Faced with growing opposition and an ever dwindling grasp on power, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari railed against “non-government actors” today, which he accused of plotting against democracy.
The comments were his first high profile speech since his ruling Pakistani Peoples Party lost immunity for its assorted crimes and a growing number of his government’s top members face impending indictment.
The threat to “gouge the eyes” out of democracy’s enemies was not well received, with analysts noting that the speech seemed aimed chiefly at unifying the notion of Pakistani democracy with that of his own tottering regime.
Zardari has vowed to fight to retain his grip on the country’s presidency, but not even two years into his administration he has already declared “emergency rule” once and turned most of the nation’s north into a perpetual warzone. It seems however that the Supreme Court’s decision to revoke his immunity may be the straw that broke the president’s back, and it is difficult to imagine how his government could survive unscathed.
In the meantime opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, likely the big winner in the event the Zardari government falls, urged the president and others facing charges to defend themselves before the courts.
I published my predictions for 2010 this morning:
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/12/prediction…
No surprise, one of them says Zardari will be gone! I do not, however, see a return to military rule, I think Sharif will take over, and this will probably help to stabilize the country.
Pakistan politics is once again passing through crests and troughs. Probably not new for democratic forces as it has become a sober precedent to have glimpse of democracy and then long long period of dark dictatorship.
Democracy was smashed through one or the other way but Judiciary was the most perfect weapon used for this purpose in the history and once again selection was Judiciary and NRO was the tool. I'm inclined to record here that all the respectable people who are expressing discontent over the recent NRO verdict need to be heard for the sake of reason. They are very right in their comments that corruption remains a common denominator among most of the political and non-political actors. The army, the secret agencies, the lawyers, the judiciary, the political parties (including self righteous religious parties), the business class, the agricultural elite, the professionals including doctors and teachers (we have very high profile personalities from academia who are accused of plagiarism), civil bureaucracy, the society in general at all possible levels – corruption in all shapes, forms, intensities and quantities is there.
We accept it as the odd order of our lives. We need to fight, this menace in most stern manner. We have come up as one of the most proud nations and in fact PPP sacrificed lives and soaked the soil of our motherland with blood. All for the sake of democracy. We have been fighting frequently invading dictators. People of Pakistan have been winning these wars against dictators proudly since last 62 years of our country's existence. The present victory in terms of winning a democratically elected government is a fruit of people's consistent struggle and sacrifices. Now, when we got it, We should not allow anyone to derail it for their personal agendas. NRO had to be taken in order to get rid of a dictator. If we had to back at square one, there was no need to laid lives for democracy, there was no need to oust a dictator, there was no need to stand unite against darkness of democracy. No, no, we cannot allow anyone to derail democratic set up. The blood of martyrs of democracy cannot go futile. We will not allow these jugglers to play with this nation and democracy.