Present government may not be fit to rule but to dislodge it using extra-constitutional routes must not be supported.
KARACHI: This is in reference to a recent call by some politicians, retired generals and columnists for the military to step in and take charge of the country. Their reasoning is that the present government, because of its tussle with the Supreme Court, has lost all moral authority to stay in office. The chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has gone so far as to say that in such a situation dictatorship was better than democracy.
I have no love for this government and, in my opinion, it has scored very poorly on the issue of good governance. Stories of corruption are rampant and one must be with the Supreme Court on this issue, in that the court’s directives must be followed by the government in letter and spirit.
That said, the people who are calling for this kind of change have no moral standing of their own. Some, including one retired general, were allegedly involved in the Mehran Bank scandal whereby funds from the ISI were given to several politicians. Among these is one general who has admitted in the past to blocking the PPP from coming to power by cobbling the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad. And another who himself submitted the list of people who were given the money by the agency.
The present government may not be fit to rule but to dislodge it using extra-constitutional routes is something that must not be supported.
Mazhar Abbas
Published in The Express Tribune, July 28th, 2011.
