Pakistan and its brave new men and women
Leading a revival.Photo: AFP
Quite a few heroic men and women have emerged in Pakistan in these past few days. It is surprising, indeed amazing, that in a country where politics has either been conspicuous by its absence or had with regularity been pushed over the cliff, it is now democratic politics that has now asserted itself. And the one individual who clearly deserves credit for this reawakening in Pakistan is a reinvented Nawaz Sharif. Consider that a decade ago, he had his followers try to storm the courts and introduce in the country facets of Sharia law that would have marked the triumph of medievalism. Consider too that he is a politician who owes his place on the national stage to the Pakistan army. Just as once the army raised Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the heights (and then destroyed him), General Ziaul Haq plucked Sharif from obscurity and gave him a makeover as a politician in the 1980s. It is no more the old Nawaz Sharif you have in Pakistan today. His defiance of Asif Ali Zardari through staying resolute about his planned march to Islamabad has paid off. The results are clear for all to see. It is a much-diminished Zardari who tries to govern Pakistan as its president today. If Pakistanis needed a symbol of determined leadership, they now can look to Nawaz Sharif. And the only way the chief of the Muslim League can kill that aspiration is by going back to his past. For now, his stock is up. That is good news for all Pakistanis and for societies which have always respected firmness in politicians. There is a second brave man in Pakistan today. If you recall, there was once Justice M.R. Kayani, who once informed the world, tongue-in-cheek, that the valiant Pakistan army had successfully occupied its own country (and that was after General Ayub Khan had commandeered the state in October 1958). There was too Justice Syed Mahbub Murshed. In Pakistan today, it is the heroism of Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhury that inspires lawyers, judges and people across the spectrum. He defied General Pervez Musharraf by refusing to resign from the office of Pakistan's chief justice. Musharraf sacked him. Chaudhury then went to the Supreme Court to have himself restored. He won that battle, but then was shown the door again when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency. Chaudhury has marched on the streets, has been manhandled by the police (who infamously pulled him by the hair and pushed him into a vehicle). Justice Chaudhury's endurance has paid off. His restoration to his job by an embattled President Zardari is a broad sign that democracy in a steadily weakening Pakistan (think of the Taliban, the ISI, the Sharia laws in Swat) just might steady it after all. Zardari's fear was that a restored Chaudhury would likely move to annul the withdrawal of all cases against him as part of a deal President Musharraf reached with Benazir Bhutto not long before Ms. Bhutto was murdered in Rawalpindi in December 2007. The probability now is that the chief justice may actually end up creating problems for Pakistan's president. Few will take offence, especially after the way in which Zardari has tried snuffing out opposition to him and after the manner in which he kept backing out of his deals with Nawaz Sharif. The Pakistan People's Party has seen its appeal slip in these past few days because of the intransigence and hubris of Asif Ali Zardari. The human rights activist Asma Jahangir put it all in perspective when she noted the difference between Zardari and Benazir Bhutto. The latter, said she, always took a stand and carried the people with her. With the former, it has been a case of taking a stand that is at once hollow and without public support. Zardari and the PPP have now eaten humble pie. But out of this crisis Yusuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, has emerged stronger and certainly more suave and capable in handling crises and assuaging the hurt sentiments of the government's adversaries. Gilani has been a professional politician. He has convinced people across Pakistan's political divide that the country's future will be safer in his hands than in Zardari's. And then there are the moral standards that Sherry Rahman has set for politicians in the poorer democracies of the world to emulate. By persuading herself that she could not be part of an administration that undermined the principles she upheld and by casting off the mantle of minister of information, she has given fresh new meaning to intellectual probity and political heroism. Principles and probity matter. Ironically, it is Pakistan that is disseminating this lesson today.
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