Politics in Pakistan

It is almost useless to urge the Muslims all over the world to be moderate, tolerant, democratic, unless one takes enough care to materialise those sublime concepts in his own country. The West or the saner quarters of the world intelligentsia are not expected to repose their trust on words or on history, but on the deeds as are available now. Probably, no one would dispute when President Musharraf says: " We have had a glorious past. Islam exploded on the world scene as a flag bearer of a just, lawful, tolerant and value-oriented society……we exemplified tolerance within ourselves and people of other faiths." However, in to-day's world, the plain truth is that out of 52 members of the Organisation of the Muslim Conferences (OIC), there is hardly any single country which can boast of a truly tolerant and democratic set-up. The Muslim countries in general are ruled either by the Kings/Ameers, or by the military and civil autocrats, or by a system of deceptive democracy where the norms of democracy are grotesquely abused in various crude and cryptic ways just to hoodwink the innocent peoples.

If President Musharraf is really sincere about his ' enlightened moderation", he should first practise it in his own home, possibly by arranging an electoral contest with such personalities as Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and get the peoples' verdict through a free and fair election to be conducted by an independent election commission. For a perfect example of democratic and tolerant polity, one need not even look to the West, as in the East we already have the largest democracy in India where the Prime Minister is not the head of the political party in power, where the high offices of President , Speaker, Chief Election Commissioner and so on are filled up with distinguished personalities on the basis of consensus with the opposition parties, and above all, where it's not the general in uniform or the political party in power, but the elected parliament is supreme to decide who or which party will govern the country and for how long.