Someone There to Rescue Pakistan!

July 25, 2011

By Saeed Qureshi

Is there someone who can rescue Pakistan and its hapless people from the bloody clutches of Wolves and predators in the garb of humans? A massive deep drift and deadly decay is caving into the fabric of Pakistan and debilitating it like slow poisoning.

If you have a heart then tell me honestly: is it possible to survive in a monthly earning of Rs. 5000(if you have job) in a country where cabbage is 100 rupees a kilo and a watt of electricity cost Rs. 10. On the other far extreme of this bleak sight, there is a prime minister who spends millions on the visit of American philanthropist Angelina Jolie to take her around the shelters of the displaced Pakistanis ravaged by the last year’s flood and living under the open sky.

She was rightfully incensed and left with eerie feelings about the sincerity of leadership in Pakistan. She was stunned to see the extravagant and lavish lives of the people in power, contrasting their starving and hopeless millions. The prime minister threw away millions of rupees on his son’s wedding.

His son is arraigned for a mammoth money scam that is pushed under the carpet in brazen defiance of legal obligations. Every minister is busy in amassing money and making hay during their tenure of power.

There is a president whose pastime is to roam from one world capital to another in presidential jet for purposes that are as questionable and mysterious as his bona-fides. You have a president who is laden with the crime and delinquencies and is scot free. He is totally alienated from the people whom he is supposed to serve.

The Pakistan People’s Party that was hoisted to the roost of power on the crest of a people’s revolution is now sunk in the bottomless abyss of wickedness that one can think of.

The government has discovered an easy and most handy way-out to provide more voltage to the harassed people of Pakistan now growing old and shrunken under the sweltering heat and grinding poverty. It is to rent the second hand or used power units from foreign countries.

These are leased on unusually high prices that also carry their fabulous commissions. The burden of payment to the lessor( the seller) and the commission of the lessee (the minister of power or brokers) are passed on to the consumers who are already turning hunchbacks because of unbearable burgeoning economic burdens.

Lawlessness in Pakistan and pointedly in Pakistan’s leading city Karachi seems to be a blood soaked legacy of the Rwandan massacre. There is no let-up in bloodletting between the rival factions or by the trigger happy shooters.

One can draw the only conclusion from incessant wanton killings that either the government is an accomplice or it is not concerned about such manslaughters and target killings that have become the order of the day.

Where is the hope for a secure and placid future? The misnomer is being peddled that a worst democracy is better than the best autocracy or dictatorship. Do the people want the incumbent democracy to continue and keep spilling disaster every day, every hour and every minute?

I am indeed very sad and dejected over the spiraling violence that is devouring and swallowing the precious lives of the ordinary citizens without any conscious effort or plan by the government to arrest this frenzied trend and madness escalating horrendously.

The media and judiciary in Pakistan are bracing against the defiance of the government that casts media as anti state and throws supreme courts orders to the winds. How willfully and sarcastically, the administration sets aside, the apex court’s ruling on elephantine cases of corruption, dereliction of duty and gross abuse of power.

There is a litany of such cases where supreme courts have been turned into an institution of ridicule and powerless by the administration by not taking the follow up administrative measures.

Such is the abysmal state of affairs that is getting murkier by the day. Pakistan is turning into a dysfunctional state as life in that country is turning traumatic and unbearable. Agonized and panicked crowd called the people of Pakistan are hankering for water, good sanitation, genuine medicines, cure for their patients, good transportation, affordable prices of commodities, safe environment, speedy decisions, honest and responsible government functionaries such as police officials and officialdom.

Anyone can kill anyone on any pretext with remote chance of the culprits being caught or punished. This is the image and construct of a civil society in Pakistan that is worse than those existing during the middle and dark ages. We in Pakistan have put the gear of governance in reverse order while other nations are rapidly advancing on the path of progress, prosperity, unity and strength.

There is no use of projecting ourselves as nuclear power when the common man is caught in a fatiguing struggle of earning two loaves of bread for his starving children.

Why is the army fighting a war to serve the interests of other nations? It is a supportive fight for establishment of neo-colonialism whose agenda is to establish military bases, capture markets and to further their nefarious objectives of robbing and exploiting the untapped resources of the captive nations for their factories and mills.

The Pakistan armed forces are mandated to protect Pakistan and its people from external aggression. It is not obligated to fight in submission to the wishes and designs of foreign powers that nurse their own blighted concepts of self protection and priorities. Why should Pakistan a poor and economically weak country become pawn and part of the global diabolic game that is hollowing her from inside like termite and one day the edifice would crumble to the ground?

Can the leaders of Pakistan both in power and out of power think rationally and patriotically to apprehend and foresee the horrendous dangers and threats lurking over its stability and existence? Would they continue their sinister and insidious musical chairs game of intrigue and greed to take turn in ruling the country and grabbing power by foul and dubious means?

Do they realize that Pakistan is in deep and dire straits? Do they have an iota of commonsense to comprehend the hurricanes that are ferociously blowing to tear this country into pieces? Can they feel the pains and sufferings of the oppressed people of Pakistan passing every day through a life and death ordeal due to hunger, poverty, disease, unbridled and galloping cost of living and scarcity of items of daily use?

Do they know people are losing their lives because of bomb blasts and vendetta killings and gang wars? Do they know young girls are kidnapped on the way to schools and colleges and subjected to rape and sold to prostitute dens? Do they know every day 22000 young boys are molested by the sex predators in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?

We call ourselves Muslims and that is what the Islamic demagogues exhort us from the pulpit and from lavishly decorated religious congregations, to become. What is the ground reality? These religious orators incite their followers and sect fellows to slander their opponents and even kill them.

These religious zealots never initiate or start a campaign or float a mission against the social crimes, against the blood-thirsty mafias, against the evil doers, the rapist, the thugs, the looters of public funds, the adulterators, the bribe takers and bribe givers, the up to neck corrupt parliamentarians, the easy to buy jurists, the corrupt bureaucrats, the sleazy generals and the robbers occupying the power corridors.

These religious preachers can interpret to hang a powerless woman for adultery but do not want to punish a muscular and powerful man who kidnaps her and ruins her life at gun point or knife. We believe in distorted version of religious injunctions that hardly bring us any relief, redemptions and justice against the heinous culprits. Where are we heading to?

How can a woman produce four witnesses to prove that she was raped or molested? How a young and teen age girl molested by savage men can brace against the perpetrators for dishonoring her? Why, in the first instance, the laws are not implemented in letter and spirit.

If there is something erroneous in these laws and injunctions then we should be able to amend these for the benefit of the weak and the dispossessed.
I have a solution to stem this swelling rot. This would be presented in the next article.