Independence Day

The tussle between the government and the President would not have been there if he had voluntarily resigned in the wake of the February elections which were indeed a referendum against his unpopular policies. General Musharraf, who has held the presidency since 1999 and continues to occupy the Army House despite having doffed the uniform, is seen by the masses as a remnant of the military rule. With Musharraf still occupying the Presidency, there is little hope of democracy consolidating itself in the country. The Founding Fathers had conceived Pakistan as a modern Islamic democracy where every organ of the state including the army was to be subservient to the elected civilian government. The people are fed up with military rule, spanning nearly 34 years of the country's 61 years history. They want Musharraf to leave now. What provides them hope is the alliance between the PPP and PML-N, which for years have been traditional rivals but after signing the CoD have joined hands to strengthen democracy.

While military rule is alien to the concept of Pakistan as enunciated by its Founding Fathers, equally unwelcome is theocracy, which was denounced by the Quaid who advocated a moderate interpretation of Islam. Pakistan was created for the people rather than the clerics. People's elected representatives were to rule the country with the help of a sovereign parliament. The clerics had no right to exercise veto over its decisions. With the clerics misusing the name of Islam in the pursuit of their narrow political agenda, religious extremism has grown and assumed horrendous proportions. In tribal areas women are debarred by clerics from casting their votes, girls' schools, music and video centres and barbers' shops are torched. This is not in consonance with the thinking of the party that created Pakistan and whose leaders included enlightened women like Miss Fatima Jinnah, Shaista Ikramullah and Begum Shahnawaz.