By DR FAROOQ HASSAN
November 18, 2008

Dr. Hassan’s latest opinion piece has been published here.

Tyranny of good intentions

Any contemporary thinker of any significance cannot be in any doubt on the three salient aspects of the evolving political scenario in Pakistan, viz: (1) the manifest political operations through which Zardari has entered the portals of absolute power, (2) the apparently harmful response that Nawaz Sharif has exhibited thus far to the continuity of the Musharraf brand of governmental retention of power in presidency to the exclusion of Parliament, and (3) resultantly the bleak future of the country because of the lack of Opposition to the government which is the sine qua non of parliamentary systems.

People of Pakistan invariably make the right decisions for the ultimate betterment of the country. Time and again this phenomenon has been established. They demonstrated this public conception of the General Will, as Rousseau called it, in 1947, 1970 or, as most recently, in 2008. Did we not witness the same phenomenon again when the people by their vote demanded for a change on February 18? Did they not vote for Musharraf’s ouster and affirmatively condemn his consistent acts of usurpation since 1999? Was it not tantamount to a mandate for the restoration of the Musharraf-purged judiciary? We cannot simply forget that but for that “NO” that came from one CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9, 2007, all these present rulers and many in the Parliament would still be sitting in foreign lands as exiles or absolute nobodies within the country itself?

Please read all of Tyranny of good intentions here.

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