We should not belittle the democratic transfer of power that has happened for the first time in the country.
LAHORE: This is with reference to the article “Old guards, new Pakistan” (May 28) by Shabbir Ahmad Khan. The writer has presented a pessimistic view of the recent elections and the ensuing change that has come. He has failed to notice that it is the first time that caretaker set-ups and the chief election commissioner were nominated after consultation between the government and the opposition, which is of course a major shift from the previous practice of nomination of the caretaker set-up by the president. This is a welcome departure and it needs to be applauded.
His second contention that democratic transfer of power took place in 2008 does not hold water because the government of that time was essentially a dictatorship, under the garb of democracy. Moreover, he has equated the rise of the MMA with that of the PTI in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), which is also misplaced. Everyone in Pakistan knows that the MMA’s rise in K-P came about as a result of the sidelining of the main political parties, the PML-N and the PPP, and the MMA’s coming into power was an engineered job. There is nothing engineered about the PTI’s mandate in K-P.
The point is that we should not belittle the democratic transfer of power that has happened for the first time in the country and if the same process is allowed to continue, we can expect the weeding out of corrupt politicians and installation of honest and upright people.
Omer Butt
Published in The Express Tribune, June 3rd, 2013.
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