The sheer waste of our precious resources and the pomp and show of our rulers are just nauseatingly legendary
ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Muhammad Ali Ehsan’s article “Brothers in arms?” published on January 15. Mr Ehsan states in his piece: “Shouldn’t moral and ethical values have prevented General Kayani from allowing his brother access to areas that he influenced or controlled?” Well, the million dollar response is that morality and ethics have little relevance in Pakistan as it has been morally and ethically wrecked for a while now, and is getting worse by the day. It is an open secret that greed, nepotism and corruption at the highest level (and filtering down the hierarchy) define how the country is governed. Black money can be whitened and looters encouraged to plea bargain and keep a portion of the loot for themselves. That’s the way the cookie crumbles here in Pakistan.
The previous PPP government did a good job by strictly focusing its insatiable avarice and succeeding. The incumbent PML-N government simply does not have any vision for Pakistan. And a classic example of nepotism is observable for the government is nothing but a close family affair, resulting in dwindling exports, sky-rocketing debt and rampant inflation. The economy is dangerously wobbly. Health, education and employment, as usual, remain secondary to glittering metro buses and a bunch of flyovers and roads, so at least the PML-N is a notch better than the PPP. But overall, even after a dismal third attempt to lead a distressed nation, no lessons have been learnt thus far. The sheer waste of our precious resources and the pomp and show of our rulers are just nauseatingly legendary.
There was hope when General (retd) Pervez Musharraf took over in October 1999, promising a swift end to corruption as well as the initiation of other reforms. But he, too, like his predecessors took the less arduous route and joined the old bandwagon of charlatans just to stay in power for as long as he could. Only if Musharraf was half as ethical, focused, principled and morally upright as General Raheel Sharif, we could most certainly be enjoying a better Pakistan by now. But alas that was not to be.
Danish Aftab
Published in The Express Tribune, January 19th, 2016.
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