Quantum Note: Wither Pakistan?
Posted on 12. Aug, 2011 by drmuzaffar in Pakistan
By Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
A self-explanatory and ominous pointer to the direction Pakistan is heading is the section on “modern history” in Wikipedia entry on Pakistan where each of the three “democratic eras” are matched by “military eras”; the fourth (2008—to present) remains open ended. The first democratic era (1947-1958) was followed by the first military era (1958-1971) which lasted longer than the democratic era by 3 years; the second democratic era (1971–1977) was, once again, shorter than the second military era (1977–1988) by five years; the third democratic era (1988–1999) was slightly longer than the third military era (1999–2007), and the fourth and present democratic setup (2008–present) may prove to be the first major change in this pattern in the checkered history of this country which burst on the world scene in 1947 amidst bloodshed and migration of two million people across the new borders which a British man drew flying over the land.
Even if the pattern is broken and Pakistan matures into a polity ruled by elected representatives, one cannot place much hope in the elected representatives: there is hardly a person among the political lot who is competent and honest to rule a country beset by such grave problems. This is obvious, but what is not so obvious is the fact that there is no hope that any such competent and honest person is able to emerge from the strangled political landscape. The recent unopposed “election” of Mr. Nawaz Sharif to continue to head his faction of the Muslim League notwithstanding, all political parties of Pakistan are dictatorships and family fiefdoms. Thus, it is not surprising that the nation has been given the good news of the entrance of Mr. Bilawal Bhutto in the political arena in September: imagine the state of this poor country when the father-president graces the palace without the hill and the son-prime minister sits down the road!
Sharif and Chaudhry families have had their early starts in inducting the next generation into their fiefdoms, both failing miserably, because the sons have neither the cunning political temperament required to do the job, nor the existential necessity to enter an arena strewn with daily headaches of statements and counter-statements, corruption, fraud, and all the vile things one can think of. After all, they already have the multi-millions their fathers have amassed to live a comfortable life.
Jamat-e Islamic, the only “political party” which has some kind of transparent system for the emergence of leadership is so handicapped by the shortsightedness of its higher cadres that it has no chance at the polling stations: its political future is as doomed now as it was in 1954 when its founder abandoned the only path of success that was open to it. This leaves the regional players—especially, MQM and ANP—and the one-man party of Imran Khan. While MQM and ANP are secure in their local geographical areas, they can never assume national character given their present make up and both are, like all other political parties, dominated by one men at the top.
Imran Khan’s Tahrik-e Insaf is just that: Imran Khan’s one man party; a person who happen to become a national cricket hero at one time and who, later, used that fame for a good cause, but who has no political program, no broad based consultative process, no democratic process within his own party.
This barren political landscape is not merely the result of greed, corruption, and incompetence of Pakistani leadership; it is also the result of the psychological makeup of Pakistani nation: Pakistanis always think in terms of a person who will take them out of their present dismal state; the personal charisma is not only a major factor in their political behavior, it is the only factor. A leader is what they need, just one person on whom they can heap all their hopes and miseries. This may very well be the result of a strangled political past, but it certainly has something to do with the broader makeup of this nation.
For centuries, people who now comprise Pakistan have lived under feudal system. Throughout the Mughal era, the entire subcontinent remained a fiefdom of local lords; the British rule did little to change the basic demographic realities and though urban population did achieve a certain degree of political culture, a very large area of the current state remained—and remains—under the spell of local feudal lords. This factor alone has perpetuated untold suffering and poverty for a very large percentage of Pakistanis.
Historically entrenched facts are not changed at the polling booths. For Pakistan, this means a dangerous reliance on the cesspool of its current political leadership—for there is no one else on the scene who can enter power politics—and if one surveys the current political landscape of Pakistan, the only future one can imagine is the continuation of the present. And the present is unsustainable, if for nothing else, then due to the enormous population pressure which demands radical institutional reform. Yet, under the present circumstances, Pakistan’s future parliament and senate will not be much different from what they are now: two houses mostly populated by illiterate and incompetent men, many of whom have been charged for obtaining false educational degrees and none of whom has the ability to formulate even a single policy for a country where administration and politics have never been separated.
In this bleak scenario, all extrapolations of the present yield a downward spiral path into poverty, violence and disintegration. If there is any hope, it may very well be that in that very spiral; for things can go wrong only to a certain limit; once that limit has been reached, something new has to emerge. That something new, in the case of Pakistan, is not a new political order dreamt up in Washington DC for polities where even the basic ingredients of modern political state are absent, but something local. It could be a charismatic hero-type, who will emerge from the rubble and take hold of the nation in its death pangs and carve out a hitherto unforeseeable future for it.
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4 Responses to “Quantum Note: Wither Pakistan?”
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Ali
12. Aug, 2011
Mr, you just disapoint me and why are you spreading disappointment. I want to correct you on Imran khan. I’m in usa and I just join “PTI” few month back and we had election on every position. And we tried to chose best candidate.I have a suggestion for you, you should research more on Pti website so you can give hope to the Pak peopl. On my side I’m part of change that going to be happen in free and fair election in Pakistan soon.
Alami Musafir
13. Aug, 2011
As usual Dr Iqbal, you have hit the nail on its head…Bravo for an excellent analysis.
You ended on a note of despair, which I too share. Perhaps the grapevine is right and we really are in the End Times…looking around the world it certainly looks that way. And as with all such things I'm sure that it will be a long, drawn out and miserable affair, a sputtering tortuous business instead of a nice quick bang which would end the world, put us out of our misery and dispatch us into the next world (no doubt to repeat the process all over again).
abubaqar
13. Aug, 2011
i agree with most of your views written here even though i am an outsider now having left pakistan for the last 40 years.
pakistanis need better then the idiotic shitheads running the show as if pakistan is they fathers property!
IT IS THE CHOICE OF ANY PERSON TO COMMITT A SIN, HOWEVER, IF DUE TO THAT SIN INNOCENTS HAVE TO PAY THEN THE SINNER SHOULD BE REPAID IN KIND!
may i suggest that to make quick change a party should stand up and state clearly that everyone who votes it to power will be entitled to an acre of land or more plus generous help towards homes with materials and manpower!
confiscate all that money put outside the country by the current thieves if possible and dole it out to the poor equally!
talking is not going to get you anywhere, people want material things to change so offer it to them, confiscate the lands of the jagirdars and ensure no one can own more then a certain amount of acreage until there is stability in society. this was done by akbar the great and produced good results, try it you have nothing to lose it seems except your lives which will be gone one day anyway!
democracy rubbish does not work in america, so how can it work in pakistan???
americans cannot even criticise those who rule over them, namely the zionist jews who work for israel and not for america!
be true to Allah and implement his laws and not secular laws based on mans silly ideas!
yusuf bin tashfeen did the same in spain when it nearly crumbled by the excess of the thieves like todays zardari,s, mashallah he kept the country going for another 400 years!!!
i wish for pakistan and its people, but i also wish for them to wake up and recognise the rottennes in they country to excise it for your betterment. after all you can only have the kind of leaders based on what kind of people you are!
Red Mann
15. Aug, 2011
RED MANN HAS A SPECIAL FACT TO SHARE WITH 81 US CONGRESS PEOPLE & THEIR FAMILIES! TRAITORS TO THE usa! PLEASE SPREAD THIS ALL AROUND ISA-HELL FROM THE RED RACE OF PEOPLES OF OCCUPIED EURO-AMERICA!
“Hallelujah” !
Really want the white killer-judo-christian hoarding amerikan congressmen and their families to understand the true meaning of my using the word isra-HELL to describe “their holy land”.
You see, all you “white-skinned cherub” judo-christian killers, it has NOTHING to do at all with being “anti-semantic” or not “liking christian hoarder-killers”. No, nothing at all.
What it does have to do with is the joy of knowing that all of you are going to the “holy land” to take a big breath of that holy air which has flying around in it literally “itty bitty hot particles” spread all around when the war criminals of isra-HELL used Depleted Uranium Munitions on the residents of the Gaza Strip.
That YOU amerikan government war criminals gave to them to use and have used yourself on large populated areas of the world.
The isra-HELL “war criminals” have also used white phosphorus on Gaza Strip civilian populations.
But, unlike D. U. munitions there is no “gift that keeps on giving”.
So, our “friendly” amerikan white killer-hoarder judo-christian visitors as well as all the civilian population of isra-HELL is breathing in these radioactive hot particles to their lungs, eating and swallowing these hot particles on leafy vegetables and fruit grown outside when they eat!
What joy this brings Red Mann because the following is what it means:
Very malignant fast acting cancers of all sorts will form in the individuals who have consumed and inhaled hot particles.
Diabetes type 2 at pandemic levels.
A tremendous rise in the infant death syndrome.
Human genetic mutations, also, of all types.
Genetic mutations of every living thing including bacteria and viruses.
A tremendous drop in the isra-hell “viable male sperm count” versus what is considered “fertile” or “normal levels” in the rest of the world that has not been affected by Depleted Uranium Munitions.
Hey, fools that call yourselves “gods chosen people”, your male’s viable sperm count is already down to 35% in volume of what is considered normal. I say to you (the problem) will be solved because you will render yourselves sterile. And within 20 years, like most of the white people in the “united states of terror”, you will fade away, too.
Remember that big fire that just happened last August, 2010?
Remember all that smoke and all those particles (particulates) in that smoke that floated around you and all your cities for all the time that fire went on?
Some of those particles were DU hot particles, and every time there is another fire, you all will breathe more.
Because you believing, doting fools have let your military coat the entire surface of your country with the micron-sized hot particles of Depleted Uranium Munitions that you have dropped on your neighbors.
Red Mann is so happy!
The half life is something like 2.5 million years – does not mean it is gone – or “safe”, just that the radiation level now decreases by half IN 2.5 MILLION YEARS.
You evil sons of bitches are finally starting to kill yourselves off for good.
100 million “white deaths” weren’t enough for you WHITE MONSTER-MANIACS during the 1900’s.
But Red Mann is going to warn all the other races and give them the exact way to be able to defeat you psychologically as well as your Arab brothers. And Red Mann will never resort to violence, will never “fire a shot” (like you do whiteman, consistently over a several thousand year period of history that you – the PERPETRATORS OF THE CRIMES, were kind enough to document), no, we are going to take you apart with your own “psy-op” compromised religiously brain-washed psychology that has been embedded in you by the pedophile-infested clergy you blindly follow.
Red Mann will use on you what you have used on everyone else all this time.
And few of you “free” white judo-christian killer-hoarding “assholes” will even know what’s being done to you.
Cause Red Mann knows that in your ancient “old testament book of designed Babel and never-ending designed-not-to-be-solved mystery”, no matter what version (jew – christian – muslim) is referred to, you all come from the same tribe.
You all come from the same blood.
You all have the same genetics.
You all have the same “bull shit story” where “god” has a DICK – a penis!
And, written exclusively by males, all versions of your “holy babble books” have no natural balance at all.
It is time for you “lunatics” plagued with all forms of “god-has-a-dick-religions” to fade away.