It has been reported by the media in Pakistan that Benazir Bhutto and General Pervez Musharraf have reached an agreement. That is, Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto will together run Pakistan as President and Prime Minister respectively. The national general elections will take place in Pakistan this year, but it appears that the results of this year’s elections have already been decided.
Musharraf has failed to create a set of parameters and structures that will alleviate conditions that give rise to poverty, corruption and injustice. Instead, he has joined existing wretched political mafia, of which, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are shining examples. However, Musharraf’s main reason for coup was to clean the political system of Pakistan and deter feudal thugs and petty thieves to usurp power.
Benazir is a feudal thug. Her family has tasted power many a time but they have hardly achieved anything substantive. Have any of the Bhuttos improved education, healthcare or for that matter any institution in Pakistan? Let alone Pakistan, they have not even improved tiny Larkana in Sindh. It is abominable and reprehensible that Musharraf and his cabal are treating Pakistan as their fiefdom and summarily importing people to run the day-to-day administration of the country.
Musharraf used to always remind people of disastrous legacy of Benazir and Nawaz. But then why does he want to bring Benazir Bhutto back to Pakistan and anoint her as his Prime Minister? President Musharraf wants to remain in power and wants to ensure his unending reign. By brining back Benazir Bhutto he has proven that he lacks: vision, principles, integrity and courage. Musharraf is a bankrupt man who is destrying the national fabric of Pakistan by perpetuating his illegal tenure as the President of Pakistan. He knows that Benazir and her associates are: corrupt, criminal and incompetent, yet he wants her to come back and run Pakistan. Musharraf is therefore wilfully, in full knowledge and intentionally destroying Pakistan.
Benazir’s PPP is one of the largest political parities in Pakistan and if they join Musharraf then there is effectively no opposition against Musharraf. Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is morally, ethically and politically a bankrupt party. PPP is effectively run by people like Benazir Bhutto, Aitizaz Ahsan, Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Asif Ali Zardari. They all know what to say to foreign media but they are in reality petty thugs. PPP and Muslim League has been instrumental in destroying Pakistan by partaking and facilitating corruption. Furthermore, PPP and Muslim League governments were incompetent and as a result, they did not leave any substantive legacy.
So it is indeed a disgrace that General Musharraf has already decided that Benazir’s PPP will form the next government. Now: why should people like Imran Khan bother to even campaign, for the government in power has already announced the results of the elections even before the elections have taken place. In these harrowing and grotesque times it will not be churlish to say that Pakistan is heading towards destruction and desolation.
Once again, the political cartel par excellence has come into vogue in Pakistan. And as Khuldun points out, let us be clear: Bhutto is no philosopher-queen in any respect. She is a classic example of a wasted vision: someone given all the opportunities in life to better the lives of others, who instead goes for base parochialism and snatches despair from the jaws of opportunity.
To despair is a terrible sin, we had been taught. The conscience that makes cowards of us all. The surrender that makes the worst inevitable. But now dear friends, in good truth- all other options seem finally to have been exhausted.