Muhammad Ahsan Yatu
Pakistan is one of the safest countries as far as its boundaries are concerned. It has no threat from outside, and certainly not from its neighbours. Presently one division of our army is engaged in commercial and civilian activities throughout the country, another division is busy in maintaining law and order or to counter terrorism in Punjab and Sindh, and four divisions are engaged in Swat, Waziristan and Balochistan. What is left is not sufficient to defend the country in case there is an attack from outside. However, no country would take advantage of our unstable situation. No one would attack us. No one would even try to destabilise us further. China is a friend, Afghanistan is itself in great trouble and needs help, Iran too is a friend, and India is busy with its own problems and massive economic activities, and it too needs our cooperation. This is what our military establishment, our intellectuals and our people know. That is why we are not worried about borders.
What worries the people and the intelligentsia is an increasing and continuing wave of terrorism. However, our affluent groups are not at all worried about this internal terrible crisis. They are doing their businesses, as usual and happily. Even the assassination of Benazir Bhutto did not affect their money-making activities. Earlier, they took the lawyers’ movement and the fascist ways to curb it as non-events. They remained normal even after the massacre of political workers on May 12, 2007 and October 18, 2007. What is happening in Waziristan, Swat and Balochistan, and how many soldiers and civilians are being killed there is not their concern. The biggest proof of their indifference to the internal situation is our stock exchange the index, which is rising and rising; and whenever it falls, it does so only to swallow the earnings of small investors. These quick money-making groups are named as mafias in other countries, but here they are taken as entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs own our entire unorganised economy.
We have been having a considerable organised economy related to agriculture and agro-industry. During the past eight years, even this life saving part of our economy has been turned into an unorganised one through the sugar, wheat and cotton scams. The masterminds behind this conversion were patronised by our establishment for petty interests, and also for gaining the support of the rich so that its control over affairs of the country could remain intact. This patronisation has turned these mafias into a parallel establishment, which has become so powerful that it can give whenever it likes a final jolt to whatever economy we have, and in that sense it has become even more powerful than the civil-military establishment. The fact is that these mafias, internal and external, had rightly assessed a post-9/11 Pakistan.
They had visualised that Pakistan would receive billions of dollars in relief and aid due to the war on terror. Moreover, its foreign currency reserves would certainly increase because of increase in remittances, grants, loans and loan re-adjustments. Thus, through a well-planned strategy they grabbed the most from what we received after 9/11. They did it by creating an artificial consumer culture that we did not need, and that we could not afford.
Imagine a nation, whose 90 percent population has less than two dollars a day to spend, was enticed to become engaged in bank loans, automobile purchases, property businesses, mobile phones, stock exchange manipulations, electronic gadgets, etc. That is how our imports increased to horrible limits. That is how our current account deficit reached seven percent: That is how we lost 66 billion dollars and whatever manufacturing capacity we had. That is why presently we have no economy at all. Today even the State Bank has admitted that all economic indicators are negative. In fact, economic indicators had remained negative during the last eight years. That is why ever since martial law was imposed on October 12, 1999, joblessness, inflation and income disparities had been rising.
What is happening is that the chaos and anarchy, no matter how it comes, through religious extremism or political uncertainty, suits our quick money-making groups. The tragedy is that the chaos and anarchy also suits our establishment. A nation poor in resources and without political cohesiveness cannot survive for long with persistent anarchic conditions, and with two establishments, of which one is shamelessly self-centred and the other is ruthlessly exploitative.
We have talked about how mafias hijacked our economy; let us discuss how did our rulers of the past eight years increase political uncertainty. It was done through the so-called ‘devolution of power plan’. This writer was the only one who had through his articles warned that the devolution plan would prove a poison for the political environment. The warning was based on the argument that without the open and mandatory participation of political parties, the plan would divide the nation into infinite pieces and consequently we would be left with a depoliticised society having no genuine or effective political organisations.
Political organisations or political parties are what our two establishments hate most. Political organisations or political parties are what we the people of Pakistan need most. Had there been a political bond between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, we would not have faced the dilemma of Dhaka’s fall. Had there been a political bond among various areas of present Pakistan, there would have been no religious extremism and no voices for further break-up of Pakistan. These mafias are natural enemies of political organisations; they cannot exist in a genuine political environment. Why does our establishment hate and hence attempt to eliminate genuine political parties is a question that disturbs, because if Pakistan ends, it will be an end for all.
Some analysts think that there is no place left for more nails in the coffin; for them Benazir’s assassination was the last nail. Given the lawyers’ movement and the wisdom that the PPP has displayed, perhaps there is still a hope for all of us. All that we need to do is to rise above ethnic and institutional prejudices and banish the ghost of devolution and concepts that a combination of religion and military power are a substitute for politics. Let political parties decide what kind of local bodies system this country needs. Let political parties decide how much military strength we need. Let political parties decide how budgets should be made — how much should go back to the source from where the revenues come, to the people and provinces. Let political parties decide how to deal with the Americans and the Arabs to retrieve our lost sovereignty, our lost identity.
http://www.thepost.com.pk/OpinionNews.aspx?dtlid=138807&catid=11 |
