All change!

A new leadership is vital for many reasons. A distant dream as Zardari and Sharif are clingers-on par excellence.

Early this month, posted on the BBC News website was a column by Ahmed Rashid, “Ten years of meltdown in Pakistan”, discussing the effects the apparently interminable war waged since 2001, has had on this unfortunate “hard” country.

Listed are all the usual woes which we here well know and which are internationally acknowledged and have brought Pakistan’s standing in the comity of nations to an all-time low — its own fault as the blame game never did wash.

Rashid writes that “there is hope that this government will survive until the next elections”, purely for democratic purposes, obviously not on merit. Is it possible for anyone other than the elected and their hangers-on to argue that this democratic dispensation has been an improvement, as far as the masses and its own welfare are concerned, over the justifiably maligned nine years of military dictatorship that fancied itself as ‘democratic’? Rigged indeed were the elections of 2002, and in a way the 2008 elections can also be said to have been rigged in a certain manner, as it was agreed between the western powers, the military dictator (his main negotiator being the present army chief), and that the PPP power in Pakistan would devolve upon the PPP in partnership with a retired general.

In all the democratic kerfuffle of the past three years, that ‘agreement’ has along the way been conveniently forgotten, partially because the skilful political manoeuvring of the self-appointed PPP co-chairman ousted the retired general.

Anyhow, Ahmed Rashid makes an eminently sensible suggestion — though perhaps it does not go far enough. If this government survives until 2013 and the elections are held, “if Pakistan is to be lumbered with the same political leadership as today then change and progress will be impossible to achieve”. Yes, no arguing on that.

So, suggests Rashid: “Before the elections, both President Asif Ali Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif should offer that they will not stand to lead the country into the next elections and will encourage a new leadership to emerge through democratic elections, held in their respective parties.”

The problem lies not only in the offer but in encouraging a new leadership. To do that, not only should Zardari and Sharif stand down, but so should all members of their immediate families and all the dead wood in the form of party members who have been sitting in the assemblies since the late 1980s. And joining them should be the Chaudhrys of the Q League and their cohorts — that renegade wagon-jumping lot — in fact all those of whichever party who have been in politics and made an almighty mess of things for over two decades.

A new leadership is vital for so many reasons — what we have and have had, cannot and could not deliver what is needed to pull Pakistan back into the civilised world. And it should at least be representative of the people, the 180 million, which most of those now occupying the plushy assemblies and senate are not. They are representative of themselves and their families — full stop. Also wanted in buckets full is ability — more ability than is needed to run a village water pump which is even beyond the capabilities of the majority of the present politicos.

A distant dream, of course, as Zardari and Sharif are clingers-on par excellence — the former being able to outsmart the latter at each step and he should now realise that his days are over. Neither is altruistic when it comes to the country. A further problem is that Zardari has skills and smart knacks that can keep him going for as long as he and the US may choose.

So it may not just boil down to tolerating Zardari until 2013, merely to sustain a democratic process. The country may have to tolerate an unpopular, corrupt and selfish leadership thereafter — barring a miracle from inner or outer space.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2011.