By Ikram Sehgal
Sixty-one years into freedom from British rule we are not only prisoners of the circumstances created by our leaders--because of their incapability, selfishness, greed and lack of vision--we are in serious danger of losing whatever independence we have left. Instead of recounting all our failures and lamenting our mistakes which have brought us to this sorry plight, it is time to lay on the line the vital steps the leadership in each strata of our society must take for the sake of a country that we all love, or prefer to love, but one which is in grave danger of becoming a place we would hate to live in. The meaning of independence is to be free, not dependent upon others.
Good governance is the demand of all our citizens. This will be achieved if democracy is not given short shrift by those who profess to be the principal proponents thereof. The February 2008 elections were meant to be contrived but these were fortunately free and fair, as much as elections can be in Third World countries. Accountability being the basis of his own existence, Musharraf overturned this by enacting the black NRO. What we got is hardly a pristine version of democracy. The manner the "inheritance" of the mantle of leadership of our major political party was passed onto husband and son, thanks to a disputed will, would have put any absolute monarchy in the world to shame. |