therefore, now trying to target political corruption whose proceeds also help fund terrorism. And that is where the shoe has started pinching badly those who were enjoying a free ride on the proceeds of loot and plunder from the city of Karachi and its institutions.
Be that as it may, Zardari has shot himself in the foot. Today General Raheel Sharif is riding high on the crest of people’s popularity as is the Pakistan Army. Both he and his officers and men have earned this admiration of the people through a clear policy of ridding Pakistan of terrorism at all cost and once again make this country a safe and secure land for those who live here.
As they fight their way in that direction, we see them cleaning up the country’s largest city, its economic engine, so our economy breathes again and breathes freely. As they fight their way in that direction, we see them challenge the corrupt of the corrupt in that city and, by extension, their patrons and real beneficiaries. By daring the Pakistan Army and its chief, Zardari has, perhaps unwittingly, dared the people of Pakistan. Also, perhaps unwittingly, he has joined those who do not rejoice at the prospect of a peaceful, progressive and progressing Pakistan.
At a time when Modi led India is on the offensive against Pakistan, when Afghanistan continues to pose a challenge and when the Pakistani Army is in a full scale war on terror laying down lives for the sake of this country, Zardari has done himself and PPP no favour by saying what he has said about the army and its generals. In my view he has shot himself in the foot, even if unwittingly.
And I pity those in the party, who are not part of the corrupt mafia in Sindh and Karachi. I particularly pity the plight of the party’s leaders and workers in Punjab which was once the party’s stronghold. They would be in greatest discomfort today as it is from Punjab where the army draws most of its officers and men and it is from Punjab that most of the officers and men have laid down their lives in operation Zarb-e-Azb in particular and in the fight against terrorism in general.
Zardari has surely put his party in the Punjab in a fix. They cannot defend their leader’s diatribe in a province where the party has been already marginalised, thanks to the five years of its rule or misrule in Islamabad. They cannot defend him in a province whose sons have been at the forefront in laying down lives in the fight against terror. That this should happen to a party only because a small coterie of its leaders could not reign in their lust for “more” is indeed sad. That it should happen to a party whose leaders, the late General Zialul Haq could not accuse of and prosecute for corruption despite every effort after the coup of 1977 is indeed sad. How long will the party and its cadre defend the handful of its leaders whose lust for “more” knows no limit? When history will be written of Pakistan and its politics of today, those who have been dared by Zardari will stand tall and patriotic. How will history record the one who has dared? Well, I shall leave it to the readers and to the historians to judge.
The writer is a former federal secretary