Countdown Starts For Pakistan's Failed Democracy

Our failed politicians were lucky to have an army chief like Kayani.

I have bad news to report to all the 'democrats' in Pakistan: Your days are numbered.

Pakistan's political elite is united in filth, corruption, and violence.

For a great Pakistani nation, this elite is a liability and is not suited to occupy any office in a nuclear-armed country and one of the largest nations of the world.

Any cleanup in Pakistan has to start with this failed political class.

But for all of their shrewdness, the biggest crime of our failed politicians this time is stupidity.

I apologize for being harsh but I have to convey the message.

This time, these failed politicians have blown it big time.

They were lucky to have an army chief like General Kayani.

This is a general officer who did everything he could to allow democracy to work and give a chance to every failed politician. In fact, he even let these failed parties fight over who gets to pocket the riches of extortion money in Karachi, the country's richest city.

Five full years for this failed political elite to get its act together.

But what they do?

They break all previous records in corruption and treason.

Yes, treason.

Today, if a Pakistani political party or politician is not connected to some foreign embassy or government then they're nobody.

This is not what Pakistan deserves. Pakistanis, from Karachi to Khyber and from Makran to Srinagar, are compassionate, smart and good people. They have enough honest and capable people to put at the top to run the country.

This doesn't necessarily mean a military-led government. That's a possibility but only as a last option. Hopefully we're not there yet.

What is for sure is that any effort to force failed politicians out of the way and prevent them from using force and violence to blackmail Pakistanis can succeed without the help and intervention of the country's armed forces and the judiciary.

The blackmail has started. A failed politician from a party in the ruling coalition openly threatened Pakistan of breakup [a repeat of the Indian invasion of East Pakistan in 1971] if his party's mafia-style control of Karachi was challenged.

More politicians are expected to use blackmail to challenge the State.

PPPP is expected to use the Sindh Card. PMLN is expected to use the Punjab Card, and possibly even the India Card.

The existing Pakistani political elite has gone too far in robbing the nation, and in compromising our economy and our security.

This elite is now violent and beyond control.

Most of the faces in this elite entered politics about 28 years ago, in the nonparty elections of 1985. Three decades is a lot of time for these tested, tried and failed politicians to stay in power.

Time to change faces and change the rules of the political game in Pakistan.

This is the only way to position Pakistan for the 21st century.

And Pakistan will be repositioned because this is our destiny. Patriotic Pakistanis must not allow the homeland to fail because of failed politics.

Pakistan's Biggest Enemy Is Its Failed Political Parties

Our failed political parties will destroy our country while we keep focusing on 'saving' democracy instead of 'reforming' it. Three parties have turned Karachi into Beirut in their fight for control over extortion money. Yet we still have people claiming things will be better with repeated elections. The only thing that will happen with repeated elections is these failed parties getting stronger to take over the country.

Today I've published a piece in The News International arguing that Pakistan's political parties are destroying the country and need to be fixed.

My solution is to have a strong civilian federal govt clipping the wings of these parties with the help of the armed forces. Naturally, such a strong civilian federal government can't come through elections. Our judiciary and the military can find other means to bring quality Pakistanis to the top.

Here's a quote:

"Where in Britain or Europe can parties do what we have allowed our parties to do here? Our parties can block major roads at will and forcibly shut down entire cities. Their ugly flags and graffiti blot the face of our cities and towns. They can brandish lethal weapons in public, confiscate and burn newspapers in Karachi, cut television cables and isolate Quetta from the rest of the country. Last year, one or two parties killed my colleague Wali Khan Babur, a young television reporter, in a sad attempt to ignite linguistic riots because that’s the only way these parties can flourish."

Read the full op-ed here.

UPDATE: Just to prove my point, reports are coming in that the leadership of MQM fled to Dubai as the city was brought to a standstill thanks to the gang wars between the armed wings of MQM, ANP and PPPP. The PKKH website reported that top leaders including Sindh governor Ishrat ul Ibad, Dr. Farooq Sattar, Babar Ghouri , Kamal Mustafa and others were spotted relaxing in the executive lounge of Avari Hotel in Dubai Tuesday night.

President Zardari vs. Jang Group: All Hail The Pakistani Commander-in-Chief

Imagine this: despite one of the world’s top five standing armies and nuclear arsenals, an important strategic location, 170 million in human resource, and great economic potential, and yet Pakistan’s elected democratic rulers are fighting a pitched battle with a media organization. Just a media organization.

This is what President Asif Ali Zardari, the commander-in-chief, is doing in his protracted, proxy battle with the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest media conglomerate.

How pathetic that a President of such a big country feels threatened by a media group run by a few journalists. Media management is an art that has eluded Pakistan’s political and military rulers. They just don’t get it. So Mr. Zardari’s aides hound the media group in multiple ways: blocking federal government advertisements, ordering the state-run media to produce counter-programs to the popular political talk shows on Jang’s television network, and try to scuttle Jang’s exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events.

The latest move by President Zardari’s government is to shut down Geo Super’s broadcast rights in Pakistan, leaving this subsidiary of Jang’s Geo Network with the expensive option of beaming its programming from a location outside Pakistan.

None of the successive Pakistani governments, including the five governments of President Zardari’s US-backed PPPP, paid any attention to developing a healthy sports culture in the country. The entire Pakistani political and media cultures are structured to provide maximum coverage to boring, divisive and destructive politics. There are no government-maintained sports facilities for the general public anywhere across the length and breadth of this 170-million-plus nation. Those that exist are few, privately-owned, and exclusive.

In fact, you won’t believe it if I tell you that a tennis court next to a commercial market in the F-6 sector of Islamabad is probably the only public tennis facility of its kind anywhere not just in the federal Pakistani capital but also in any one of the five provincial/state capitals.

In other words, if any businessman were to launch a 24/7 sports channel in Pakistan, it would be a losing proposition. You can’t make money from sports in a country that has no sports on the ground. A few dying national sports teams in squash, football, hockey, cricket and others don’t count.

So Jang’s sports channel was a money drain. And now that’s gone too.

It probably won’t make a dent in the media’s group’s earnings, and the only victims might by the staff. As for the public, they are left with two options:

One, to watch the recycled faces of Pakistani politicians as they grace dozens of talk shows every night regaling the nation with their absurdities and bad manners, barring of course a distinguished few.

And two, to watch self-styled religious channels where very few truly respectable individuals exist, with proper religious education from renowned Islamic schools. The rest offer multicolored turbans and opinions. I have talked to respectable Egyptian and Saudi men of religion and they are embarrassed by what we in Pakistan have to contribute to religion.

No wonder ours is a fatalistic nation, where doom and gloom abounds and most people have nothing to do after a day’s work except watching political TV.

My advice to Jang Group is simple: hit back. Don’t take the closure of your sports channel lying down.

Jang, with its influential talk shows and newspapers, has a unique ability to influence Pakistani public opinion. What it should do is to DOWNGRADE all politicians affiliated with the ruling coalition and its partners. All of them.

Yes. Downgrade them. How? Simple.

It should stop making them heroes by rotating them on its different talk shows every night, giving them free publicity and valuable airtime. It should do what one of its hosts, Saleem Safi, has admirably done: minimize the appearance of politicians on his show unless relevant to the story of the day and substitute them with other more intelligent Pakistanis.

Only a fraction of the 1,000 or so elected Pakistani politicians bore us every night on TV. There are many Pakistanis who can talk politics with more sense and creativity than many of these elected nincompoops. [Remember this: in Pakistan, the lowest you are in the cultural and intellectual development ladder, the bigger your chances of being elected and becoming Pakistan’s newest ‘democratic warrior’.]

So good for you, Mr. President. Don’t let us interrupt you. Please continue your battle against the media group. We have already wasted the first decade of the 21st century. We have nine to go and we’ll manage that with this kind of ruling elite.

Sindh Is Not A Card, Mr. Zardari

A large Sindhi cap is permanently displayed at Ayub Park, Rawalpindi.

There is a clear stench of deceit in Sindh Culture Day, being celebrated across Pakistan's Sindh province tomorrow. It has nothing to do with Sindh or with culture. In all likelihood, it's President Asif Ali Zardari's latest trick to blackmail his political opponents.

After all, what's the point in political groups taking out rallies waving the Sindhi cap and dress?

Sindh's culture and language are thriving like never before. They are not under threat of any kind. Sindhi language, one of Pakistan's oldest, is growing with Internet websites, newspapers, books, and television stations. All Pakistanis identify with the culture and language of Sindh. It's our culture and language. And we all own it and swoon to the great Sufi tunes of legendaries such as Abida Parveen and Allan Faqir, and the great words of Abdulatif Bhitai and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the great poet and Sufi saint of Sindh.

Pakistan's modern art, music, television and theater are greatly indebted to and enriched by the contributions of Pakistani Sindhis.



A young girl in a camp for flood victims near Hyderabad

 Instead of galvanizing the people on language, Mr. Zardari could have issued a call to the people in Sindh and across Pakistan to rise again for the victims of floods who are still homeless, and a large number of them are in Sindh. In fact, it is Mr. Zardari's government that turned these poor flood victims, especially in Sindh, into beggars, queuing by the thousands at government-run camps and offices for help and often getting beaten up by police for protesting government's corruption and ineptitude.

Mr. Zardari, who owns lavish real estate in the United States, France, UAE and the UK, is not concerned about them. He is worried about his seat of power and is looking for ways to survive.

What Mr. Zardari is trying to do is to create conditions to use the Sindh Card. Which means: if my government is toppled in any way, I will whip up Pakistan's Sindhis into demanding separation from Pakistan.

This threat is not new. A Zardari aide and interior minister in Sindh's provincial government, Zulfiqar Mirza, bluntly admitted he and his boss were contemplating this after the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Interestingly, late Mrs. Bhutto never thought of this even after the execution of late Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto. Also, I am not sure who gave Mr. Zardari or the PPPP the right to represent Pakistani citizens who are Sindhis [or who gave the same rights to MQM, ANP, etc. to represent other languages?].

Mr. Zardari has spent three years in power and has done nothing for his hometown, Nawabshah, or his wife's hometown, Larkana, or for Sindh. When he's out of power, he and his supporters will conveniently blame Islamabad, the federation, the so-called Establishment, or the alleged Punjabi-dominated bureaucracy of neglecting his home province.

People of Sindh are patriotic Pakistanis. They are also not fools.

Not only did Mr. Zardari not do anything for his home province, he didn't even do anything for Taslim Solangi. A pregnant 17-year-old Taslim was thrown to hungry dogs by corrupt landlords in rural Sindh in 2008. Before she was ripped apart by dogs, she was forced to prematurely deliver her 8-month-old baby who was immediately thrown into a river. Her family begged for justice and never received it.

Taslim Solangi, thrown to hungry dogs

President Zardari won't help the victims of  floods, won't give justice to Taslim Solangi, but is ready to use Sindh to save his presidency.

Sindh is not a card, Mr. President. Sindh is Pakistan. Please don't poison the culture of Sindh by linking it to your politics.

Unfortunately, none of the many intellectuals in Sindh stepped forward and protested President Zardari's desperate attempts to politicize our Sindhi culture. That's because they know they will be harassed by Mr. Zardari's party that currently rules the country.

It is time that we stopped anyone in the future using language for politics and to divide Pakistanis in the name of democracy.

The federal Pakistani government should seize our languages from these political parties and own them by itself. It should not let two-bit politicians use language for politics and divide Pakistanis along linguistic lines. Parties such as PPPP, ANP, MQM, PMLN and others have no right to self-appoint themselves as representatives and owners of entire groups of Pakistanis. The federal government should pass legislation to stop political parties from becoming linguistic parties. Democracy and political parties should not become tools for linguistic divisions. And this was certainly not the intent of the writers of our constitution.

We should have Sindh culture day and other culture days every year. But they should be organized by the federal government and celebrated nationally. Why should Sindh culture day be celebrated in Sindh only?

We need a federal government that can correct these abnormalities in Pakistani democracy.

Pro-US Cabal In Pakistan Is Angry At China Praise

The outgoing US ambassador to Pakistan needs to be congratulated for one thing: she did an excellent job of meddling in Pakistani media and politics. She is credited with organizing a pro-US cabal inside Pakistan that springs into action whenever the US is criticized in Pakistani media. Ironically, this cabal, which consists of Pakistanis, never shows equal passion when the US officials and media demonize Pakistan worldwide.

Ms. Patterson has not been working alone. She received full support from the ruling PPPP's media managers. That is why I am mentioning Pakistan's own wunderkid: Ambassador Husain Haqqani who is said by sources in his won party to be responsible for organizing PPPP's media plans while sitting in Washington DC.

Today the pro-US Zardari-Haqqani cabal in Pakistan [read: PPPP Media Cell] are seething with anger that I criticized Nobel's cheap shot against China. A version of my op-ed, titled, A 'Nobel' Mob Ambush, Chicago Style, was published by the blog section of the Pakistani affiliate of International Herald Tribune. The comments section makes for an interesting read.

They are livid that I linked Nobel's China swipe to the unusual wave of anti-China political ads during the current mid-term election campaign in the US. I explained how the Indian lobby in the US is contributing to the 'Blame China' campaign to divert attention from US public's anger at outsourcing jobs to India.

So guess what? The pro-US Zardari-Haqqani cabal teams up with Indian net surfers to bash China on this excellent Pakistani website.

But no one should worry: Their comments and arguments don't even begin to scratch the surface. The best answer to their ramblings cames from Mr. Ghias Ahmed whose half-line was both pithy and shrewd:

"‎2012 Nobel Prize will be paid in Chinese Yuan...".