Tahirul Qadri's Long March

[aftab]

http://www.zemtv.com/2013/01/13/dr-tahi ... lik-video/

This Rehman Malik is a complete idiot...he was using cus words for TUQ about his dress sense....talk about priorities!!!

[Mirza Ghalib]

Thanks for this Video. I looked for it and was unable to find it. Now you've done the job for me. As for the people of Pakistan, working class or simply part of the poorest of the poor are all poised on the edge of change, whether through the bullet or through the ballot yet remains to be seen. That long march has now begun as we all know. How far it goes and how it all ends is still unclear. I'm trying my best to be fair to TUQ, and yet, and yet, I still find it hard to trust the man.

As for Rehman Malik and his crazy way, he's yet another person only someone blind could trust, seems to me.

[Mirza Ghalib]

Opinion

When means do matter

Shireen M Mazari
Monday, January 14, 2013

Dr Tahirul Qadri undoubtedly moved me on December 23, especially with the sea of green and white flags and the passionate resonance of the national anthem. We may be far from where we want to be, or should be, as a nation, but the passion and dream lives on in so many of us. Dr Qadri’s message touched a chord and the instinct was to join up in his caravan for change. After all, this was what had attracted me to the PTI until the “electables” invasion, traditional manoeuvring and takeover. Imran’s commitment to change was not the issue, but the means – of the same “electables” somehow becoming harbingers of this change – did somehow undermine the belief, notwithstanding the passion of the youth!

So when Dr Qadri in his convincing manner offered yet another path to truly change the democratic political equation in Pakistan, it was difficult not to join in. But something held me back, and I can now identify three different levels of reasoning that made me decide to stay away. The first level was related to the assumptions underlying the march, regardless of the numbers! The idea of having a “people’s assembly” which would make decisions for the nation without itself having been selected by the people smacked of an arrogance that was discomfiting! After all, how could this “people’s assembly” represent the whole gamut of the Pakistani nation without having actually been given this mandate? Similarly, respected scholar though he is, Dr Qadri also has not been given a mandate to head such an assembly and make decisions on behalf of the people of Pakistan!

At a second and perhaps most crucial level, I feel that, given the chaos and violence Pakistan is already experiencing, the means of bringing change matter. There is absolutely no doubt that the demands for electoral reforms through proper enforcement of the constitution are the need of the hour for Pakistan to rid itself of the corrupt politicians’ coterie ruling us. But the questions that came to mind are: One, why not use the Supreme Court and challenges through the ECP to ensure enforcement of constitutional provisions with regard to electoral candidates? Here Imran Khan’s example stands out in connection with bogus voters’ lists, as well as his pending appeals against pre-poll rigging.

There is a system that works, if used properly. This usage also allows for strengthening of institutions like the judiciary and the ECP – thereby fortifying the roots of democracy. I feel Imran’s use of petitions to fight electoral corruption not only shows faith in the judiciary, thereby fortifying the institution, but has also borne positive results in the battle for electoral reform – although the war has yet to be won.

Two, how can one man and his followers decide who is clean or pious? At the end of the day, if we believe in democracy then we must fight the battle against corruption and lawbreakers at the ballot box. Yes, rigging is a plague, as are the traditional political norms, especially in the rural areas; but if enough voices stand up against these evils, I believe things will change. We have never given the democratic system, flawed as it may be, a chance to take root. Too many dictatorial interventions in the name of “reform” have already cost this country a smooth evolutionary developmental process. In fact, this is a major reason why the corrupt, inept traditional “electables” succeed time after time in elections – because they are allowed to embrace political martyrdom instead of being exposed for the criminals that they are.

Distasteful as it may be, we have to allow the system to continue and hope people will choose new faces, who will in turn bring reform to the electoral system through parliamentary legislation. We need a system of proportional representation; of unhinging the roots of support for corruption in politics such the misnomer “development funds,” and so on. But these changes need to come through letting the electoral system continue, which may make the task more daunting but it is the only legitimate way. Too many non-democratic interventions have already destroyed the fabric of this nation.

Three, I feel very strongly about the whole issue of dual nationality and had written a letter to the CJ on the issue also. No matter how committed to Pakistan, dual nationality implies dual loyalties, especially in the case of the US naturalisation oath. If one wants to lead a political movement in Pakistan then commitment to this cause requires a renunciation of the foreign nationality. Not everyone agrees on this, but it is a conviction with me.

At a third level, my misgivings are based on what I tend to call “connecting the dots.” The timing of Dr Qadri’s return; information flowing out from British sources that the UK High Commissioner to Pakistan visited Dr Qadri in Canada two or three times about six months ago; the growing belligerency of drones and Indian troops along the LoC, alongside an unprecedented increase in terrorism, especially in Quetta; the sheer money and organisational structure that suddenly became overt – just too many coincidences in terms of timeline. Some said the “establishment” was behind Dr Qadri, but I am not convinced on that count! However, external powers I suspect have a role, although I have no proof – simply an educated assessment of what is happening within Pakistan and in our region.

We know the US seeks a favourable dispensation in Islamabad up to 2014 so that its withdrawal from Afghanistan can be smooth and the post-withdrawal scenario to its liking. A long-term friendly caretaker setup would suit them more than an elected government, especially since they are not sure what will happen in the next elections when there is no NRO and no “guarantors”! We also know how the UK played a lead role in the whole NRO game, so the same linkage can be taken as a given again. Banking on someone they recognise as a “liberal religious leader,” who has even sought to justify drones before December 23, they feel will allow them to bring the Pakistani nation on board. These are dangerous and false assumptions but it will not be the first time such miscalculations have been made.

Too many questions to set the mind at ease over the agenda of Dr Qadri – a man to be respected for his scholarship. But if he is really concerned about the people of Pakistan then a march that would win support from all over the country would be a peace march to Quetta. Now, that would be a march I would join without hesitation. Till then elections and legal challenges to enforce constitutional provisions are the route to achieve change. The means do matter.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9 ... -do-matter

[Mirza Ghalib]

Shireen Mazari at her very best giving us a well-pondered piece for which our many thanks. I'm glad she pointed out, without using the word of course, the towering arrogance inhabiting TUQ, posing as the saviour of the nation. But even through him, some good can come to the nation. Let us hope such will be the case today in Islamabad.

[Mirza Ghalib]

Of doubts and suspicions

Badar Alam
14.1.13

Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri’s agitation, by his own demands, is meant to achieve three things: i) a new election commission; ii) a caretaker government set up through consultation with the military and the judiciary; iii) a strict implementation of the eligibility criteria for election candidates.

This is, by all means, a tall order – in particular because there is no constitutional and democratic quick fix solution to bring these changes about overnight. But, on the flip side, these demands manifest what Qadri’s recent foray into politics is all about. He wants to change the rules of a game which he himself is ineligible to play.

Why? This is the most obvious, and perhaps also the most pertinent question being raised about Qadri’s demands and agitation over the last three weeks. His own answer: for the sake of the people of Pakistan. It is, however, not clear how a new election commission, a caretaker government blessed by the General Headquarters and the Supreme Court and a strict enforcement of some religious and moral standards for a decidedly worldly affair called politics can create a system that will take care of all the economic, political, ethnic, sectarian and violent phenomena facing and threatening Pakistan’s existence. By whittling down his agenda to these three demands, Qadri has achieved a climb down after having set about to ward off threats to the very existence of the state. In fact, he has succeeded in doing the opposite of what his self-assigned and self-professed agenda of saving the state ostensibly aimed at: instability, uncertainty and anarchy, all existing before he announced his march on Dec 23, 2012, have only increased since then.

Then there is another thing that has happened. Due to the massive gap between his sweeping, idealistic religious rhetoric and his actual mundane demands, politics seems to have taken precedence over the state. Election commissions, caretaker governments and eligibility criteria for elections, after all, are nothing if they are not about politics. Unless he now starts telling his supporters that politics – electoral politics, that is – is the only way to save the state, he has already turned his agenda upside down.

The question that rises again is what for. Who wants a new election commission in Pakistan? Two main parties in the parliament – the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) do not; nor do the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), despite initially having decided to take part in Qadri’s long march, the Awami National Party (ANP) and myriad other parliamentary groups and parties. Even those outside the parliament, like Imran Khan and Jamaat-e-Islami, have also not demanded that. The only party which so far has raised any objection against the current election commission and its chief is the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q). In the wake of recent by-elections in Punjab, the party accused the election authority of partisanship. Is Qadri, then, advancing the PML-Q’s agenda? Were the PML-Q leaders telling him on Saturday that he no longer needs to take to the streets after the issue has been sufficiently raised in the public arena? No incriminating evidence exists to answer these questions in the affirmative but, as events have unfolded over the weekend, there is certainly a lot of room for speculation and conjecture.

The next two demands are aimed at giving the military and the judiciary a strong say, and a possible veto, in the processes in which the constitution doesn’t allow them any role. The caretaker government has to come about through a constitutionally mandated procedure which leaves absolutely no room for consultations with power centres outside the parliament. Similarly, the right to decide who can contest an election and who cannot, first and foremost, lies with the election commission. But certainly only the judiciary, in its current hyperactive mode, can turn the constitution’s vague moral edicts into concrete judicial verdicts to bar candidates on a mass scale from taking part in the polls.

All this begs the same question again and again. What is it for Qadri in all this? His own Pakistan Awami Tehreek is not a registered party eligible to take part in the polls. He himself is a Canadian citizen and cannot run in an election without giving that up; his party machine is non-existent and his track record at the ballot is dismal, if anything.

One possible answer is that he has got carried away by his reception in Lahore three weeks ago and then by listening to the echo of his own sound in television talk shows as well as during his parleys with even the government’s coalition partners. By the time the media started questioning his motives and his sympathizers and supporters among political parties began deserting him one after the other, it was too late for him to take back his plans for the long march.

Well, this is quite possible. But it does not look plausible. Qadri is too well-informed and experienced to allow himself to be taken in by the spontaneous overflow of religious passion among his followers after his return from abroad after almost half a decade. He also knows his political base is miniscule and even his religious appeal is strictly limited to the followers of one sect – mainly in urbanizing parts of Punjab. In two elections that he contested, in 1992 and 2002, the total number of votes his party received remained paltry. His political worldview is either too idealistic to make sense to a Pakistani voter or it is too sectarian and too cut and dried to attract anyone beyond those already converted to his cause.

But Qadri also knows that he is capable of at least two things: creating occasional panic and trouble (like he has done with his long march) and sowing the seeds of doubt (through his broad-brush strokes of anti-regime, anti-incumbency sloganeering coated in pious statements about constitution, democracy and Islam) about the democratic transition just round the corner.

A successful, smooth transition which nobody doubts and disputes will certainly go a long way in strengthening democracy in Pakistan. But if there are eloquent naysayers, like Qadri, out there raising objections and questions about its constitutional and moral legitimacy, doubts will continue to linger in the public mind about the coming electoral exercise in particular and the effectiveness of democracy as a political system fit for Pakistan in general. It is in creating and perpetuating such doubts where Qadri’s importance lies. And regardless of how many people are there in his march or whether or not he succeeds to reach in front of the parliament, his mission is accomplished.

Qadri has certainly helped create a lot of uncertainty about an election that he refuses to accept even before it has taken place. The same goes for the transition that such a ‘questionable’ election – if and when it takes place – will result in. Both will remain subject to intense discussion, by him and by many other detractors of democracy, in the coming weeks and months raising the spectre of more uncertainty and instability.

Notwithstanding the scale of participation in his long march, Qadri has succeeded in denying Pakistan an uneventful and unanimously acceptable democratic transition. Without that taking place, the electoral experience is bound to remain under the scanner as well as under threat. He has played his role well, without keeping it a secret that he wants those institutions to play a role which are responsible for the security and the solidarity of the state. It is in this that Qadri’s slogan of saving the sate rather than saving politics assumes an extra-democratic, extra-constitutional significance. The trouble is that past attempts at saving the state by shunning politics have all ended in failure.

http://dawn.com/2013/01/13/of-doubts-and-suspicions/

[aftab]

It looks like TUQ and his supporters are going for a showdown with the government, if i were the government i would allow him to stage a sit-in at D-Chowk and cool things down because as it stands there will be a violent confrontation.

[aftab]

http://www.zemtv.com/2013/01/15/tahir-u ... ll-speech/

[Shimatoree]

Things are moving at a breakneck speed and at least at this time it seems that Imran and PTI have just missed the train which is beginning to leave the station. Sh. Rasheed must be thought off now as a great prognosticator of political events in Pakistan.
I have a strange feeling that things WILL get out of hand and the anger of the common man will take over.
I have watched TUQ's speech that he gave after arriving in Islamabad and if he maintains his stance.........well Vive La Pakistan and maybe there is a market for my GUILLOTINE.

I wonder what is coming next

[aftab]

"though I have already admitted that I am confused at all what is happening, I am trying to make sense of all this....Dr. Qadri has definitely pulled up a few good punches, first by collecting more than 40-50,000 people and making them reach Islamabad, (and he is calling them 4 million) and now by pulling up this audacious trick of violating his (apparent deal) deal with the Capital administration....I am still trying to make sense of it; but I am afraid that PTI may miss out the bus, they are not decisive enough, they need to watch all this carefully...Qadri will definitely extract some "deal" some concessions from this political system...but who is doing all this? could Dr. Qadri be doing all this by himself? ..what I have seen today needs some nerve....let's see how the political system responds to all this by the morning...

I still think and hope and pray that Dr. Qadri will sit tight at the D-Chowk, issue his demands and negotiate with the government...I hope he won't pull more surprises from his "umro ayar ki zanbeel" today's drama was enough for us.....but I increasingly suspect that the government may also be playing some sort of trick with us...as if everything is scripted and government too is part of it...somehow or the other, I am intrigued at the speed of their compromises, as if they are playing a topi drama and putting up all this show to fool us...may be I am wrong...but let's see by morning..this is already 4.30am in Islamabad..."

Moeed Pirzada on Facebook

[aftab]

Looks like TUQ and his supporters have been allowed to have a sit in at D-Chowk. Rehman Joker is also at D-Chowk.

[aftab]

Containers pushed a side quite easily by only a few dozen people. What a joke this government is...

[aftab]

latest Ary anchor said confirmed that Ary transmission is blocked by government PEMRA in Islamabad

[aftab]

Government time is up ...so what are they waiting for? There just want to be political martyrs now!

[Mirza Ghalib]

Clashes between police, long marchers
January 15, 2013

Police fire tear gas at long marchers

ISLAMABAD: Police fired tear gas at a growing crowd of protesters who converged on parliament Tuesday as gunshots were heard and some demonstrators threw stones at security forces near Kulsoom Plaza, Geo News reported Tuesday.

The protesters are followers of Tahirul Qadri, who led a two-day protest march into the capital Islamabad overnight to demand a peaceful "revolution" and the dissolution of parliament.

Police sources told that someone from the crowd fired aerial shots after which the police fired tear gas. After the scuffle between police and protesters, the members of the Tehrik e Minhajul Quran secured their leader and surrounded him to protect him.

After the incident, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has instructed police and Rangers to provide security to Tahirul Qadri. He said that Qadri is their guest and it is the responsibility of the police to protect him.

Malik further said that the government is cooperating with Qadri and it does not want any unpleasant happening to occur.

Moreover, the Interior Minister has sought the firing report from the Chief Commissioner Islamabad.

It was not clear who fired the gunshots. Witnesses saw police fire tear gas shells at the crowd. Protesters were holding sticks and had pelted stones at police around 500 yards from parliament. The protesters also smashed the windowpanes of vehicles.

Qadri told his followers to camp out overnight in Islamabad, despite chilly temperatures and advance towards parliament.

He gave the elected government, whose five-year mandate ends in March, until 11:00 am (0600 GMT) to dissolve parliament.

"After that, the people's assembly here will take their own decision," he said, shouting and gesticulating from behind a bullet-proof box.

His demand for the military to have a say in a caretaker administration and for reforms has been seen by critics as a ploy by elements of the establishment, particularly the military, to delay elections and sow political chaos.

Qadri's followers dismantled a first barricade of shipping containers separating the initial venue of the protest from parliament and other sensitive buildings in the government and diplomatic enclave.

His supporters say his calls to end corruption and implement reforms could be the solution to endless problems in Pakistan, struggling with a weak economy, crippling energy crisis and Islamist violence.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-83848 ... g-marchers

[Mirza Ghalib]

This man's a crook in a guise of a clerical. How come others don't see it? To write off IK on the basis of last night's events seems to me to be premature. Trust his intuition. How much the guillotine will come into play here I can't say. But Pakistan under a TUQ would be the perfect suicide. Shim. I think your advance Information to me several weeks ago is now being enacted. And Aftab, Dr Pirzada is right to call it a topi drama. That's exactly what it is. But it may have dramatic consequences.

Last but not least, have you heard as well that Zardari might have left the country by now? Or was that yet another baseless rumour?

[aftab]

Live Stream

http://fancystreems.com/default.asp@pageId=112.php

[aftab]

SC orders the arrest of Raja Rental immediately!!!

[aftab]

All secretaries who were involved in Rental case corruption should also be arrested.

[aftab]

Shaukat Tareen should also be arrested!

[aftab]

what will Rehman Baba do now?