Pakistan: Nation's saddest times

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

What great sin is it that the 180 million, mostly deprived, denied and downtrodden, people of this unfortunate nation have committed that their miniscule motley crowd of fat bellies and nouveaux riches posing to be their political leaders are so insanely out to punish them for so vengefully? What indeed is the harm that these wretched people have done them that they are so madly hell-bent on throwing them on the saddest times of their lives? Couldn't the prime minister spare them a constitutional crisis when his watch has been such an era of endless turbulence and turmoil for them? Instead of hairsplitting, he could have exercised high moral choice, stood down and sought legal remedies to his court conviction on contempt. That indeed would have lent him a bit of respectability to his otherwise deeply tarnished repute. Yet he preferred hanging on to his job, even as his incumbency had become so compellingly untenable, morally if not legally. But what glorious track record for respect to judiciary does Mian Nawaz Sharif carry that he is striking such strident postures of piety, accosting Yousuf Raza Gilani either to quit or face the fury of his street agitation? Although till now he has deluded himself into believing, no lesser helped in this self-centred conceit by the coteries of fawning party acolytes and fondling media lackeys, that it was his long march that had resulted into the dysfunctional judiciary's restoration, the bland fact is that he has been living on borrowed laurels. That feat had actually come about from the dysfunctional judges' own unflinching steadfastness and the unrelenting campaign of the corps of Black Coats. Together, the judges and the lawyers had braved, unbendingly, the atrocious strike of a haughty willful despot, determined to cow down an independent judiciary and subjugate it into his handmaiden. They won; he lost. And MNS was nowhere on the scene when the lawyers and the judges threw the challenge to the despot. He was then cooling his heels in the cool climes of his London redoubt, cobbling up such contrivances as the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) with other politicians like him in political wilderness, all of whom he later betrayed remorselessly, ditching them to participate in the 2008 election under the dictator, contrary to the vow of his own London-convened conclave. He had only conveniently hopped on to the bandwagon of the campaigning true champions of independent judiciary. This was, anyway, when he was not in power. The real test for his new professions of being an ardent reinvented believer in the independence of judiciary is still to come. For, when in power he had had the singular honour of commandeering a squad of party storm-troopers to invade and ransack the nation's highest seat of judicial power, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, to set a record which one fervently hopes and prays would go unbroken in all times to come. But both Gilani and Nawaz can do a favour to the deeply-distressed nation and mercifully save it the atrocity of a confrontation that it would do without. Already, it is going through the worst-ever harrowing times of its lifetime. With a sagging economy showing no sign of reviving and throwing no jobs, no opportunities and no livelihoods over these past four years, they have virtually been consigned to a perpetual state of abject poverty and penury, utter want and squalor, and rampant hunger and malnutrition. Terribly, the bulk of the 180 million people stay wholly deprived of basic needs like healthcare, education, drinking waters, sanitation and public services, unrelievedly. And living amid unremittingly-prowling extremism, terrorism and criminality, they have lost all their sense of safety and security. Worse, the nation's cohesion, solidarity and unity are under the dire battering assailments of a variety of vicious inimical forces. Yet none of this is coming perturbedly to Gilani or Nawaz; indeed, for that matter, to any of the eminences strutting on the nation's political landscape, flaunting themselves up as its political leaders. Undistracted, they stay engrossed in their self-centred petty politics. Indeed, the way things are going on in the country is coming gleefully to this nation's inveterate enemies. They are gloating that their sinister job is being done very well for them by these insane politicos. And this nation's well-wishers are horrified with creeping fears that with their shenanigans these senseless politicos are dragging the country on to a perilous precipice dangerously. Yet those who should be deeply concerned over this are least pushed about it: our politicos across the spectrum. Coming uppermost to them is not the nation's and the country's well being but their own dirty politics. At least now, both Gilani and Nawaz must take mercy on the nation and spare it from their stridencies. Pull back they must. Gilani must bow down humbly to the apex court's verdict. And Nawaz must put off his pretences of love for judiciary for some better times. The nation would be well off without their stupid battles. After all, this country is nobody's political battlefield; and its people are not the playthings of anybody.