Debunks Regime’s Claims of Moderation: Address to Pakistanis in New York
New York – January 15, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity of addressing members of the Pakistani Community here in New York, the financial center of the world.
I thank you for the warmness of your welcome, for your hospitality and your commitment to Quaid-e-Azam and Quaid-e-Awam’s great democratic principles.
To all of you, Salaam Aleichem, May Peace Be With You.
We gather together at a difficult time in the South Asian region and in this world.
The international situation in which the world finds itself is not what we would have expected in those glorious days of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
The peace dividend — when the world hoped that the resources of the Cold War could be diverted to international economic and social development — never materialized.
The stability that we hoped would be achieved in a unipolar world has degenerated into a potentially even more dangerous instability and unpredictability.
Ethnic and religious tensions, long suppressed, have erupted to the surface.
This is not the way we thought it would be just 15 years ago when it appeared that the forces of democracy, human rights and the free market had triumphed and that these positive values would sweep — unimpeded — across the planet.
Some things may be out of our control. But most that has happened has been caused — directly or indirectly — by choices that have been made by leaders, by governments, by nations.
Governing is about making choices.
Governing is about setting priorities.
Governing is about deciding what is most important, what cannot wait, and what must be addressed now.
Governing is deciding, in the words of the sociologist Harold Lasswell, who gets what, when and how.
This is why it is so very important to have a government that is elected, representative, accountable and responsive to the needs of the people.
Governing can be deciding whether the social sector or the military sector is fully funded.
It can be deciding who is educated, and who is not.
It can be deciding who is fed, and who is not.
It is deciding where roads are built, and where they are not.
It is, most painfully of all, sometimes deciding between life and death.
It is also about building consensus within nations and between nations.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Political miscalculations are compounded by the power of Nature.
We mourn the devastating earthquake in the Northwest Frontier and in Kashmir that has killed 100,000 of our fellow countrymen and left millions of poor and defenseless Pakistanis to fend for themselves, with little support from their own government, through a cold and dangerous winter.
And even as we try to come to terms with an earthquake that shattered so many of our towns and villages, new tensions arise.
In Baluchistan, separatist sentiment is running high. A military operation has been launched. Every day we hear of guerrilla attacks on Pakistani installations.
· Return of Baloach leaders in 1988 by PPP.
The proposal to build Kalabagh Dam threatens to alienate Frontier and Sindh.
Meanwhile General Musharraf went back on yet another promise, the promise he made following the London bombing in July last summer to ensure all foreign students left Pakistani Madrassas by December 2005.
Moreover while political parties have to submit sources of funding to the Election Commission. Schools run by religious leaders do not have to declare sources of funding.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The internal tensions in Pakistan take place at a time when our country is in the grip of a military dictatorship.
Despite the promise to take off his uniform, General Musharaf did not do so following the elections of 2002. He said everything he has introduced in Pakistan’s interest would have been derailed if he had relinquished his military uniform. One day he will have to take off the uniform. This is why plans based on force do not last, whether they are good or bad. Plans based on political participation last because they give legitimacy.
After coming to power, General Musharraf held a referendum like Zia’s. The 2002 election were “pre-rigged” to bring a parliamentary majority he wanted. The mainstream parties were also “broken” to create a majority of one in the National Assembly.
While negotiating the 17th Amendment with the MMA, President Musharraf promised that he would step down in 2004. When the year passed and he still retained the uniform, there was a protest against this breach of promise, which damaged his still somewhat positive image. What he has said now will improve it even less. In December 2004, he had given us a different excuse. He had said the MMA had promised something regarding the National Security Council outside of the text of the 17th Amendment, which it had not fulfilled. He asked the MMA to go to the Supreme Court on the issue, while some experts opined that the text of the 17th Amendment had been so manipulated that he could actually stay on wearing two caps. True to his pledge of plain speaking, he has now admitted that he had actually reneged on a pledge given in earnest to the opposition.
The pledges he had made about cleaning up the textbooks, reforming the religious seminaries and bringing the jihadi militias to heel, have not been honoured, damaging his international credibility.
The dictatorship exploits the war against terrorism to stay in power.
The war against terrorism begun after the post-September 11th environment has seen the true nature of Islam distorted by those who would politicize it.
Islam denounces inequality as the greatest form of injustice. Yet Pakistan, the second largest Muslim country of the world, can not provide justice to its people irrespective of whether they are politicians or not.
It enjoins its followers to combat oppression and tyranny.
Yet the shadow of one man rule clouds the future of our country.
Islam enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind.
But we see that it is political affiliation, gender or minority views that are the criteria for judging humans in our society.
We live in a dictatorship whilst our religion is not only committed to tolerance and equality, but it is committed to the principles of democracy. The Holy Quran teaches that Islamic society is contingent on “mutual advice through mutual discussions on an equal footing.”
Beating, torturing and humiliating women is inconsistent with the principles of Islam. But the clothes of a United Nations Rapporteur are torn as a collective warning to women of the humiliation that awaits them if they exercise their constitutional right to protest.
Islam is an open, pluralistic and tolerant religion that positively shapes the lives of one billion people across this planet, including millions upon millions in the growing Islamic populations of Europe and the United States. Yet Muslims and Muslim societies are judged not by the values of Islam but the values of unelected dictators that rule through force.
When the human spirit was immersed in the darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe, Islam proclaimed equality between men and women. But I do not see this culture of equality in the crimes committed against women through honour killings.
The PPP and I believe that it is through freedom, through democracy, through human rights and the rule of law that we can salvage our country and our society from the specter of brutality and barbarism brought about by one man rule.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Information leads to change. Change is something that many fear and will not tolerate. But it was change that the PPP and I devoted myself to in our two terms in government.
We introduced freedom by bringing in the information age. We put an end to the ban on fax machines, digital papers, fiber optic communications, cellular telephones, satellite dishes, computers, Internet, e-mail and introduced private television in Pakistan.
Under our government, Pakistan was the first country in the Muslim world to break the shackles of tradition by electing a woman Prime Minister. We were the first country to break the bondage of centerlisation by deregulating , privatizing and opening financial markets. South Asia and the Middle East are now following the road we introduced in 1988 and 1993.
Under the PPP government Pakistan integrated into the global economy became one of the top ten emerging capital markets of the world, attracting over 20 billion dollars in foreign investments, particularly in power generation.
We eradicated polio in our country.
We dramatically reduced infant mortality.
The World Bank held up our economic program as a model to the entire developing world.
Despite institutional and social constraints, when I became prime Minister of Pakistan, the PPP government reversed centuries of discrimination against women.
We increased literacy by one-third, even more dramatically among girls.
We built over 48,000 primary and secondary schools, targeting rural Pakistan.
We brought down the population growth rate by establishing women’s health clinics in thousands of communities across our Nation.
We outlawed domestic violence and established special women’s police forces to protect and defend the women of Pakistan.
We appointed women judges to our nation’s benches for the first time in our history.
We instituted a new program of hiring women police officers to investigate crimes of domestic violence against the women of Pakistan.
We encouraged women’s and girl’s participation in sports, both nationally and internationally by lifting the ban imposed on their participation.
Sharing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s view that the best way to guarantee literate children is to educate literate mothers, the PPP government targeted adult women for remedial education programs.
We refused attempts by reactionary forces within Pakistan to turn into a theocracy. We stopped two such constitutional attempts twice through the Senate.
The PPP governments made extraordinary progress on the international front as well.
We facilitated the formation of an interim government of national consensus in Afghanistan where the moderates and hard liners agreed to co-exist.
We blocked the Taliban’s solo show in Afghanistan. Within days of the PPP dismissal, the Taliban invited in Osama Bin Laden and permitted the establishment of Al – Qaida training camps. That critical and strategic mistake paved the way for the attack on the Twin Towers and the repercussions that flowed from it culminating in the Afghan and Iraq wars.
On the India front, we had extraordinary progress with the fist nuclear confidence building treaty, the agreement not to attack each other’s respective nuclear facilities.
We reopened our borders to travel and tourism, and adopted a south Asian preferential tariff agreement that established a free-trade zone between Pakistan, India and the other nations of the region.
I called upon all the nations of the region to declare the sub-continent a nuclear free zone.
The PPP government was making dramatic progress in relations with India and with containing terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But moderation and progress is not what supporters of military dictatorship tolerate.
A democratic and stable Pakistan, gaining strength economically and moving forward socially under a popular government was their threat. The PPP government was eliminated and every attempt made to eliminate the party and its leadership.
But ideas and dreams cannot be replaced as easily as a coup against leaders.
The record the PPP accomplished is one in which I have great pride. Despite the reversals in our country, both to the political institutions of democracy and the role of women in society — the progress that the PPP made raised the bar of expectations and cannot long be ignored.
I view the PPP’s commitment to women’s rights as consistent with our commitment to human’s rights and to the inevitability of democracy. In our commitment to political liberty and to democracy, we have never wavered.
Unfortunately, that has not always been the case in the conduct by many great nations of international affairs over the last generation.
Today a military dictatorship in Pakistan is supported by the international community for short term strategic reasons. I believe that is a mistake.
Afghanistan is a tragic case in point of how retreating from the principles of human rights and democracy can have the most tragic unanticipated consequences. Not planning for a post-war Afghanistan built on democratic and Islamic principles of coalition, consensus and cooperation was a very bad choice.
The goal of the international community’s foreign policy agenda must also be to simultaneously promote stability and to strengthen democratic values — not selectively but universally, not just because it is convenient but also because it is right.
Might doesn’t always or necessarily make right. Indeed it was the great American President Abraham Lincoln who said just the opposite, that it is “right that makes might.”
This mixture of realism and idealism was best manifest when The United States, under President Bill Clinton, militarily intervened to stop the genocide of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. Was the US strategically threatened? No. Was it morally threatened by genocide on this planet? Yes.
The universalization of human rights may be the underpinning of internal stability within nation states, and peaceful relations among nation states.
I address this issue from a unique double focus.
I wear the scars — on my body and my soul — of the abuse of basic human rights, and thus I view oppression through the eyes of the victim.
In the rhetoric of the West, democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and press freedom are important, but apparently only sometimes.
Violations of these principles lead to international sanctions — but only sometimes.
The world is not yet a fair or just place, and will not be so until each and every country on our planet is treated equally.
If democracy is good for Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, then democracy, and not dictatorship, should be supported in Pakistan.
Democracy is the first step toward humanity’s liberation. But it is not an end in itself.
Liberty and freedom depend on social and economic justice.
Voting does not guarantee justice. An independent judiciary with members who impartially uphold the law does.
Equal rights depend on more than electoral choices. They depend on cultural change and education.
Democracy is not just about elections. It is equally about governing in a manner that is representative, respectful of constitutional provisions, provincial autonomy and the balance of power.
Nations make choices. And choices lead to consequences — political consequences, economic consequences, social consequences.
Today 58% of the people of Pakistan live on less than $2/= a day.
But we spend our money building a second General Headquarters next to the one we already have.
The girl who is illiterate has no future. But we spend $ 1 billion dollars on SAAB aircraft even as we make peace with Indian and make overtures to Israel and therefore face no imminent threat.
Economic development and political development are surely linked, but both depend on respect to human rights and the right economic policies.
We cannot claim to believe in moderate enlightenment if we do not fight for it in our own homes, and in our own homelands.
We can not imprison a speaker of the National Assembly, a Cabinet Minister, the spouse of a Parliamentarian, because we disagree with their choice of political leader and political party.
Here I will take the opportunity to call for the release of Yousaf Raza Gilani, Bismillah Kakar and Pir Mukkram, who have been imprisoned for their political beliefs by the Musharaf dictatorship. I also call for the return of the exiles and a restoration of democracy through impartial elections held by an interim government through an independent Election Commission and an immediate vote count and announcement. While Yousaf Reza Gillani, Bisimullah Kakar and Pir Mukkaram remain behind bars on political grounds. We cannot say Islamabad respects human rights. While elected Prime Ministers are forced into exile, we cannot say Pakistan has human rights. While NAB finds corruption only in the opposition and not in the ruling party, we cannot say Pakistan has Justice.
It is through the empowerment of the people of our nation that we can reclaim the heritage of Quaid-e-Azam and Quaid-e-Awam, that we can confront and defeat social evils in the form terrorism, extremism, militancy, honour killings nor give our youth an opportunity to live a life free of poverty, backwardness, disease and unemployment.
Social inequality leads to political instability, not just in the Middle East, Asia, but also all through the developed world including America and Europe.
This is evident in the large, radicalizing Muslim communities in France and across much of Europe.
The challenge is to make alienated Muslim immigrants and their children feel like fully integrated members of the nation, and to convince them to accept the full obligations of democratic citizenship.
The way to accomplish this certainly is not religious or cultural ridicule.
The way clearly is equality of opportunity, education and respect for cultural and religious pluralism. These are choices that the world community must make.
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is our job to make choices.
It is our job to find answers.
It is our job to marginalize the extremes.
It is our job to act, not just talk.
Realizing that in the time it took me to deliver this speech, over one thousand children have starved to death on this planet.
I want you to know that choices have consequences.
I ask you to make the choices that can help us together build a better Pakistan, a brighter Pakistan, a proud Pakistan, where its people live in peace, progress and prosperity.
I ask you to support the Pakistan Peoples Party and its allies in reclaiming our constitutional and democratic heritage so we can bequeath to our children a better world than we saw.