Bridging the gender gap

IT is unbelievable that instead of focusing on pressing national problems, we should be running after non-issues and making them the cause of discord and violence as in the Gujranwala case. Neither the MMA, nor the government was justified in adopting a confrontational stance on the question of girls’ participation in the mini-marathon. It was improper for them to fight an ugly “street battle” on an issue which, as the prime minister suggested, would have been best debated in parliament.

Nobody, not even the MMA hard-liners, were opposed to the girls’ participation in sports activities including marathons, provided that they were conducted within the bounds of our culture and religion. Our society is not yet ready for mixed marathons, or for that matter, mixed swimming events. Even President Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation” which our people rightly welcome has no place for “culturally inappropriate” activities.

However, a lot remains to be done for genuine “gender-mainstreaming and empowerment” of women in our country through the elimination of discriminatory policies and mediaeval practices. Instead of organizing activities or events perceived as “culturally inappropriate”, we should be applying our energies and resources to plugging the gender gap in education, health and employment. It is in these critical areas that Pakistani women need to be included in the mainstream.

The administration of justice is another crucial area where gender-based discrimination manifests itself for the women in Pakistan. Despite the relative privilege of some women, the large majority remains structurally disadvantaged as a result of our discriminatory legal system and obscurant norms and attitudes. They are subjected to barbaric and senseless customs and laws such as karo-kari, the Hudood Ordinances, Qisas and marriage to the Quran.

They are also victims of gruesome forms of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, with pervasive denial of justice. Successive governments have done very little to rationalize the legal system or the laws that heavily infringe on women’s rights. Effective legal measures, including penal sanctions, civil remedies and compensatory provisions are needed to protect women against all kinds of violence and harassment.

Pakistan remains one of those countries where women continue to be denied their basic rights and fundamental freedoms as “equal citizens”. Our customary gender norms are at the root of the pervasive political, legal, economic and social inequalities that perpetuate women’s lack of access to resources, education, health care, employment, decision-making and participation in public life.

In recent years, no doubt, there has been a conspicuous increase in the number of women in our political institutions, but merely showcasing the presence of a few privileged females in our legislative chambers is neither gender-mainstreaming nor empowering women. We need more affirmative political and economic action that genuinely seeks to address the “core issues” underlying women’s socio-economic backwardness in Pakistan.

Successive governments in Pakistan have only paid politically motivated lip-service to the cause of women. No government, not even the present one, has shown the courage needed to grapple with the primitive gender norms inherent in our legal system and customs. Instead of indulging in diversionary antics, which at times may be inconsistent with our religious and eastern value system, we need to focus more on coherent and concrete legal reforms, even if we have to resort to reversing some of the existing policies and laws.

This would inevitably require courage and consistency of approach on the part of our governments, which unfortunately we did not see when the government knuckled under its own politics of expediency and retreated on its earlier, correct position on the religion column in new passports. We witnessed another disappointing performance by the ruling party when it joined the religious ranks in parliament to kill a private bill moved by one of its own women members seeking changes to the controversial honour killing law.

Violence against women remains a serious and widespread menace. Regretfully, there are systemic, almost insurmountable barriers to justice confronting victims of violence, rape and other excesses. Women who report rape or sexual assault face several obstacles, including the possibility of being prosecuted under the 1979 Hudood Ordinances. Some of the victims prefer to seek asylum in other countries rather than live under conditions of insecurity in their homeland.

Clear violations of international law on the rights of women occur daily in Pakistan and are regularly chronicled in the reports of international human rights organizations. Laws that discriminate against women remain in the books and are actively enforced while discriminatory access to government resources and services continues unchecked.

Pakistan is obliged by its ratification of international treaties to ensure respect for women’s rights and fundamental freedoms. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw), to which Pakistan acceded in 1996, requires the government “to take action to eliminate violence against women as a form of discrimination that inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men.”

Similarly, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Pakistan has not signed but which is a cornerstone of international human rights law, requires governments “to ensure the rights to life and security of the person of all individuals in their jurisdiction, without distinction of any kind, including sex.”

According to Human Rights Watch, Pakistan is in flagrant violation of “women’s rights to life and security of the person” while women victims of violence continue to suffer systemic denial of justice. The recent cases of Mukhtar Mai and Shazia Khalid are classic but painful examples of gender-based denial of access to justice in our country.

Pakistan has been a leading player in international forums contributing significantly to the promotion of global consensus on issues related to social and economic inequalities. These include the Beijing declaration and Platform for Action (1995) for the advancement of women, which recognized that “equality between women and men is a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice, and is also a necessary and fundamental prerequisite for equality, development and peace.”

A 10-yearly progress review of the Beijing Declaration was carried out at the recent annual meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York. The outcome of this review called for “further action from governments for full and accelerated implementation” of the Beijing Platform for Action. Pakistan, which has traditionally been an active participant in these activities, was listed among the few countries that had failed to furnish their progress reports on the implementation of the commitments for achieving gender equality and facilitating the advancement of women.

Widening gender inequalities in our country will not be bridged by staging sports events for girls in public. The gender gaps will be closed only with concrete and sustained actions backed by the requisite allocation of resources to promote literacy and basic health services for women in Pakistan, especially in rural and other backward areas. Effective legal and enforcement measures are necessary to deal with gender-based violence.

An editorial in this newspaper, quoting a recent Unicef report, has drawn our attention to the “appalling” gender gap in Pakistan’s education sector. The literacy rate of women in Pakistan is less than 28 per cent as against 53 per cent for men. Our misplaced priorities and cultural barriers have kept the ratio of girls’ enrolment in Pakistan among the lowest in the world. Even countries like Bangladesh are doing far better. We need more schools for girls, especially in the country’s backward areas.

In a welcome initiative, the government of Punjab has launched a programme to subsidize the cost of schooling for girls. This approach needs to be emulated by other provincial governments. With potential benefits of subsidized costs, improved physical access and a “culturally appropriate” design and environment, we can expect a sharp increase in girls’ enrolment.

The statistics in other social sectors including health are no less dismal. The maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Reproductive health services are available only to a tiny fraction of the female population. Women’s participation in the economic arena is disproportionately low, with women constituting only 28 per cent of the country’s labour force.

According to a study, while our defence budget is constantly rising, the resources allocated to education and health, especially for women, continue to be among the lowest in the Third World, and much of what is to be distributed is lost in rampant, institutionalized corruption.

Basic health services need to be provided to every village, with special focus on preventive and curative facilities and women and child welfare programmes. Iran has one of the best basic health service systems in the developing world which we could use as a model.

We have other problems, too, that need to be addressed. But these are rooted in our misdirected culture of religious extremism and obscurantism which we promoted as an instrument of our “geo-strategic” pursuits. In the process, Pakistan became the hotbed of jihadi militancy, sectarian violence and terrorism.

A nation’s interests and capabilities, its problems and disorders, and its operational approach determine its health and inner strength. In our case, the stability and survival of our nation will depend on “the system and methods” of our government, on our policies and priorities, and on our ability to cope with the challenges of our times.

The key to our social problems regarding the “betterment and empowerment” of women in Pakistan lies in comprehensive “legislative and budgetary” packages to close the existing gender gaps in our health, education and employment sectors, and to remove all gender-based barriers in our legal system.

We will not be able to project our image as a disciplined and forward-looking nation, unless we achieve and project a healthy balance, moderation and consistency in all expressions of our national behaviour, including sports, art, music and architecture.

The author is a former foreign secretary

Reconciliation: external realities, internal truths

AT a time when the concept of reconciliation is increasingly being used for conflict resolution in both international and national contexts, let us examine the subject from global as well as individual polarities. There is also a need to recognize the damage which a non-violent dimension can inflict on human relations.

An unassuming, dedicated group of individuals ably led by Dr Meenakshi Gopinath at the Foundation for Universal Responsibility in New Delhi known as WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace) organized a three-day symposium in March 2005 that brought together a wide range of perspectives from South Asia and Europe on this subject. Exchanges at this event illustrated the fact that while South Africa post-1990 under Nelson Mandela made “reconciliation” a part of the contemporary lexicon, there remains vast scope for new research and sustained reflection in this direction.

We need to explore reconciliation with a look at the world’s map from three perspectives. The first is that 6.2 billion people on the planet today share an unprecedented collective consciousness that is instant and simultaneous, which is conflictual as well as consensual. There is some exaggeration on the inclusion of every human being in this shared collective consciousness. Even today mass media and telecommunication — which are the instruments that shape this collective simultaneity — are not fully accessible to about half the planet’s population. But never before in human history have as many as over three billion people been in immediate, daily awareness of each other. For the first time, they have the means to be able to switch into this shared world consciousness through media, telecommunication, mass travel, commerce and contemporary culture.

The second perspective is that there is an unrivalled concentration of technological, military and economic power in a single state that seeks to dominate the globe by promoting the free market, and the new mass cult which believes that: “big is better” and “more is best” because “small” and “less” are no longer beautiful. This hegemonic dominance by one strong state and ethos repels as well as seduces; it becomes a determinant of the way world affairs evolve.

The third perspective is the unchecked devastation of our ecology. This is taking place through climatic change, loss of biodiversity, contamination of water, air and land. Consumption for its own sake, over and above the need to fulfill basic requirements has become the core value of life, instead of conservation. There is a grave imbalance between our desire for development and our disregard for nature. As we pursue growth and consumerism, eight million people die every year because of abject poverty. But ironically in a world so external and pervasive as the one defined by those three perspectives, we need to begin a search for reconciliation from within each person.

Let us also, in this instance only, depart from the violent and post-violent context of reconciliation which is the principal framework in which reconciliation is generally attempted. Violence is brutal, it is anti-human, it is anti-nature. Yet, it is perversely easy to measure: most of the results of violence are visible and obvious.

But there is a dark side of conflicts that is created and bred without using violence. This dark side of non-violence can be subversive and suppressive, in a subtle as well as a crude manner but can be in many ways as painful for the psyche and the spirit as violence can be harmful to the human body. This dark side of non-violence applies to inter-personal relationships, in the way, for instance, by which some parents may bring up their children, ostensibly smothering them with love but actually suffocating them with their own preferences and patterns of thought and behaviour. The dark side of non-violence can also apply to other levels of human relationships: between husband and wife, among relatives, and on a larger scale, among communities, races, religions, sects, castes and classes.

Attempting reconciliation between deeply embedded, polarized extremes of perceptions and sentiments that have carefully and insidiously avoided violence but have maintained schisms may be far more difficult than attempting reconciliation after a violent conflict. Setting out to map reconciliation, we have to begin with the individual human being and not with groups. Each individual begins with an inheritance that is also unchangeable.

A person’s DNA, genes, race, parents, family, the given name, clan, religion, sect, gender and caste with which he has come into this world mean that he is immediately trapped at birth itself, locked into a time warp from which few ever escape. Our birth determines a great deal of what we are, what we do, what we become. In most of the above features, an individual simply has no choice. A whole life is spent as a struggle to overcome our genesis.

To say this is not to devalue the importance of upbringing and the choices that each individual is, in theory, able to make. Nor is it to deny the responsibility that each person bears for his own conduct, particularly after attaining adulthood. Indeed, when we note the startling contrasts that can exist between parent and child, between siblings of the same blood and lineage, we are in awe of human capacity to transcend inherited traits.

As an individual grows from birth to adulthood, multiple levels of internal realities develop. Each person contains within his own mind and soul a vast unseen ocean, with unforeseen, uncharted depths. Life comprises a perennial search for internal reconciliation between the several levels of this internal reality. There can be harmony or conflict between the sense of self and of selflessness, childhood and adulthood, old convictions and new doubts, ambition and actual ability, inherited identity and acquired personality, dreams and reality, the physical and the spiritual. The existence of this inner, turbulent realm does not necessarily connote sickness, requiring psychiatric treatment or psychological cure. Even normal, visibly well-adjusted persons carry on living with an internal world which is often unsettled.

The combination of inheritance and of internal imperatives becomes a highly combustive mixture. To reduce the volatility that threatens stability, individuals resort to habitual thinking and repetitive patterns of action. This helps them deal with the insecurity syndrome.

Reconciliation requires innovation. We have to venture into unknown and as yet undiscovered territories of the mind and the spirit. Faith in religion, worship, practice of yoga, the observance dietary abstinence, the use of counselling, the resort to various support systems are meant to help stabilize a person’s inner reality or the hazards of a journey into the unknown. But often, all these are not adequate or widespread enough to deal with the consequences of the non-violent context of conflict. For this non-violence does not bring outright destruction. Instead, there is a steady erosion, a gradual deconstruction, a diminution of the capacity for happiness. Every human life begins with so much joy and innocence and pleasure and ends with so much pain, decay, guilt and disquiet.

When individuals interact with each other, in the community, with the state, with a political system, there can be co-existence without reconciliation, passive hostility without even passive acceptance.

Adversarial parallels exist in abundance. States may reconcile with each other such as in the present peace process between Pakistan and India but there are non-state actors within each state that remain unreconciled and which receive notable levels of popular support. Internal units of a state can remain unreconciled to the state itself as in the case of the Maoists in Nepal, the Naxalites in India, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and to a fortunately lesser degree, the tribal dissidents in Balochistan in Pakistan. States may be equalized within a single institution such as the United Nations General Assembly and yet remain divergent in terms of power and might, within the veto-based UN Security Council. An overwhelmingly large number of human beings on the planet today remain unequalized as disparities of wealth grow greater, rather than decrease.

Democracy appears to drive reconciliation. Yet political parties and the practices and procedures of democratic institutions such as the principle of the “majority is right” and that “numbers rule”, makes partisanship the poison of democracy, the brew that kills any attempt to reconcile. Perhaps this is because the technology of democracy even in the 21st century and even in societies with strong electoral systems and practices remains primitive and rudimentary, compared to the technology we have developed in computers and telecommunications.

There is a need for citizens to take more active responsibility for the conduct of reconciliation and not parrot the popular media-driven myth that portrays political leaders as villains and scoundrels. The distance between civil society organizations and political society, particularly in South Asia, is most disquieting.

People possess remarkable resilience. They have an almost infinite capacity to survive tragedies, traumas and tsunamis. Individuals have the capacity to conduct their own spontaneous reconciliation.

If internal reconciliation within the mind and the spirit of each individual is the pivot on which reconciliation on a large canvas is to be conducted, when does reconciliation become apathy, complacence and acceptance for the sake of bringing visible tensions and divisions to an end? Or can the search for internal personal reconciliation become dangerously destabilizing? As we know, searching self-criticism is the single most difficult process to conduct. Equally, this kind of no-holds-barred scrutiny of one’s own persona is the irreducible and inescapable starting point of reconciliation with the other person, group or country.

The writer is honorary chairman, International Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution, and a former minister

Military operation in Waziristan

HOW would one interpret a statement by a US army general that another military operation was being contemplated in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Was it the result of a mutual agreement, which Pakistan has now chosen to deny, pressure on Pakistan to undertake another military operation in Waziristan, or blatant interference in our internal affairs?

Lieutenant-General David Barno, the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, recently declared at a press conference in Islamabad that “We (Pakistan and the US) collectively feel that there is need to undertake a military operation in North Waziristan to keep pressure on the terrorists net- works.”

This is the same general who, after the pragmatic Shakai agreement of April last year between the corps commander, Peshawar, and the Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen of South Waziristan, had expressed his disappointment and anger by saying that foreign fighters in Pakistan had to be killed or captured and not given amnesty by Islamabad.

This statement and subsequent events practically sabotaged the Shakai agreement resulting in the resumption of hostilities and the brutal killing of Nek Mohammad and other tribal elders. In the same press conference, General Barno also said that his area of responsibility included Pakistan and that Pakistani liaison officers were working at the coalition forces headquarters in Kabul.

Whichever way you view General Barno’s recent statement, it is an irresponsible utterance violating Pakistan’s sovereignty and independence. Whatever reasons, clarifications and contradictions the Pakistani side may be offering, the poignancy of this unfortunate episode cannot be mitigated, unless the US general admits publicly that he has made a faux pas and apologizes for it. We may be coerced partners in the war on terrorism but we are not so demoralized or indifferent as to allow anyone to injure our self-respect.

While one is prepared to concede that the Americans in their current state of paranoia and ignorance are not familiar with the sensitive nature of our tribal areas, it is incumbent on the Pakistan side to warn the US of the disastrous consequences of repeated military actions in the tribal belt. The US has to be told that there are time-tested mechanisms for settling disputes in the border regions.

It is a fact admitted by local tribal leaders that some foreign elements had settled in the tribal areas after the Afghan war and the rout of the Taliban. However, they had adapted to local ways and were living a peaceful life, until the American ambassador in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, accused Pakistan of harbouring “miscreants”. The consequent belligerent attitude by the US commanders in Afghanistan resulted in military operations.

Another factor to which the attention of Pakistani leaders has to be drawn is that the tribal regions of Pakistan are not considered part of the country in the traditional sense, but have been accorded a special status by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, one that is embodied in the Constitution. Soon after partition, the Quaid, as a gesture of goodwill and trust, ordered the withdrawal of all military forces from the tribal belt, particularly from Waziristan as the Wazirs and Mahsuds had contributed heroically to the Kashmir struggle.

Speaking to a grand tribal jirga on April 17, 1948, at Government House, Peshawar, Mr Jinnah said, “I am fully aware of the part that you have already played in the establishment of Pakistan, and I am thankful to you for all the sympathy and support you gave me in my struggle and fight for the establishment of Pakistan. Keeping in view your loyalty, help, assurances and declarations we ordered the withdrawal of troops from Waziristan as a concrete and definite gesture on our part that we treat you with absolute confidence and trust.” In the same address, the Quaid guaranteed the customs, traditions and way of life of the tribesmen by declaring, “Pakistan has no desire to unduly interfere with your internal freedom.”

Compare this with what is happening now or was until recently in Waziristan. According to the corps commander, Peshawar, there are 70,000 troops stationed in the area. In the earlier operations, tribal customs and traditions were violated. The area was blockaded, and economic sanctions were imposed on a region which is completely dependent on trading with other parts of Pakistan. A large number of casualties occurred on both sides. This is how we have honoured the Quaid’s pledge to these loyal and brave people.

A pertinent question arises as to what the government achieved as a result of the earlier operations that it now wishes to repeat. These operations have resulted in complete mistrust, hostility, destruction, alienation and a vendetta, which can go on for generations. The area was completely calm before the military operation in March last year. The government functionaries were operating in a harmonious environment. There was a relationship of trust and reliance between the two sides.

Currently, the government is boasting of unprecedented economic activity in the area. This may be true, but it has not endeared the people to the government. There has been an assassination attempt on the political agent. Government servants in the area work behind the high walls of the military garrisons. Military conveys have been repeatedly attacked. The lives of tribesmen suspected of collaborating with the government are in danger.

What is the solution of this seemingly intractable problem which would be acceptable to all concerned? The first and the foremost is to end outside interference, particularly from the US and its surrogates in Afghanistan. They have to be told in no uncertain terms that Pakistan is a sovereign and independent state, that its tribal areas are its internal affair, and that the government will not brook interference or take dictation from any quarter.

Urgent steps have to be taken to restore confidence between the government functionaries and the tribesmen. Tribesmen whose property and homes have been destroyed and whose businesses have been ruined must be handsomely compensated. Other confidence-building measures can be initiated.

A good beginning was made recently by the corps commander, Peshawar, Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain, who admitted to past mistakes at a press conference, saying that there were no terrorist networks in Waziristan and that he would achieve his objectives “by not firing a single bullet”. This is indeed a positive approach and a way forward. If implemented with sincerity and goodwill, the tribesmen will show the same loyalty to which a reference was made by the Quaid in his address to the tribal jirga in 1948.

The writer is a former ambassador

Prime ministerial merry-go-round

IN the March 2005 issue of the Herald there is a delightful coloured photograph of three Pakistani prime ministers, all from the ruling Muslim League, smiling and holding hands in a show of solidarity, after having gallantly upheld the tradition of performing Umrah at the taxpayers’ expense.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Shaukat Aziz looked as pleased as Punch, as if it had just been announced that they had won the Canadian lottery. So did the two other Muslim Leaguers standing directly behind them, Ejaz-ul-Haq, son of Pakistan’s obscurantist military dictator who authored the iniquitous Hudood Ordinances, and Senator Mushahid Hussain, who, a few years ago, was the trusted lieutenant and right hand man of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Under the picture is the terse headline: “43 million spent on official Umrah trips by three PMs.” The public would never have known of this extravagance at the taxpayers’ expense, had it not been for Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmud Kasuri providing this startling information in parliament in response to a query by PPP Senator Enver Baig.

Shaukat Aziz’s visit to the holy land cost the exchequer Rs. 11.12 million, a fraction more than what was unjustifiably spent by Chaudhry Amir Hussain, the speaker of the National Assembly, on his sleek, black Mercedes Benz, also bought with the taxpayers’ money.

Shaukat Aziz at least made 48 political freeloaders happy, which is more than what can be said for the speaker who, according to the grapevine, hasn’t as yet picked up any hitchhikers on his way home. Currently, he still heads the list of elected functionaries who have misused their official position for personal gain. He must be praying that the current crop of Muslim League parliamentarians survives after 2007, for, as appears to be highly likely, a PPP-dominated government will emerge and certainly initiate its own enquiry.

Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali’s experience left the auditors scratching their heads. He ferried only 29 people, but managed to spend Rs. 16.7 million. Details are not available on just why this happened, though it has been suggested that the federal and provincial ministers who were taken along must have suddenly developed voracious appetites on the trip.

The statistics for Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s Umrah trip are the most impressive and suggest passengers were on a strict diet and were not insisting on rooms with a view. Only Rs. 15.18 million was spent on an entourage of 134 people which included a photographer and a singer. This demonstrates that in Pakistan the law of diminishing marginal utility doesn’t always work.

However, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain claimed that he paid for the boarding and lodging expenses incurred by him and members of his family who made up a sizeable portion of the entourage, and forked up hotel receipts to substantiate his claim. Of course, he paid for his family. But that is not the point. The issue is, prime ministers and presidents must stop this practice of taking along small armies of sycophants every time they become restless and decide it’s time to explore foreign parts.

Apparently a petition was filed in the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court in 2004 against official Umrah and Haj trips by state functionaries. Mr Justice Nawaz Ali Chohan observed that except for those visits taken to serve the Hajis and teams of medical practitioners; no state functionary should be allowed to travel on official expense. The case is still pending in the court.

What about trips which have nothing to do with religion, like the ones regularly conducted by President Musharraf who is setting something of a record in his quest for spreading goodwill and enlightened moderation abroad and telling everybody what a dangerous place the world has become and that they should gear up to fight terrorism. One would have thought a simple letter or an email would do.

However, in spite of all the handicaps under which he is operating and in spite of the packaged artifice of industrialized fiction that is regularly emanating from Islamabad about how well we are doing, Shaukat Aziz still comes across as a reasonable man who believes he is taking the country in the right direction. The only problem is, will he survive till the end of 2007, or rather, will he be allowed to survive? The average tenure of a prime minister in Pakistan is abysmally short.

From Liaquat Ali Khan, the country’s first prime minister, to Shaukat Aziz, 13 elected and four caretakers functioned as prime ministers of Pakistan. In fact, prime ministers served for only 27 years of the country’s 58-year old history, while for 31 years the military brass ruled the roost with or without its display of battle fatigues.

The only prime minister who was able to hold office for four years, two months and two days, and who would have most certainly served many more years and given the country a Constitution, had he not been assassinated in Rawalpindi on October 16, 1951, was the amiable, scrupulously honest and loyal campaigner for the rights of Indian Muslims, Liaquat Ali Khan. Four years, two months and two days is something of a record for a prime minister in Pakistan, edging out Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s stint at the crease by a little more than three months.

With Liaquat’s elimination the process of insinuating and establishing a constant state of instability was introduced. Three days after the assassination, Khwaja Nazimuddin, an honest and upright parliamentarian who belonged to the other side of the great divide, took over as prime minister. He lasted only 18 months and was succeeded by Mohammed Ali Bogra.

Nazimuddin had a champion in the person of Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan, the speaker. But in spite of Tamizuddin Khan’s heroics, arriving in a rickshaw at the servant’s entrance of the high court building dressed in a burqa to evade police surveillance, and the subsequent judgments of the higher judiciary which have become landmarks in the history of jurisprudence in Pakistan, the journey downhill had begun.

The country had started to lose its moorings and there was a constant feeling of temporariness in the air. Legal experts still argue with conviction that the history of the country would have been vastly different from what it is today if the judgment of Mr Justice A.R. Cornelius had been upheld.

Mohammed Ali Bogra fared a little better than Khwaja Nazimuddin and managed to hang onto his seat for two years and four months, after which the puppeteers in the north, who make the marionettes dance, decided to introduce another round of musical chairs. Chaudhry Mohammed Ali came next, lasted exactly 13 months and on September 12, 1956 the nation learned that Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, the brilliant lawyer who was greatly feared by his adversaries, had become prime minister.

A year and five days later, Suhrawardy was shown the door and in walked Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar, a quiet, likeable and principled man, who established something of a record for managing to hang on for a month and 28 days. He at least had the dubious distinction of having Karachi’s most important business thoroughfare, McLeod Road, renamed after him.

On Chundrigar’s resignation Feroze Khan Noon held court along with his beautiful and gracious Viennese wife who played hostess to Karachi’s glitterati. But one heard the Strauss and Lehar waltzes for only 10 months. They were replaced by the unmistakable sound of the measured tread of hard heels on a pavement slaked with corrugated rust. President Iskander Mirza and General Ayub Khan of the Pakistan army were getting increasingly restless and had decided to do something about it.

Finally it happened. Martial law was declared at midnight on October 7, 1958, sounding the death knell of parliamentary democracy as we once knew it. After that the political history of Pakistan could best be described as one long extension of military rule interrupted by brief bursts of democratic activity.

Ayub Khan’s unceremonious turfing out of Iskander Mirza within three weeks of the take-over, his 11-year long decade of development, his final handing over of power to Yahya Khan, the snubbing of Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, the rise and fall of Bhutto, the acerbic and oft brutal 11-year rule of the retrogressive Ziaul Haq, the two cracks each at the national pie by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and the emergence of Pervez Musharraf, are all a part of recent history. What is worrying analysts is whether the country is going to see another 11-year innings at the crease by Musharraf.