Democracy, eh?

I don’t understand people rendering the present government and its reforms as “undemocratic”. With the presidential elections just round the corner everywhere, we hear, the president should go; or rather he would be gone. But my opinion about the matter is that, Why don’t we just let it be? Why can’t people just get it…? I dunno where I would start the discussion from and to where I would take it. I think some points might not make any sense, but I believe the whole study will. So just read along.

When Musharraf brought so much progress to the nation, nobody remembered him. When he increased the reserves of the country from nothing at all to an enormous amount and took the country forward from an utterly poor nation to one of the fastest growing economy, that it’s today, nobody acknowledged that. And that my friends, are not only figure and facts. If you are one of those who form their opinions solely on the basis of what people say against or for this man, please go ahead and look for yourself, and form your own opinion. I’m not a pro-Musharraf or rather an extremist for that matter. I’m just trying to make my point here, count!

So, when you ask me, what’s the big deal if Musharraf only increased the economy? The poor in this country are still forsaken. I’d like to remind you of our past. If not Musharraf then why Bhutto and why Sharif?? Were the situations any better during their reign? No. But the times were even worse. Neither were we good economically, nor were we having deep welfare roots. So what were we good at in those times? Nothing! So, now if you look around, don’t you see so much progress done during all these years? And I suppose that’s all we can blame the government for. We can’t expect government to remove poverty, alleviate illiteracy and especially in such a small period. But yet, much was done, because I believe, Education is the key to the developing nations, and all the progress that we did in the education sector alone, is admirable. Has any such programs ever been undertaken before? I don’t believe any government can surely uproot poverty to the lowest level, because it’s nearly impossible. I believe it’s the local organizations, the society and the people themselves who can change their own fate. Nobody from the outside is going to come and make it possible. The government has done what they could. It’s providing opportunities to the youth; it has opened new avenues for education, but to those who want to acquire it. And then it comes down to us, if we want to improve out situations, we need to work on it, not the government. The government can’t provide us with money to eat and survive. It’s our duty to work, for the sluggishness of our nation has been proved time and again. Is time to wake up and stop criticizing the government for our issues!

So what else do we want from the government? It has given us the opportunity to get education, an opportunity to make the lives of the poor better. It has given us the economic edge, which has given us a chance to come forward as a developed nation. And in the end, we talk out heads off on “Lack of democracy”?? Doesn’t anybody here agree with me that we have more freedom of expression that we ever had before? We can sit on our TV channels mimicking our politicians all day long. And yet, if the objection is about Musharraf’s uniform, then I don’t think that is rational enough an excuse to be created all the fuss about. If we have a leader who has improved the country more than anybody has ever done before, who is a true patriot to the nation and wants to take it forward, and we still won’t let him, just because he is an Army General? Then I suppose its time for us to wake up and remind ourselves of what we had in the past. Would that be called democracy? Did we ever really have democracy? So why do we want it now? Actually to me in a country like Pakistan, where the literacy rate is defined if a person is able to write his name correctly, in a country in which prime ministerial candidates get false graduation degrees, buy the votes and get elected year after year. What will become of us if history keeps on repeating itself and the people who don’t have a clue of how to run a country keep getting elected.

I say a “Dictator” who knows what he’s doing and is ambitious to take the country forward is better than an illiterate “Democrat” who doesn’t know anything about the office, but then, hell yeah we will have democracy. I tell ya, we still won’t!!

The above article is not supposed to attack anybody’s political viewpoint, nor does it mean to offend anybody. It’s just a way of putting my opinion “out there” and helping people see both sides of the picture, at one pint where they are constantly bombarded with the never-ending calls of “Democracy” and “Uniform”. The two most popular words, every Pakistani is now-a-days well aware of. And I WAS NOT paid to write this : )