Five Decades as a Republic
Pakistan chose not to become a republic till March 23, 1956. Five decades on (and 35 years almost to the day the “First Republic” came asunder), we must take stock of where we are today, and where the “Second Republic” will be in the future. One may take lessons from the past, it is no use lamenting the many mistakes made, they are the stuff of history and fortunately, despite our best efforts we are still in existence. Predictions range from dire pessimism to the optimistic “feel good” churned out by the establishment’s propaganda machine, it would be in the scheme of things to hold that the truth is somewhere in-between, but would that be true? Most developing nations without access to windfall oil revenues (or some cash resource along that kind) face problems of varying magnitude and are coping with them. There have been some gains and some losses. Simplistically stated, the gains are mainly in the economic field, the losses mainly political. Defying the laws of nature, we are geo-politically stronger than ever before, due (with some individual credit to Pervez Musharraf’s decision-making) to favourable circumstances than our own abilities and performance thereof.
