Mistakes and Future of Aitzaz Ahsan
By Sameer Shaharyar • Jun 18th, 2008 • Category: Politics • 4 Comments •For sixteen long months, Aitzaz Ahsan fought for the cause of the judiciary. He not only was rebuked by his own party, he also faced extremely brutal state terrorism during the Pervez Musharraf era. He, despite of sheer hardships didn’t budge an inch from his stance, and successfully kept on hoisting the flag of justice and democracy.
When in July, 2007 Mian Nawaz Sharif convened the All Parties Conference (APC) in London, PML-N wanted to invite Aitzaz Ahsan, but on the acrimonious insistence of late Benazir Bhutto that invitation was canceled. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, people like Farooq H. Naek, Latif Khosa, Babar Awan and Rehman Malik warned Zardari about the rising and rousing popularity of Aitzaz Ahsan, and Zardari never let Aitzaz get any significance in the party since February the 18th.
Aitzaz Ahsan carried on with his popularity streak and got a golden stature of becoming a national leader. On his call, lawyers, civil activists and students from all over the Pakistan started a movement and upon his call they marched towards Islamabad. But Aitzaz Ahsan then made some mammoth mistakes, and the end of the unprecedented long march was very disappointing.
Aitzaz Ahsan perhaps didn’t realize his popularity and when he saw the ocean of people following him to the parade avenue , his never defeated him and he puked. When Aitzaz and some other lawyers leaders saw the unlimited heads in front of the parliament house and then they saw the presence of Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, they falsely feared hijacking of their movement. Politicians became disturbed over those fears and left the stage and so were their workers which started a heavy drainage from the long march.
The biggest mistake Aitzaz made was his continuous ride on the two boats. At one side he kept on attending the central executive committee meetings of the PPP, and on the other hand he kept on heading the close knit meetings of the strategy devising meetings of the lawyers. Aitzaz was keen to head the lawyers movement and he was desperate to not to leave his party. That made him suspicious in the eyes of young lawyers on the eve of 13th June, when he abruptly announced the termination of the long march. Some sentimental and angry lawyers rushed to beat Aitzaz with batons, but then Aitzaz was rescued by the same Islamabad police, which beat him not long ago at the same place.
One shouldn’t cast suspicion on the intention of this 62 year old spearhead leader of this great lawyers movement. He must learn from his mistake, and he must understand the passion of the people, and he must come out of rhetoric, and above all he must leave PPP, and he must indulge and absorb himself in the lawyers movement. His future is still there and a bright one, but he must cash in on it pretty fast.
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Sameer Shaharyar
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Aitzaz has a brilliant legal mind however he has been outclassed in political matters by Asif Zardari. Every Pakistani male is afflicted by two major ills, one is vanity and another self-sense of grandiosity and Aitzaz is no exception. Upon successfully leading the large gathering of masses, he naively start thinking that he can use this people power to achieve his and lawyers’ movement objectives. A smart politician should not raise bets unless he/she is absolute sure that cards in his/her hands are beating all the odds. Aitzaz keep making rookie mistakes from boycotting elections, getting cosy with Nawaz, speaking against Benazir and Asif, taking Iftikhar to Asif for a meeting and to calling a useless long march and calling it off on the insistence of Nawaz. His sense of grandiosity led him to believe that doing all this will somehow catapult him directly into corridors of power and into PM house, which is utterly nonsense and wishful thinking since he’s being watched very closely by both Nawaz and Asif. There is a proxy political war going on in Pakistani politics these days and one war is being waged by Imran, Qazi and others in subtle complicity with Nawaz by using Aitzaz as proxy against Asif. Another proxy is being waged by Musharaf through Rehman Malik and Salman Taseer against Nawaz. There are scores of other proxy wars being waged at different fronts to achieve different objectives which provide a great smoke screen for Gilani government to hide behind and do their job. All I can say, nothing has changed and nothing will change. It has been hopeless 60 years of existence but I fear the next 60 years would even materialize within existing physical confines of the country?
Just great stuff !
One wishes you could be a little more clear about Nawaz - Qazi - Imran - Aslam Beg - Hamid Gul nexus and game plans and ultimate goal. Are we going to be made the proverbial “sacrificial goats” for their designs? What is this talks / threats about the strength of Retired Army Personnels Association (or whatever it is named) they are going around boasting membership of 70 K to 2.5 million, what does that mean? Are they going fight for their causes with last drop of inncocent and naive (as well as ignorant) Pakistani blood?
to Z
Every body who is practical cant avoid mistakes in his life.If you do something, there are always chances of error but practical person cant stop his mission for afraid of having mistakes.I will give you an example for understanding the real problems behind restoration of judiciary.
Music has many forms but it depends how it is played.If it is used by religious scholars, it is called part of sufism, when some mother uses it for calming her child it becomes beautiful melody,when it comes on media it becomes a strong form of performing art but when it is used in red light area it is labelled as vulgarity.So same thing is happening here for ruling mafia speically in army circle the matter of independent judiciary is thought to be curse for civillian setup, for lawyers’s community it is matter of respect, for common man or civil society it is matter of their survival to fight for this cause but when it goes to the den of political parties,it is being distorted or damaged by foxy tricks.They are adopting all filthy tactics for messing on this critical issue so that people would give up on this critical cause as independent of judicary would firstly combat on the ruling mafia’s activities who consider law as their maid ,no way they can digest strong judiciary system for exposing their weak personalities.Atizaz has only powers of words and logics to convince the strong ruling mafia to accept the public demand.He is accepting lawful attitude from those groups who have no concept of suprmacy of law in their country but to rule the country without rules and that is the basic reason of delaying this critical matter
All this fine, but how does all this resolve real issues of providing basic needs that people are badly deprived of. All the talk is about judiciary and president. but lets assume by tomorrow judiciary is re-instated and president is changed… then what ?
2 issues are taking the highlight off the real issues. no one is keeping eye on govt. progress so far in 4/5 months (not that we should expect miracles) or its future plans on tackling “awam kay masaael”….
& to be honest if they just talk the talk and don’t walk the talk on these 2, than everyone will soon lose all the interest in them. who knows may that’s what the real plan is.
& by the way all the talk about promoting democracy, independent judiciary blah blah blah is just a talk nothing more. the parties talking about it themselves don’t follow the basic rules of a democratic setup. why a defacto party leader is running the show while we hardly hear anything from the elected PM (or supposedly elected).
Just last week we had a puppet ruler from neighbor country, who himself can’t even dare to take a morning stroll in his own palace without the foreign provided guards, threatening to invade the country and all our PM can muster out is that “No one will be allowed to invade ….” don’t even have spine to give a direct reply. THEY ARE NOT ASKING FOR PERMISSION THEY ARE THREATENING TO INVADE .. got the point ….
if he’s really so sincere about judiciary independence, to start with why the leader who raided supreme court with his thugs doesn’t issue an apology for his actions and admit the mistake before making all the hollow claims. not to forget he himself florished in politics under a dectator…
if the core leadership at the top isn’t changed than don’t expect too much from this return of previous THUGsss. they are all being dictated by foreign powers & any sensible person should be able to make this out from the statements that these leaders keep giving. They are too much indebted of their foreign MASTERS, to be sincere to their country.
all this repeated statements of judiciary and presidency is getting really sickening. either get it done or JUST SHUP UP!!!!!