Comments on: A de facto Presidential System http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/ Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:20:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: FarooqAhmed http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40782 FarooqAhmed Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:21:05 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40782 In my opinion, Pakistan should progress in adopting the presedential system. Presedential system will work better for Pakistan, because most of the power is hold by the President. Also, people of Pakistan will be able to elect their president directly. Parlianmentry system is not working for Pakistan right now, as no party gets the 2/3 majority and the parlianment that is formed is always a hung parlianment, which unable to pass any legislation. If one party tries to pass one legislation, other party blocks it and vice versa, making no legislation to pass. In my opinion, Pakistan should progress in adopting the presedential system. Presedential system will work better for Pakistan, because most of the power is hold by the President. Also, people of Pakistan will be able to elect their president directly.

Parlianmentry system is not working for Pakistan right now, as no party gets the 2/3 majority and the parlianment that is formed is always a hung parlianment, which unable to pass any legislation. If one party tries to pass one legislation, other party blocks it and vice versa, making no legislation to pass.

]]> By: Dervaish http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40700 Dervaish Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:18:35 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40700 Perhaps the diseases are not of the same type and quality, although the Pakistani pimp-and-whore elites are trying their best to "catch-up" with the worst that is on offer. As a Pakistani, as a concerned Pakistani and as a decent human being, your and our competition should not be with the trash and trash cultures of other places but with efforts to live and die according to what has been laid down by your own tradition, culture and faith. America's problems must not be replicated in a country like Pakistan: they must be understood critically and lessons must be learned from them. But everything in Pakistan, from politics, media to general lifestyles of the masses seem to be going that way: an accelerated process of degenaration (usually known under the euphemisms of "development", "progress" etc.) where monkeying the worst of the postmodern West are considered acts of refinement and something to bee proud about. Perhaps the diseases are not of the same type and quality, although the Pakistani pimp-and-whore elites are trying their best to “catch-up” with the worst that is on offer. As a Pakistani, as a concerned Pakistani and as a decent human being, your and our competition should not be with the trash and trash cultures of other places but with efforts to live and die according to what has been laid down by your own tradition, culture and faith. America’s problems must not be replicated in a country like Pakistan: they must be understood critically and lessons must be learned from them. But everything in Pakistan, from politics, media to general lifestyles of the masses seem to be going that way: an accelerated process of degenaration (usually known under the euphemisms of “development”, “progress” etc.) where monkeying the worst of the postmodern West are considered acts of refinement and something to bee proud about.

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40667 nota Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:06:07 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40667 Sorry forgot to add links to the articles above: <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18944.htm" rel="nofollow">Bill Moyers: America on Steroids</a> <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18927.htm" rel="nofollow">John Pilger: Liberalism To Murdochracy</a> Sorry forgot to add links to the articles above:
Bill Moyers: America on Steroids
John Pilger: Liberalism To Murdochracy

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40665 nota Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:03:28 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40665 @Dervaish But I don't want to pick on us alone. Reading this Bill Moyers piece about America, one would think he was talking about Pakistan: <i> In our drugged state, we cheer the winners in the game of wealth, the billionaires who benefit from a skewed financial system -- the losers, we kick down the stairs. ... We open fire hoses of cash into our political system in the name of "free speech." Television stations that refuse to cover government make fortunes selling political bromides over public airwaves. Pornography passing as advertising assaults our senses, seduces our children, and pollutes our culture. Partisan propaganda gets pumped up as news. We feed on the flamboyance of celebrities. And we actually take seriously the Elmer Gantrys who use the Christian Gospel as a guidebook to an Iowa caucus or a battle plan for the Middle East. In the face of a scandalous health care system, failing schools, and a fraudulent endless war, we are as docile as tattered scarecrows in a field of rotten tomatoes. <i> Now let's see what Pilger has to say about Britain: <i> As events have demonstrated, Blair and the cult of New Labour have destroyed the very liberalism millions of Britons thought they were voting for. This truth is like a taboo and was missing almost entirely from last week's Guardian debate about civil liberties. Gone is the bourgeoisie that in good times would extend a few rungs of the ladder to those below...and all but abolished the premises of tolerance and decency, however amorphous, on which much of British public life was based. The trade-off has been mostly superficial "social liberalism" and the highest personal indebtedness on earth. In 2007, reported the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the United Kingdom faced the highest levels of inequality for 40 years, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and more and more segregated from society. The International Monetary Fund has designated Britain a tax haven, and corruption and fraud in British business are almost twice the global average, while Unicef reports that British children are the most neglected and unhappiest in the "rich" world. Abroad, behind a facade of liberal concern for the world's "disadvantaged", such as waffle about millennium goals and anti-poverty stunts with the likes of Google and Vodafone, the Brown government, together with its EU partners, is demanding vicious and punitive free-trade agreements that will devastate the economies of scores of impoverished African, Caribbean and Pacific nations.... ...In 1977, at the height of the cold war, I interviewed the Charter 77 dissidents in Czechoslovakia. They warned that complacency and silence could destroy liberty and democracy as effectively as tanks. "We're actually better off than you in the west," said a writer, measuring his irony. "Unlike you, we have no illusions." </i> @Dervaish
But I don’t want to pick on us alone. Reading this Bill Moyers piece about America, one would think he was talking about Pakistan:
In our drugged state, we cheer the winners in the game of wealth, the billionaires who benefit from a skewed financial system — the losers, we kick down the stairs. … We open fire hoses of cash into our political system in the name of “free speech.” Television stations that refuse to cover government make fortunes selling political bromides over public airwaves. Pornography passing as advertising assaults our senses, seduces our children, and pollutes our culture. Partisan propaganda gets pumped up as news. We feed on the flamboyance of celebrities. And we actually take seriously the Elmer Gantrys who use the Christian Gospel as a guidebook to an Iowa caucus or a battle plan for the Middle East. In the face of a scandalous health care system, failing schools, and a fraudulent endless war, we are as docile as tattered scarecrows in a field of rotten tomatoes.

Now let’s see what Pilger has to say about Britain:
 As events have demonstrated, Blair and the cult of New Labour have destroyed the very liberalism millions of Britons thought they were voting for. This truth is like a taboo and was missing almost entirely from last week’s Guardian debate about civil liberties. Gone is the bourgeoisie that in good times would extend a few rungs of the ladder to those below…and all but abolished the premises of tolerance and decency, however amorphous, on which much of British public life was based. The trade-off has been mostly superficial “social liberalism” and the highest personal indebtedness on earth. In 2007, reported the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the United Kingdom faced the highest levels of inequality for 40 years, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and more and more segregated from society. The International Monetary Fund has designated Britain a tax haven, and corruption and fraud in British business are almost twice the global average, while Unicef reports that British children are the most neglected and unhappiest in the “rich” world.

Abroad, behind a facade of liberal concern for the world’s “disadvantaged”, such as waffle about millennium goals and anti-poverty stunts with the likes of Google and Vodafone, the Brown government, together with its EU partners, is demanding vicious and punitive free-trade agreements that will devastate the economies of scores of impoverished African, Caribbean and Pacific nations….

…In 1977, at the height of the cold war, I interviewed the Charter 77 dissidents in Czechoslovakia. They warned that complacency and silence could destroy liberty and democracy as effectively as tanks. “We’re actually better off than you in the west,” said a writer, measuring his irony. “Unlike you, we have no illusions.”

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40473 nota Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:01:37 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40473 @Dervaish You are so right. Our problem is that we don't realize how morally corrupt each of us has become. Whether it has rotted from the top down or from the bottom up, it is rotten nonetheless. And I find it funny that although we all smell the rotten meat, we think the smell is from around us and refuse to accept our personal contribution to that rot. It's always "It's everyone else that is rotten but not me" so there is no looking for a fix and the rot gets worst by the day........ @Dervaish
You are so right. Our problem is that we don’t realize how morally corrupt each of us has become. Whether it has rotted from the top down or from the bottom up, it is rotten nonetheless. And I find it funny that although we all smell the rotten meat, we think the smell is from around us and refuse to accept our personal contribution to that rot. It’s always “It’s everyone else that is rotten but not me” so there is no looking for a fix and the rot gets worst by the day……..

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40469 nota Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:50:35 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40469 Sorry to post another piece but I really loved the Ayaz's piece so here is another excerpt: <i>Endlessly restless and therefore flitting from here to there, fascinated with gewgaws and gimmicks, believing that somewhere through the woods lies a golden short-cut which if discovered would turn the burden of governance into a perpetual holiday, are vintage Nawaz Sharif traits which at least the members of Pakistan's permanent politburo (Roedad Khan being an erstwhile member of this club) should have fully known when they went about creating him as a counter-weight to Benazir Bhutto. But they were blinded by their prejudices, hating Benazir more for being her father's daughter and less for her presumed failings. Indeed when it was discovered that Benazir was quite unlike her father and that her reigning passion was to feather her nest rather than to rock the national boat, many of the politburo members who had earlier thought her to be the very personification of fickleness and evil gladly took up service under her. The history of Pakistan is replete with such ironies. It is also instructive to remember that while Benazir cut her populist moorings and became a child of the civil-military establishment, Nawaz Sharif moved in the opposite direction. From being a creation of the establishment he became his own man, especially after his falling out with President Ishaq Khan in 1993. In other words, he freed himself from the clutches of the English-speaking establishment and successfully created a Punjabi or a desi mass constituency for himself which ultimately culminated in the heavy mandate of 1997. The tragedy is that while the intellectual and moral calibre of the English-speaking governing classes was always low, that of the desi crowd which has assaulted Islamabad on the strength of the heavy mandate is even lower. Between them Pakistan's goose is being cooked. </i> Sorry to post another piece but I really loved the Ayaz’s piece so here is another excerpt:
Endlessly restless and therefore flitting from here to there, fascinated with gewgaws and gimmicks, believing that somewhere through the woods lies a golden short-cut which if discovered would turn the burden of governance into a perpetual holiday, are vintage Nawaz Sharif traits which at least the members of Pakistan’s permanent politburo (Roedad Khan being an erstwhile member of this club) should have fully known when they went about creating him as a counter-weight to Benazir Bhutto. But they were blinded by their prejudices, hating Benazir more for being her father’s daughter and less for her presumed failings.

Indeed when it was discovered that Benazir was quite unlike her father and that her reigning passion was to feather her nest rather than to rock the national boat, many of the politburo members who had earlier thought her to be the very personification of fickleness and evil gladly took up service under her. The history of Pakistan is replete with such ironies.

It is also instructive to remember that while Benazir cut her populist moorings and became a child of the civil-military establishment, Nawaz Sharif moved in the opposite direction. From being a creation of the establishment he became his own man, especially after his falling out with President Ishaq Khan in 1993. In other words, he freed himself from the clutches of the English-speaking establishment and successfully created a Punjabi or a desi mass constituency for himself which ultimately culminated in the heavy mandate of 1997.

The tragedy is that while the intellectual and moral calibre of the English-speaking governing classes was always low, that of the desi crowd which has assaulted Islamabad on the strength of the heavy mandate is even lower. Between them Pakistan’s goose is being cooked.

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40466 nota Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:43:46 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40466 Here is a <a href="http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/990806.htm" rel="nofollow">direct link</a> to the Ayaz Amir's piece from Aug 1999 mentioned above. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same :( Certainly worth a read. Excerpt: <i>Amidst this hectic activity the prime minister decrees the construction of a new state guest house at Bhurban, Murree. In Lahore he inspects the model of the new airport terminal, whose outlines resemble the mock-Mughal facade of the PM's secretariat, and orders that it be completed by next year. Meanwhile, in the name of road development, the vandalization of Lahore continues, with age-old trees being pulled down and ever wider malls being built to accommodate the traffic sense peculiar to this country. Things have been brought to such a pass that ordinary people (as opposed to drawing room literati) are past caring. Weary of sights and sounds which keep recurring like scenes from a bad dream, and their last illusions lying broken and scattered over the landscape, they are past caring and, to the government's infinite joy, past protesting. Burning tyres, erecting barricades and braving police lathis after all are functions of hope, vigour and enthusiasm. When from the body-politic these vital qualities are drained, from whence should arise the spirit of protesting? The people of Pakistan have tried everything: repeated dictatorships, experiments with different brands of democracy, the rise and fall of Benazir, the glittering summits of the heavy mandate. They have raised monuments to the Chaghi hills, hailed Dr A.Q. Khan as their deliverer and believed with all the fervour of their emotional souls that the defence of the country had become impregnable. The lies and absurdities they have put up with would have caused an upheaval in any country similarly placed. But their stamina for more experiments now lies exhausted. It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things, a revolution.</i> Here is a direct link to the Ayaz Amir’s piece from Aug 1999 mentioned above. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same :( Certainly worth a read.
Excerpt:
Amidst this hectic activity the prime minister decrees the construction of a new state guest house at Bhurban, Murree. In Lahore he inspects the model of the new airport terminal, whose outlines resemble the mock-Mughal facade of the PM’s secretariat, and orders that it be completed by next year. Meanwhile, in the name of road development, the vandalization of Lahore continues, with age-old trees being pulled down and ever wider malls being built to accommodate the traffic sense peculiar to this country.

Things have been brought to such a pass that ordinary people (as opposed to drawing room literati) are past caring. Weary of sights and sounds which keep recurring like scenes from a bad dream, and their last illusions lying broken and scattered over the landscape, they are past caring and, to the government’s infinite joy, past protesting. Burning tyres, erecting barricades and braving police lathis after all are functions of hope, vigour and enthusiasm. When from the body-politic these vital qualities are drained, from whence should arise the spirit of protesting?

The people of Pakistan have tried everything: repeated dictatorships, experiments with different brands of democracy, the rise and fall of Benazir, the glittering summits of the heavy mandate. They have raised monuments to the Chaghi hills, hailed Dr A.Q. Khan as their deliverer and believed with all the fervour of their emotional souls that the defence of the country had become impregnable. The lies and absurdities they have put up with would have caused an upheaval in any country similarly placed. But their stamina for more experiments now lies exhausted.

It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things, a revolution.

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40463 nota Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:22:03 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40463 @c hussain And was it Roedad Khan who had <a href="" rel="nofollow">signed Z A Bhutto's death warrants</a>? Here is an excerpt from <a href="http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/1999/07aug99.html" rel="nofollow">Ayaz Amir column from 1999</a> about Roedad: <i>It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things, a revolution. Every despotic regime in recent memory he faithfully served. The burden of the infamies then gathered by the country he valiantly bore but the infamy of Kargil has cut him to the quick and made him write a frenzied piece in the News with gems such as this: "What a terrible burden of guilt our rulers bear. One day this treachery shall be avenged and out of all this would come the politics of the future." He goes on to ask, "Who will light a candle in the gloom of our morale?" The answer should be obvious: another Zia-ul-Haq with Roedad Khan as his secretary-general of the interior.</i> More about Roedad Khan in the piece <a href="http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/dec/demons.htm" rel="nofollow">Demons of December — Road from East Pakistan to Bangladesh</a>. Excerpt: <i>Information Secretary of Yahya Khan, Mr. Roedad Khan continued to climb the ladders of promotions and retired with all perks and privileges from the senior most post....The civilian bureaucrats serving the regime, like Information Secretary Roedad Khan were advising the generals about ‘putting some fear of God’ in Bengalis and how to purify Bengali race and culture by Arabising the Bengali script."</i> @c hussain
And was it Roedad Khan who had signed Z A Bhutto’s death warrants?
Here is an excerpt from Ayaz Amir column from 1999 about Roedad:
It is a strange country indeed where a ghost from the past such as
Roedad Khan should emerge from the mists to preach, of all things,
a revolution. Every despotic regime in recent memory he faithfully
served. The burden of the infamies then gathered by the country he
valiantly bore but the infamy of Kargil has cut him to the quick
and made him write a frenzied piece in the News with gems such as
this: “What a terrible burden of guilt our rulers bear. One day
this treachery shall be avenged and out of all this would come the
politics of the future.” He goes on to ask, “Who will light a
candle in the gloom of our morale?” The answer should be obvious:
another Zia-ul-Haq with Roedad Khan as his secretary-general of the
interior.

More about Roedad Khan in the piece Demons of December — Road from East Pakistan to Bangladesh. Excerpt:
Information Secretary of Yahya Khan, Mr. Roedad Khan continued to climb the ladders of promotions and retired with all perks and privileges from the senior most post….The civilian bureaucrats serving the regime, like Information Secretary Roedad Khan were advising the generals about ‘putting some fear of God’ in Bengalis and how to purify Bengali race and culture by Arabising the Bengali script.”

]]> By: nota http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40453 nota Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:37:36 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40453 <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=520966" rel="nofollow">A Coup Against the People - Harvard Crimson</a> <a href="http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_content/2007/12/120707ov_hor_contempt.php" rel="nofollow">Bush’s and Musharraf’s Contempt for Judges and Lawyers - Jacob Hornberger</a> <a href="http://www.dailynews-record.com/opinion_details.php?LID=5695" rel="nofollow">Shakespeare And Pakistan</a> <a href="http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2007-2008/issue13/opinion/02.html" rel="nofollow">Tyranny, not Islamism, is Greatest Threat to Pakistan</a> <a href="http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_7758679?nclick_check=1" rel="nofollow">Let’s compare Musharraf with George Bush</a> <a href="http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_25663.shtml" rel="nofollow">TOP TEN IDI*TS of the MUSLIM WORLD for the year 2007</a> <a href="http://www.navhindtimes.com/articles.php?Story_ID=121826" rel="nofollow">Musharraf: Individual Before Nation</a> <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IK28Df03.html" rel="nofollow">‘Our’ dictator gets away with it by Pepe Escobar</a> A Coup Against the People – Harvard Crimson

Bush’s and Musharraf’s Contempt for Judges and Lawyers – Jacob Hornberger

Shakespeare And Pakistan

Tyranny, not Islamism, is Greatest Threat to Pakistan

Let’s compare Musharraf with George Bush

TOP TEN IDI*TS of the MUSLIM WORLD for the year 2007

Musharraf: Individual Before Nation

‘Our’ dictator gets away with it by Pepe Escobar

]]> By: c hussain http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40356 c hussain Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:11:41 +0000 http://pkpolitics.com/2007/12/21/a-de-fecto-presidential-system/#comment-40356 The current system is not presidential system - it is still martial law because all the changes he made was through PCO and him as Chief of Army Staff and not as President. A Pakistan's president can only act via 52 B - thats all. As for Sharifuddin if someone comes tomorrow to him and says he has raped his (meaning Shairfuddin Pirzada) daughter and that would he defend him in court - what would he (Sharifuddin ) do in that case. Would he still for the sake of money defend the person who raped his daughter. May be he is so greedy he would dump his duaghter and even defend that criminal. Because like Mir Jafar and Mir Sadiq he has no qualms of conscience and would do anything - and now like them he has got a place in Pakistan history and everyone would remember him in very very bad words and this is his life's achievement which he would take with him to his grave. Now he even if says all teh rules were dictators and despots and corrupt doesnt justifiy his action because he chose to a part of it. Same goes for AG Qayuum whose father justice Akram sold his conscience and hanged Bhutto. Musharraf doesnt realise one thing - he has opened the door for kiyani for future action which Kiyani can do at his own will whenever he choses and if he takes that action - he would be acting within the ambit of orders of Supreme Court which in last decision had asked everyone not to follow PCO. So all those who followed it have violated Article 6 and punishement for that is death penallty. I hope Shareffuddin also knows that - Inshallah that day would come one day and very soon. Bush is also on his way out - he has just another ten months left. The current system is not presidential system – it is still martial law because all the changes he made was through PCO and him as Chief of Army Staff and not as President. A Pakistan’s president can only act via 52 B – thats all.

As for Sharifuddin if someone comes tomorrow to him and says he has raped his (meaning Shairfuddin Pirzada) daughter and that would he defend him in court – what would he (Sharifuddin ) do in that case. Would he still for the sake of money defend the person who raped his daughter. May be he is so greedy he would dump his duaghter and even defend that criminal. Because like Mir Jafar and Mir Sadiq he has no qualms of conscience and would do anything – and now like them he has got a place in Pakistan history and everyone would remember him in very very bad words and this is his life’s achievement which he would take with him to his grave. Now he even if says all teh rules were dictators and despots and corrupt doesnt justifiy his action because he chose to a part of it.

Same goes for AG Qayuum whose father justice Akram sold his conscience and hanged Bhutto.

Musharraf doesnt realise one thing – he has opened the door for kiyani for future action which Kiyani can do at his own will whenever he choses and if he takes that action – he would be acting within the ambit of orders of Supreme Court which in last decision had asked everyone not to follow PCO. So all those who followed it have violated Article 6 and punishement for that is death penallty. I hope Shareffuddin also knows that – Inshallah that day would come one day and very soon. Bush is also on his way out – he has just another ten months left.

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