Ordained leadership

This refers to the articles, ‘Pakistan’s Kemalist moment’ (June 30) and ‘Pakistan needs strong leadership...period’ (July 3) by Ayaz Amir. Starting from Maj-Gen (r) Iskandar Mirza to General (r) Pervez Musharraf, we have had an impressive list of claimants of strong leadership with Kemalist pretentions. However, personally speaking, one would not mind his wish being fulfilled another time soon.
But then being a veteran soldier himself the writer would agree that perhaps more than ‘war’ it is ‘leadership’ that is too serious a business to be left to Kemalist adventurers alone. And then with his great sense of history, one is sure he would also agree that save for Jinnah and Gandhi, the entire Subcontinent in its long history could only produce two leaders of substance – the great Ashoka and Ranjit Singh. Therefore my humble advice to the writer would be to have some more patience and let these poor civilians complete another cycle or two.
Zia-ur-Rehman
Islamabad