Saturday, December 29, 2007

Autocrats have always ruled Pakistan

The essence of democracy is conflict and competition. There has been little of this in any of Pakistan's political parties.

In any election, the people of Pakistan get to choose which autocrat they want.

Here's an article from Bloonberg news:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aeuvEJTcrGvM&refer=home

Bhutto Party Faces Power Struggle Choosing New Leader (Update1)
By James Rupert and Janine Zacharia
Dec. 29, 2007 (Bloomberg)

"...[Benazir Bhutto's party] The PPP, a leading voice for the restoration of democracy since Musharraf's 1999 military coup, has no obvious successor because it has always been an autocratic institution.

Since its founding as a populist movement 40 years ago, the PPP has been led only by Bhutto, her mother or her father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Months before her Dec. 27 assassination, Bhutto, 54, assumed the party title of ``life chairperson.'' Her teenaged children are too young to assume her mantle.

Pakistani parties, including the PPP, ``are not internally democratic and do not transmit the democratic aspirations of Pakistanis,'' said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

The autocracy of the mainstream parties, including Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, has cost them popular support, at times allowing others to fill the void by leading the fight against Musharraf. After the president sparked a crisis by trying to oust the independent-minded Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, lawyer-led street protests and aggressive coverage by independent television stations forced Musharraf to back down, at least temporarily.

``Our political parties have lagged far behind popular expectations'' by failing to aggressively promote democracy, commentator Ghazi Salahuddin wrote Dec. 2 in The News, an English-language newspaper...

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