Born-again Muslims
The government of Mian Nawaz Sharif recently moved a Bill in the National Assembly (NA) for the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (popularly known as CA15). Certainly the government could not have chosen a worse time to launch another initiative. On a number of major fronts, the Mian Nawaz Sharif regime has been facing disaster, starting with one certainly not of its making. It is incumbent on any government to maintain control over the tension level, each major initiative has raised apprehensions as well as the stakes, polarising society along the way at a particularly critical time in our history. Has anyone in the regime’s camp heard of such a thing as a “trial balloon?”
A number of major contributing factors encompassing decades of bad governance and malpractice went into the economic crisis that we were immersed in at the beginning of May 1998, culminating in the hands-on looting of the public exchequer during the Asif Zardari-Ms Benazir regime circa 1993-1996. Despite widespread institutionalised reforms and the putting in place of supervisory controls by Mian Nawaz Sharif’s economic team, the economy continued to deteriorate but displayed some early indicators of possible recovery. Then came May 8th and 11th and our world changed overnight. Suddenly we were under immeasurable domestic pressure to counter the Indian blasts and under severe external pressure not to go ahead with a response. As we stood between the devil and the deep sea, the Indians launched a most vicious propaganda campaign, designed to rub our noses in the dirt, to wreck the nation’s morale, “to win a war without bloodying swords,” to quote Sun Tzu. The proliferation of vitriol decided our May 28 nuclear response at Chagai, we were left with no options but to either “eat humble pie” or to “eat grass.”
