waiting anxiously for the army to get its act together and extend its control over the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in NWFP and for the police forces to girdle up for urban counter-terrorism. The radical extremist groups outside the ISI’s control have now been further emboldened and in the next few months they will extend their area of operations further into Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistan army has proved itself adept at sponsoring and supporting insurgencies in neighbouring countries, as witnessed by the proxy wars that the army and the ISI fought in Afghanistan and Indian Punjab in the 1980s and then in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989. However, it has been tested and clearly found wanting in its ability to plan and execute counter-terrorism operations efficiently. Lacking strategic foresight, the army and the ISI failed to make a simple military assessment – indiscriminately arming and equipping religious fanatics and sundry warlords inevitably leads to the eventual emergence of an uncontrollable monster that relishes biting the hand that feeds it. Now the cows have come well and truly home. Hundreds of army personnel have been ambushed and “taken hostage” with their weapons, many have refused to fight their own Sunni and Pushtun brothers, some have surrendered and still others have deserted. There are even reports of some soldiers having committed fratricide while on operational duty. Army casualties are mounting and kill-ratios are abysmally low despite the use of artillery and helicopter
gunships. The militants are becoming bolder and more aggressive and are shifting their focus from operating against the infidels – NATO’s ISAF and US forces in Afghanistan – to directly fighting the Pakistan army that is seen to be in league with the Americans in the so-called global war on terror
(GWOT). The extremists are gradually gaining control over territory and have begun to expand their area of operations. From here the turmoil is bound to spread towards the Indus River and Punjab. Simultaneous with internal instability, the insurgency in Balochistan could flare up again at any moment as the Baloch people’s grievances have not been redressed to their satisfaction. With clearly discernible poor junior leadership, evidently loose command and control, inadequate training, signs of insubordination and indiscipline, increasing incidents of cowardice in the face of danger, the Pakistan army is losing its much-vaunted status of a professional army. The US was betting on Benazir Bhutto coming back to power and will now be forced to back another candidate. Despite all his machinations, General Musharraf’s days in power are now numbered as the people of Pakistan want him out. The US may try to use its influence with the Pakistan army to install an untainted moderate person in power. Some one like General Jehangir
Karamat, a former COAS and Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, may be acceptable to the army and may temporarily satisfy the aspirations of the people for a change. Instability in Pakistan does not portend well for India as radical extremism could eventually spill over across the Radcliff Line if the Indian security forces are not vigilant in a pro-active manner. In fact, past experience shows that the Pakistan army will not hesitate to divert the most virulent extremists to Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India. In case that happens in violation of the ongoing India-Pakistan rapprochement, Kashmir will face a “hot” winter with a large increase in infiltration attempts in the lower reaches of the Pir Panjal Range and, consequently, an increase in the number of incidents of violence on soft targets. This is undoubtedly Pakistan’s darkest hour. Pakistan’s future depends on how its army copes with the self-created disaster of radical extremism. |
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Inside Pakistan Benazir
Bhutto’s premonition has proved true. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan has been eliminated before she could try her luck during the coming elections to stage a comeback. Who could be behind her assassination? This question will continue to be debated for a long time to come, though the real culprits may never be brought to book. As The Frontier Post commented, “A secular by temperament and by creed, she was uninhibitedly opposed to all strands of extremism and fundamentalism. And even as she was presently under constant threat of the fanatical elements, she refused to bow down. Never ever did she fear in giving vent to her thoughts on this score publicly and fearlessly. And over these days, her persistent refrain was that if she came to power she would take on upfront the fanatical forces and stub them out.” Her clear stand against religious extremism indicates that her murder is the handiwork of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But this reflects simplistic understanding of the currents and cross-currents in Pakistan. The accusing finger is bound to be raised at Pakistan’s politicised intelligence agencies, now under the indirect control of the people whose names she had mentioned after the Karachi blast the day she came back to her country on October 18. Ruling PML (Q) leaders dreaded her coming back to power after she was reported to have reached a secret deal with President Pervez Musharraf. These leaders not only expressed their dismay over the deal idea, but also opposed it tooth and nail. Ultimately, Gen Pervez Musharraf, who had not doffed his uniform till then, succumbed to the pressures from his party leaders and declared that their interests would not be compromised. Could her known political rivals go to the extent of hatching an assassination conspiracy against her? “Irrespective of the fact which evil forces were behind this gruesome murder, fingers will inevitably be pointed. And the assumption will be that in their mad pursuit of eliminating an indomitable political rival they lost sight of the threat their ill-advised act would pose to the country’s solidarity”, as an editorial in The Nation said. According to The News, “Benazir Bhutto was expressly aware of the threat to her life and she had been saying so publicly, even before she decided to end her self-exile in October. That is probably why she did not bring her immediate family, husband Asif Ali Zardari and the three children, back to Pakistan. “But she was a determined lady and a brave one too. She had been pointing fingers at the retired elements in the state intelligence agencies, those who had themselves turned into religious fanatics or supporters of violent extremism, saying that they were after her because she supported a moderate and liberal Pakistan. Whether she was right in pointing out the culprits is impossible to say but her fears were not misplaced. “….More importantly, her assassination threatens to derail the entire process of Pakistan returning to an elected democratic rule, especially by a coalition of moderate and liberal leaders who could confront the growing menace of religious extremism and fanaticism. “This strategy had the full blessings of the West, specially the United States, as Washington carefully pushed General Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to move closer to occupy that middle space and keep Pakistan from swinging perilously towards the right. Her death will be felt as a severe blow to US interests in Pakistan and in the region. Pakistan, it would be fair, to predict, is now in for very turbulent times.”
Loss of partner Benazir was playing her cards in a very calculated manner. Her one-point programme, perhaps, was to weaken the PML (Q) so much so that it had no relevance in the post-election scenario. This is the reason why she had reached an understanding with another former Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, though her old rival, for contesting the coming elections. She purposely avoided critical references to Mr Sharif and other PML (N) leaders during her election speeches. The day she was done to death in Rawalpindi Daily Times carried an editorial, saying that “They could have succumbed to the old seduction of mutual electoral vilification, but they did not… The PPP leader is careful in her references to the PML (N), but the last time she ‘predicted’ that her party and the party of Mr Sharif would win the 2008 elections, she blithely put the PML (N) at number two.” Mr Sharif’s declaration of a boycott of the elections after her assassination is understandable. He must be feeling uncomfortable more because of having lost a valiant participant in the ongoing fight for democracy than the fast-spreading culture of violence. |
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by Michael Fathers
