The legitimacy factor!

He did not announce a rethink on Pakistan's outlandish alignment with the US that seems to be at the heart of a growing disaffection among the people. Asking the Parliament to set-up a committee to 'revisit' the undemocratic 58-2(b) and the 17th amendment was like telling them to sit quietly and do nothing. He vowed to continue fighting the American War On Terror and made an unconvincing argument to own it as 'our war'. The polemics poured forth in abundance. The local and alien bombings continued, only increasing in ferocity and depth. Every thing seemed rosy from behind the 'coloured' spectacles that he must be wearing!

A devastating suicide attack at a local hotel followed the Iftar dinner that had been arranged by the National Assembly Speaker in the evening after the president had addressed the Parliament. The result was over fifty dead including the Czeck ambassador and some other foreign nationals and more than two hundred injured, some of them critically. That did not douse the spirit of the president, the prime minister or the speaker who all took off in different directions less than a day after the massive tragedy had struck the capital: the president went to the US on a thanksgiving pilgrimage, the prime minister found Islamabad to be too scary and headed towards Lahore and the speaker left as part of the president's entourage.

Islamabad was left paralysed only for its residents to suffer. The siege of the so-called Constitution Avenue (nay 'red zone'!), that had come to symbolise the unyielding and unrelenting spirit of the protesting legal fraternity and the members of the civil society to rid the country of the brutal dictatorship of General Musharraf, was further tightened as it was declared out of bounds for the 'common citizens'. Instead of looking into the reasons of a tragedy of such monumental proportions, and the attending grave lapse of security and intelligence mechanisms, it is the underprivileged folks again who were made to suffer to ensure additional security for the ruling elite. What mockery of the rule of law if there is any that we have!

Come the visit to the US. The most damning component of his speech before the UN General Assembly was the expression of a clueless resolve to fight a war that has no definitive parameters or goals. In simple words, it is a war that engages a national army in the act of killing its own people and allowing foreign troops to intrude into our 'sovereign' territory to hit targets as it may deem right.