The future of Pakistan: Zardari better than all prior governments

Editor’s note:  We are pleased to cross post this article from Indian Express.  Aside from the mandate of the people, the PPP-Government lead by President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani has also been appreciated by the global community for its reasonable approach.  It has also now become clear that Pakistan’s security establishment and its civilian proxies is deeply uncomfortable with President Zardari and the PPP and are doing their best to undermine him by propping up Taliban apologist and playboy-turned-Islamist politician, Imran Khan.

While the security establishment wants to drag Pakistan into the Middle Ages by continuing to support the Taliban and other Jihadi militias, President Zardari and the PPP stand as the sole bulwark.  Unfortunately Pakistan’s urban elite “intelligensia” has played a negative role in the current democratic dispensation.  They have used their elite status to undermine the government by lining up in the ISI-sponsored Lawyer’s Movement.  The late Benazir Bhutto did her best to wrestle this movement away from the right-wing Islamists (PML N, PTI, JI, SSP, Al Qaeda) and their establishment backers but paid with her life for opposing the establishment.

As right-wing Islamist political groups like the PTI and PML N are manupilating a deeply politisized Judiciary to undermine the government throught the Memogate controversy, the urban intelligensia has an opportunity to redeem itself instead of continuing to protect its financial interests and NGO turfs. For this, they will have to intellectually counter the chauvinist discourse of  military establishment touts like Ejaz Haider and Cyril Almeida.  The abusive tirade of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi apologist, Ejaz Haider, against the elected President of Pakistan are a shameful reminder of how distorted our national discourse has become and stand in stark contrast the objective analysis below.

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Zardari better than prior civilian govts: think-tank
Pakistan’s embattled President Asif Ali Zardari has performed better than any prior civilian government of the country and led attempts to rebuild some of the badly weakened Constitutional institution in the turbulent nation, a US expert has said.

Thought the Pakistani President is facing systematic attempts by the opposition and intelligence services to portray him corrupt, his government led by the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has performed better than expected in a country mostly been ruled by military dictators after independence.

Lacking his wife’s brilliance and charisma, America’s foremost expert on the subcontinent, Stephen P Cohen, Zardari is largely following late Benazir Bhutto’s agenda of reform and restoration rather than transformation.

Complaints of corruption against Zardari have faded in 2011 as the problems facing Pakistan-notably terror attacks-have shifted attention to the military and its inability to control domestic violence, Cohen writes.

Cohen’s ratings of the new Pakistani government are carried in a book ‘The Future of Pakistan‘ brought out by Brookings Institute — a prestigious Washington-based think-tank.

“Little was expected of Zardari, a Karachi-born, Sindhi-speaking politician from Punjab’s Multan district, but in partnership with stalwart PPP members, his government, led by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, has performed better than any prior civilian government-not a great accomplishment, but one that should not be belittled,” the US expert said.

“In the three years of Zardari’s presidency, there have been significant changes in Pakistan’s constitutional arrangements and an attempt to rebuild some of the badly weakened institutions of the Pakistani state,” Cohen writes.

Summarising, Cohen says that indicators of the competence of the Pakistani state are generally negative. “Despite the efforts of the Zardari administration to reform the system, all of the levers of power-the civil bureaucracy, the higher decision making system, and the public-private interface-are incoherent,” he wrote.

“The state has yet to regain the integrity that it had forty or fifty years ago, even though it is called on to do much more in terms of economic development and public administration. Corruption is rife, but it would be acceptable if the government were able to deliver the basic services expected of a modern state. The media and the NGO community cannot replace the state; nonetheless, fundamental reform is not supported by the strongest institution of all, the army,” Cohen concluded.

Source: Indian Express

Related PostIn Defence of Asif Ali Zardari – by Abdullah Zaidi

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