I read a book recently and a lot of what was written - even though fiction - seemed to be true for Pakistan. The book showed how people from a democratic country, who had gone through a major man-made calamity, grabbed onto the idea of a kingdom in hopes of finding a better leader.

In terms of Pakistan, Musharraf has constructed a sort of kingdom for himself and refuses to let go of power at any cost. Before he came into power when the two major political parties each had their stints in the government (if they could be called democracies), they too ruled and spent their time as if it was a kingdom. Below is a part out of a passage from that aforementioned book :

At their cores, like all governments, democracies and kingdoms are both corrupt. We form them as necessary evils to protect us against other corrupt governments, but governments are not the people and they never have the people’s best interest at heart, they have the government’s best interest at heart. Regardless of what protections we put in place, a Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, governments will oppress the people, censor the people, exploit the people. Governments do not trust the people, governments are contemptuous of the people. Governments build concentration camps and cathedrals, the people plant gardens. We feed and breed, we nurse and harvest;put your trust and love in the people, never a government. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do to save and promote and protect the people even if that requires treason of king or country, because the people, your family, friends,neighbours, we are the conspiracy that has survived a million years, and we are alive today not because of governments but in spite of governments. We endure. We are the people.
*Excerpt from Our American King by David Lozell Martin

EnI’s Domain

 E-mail this article to a friend