An outrageous feud

The Frontier Post
Commitment to Journalism
An outrageous feud
Given the prevalent political conditions when the bigwigs of the mainstream PPP and the PML (N) formations are out with daggers drawn, the promulgation of the presidential ordinance regarding the establishment of mobile courts could only raise eyebrows. The contentions of the president's spokesman are too slim to wash. Even if the intent is, as he would have it believed, to provide for speedy justice in rural areas bereft of judicial infrastructure, what was the urgency of promulgating it by stealth at the dead of night? And that too, when the National Assembly was in session? Doesn't the constitution strictly forbid legislation by presidential enactments when the parliament is in session? The spokesman's assertion that the ordinance had actually been promulgated on February 27 could only be the worst crooked kind of a travesty of truth. Not even a half-wit would give credence to such a mendacity. That an ordinance was enforced two days earlier but the announcement of its enforcement was kept pending to make late at night two days later is just a bunk that not even the most gullible would buy. There is no point for the spokesman to beat about the bush. The pungent reality underlying this presidential enactment is too obvious to hide or understate. Its long-term objective may be what he states. But its immediate intent is what he doesn't state: to deal with a clenched fist with the street agitation launched by the disqualified Sharif Brothers and with the lawyers' planned long march to Islamabad and sit-in there. Not that we are in any way in the corner of the Sharif Brothers or the lawyers. Even as we do empathize with their grouses, we are absolutely abhorrent of any kind of street turmoil at this point in time when the nation is caught up in existential threats, both internally and externally, and while the national economy is on a sharp decline, the people's economic plight is worsening irreversibly. The urgent need of the nation is a complete calm and tranquility on the street so that the rulers could attend single-mindedly to the catastrophic challenges confronting the country and the calamitous woes afflicting its people. But the regret is that the ones to whom this inviolable necessity should come home compellingly are the ones who are least alive to it. With gloves off, knuckles bare, the bigwigs of the PPP and the PML (N) have jumped in the ring, seemingly to fight their own battle to the finish. In equal measures, both the partisans are whipping up the temperatures to the boiling point, ratcheting up the tempers to irreconcilable heights and escalating their rigid positions to the point of no return. And it would be no wrong to say that they have opted to sacrifice the good of this unfortunate nation at the altar of their personal vendetta and revenge, making our hapless people the guinea pig of the clash of egos of their two leaders, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. But what for? What have they given to the nation, for which they are exacting such a high price on it? They divide up their time between home, where they land to agitate or to reign and rule, and abroad, where they keep stashed bundles of their slush cash and heaps of their prized properties, luxury apartments and booming businesses. But why have the masses become such a silent spectator of their inherently disastrous show, which could potentially push up their country to a precipice and hurt it irreparably. These charlatans and imposters masquerading as their leaders will feel no hurt. They have many places abroad to go to. But the masses have to live here; no place outside they have to go to. Their destiny is linked with this land; if it thrives, they flourish; if it sinks, they too will sink. They must stand up and condemn with their full-throated voice the outrageous feud of these partisans and in no event should they become part of it. This feud is not their feud. Where were these bigwigs when they were under the rule of the jackboots? Fugitives; were they not? Luxuriating in their palaces, chateaus and villas in distant resorts; were they not? And are they seeing the menacing clouds creeping in over their land from the western and the eastern horizons, which the masses are seeing with so much of dread and horror? Certainly, they are not. So the masses must abjure and denounce their feud, and ask them to stop it or face the consequences.
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Dated: Tuesday,March 03, 2009, Rabi-ul-Awwal 05, 1430 A.H.