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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48275)	4/8/2005 3:33:39 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

Interesting post-Awards for what? Sir: There is an anecdote that a blind man was given a handful of alms and told to distribute them among the needy. After having failed to locate the deprived, despite his best efforts, the blind man ended up keeping for himself whatever he was given to dole out. Whether he was physically incapable, or mentally unwilling, to find deserving ones is an open question. Every year scores of military officers are presented with awards. However, the justification, motivation or criteria for their selection is never disclosed. Perhaps, the unruly, uncivilised nation doesn’t deserve to know such sensitive and classified information about the top-performers in uniform. Hence, in the absence of an official version, I am going to make some civilian observations. First of all, interestingly, the overwhelming majority of award winners are always senior officers, Lt Colonels and above. Now the question is that we have not had any full-blown war since 1971. Even previously routine skirmishes along the Line of Control and, to an extent, the active Siachen sector, have subsided considerably, if not died down altogether. And in any case, the frontlines are manned and fought by foot soldiers and officers up till the rank of major. So, the distribution of these awards on the basis of battlefield performance is simply out of question. Second, the total number of commissioned officers in the armed forces of Pakistan is somewhere in the range of 35-40,000. Lt Colonels and above, along with their counterparts in the Air Force and the Navy, cannot be more than 5-6000. Interestingly, if we take the number of recipients of all awards – including civilian ones – then the awards given to the above-mentioned group is far greater than the awards given to civilians. How does one solve this equation? What are the benchmarks for selecting candidates for these awards? Or is this another case of the blind awarding themselves? GULL RUKH KHAN Peshawar Lies about democracy Sir: I saw a great cartoon in the International Herald Tribune that depicts perfectly the hypocrisy of President George W Bush and his claims about spreading democracy in the world. I understand that the United States needs Pakistan’s help in ‘the war against terrorism’, but why must American officials talk about what a great ‘democracy’ we have here in Pakistan? Gen Musharraf’s reaction is illustrative as well. A flying ballot box indeed. The purchase of F-16s will please Gen Musharraf’s constituency, the military, no end. The general, of course, is well aware that the only people who can remove him from power are his subordinates in the army, so he must keep them occupied with new toys. Gen Musharraf makes out that he is all that stands between the maulvis and power. Events such as the attack on runners in a mini marathon in Gujranwala reinforce this view. But the general has actually strengthened the maulvis at the expense of secular, democratic parties such as the Pakistan People’s Party to maneuver himself into this position. Bush must know this, which is why his hypocrisy is all the more galling. SALIM SUBEDAR Lahore