The demonisation of Zardari
Rahimullah Yusufzai, .thenews.com.pk
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
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President Asif Ali Zardari isn’t an angel and he has his shortcomings as a human-being and politician. He has done things, some real and others imagined, that have damaged his image and overshadowed whatever good he is doing. But it is also a fact that he has been demonised so much that even well-meaning people, including journalists who are supposed to check and cross-check their facts, start believing even the most unbelievable stories about him.
This writer personally experienced how President Zardari is sometimes condemned unheard. During a visit to the Presidency in the company of around 50 senior local journalists as part of a delegation of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA), a senior colleague remarked that the reports he was getting about Americans taking over President Zardari’s security had been proved true. As evidence he pointed to a young, tall and fair-skinned man in Western suit standing close to the president, as the latter arrived for the meeting with our delegation, and said this appeared to be one of the foreigners attached to Zardari’s security team. He was certain this man was among the several Americans now on duty to provide security to the president. When it was pointed out to him as to where were the other Americans and why didn’t they accompany the president, our journalist friend said they must be on duty elsewhere in the Presidency.
One thought these American security guards should be with the president all the time as deploying only one of them with him won’t serve the purpose, particularly while meeting a large group of journalists among whom were some clearly unfriendly to Zardari. It is not to suggest though that these hacks, thoroughly searched upon entering the president’s house, would have pounced upon the president with their pens.
Journalists are supposed to be curious and this was the reason this writer started making efforts to talk to the tall fair-skinned man in a western suit staying close to the president. Fortunately a senior army officer, also in western suit, apparently heading the president’s security team knew this writer and offered help. He was amused to know that my journalist colleague believed the story, which in fact had already been published in an Urdu newspaper, that the US had sent its elite commandoes to provide security to the insecure Pakistani president.
The army officer said the man in question was a Pakistani and not an American and belonged to Hunza in Gilgit-Baltistan. That could be true because the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are fair-skinned and healthy as they live in an unpolluted mountainous area. On this writer’s insistence, the army officer summoned the tall fair-skinned man in western suit and in Urdu asked him his name and the place of origin in Pakistan. The shy and lanky young man said he was Younis and was a policeman belonging to Karak district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He spoke Urdu and this writer quickly turned to Pashto to find out if he really was from Karak. And indeed he was because he identified his village and the section of the Khattak tribe to which he belonged. Almost every inhabitant of Karak is from the Khattak tribe and this district, along with neighbouring Kohat, provides most of the soldiers to Pakistan’s armed forces and also the law-enforcement agencies from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The mystery had been solved and our journalist colleague wasn’t a happy man after being proved wrong. To his credit though, he admitted that he was fed wrong information. And that for sure is a major problem in present-day Pakistan because the free and, at times, unverified flow of uninterrupted information is making it difficult to shift the wheat from the chaff and find out the truth. It would not have been impossible to verify the piece of information regarding the president’s security, but no effort was made to have it checked and one newspaper even published it without caring about the facts. The reason for the negative attitude towards President Zardari is his reputation which precedes him everywhere and is mentioned whenever something concerning him is discussed. It is another matter how he managed to acquire this unsavoury reputation and whether all these stories about his deeds, or should we say misdeeds, are true.
In fact, Zardari has been demonised to such an extent that many people have started believing that he is incapable of doing any good. This is unfortunate considering the fact that he is president of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces. Perhaps he would have helped his cause and become acceptable to more Pakistanis if he had quit as the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party after becoming the president. The fact that he didn’t do this explains his inherent vulnerability because he would have thought that heading Pakistan’s largest political party was a more secure job than being the president of the country.
Such is the animosity towards the president that even his recent health problems were politicised and exploited to bring him down. His past ailments, mostly acquired during his long years of imprisonment, are common knowledge and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise if he required hospitalisation irrespective of the fact if it was due to a heart problem or stroke. The fact that the president was admitted to the American Hospital in Dubai, where his children are living, and not at any hospital in Pakistan also provided an opportunity to critics and condemn his choice for showing lack of trust in Pakistani doctors and institutions.
However, we tend to forget that most of our ruling elite prefer seeking treatment abroad, mostly in the western countries, than in Pakistan. Zardari would have faced even more criticism if he had chosen to get treatment in the west, particularly in the US, and all kinds of meanings would have been attached to it, more so in the wake of the memo issue in which the Americans were supposed to have played a crucial role in backing the PPP-led democratic government to cut down the powerful military to size.
Some of the problems facing the president and his government are self-inflicted. Why were the government spokesmen, the PPP leaders and ministers unable to speak in one voice regarding Zardari’s sudden departure for Dubai and the status of his health? What is stopping the government and the president’s family from issuing a daily medical bulletin about his health, preferably in the company of his doctors in Dubai in line with the practice the world over in cases involving high government figures and celebrities? It is still unclear if the president suffered a ‘minor heart attack’ or a ‘stroke’ because no definitive answers have been made available, not the least by the doctors who should know.
The more things are kept under wraps, the greater would be the curiosity and the subject of rumours. The president’s health isn’t only a family or party affair as he ought to be in fairly good condition to take decisions. Already demands are being made that he step down as required under the Constitution due to his poor mental and physical health. It is also debatable if rushing Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to Islamabad to chair the PPP meetings as its chairperson in the absence of his father was a good idea. The move betrayed panic and contributed to rumour-mongering. Pakistanis appear fed up with dynastic politics and bringing the young Bilawal to hold the fort in place of the president wasn’t seen positively in the country.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com
Rahimullah Yusufzai, .thenews.com.pk
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
=================================================
President Asif Ali Zardari isn’t an angel and he has his shortcomings as a human-being and politician. He has done things, some real and others imagined, that have damaged his image and overshadowed whatever good he is doing. But it is also a fact that he has been demonised so much that even well-meaning people, including journalists who are supposed to check and cross-check their facts, start believing even the most unbelievable stories about him.
This writer personally experienced how President Zardari is sometimes condemned unheard. During a visit to the Presidency in the company of around 50 senior local journalists as part of a delegation of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA), a senior colleague remarked that the reports he was getting about Americans taking over President Zardari’s security had been proved true. As evidence he pointed to a young, tall and fair-skinned man in Western suit standing close to the president, as the latter arrived for the meeting with our delegation, and said this appeared to be one of the foreigners attached to Zardari’s security team. He was certain this man was among the several Americans now on duty to provide security to the president. When it was pointed out to him as to where were the other Americans and why didn’t they accompany the president, our journalist friend said they must be on duty elsewhere in the Presidency.
One thought these American security guards should be with the president all the time as deploying only one of them with him won’t serve the purpose, particularly while meeting a large group of journalists among whom were some clearly unfriendly to Zardari. It is not to suggest though that these hacks, thoroughly searched upon entering the president’s house, would have pounced upon the president with their pens.
Journalists are supposed to be curious and this was the reason this writer started making efforts to talk to the tall fair-skinned man in a western suit staying close to the president. Fortunately a senior army officer, also in western suit, apparently heading the president’s security team knew this writer and offered help. He was amused to know that my journalist colleague believed the story, which in fact had already been published in an Urdu newspaper, that the US had sent its elite commandoes to provide security to the insecure Pakistani president.
The army officer said the man in question was a Pakistani and not an American and belonged to Hunza in Gilgit-Baltistan. That could be true because the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are fair-skinned and healthy as they live in an unpolluted mountainous area. On this writer’s insistence, the army officer summoned the tall fair-skinned man in western suit and in Urdu asked him his name and the place of origin in Pakistan. The shy and lanky young man said he was Younis and was a policeman belonging to Karak district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He spoke Urdu and this writer quickly turned to Pashto to find out if he really was from Karak. And indeed he was because he identified his village and the section of the Khattak tribe to which he belonged. Almost every inhabitant of Karak is from the Khattak tribe and this district, along with neighbouring Kohat, provides most of the soldiers to Pakistan’s armed forces and also the law-enforcement agencies from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The mystery had been solved and our journalist colleague wasn’t a happy man after being proved wrong. To his credit though, he admitted that he was fed wrong information. And that for sure is a major problem in present-day Pakistan because the free and, at times, unverified flow of uninterrupted information is making it difficult to shift the wheat from the chaff and find out the truth. It would not have been impossible to verify the piece of information regarding the president’s security, but no effort was made to have it checked and one newspaper even published it without caring about the facts. The reason for the negative attitude towards President Zardari is his reputation which precedes him everywhere and is mentioned whenever something concerning him is discussed. It is another matter how he managed to acquire this unsavoury reputation and whether all these stories about his deeds, or should we say misdeeds, are true.
In fact, Zardari has been demonised to such an extent that many people have started believing that he is incapable of doing any good. This is unfortunate considering the fact that he is president of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces. Perhaps he would have helped his cause and become acceptable to more Pakistanis if he had quit as the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party after becoming the president. The fact that he didn’t do this explains his inherent vulnerability because he would have thought that heading Pakistan’s largest political party was a more secure job than being the president of the country.
Such is the animosity towards the president that even his recent health problems were politicised and exploited to bring him down. His past ailments, mostly acquired during his long years of imprisonment, are common knowledge and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise if he required hospitalisation irrespective of the fact if it was due to a heart problem or stroke. The fact that the president was admitted to the American Hospital in Dubai, where his children are living, and not at any hospital in Pakistan also provided an opportunity to critics and condemn his choice for showing lack of trust in Pakistani doctors and institutions.
However, we tend to forget that most of our ruling elite prefer seeking treatment abroad, mostly in the western countries, than in Pakistan. Zardari would have faced even more criticism if he had chosen to get treatment in the west, particularly in the US, and all kinds of meanings would have been attached to it, more so in the wake of the memo issue in which the Americans were supposed to have played a crucial role in backing the PPP-led democratic government to cut down the powerful military to size.
Some of the problems facing the president and his government are self-inflicted. Why were the government spokesmen, the PPP leaders and ministers unable to speak in one voice regarding Zardari’s sudden departure for Dubai and the status of his health? What is stopping the government and the president’s family from issuing a daily medical bulletin about his health, preferably in the company of his doctors in Dubai in line with the practice the world over in cases involving high government figures and celebrities? It is still unclear if the president suffered a ‘minor heart attack’ or a ‘stroke’ because no definitive answers have been made available, not the least by the doctors who should know.
The more things are kept under wraps, the greater would be the curiosity and the subject of rumours. The president’s health isn’t only a family or party affair as he ought to be in fairly good condition to take decisions. Already demands are being made that he step down as required under the Constitution due to his poor mental and physical health. It is also debatable if rushing Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to Islamabad to chair the PPP meetings as its chairperson in the absence of his father was a good idea. The move betrayed panic and contributed to rumour-mongering. Pakistanis appear fed up with dynastic politics and bringing the young Bilawal to hold the fort in place of the president wasn’t seen positively in the country.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com
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