Has anybody else noticed that whenever there's news from Pakistan, it is invariably really bad - Bhutto assassination, terrorist attacks (in Pakistan and in India), corruption, failure to deal with flooding, cricketers taking bribes to lose matches etc?
More to the point, is it a coincidence that this has all happened in the past two years since Pervez Musharraf threw in the towel? You didn't hear much from Pakistan - and certainly nothing terribly bad - during the eight years that he was in charge. He even managed to keep his sense of humour despite the numerous attempts to assassinate him.
Is it possible that he was - by Pakistani standards - a genuinely enlightened leader? I'm a pacificist and a democrat, but I always liked him and see no reason to change that opinion. Slightly more controversially, is it possible that people in some countries (particularly Islamic ones) just aren't ready for democracy? Will they ever invite him back, I wonder?
Just askin'.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Pervez Musharraf
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5 comments:
They're definitely not ready or willing. Islam teaches that democracy is the enemy of true muslims.
"Slightly more controversially, is it possible that people in some countries (particularly Islamic ones) just aren't ready for democracy?"
Shame Blair didn't know that in 2003!
A people held down in serfdom of the mediaeval kind are not ready.
For several years I worked with a pretty smart Pakistani bloke who still had family in Pakistan and visited them on a regular basis.
He regarded Musharraf as much better that the corrupt and incompetent political elite that ran Pakistan before the coup that brought him to power. He said that in many ways Pakistan had thrived under military rule, that infrastructure and public services had improved massively, economic growth had been impressive and that inequality and poverty were reduced. Obviously the political elite who lost out were less happy.
S, Anon, JH, that's probably it.
RA, thanks for anecdotal - all I've got to work on is what I read in the papers etc.
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