Postscript | Threats to the political process

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The bureaucratic establishment exposed its bankruptcy by dishing out its 10-point security plan to ban public rallies after sunset. The restrictions on fundamental rights were clamped soon after the terrorists wrote yet another script of horror, annihilating as many as 150 innocent citizens including children, women, and the elderly. These citizens were punished for their ‘crime’ of joining the jubilant, and the largest ever political rally in Karachi to welcome Benazir Bhutto.

The PPP leader landed in Pakistan’s first capital defying the establishment bigwigs’ advice to postpone her arrival (to paint and project her as their pawn). The attempt to eliminate her failed as dozens of PPP youth were specially assigned security duties in and around the armoured vehicle Benazir had boarded with her team. They bravely faced death, along with other innocent citizens. On Sunday Benazir ignored the so-called security plan that can be described as a surrender to the terrorists’ plan and went to inquire about the condition of the injured at a hospital. She also visited Lyari. The youth of Lyari were part of her security cordon. Many of them perished in the cowardly carnage, but did not leave their positions.

Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani tribal Taliban leader reported to have earlier vowed to launch suicide attacks to kill Benazir Bhutto, did not accept responsibility. The PPP leader already announced that she was aware of the retired and serving elements of the Pakistani establishment who had drawn up plans to kill her. She had told the media of having named three persons in a letter to General Pervez Musharraf. In the press conference at her residence on Friday afternoon, Benazir told the media again that she would not accuse others for the carnage, but the very elements that she had identified in her aforesaid communication.

On Sunday her party leaders submitted a written complaint about the massive slaughter of human beings on Shahra-e-Faisal with the area police. The complaint mentioned the letter sent to General Pervez Musharraf. The turnout of hundreds of thousands of Bhutto supporters contradicted many a scribe who was of the view that the PPP chairperson for life had lost much of the Bhutto charisma after the reports of the so-called deal with General Pervez Musharraf. At the same time, the unprecedented Benazir reception made the regime’s incumbent hangers-on extremely nervous. They panicked. If one of them was insisting (even after Benazir’s entourage had landed at the Quaid-e-Azam International Airport) that the crowd would not touch even a figure of 50,000, another was going on to claim it will never surpass the Lahore reception of 1986. Another more ‘informed’ told that the crowd would hardly give the PPP a national assembly seat.

The PML(Q) chief, who rushed back from London soon after the Karachi massacre, expressed his desire that the Karachi horror should be forgotten and that the regime should put a ban on political rallies. He must surely be privy to the plan for the post-carnage security. The PPP Punjab chief Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a TV channel discussion that in an earlier discussion Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid had stated that political activity in the country will be confined to the drawing rooms. When asked to explain how, he had said that a couple of blasts at rallies/public jalsas would do the trick.

A PML(Q) coalitionleader, a PPP turncoat, who once enjoyed the country’s presidency and sacked his own party’s government, has repeated an earlier suggestion from the regime’s bandwagon that called for the postponement of the general elections for a year. The PML(Q) chief has put forward this idea as well as other suggestions to postpone the polls, the imposition of emergency and similar other ploys to prevent the return of a representative government. That General Pervez Musharraf calls him ‘beeba’ (simpleton) only explains that he has also learnt some basics about political bluffing.

No political party or leader can agree to surrender the rights that should be available to all human beings and for which the Pakistani people struggled to achieve independence. In all the independent countries of the world, including Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh who face terrorism, people organise rallies, hold public meetings, and other such activities to mobilise public opinion. These activities take place in the evening most of the time. It is only in regimented societies under authoritarian misrule that people are denied their right to association and expression.

The efforts at regimentation in our country have already brutalised our society. No wonder the people are turning to violence. That was not the objective of our independence struggle. It was waged to establish an egalitarian social democracy and not a military dictatorship, theocracy, or guided ‘democracy’. Coups and conspiracies to impose a system of governance controlled by the military-bureaucratic establishment have been persistently challenged by our people who have made sacrifices in blood. Curbing the people’s basic democratic rights under the excuse of threats from terrorists will surely be resisted by all the political forces across the board that seek an end to military-bureaucratic hegemony and seek civilian supremacy and the rule of law.

The so-called 10-point security plan clearly establishes that the regime has been panicked by the popular response to Benazir Bhutto on her return from exile and is scared of her expected reception in other parts of the country, especially in the most populous province, Punjab. The province is to receive yet another mainstream political leader, Nawaz Sharif, who has announced to come home early in November. The panic is evident from the ploy contrived to prevent popular leaders’ rallies and receptions. The regime concedes its failure to establish law and order despite an expensive and extra-large security apparatus. It should, therefore, hand over power to an interim national government of consensus so that a free and fair election is held and civilian rule is established to govern the country with people’s participation in decision making.

Notice needs to be taken of the directive of a bench of the Supreme Court (SC) that took suo motu notice of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid and its allied Jamias that were vacated after the commando operation. It was another side of ‘judicial activism’ when the court asked for the payment of diyat (blood money) to the relatives of those who lost their lives in the mosque/madrassa complex sprawling mostly over encroached public property. Everyone believing in one’s right to live would abhor the loss of human lives at the Lal Masjid complex (who were provided sufficient time and space to come out of the complex and leave with their relatives/or get lodged in safe place/s).

However, one cannot avoid taking note of the fact that the SC bench played to the conservative gallery that condones terrorism, including suicide bombings, to kill innocent human beings. Had it not been so, the same bench should have taken a similar action and asked for the payment of diyat to those couple of hundred citizens slain in the terrorist attacks in the federal capital and the GHQ city. Similarly, compensation should have been directed to be paid to those who fell to terrorist and suicide bombs in all parts of the country, including the tribal areas, the Northern Areas, AJK, the cities and towns of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, NWFP during the last few years. The SC bench should also be asked if it would direct the state to pay blood money to the victims of state terrorism unleashed on the people of Balochistan in the not so distant past.

And what about those gunned down in the then East Pakistan? One wonders why the SC bench did not direct the Lal Masjid management to pay blood money to the relatives of personnel of security forces who were slain in and outside of the Lal Masjid complex and its encroached sanctuary for local and foreign terrorists. As for the Karachi carnage last week, the Chief Justice of Pakistan has announced that after waiting for a couple of days for the state to take due steps at the proper level for investigating the same, the SC would take suo motu notice of the killings. In the meanwhile, the diyat awarding bench of the SC should direct those responsible to pay blood money to the parents/spouses/sons/daughters of at least 140 of those identified to have been killed so far and hundreds of others who have received injuries that are also to be compensated under the Islamic legal code.

The writer is a senior journalist who has held editorial positions in various newspapers.

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