A Few Questions for Uncle Sam
I am deflated at the moment given that the fool in me bought the story hook, line and sinker from the Mush regime regarding the prospect of the Chief Justice reading his Eid prayers at Faisal Mosque. Furthermore the ‘re-arrests’ of our leaders Justice Tariq Mehmood and Aitzaz Ahsan have compounded the pain for all involved in the noble struggle to restore the pre-Nov 3 judiciary.
The chaos and division that ensued from the debate regarding to decision to boycott the elections or not has left a bad taste in the mouth and coupled with the continued arrests of our leaders our noble struggle has been hit for a big six in recent weeks.
With election fever finally taking root and the media treading carefully with a capital C so as to remain on our boxes. It is becoming difficult to keep the valiant struggle to restore the pre-Nov 3 judiciary in the news, in order to keep the issue alive. Even the recent attacks by the police on innocent women protestors in Islamabad were not deemed headline or front page news with media outlets choosing to look the other way except for token reporting and nil analysis.
The worst culprit is none other than Uncle Sam.and her media who like their governments have chosen to delight in hearing that the emergency has been lifted and that the khaki king has shed his second skin. The message coming from them through their inactions is ‘rejoice for its all hunky dory now’. The trouble with their approach is that they are ignoring the real issues vital to democracy and the rule of law and assume that ‘normalcy’ has returned to Pakistan.
The reality is that martial law has not been lifted it has only been concealed. Like the tip of a proverbial iceberg, the ugly realities of dictatorship continue hidden below the surface.
I have numerous questions to ask Uncle Sam ( I mean President Bush and his fan club really!) in this regard and also of those other forces who support the conventional wisdom of the Western media and governments.
However I cannot better the questions put forward recently by our very own Aitzaz Ahsan and Congressman John F.Tierney in an article in the Washington Post that brilliantly exposes the fantastic flaws of the US position. The article and questions are as below:.
Questions for the Two Rulers of Pakistan and America By John F. Tierney and Aitzaz Ahsan
One of us chairs a House of Representatives subcommittee tasked with oversight of U.S. foreign policy and one of us languishes under illegal house arrest after transfer from a Pakistani jail for the “heinous” and “seditious” crime of representing, in legal proceedings, the illegally sacked Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Mr. Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
As members of the political opposition in our respective countries and as lawyers firmly committed to the rule of law, we have a few questions for our [tyrannical] heads of state:
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How will you address the increasing anti-Americanism in Pakistan in light of the growing, and not unjustified, perception among Pakistan’s democratic moderates that the United States is not willing to stand with the people of Pakistan against an increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic government in Islamabad?
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How will you respond to the inevitable international condemnation of a parliamentary “election” in which journalists are muzzled; political parties are prohibited from campaigning; Pakistani military and intelligence services visibly enforce an atmosphere of intimidation; and opposition leaders are unlawfully exiled, illegally jailed or placed under unlawful house arrest?
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How do you expect to effectively compete against PMLQ-MQM ideology when U.S. education funding to Pakistan is one-fifteenth its military support and Pakistani funding for public education remains woefully inadequate? Thirteen million Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 — out of 27 million total — are not enrolled in school at all, leaving them exposed to extremist PMLQ-MQM mentors.
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How do you expect to combat the PML-Q and MQM cancer spreading from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the Northwest Frontier and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan when the Pakistani military is busy pointing its guns at judges, lawyers, journalists, political opponents and human rights advocates?
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How do you expect to muster the political fortitude and legitimacy to fight extremist MQM and PML-Q forces when you have alienated the center-left and center-right — the more progressive components of Pakistani society?
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The people of Pakistan and the people of the United States deserve honest answers to these vexing questions. They are long overdue.
John F. Tierney (D-MA) is a Member of the U.S. Congress. Barrister-at- Law Aitzaz Ahsan, Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President and an eminent human rights Advocate, has represented Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as well as two former prime ministers of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto and Muhammad Nawaz Sharif.
The questions say it all and I am all ears Uncle Sam as I await your rejoinder with bated breath.
- Originally written on 24th December 2007, 02:45 PK Time, written under MARTIAL LAW