Mohtarma Bhutto says dictatorship has disempowered people
Lecturer at the Simmons College in Massachusetts
US - April 30, 2005

Says Muslim world needs alternatives to theocratic rule

Islamabad April 30, 2005: former Prime Minister and Chairperson of the PPP Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto has said that elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine have been followed by elections in Ukraine and civil elections in Saudi Arabia while the Syrians are phasing out their military presence in Lebanon. "The nurturing of democracy in the Middle East was opening up a window of opportunity for the people of the area".

She was speaking as a guest lecturer at the Simmons College in Massachusetts today. The lecture was attended by about 2700 business and professional women from throughout the United States. There was a panel discussion with Ms. Judy Woodruff, a leading commentator on CNN on "What matters most".

She said that these events, especially the elections in Saudi Arabia, taken together represent the vanguard of a sea change in the Muslim community.

She said that democracy was the ultimate enemy of terrorism. Therefore it was important for her country Pakistan to move on to the path of true democracy in place of the controlled democracy which had resulted from the general elections of 2002.

She recalled that the international community decided to throw its weight behind Pakistan's military ruler General Musharaf following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centres and expressed concern that the inability of the international community so far to facilitate Pakistan's transition to civilian and democratic rule could undermine its objectives in the long run.

Pakistan's military dictatorship has resulted in the disempowerment of the people of Pakistan as well as in the domination of the country's political, financial and social class by the military. For the first time in Pakistan's history, the religious parties have grown in strength and formed a government in the Frontier province bordering Afghanistan. Another first has been the nomination of a religious leader as the Leader of Opposition who has the constitutional right to sit on the National Security Council of the country that frames foreign and security policy, she said.

There was general feeling that the religious parties, and the ruling PML Q which shares many ideas with them, gained in the October elections due to the decision to ban her and Mr. Nawaz Sharif from leading their parties and contesting in the General elections. The military regime had announced that it would not let the two former Prime Ministers run for
office a third time. However, she said that such a policy, aimed at decapitating the true leadership of the country, could end up benefiting the religious parties even further. They would make large gains in the Punjab province if this were to occur.

The former Prime Minister said that the military regime defended vesting the Presidency with enormous constitutional powers in the name of withdrawing the army from politics forever. However, leave alone forever, the enormous powers with the President did not even facilitate the withdrawal of the army from the politics of the country under General Musharaf. This proved the Opposition claim that dictatorial powers for the President were not a deterrent to military intervention. The only deterrent could be a system based on checks and balances, which was accountable and which distributed powers evenly between the centre, the provinces and the districts.

Quoting from the respected International Crisis Group's assessment of the situation in Pakistan she said it hit the nail right on the head when it said; "Instead of empowering liberal, democratic values, the government has co-opted the religious right and continues to rely on it to counter civilian opposition. By depriving democratic forces of an even playing field and continuing to ignore the need for state policies that would encourage and indeed reflect the country religious diversity, the Musharaf government has allowed religious extremist organizations and jihadi groups, and the Madrassas that provide them an endless stream of recruits to flourish."

She said that Muslim youth want power and want a say in their destiny. They do not want to live as slaves following orders of people on top who are unaccountable and unrepresentative. For her, the democratisation of Pakistan is important to the war against terrorism, to the interpretation of Islam as a message of freedom and enlightenment as well as to the empowerment of the people of Pakistan.

She recalled the words of President George Bush in his second Inaugural: "There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of freedom."

She agreed with the conclusions of the International Crisis Group that, "The U.S. and other influential actors have realized with regard to their own societies that terrorism can only be eliminated through pluralistic democratic structures.  Pakistan should not be an
exception."

The former Prime Minister said that it was a sorry state of affairs that even as political freedoms were denied, economic and social successes remained a distant dream in Pakistan. Unemployment, poverty, malnutrition and injustice destroyed lives. Society was governed by the whim of the rulers rather than by a set of rules. The head of the ruling party openly boasted that people had more or less rights according to the "dheel" or latitude given to them by the rulers than the sanctity and sacred nature of the Constitution of the country or the laws of the land.

She said that the mainstream political parties were banned and stopped from freely functioning. The proof of this was the savage break up of the peaceful reception planned for her husband former Federal Minister Asif Ali Zardari on his first visit to Lahore following eight years of imprisonment.

She said that the rulers were so intolerant of political opposition that they were pressuring the landlord of her husband's home in Lahore to cancel the rental agreement. However, she said that such petty actions would not deter the PPP from pressing ahead for freeing the people of Pakistan from the chains of tyranny, backwardness and poverty. She said
that the PPP workers knew that victory came to the brave and the bold and would face the repressive forces of the state with courage and conviction of their principles.

She also talked of the Muslim past where the Muslim renaissance saw giant leaps forward in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, literature and science based on education and rational discourse. She said that freedom in Pakistan and across the Muslim world would unleash the creative powers of the Muslim people helping them achieve the heights of greatness once again in the fields of medicine, law, literature and art and culture.

The PPP Chairperson was critical of those who presented the theocratic state, disciplined under a single religious figure, as the path to victory. She said that the generation spawned by the Afghan Jihad of the eighties against the Soviets which was heavily influenced by extremist thought, needed to be rescued with an alternative political model to that of the theocratic state.

She said the fight for freedom is a fight for giving the Muslim youth an alternative political system that can empower them, give them faith in themselves, dignity, self respect and allow them to hold their heads high with pride in their culture and history free from bigotry and prejudice.

She said that Islam believed in a pluralistic society although one could not see many pluralistic societies in the Muslim world today. Se said she read in history books that when the crusaders came they killed everyone in their wake to take Jerusalem. However, as a Muslim child, she read that when the Muslim conqueror Salahuddin retook Jerusalem, he told the victorious Muslim troops not to kill the non Muslims.

She said that this decision by Salahuddin centuries ago was proof of the tolerance and pluralism of Muslim leaders, societies and cultures which unfortunately had now been hijacked by the margins.

The former Prime Minister said that the Muslims were in search of leaders that can revive the values of Islam by reintroducing the politics of consensus and compromise that lie at the heart of democratic values. She said that such values have nothing to do with terrorism that cannot be justified by any argument.