Source / Courtesy: The Express Tribune
The year 2011 must rank as one of the worst years in the nation’s life. It began with the killing of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and ended with the most internecine of politics to topple the incumbent government before its term in office via the memogate affair. This happened in the midst of an ominous national consensus which seems to have rallied behind the military against the United States, while all economic indicators presaged doom for 2012.
Rage and excessive passion characterised the functioning of many key institutions, with the masses following their lead thanks to the dubious role played by a vastly expanding but increasingly cash-strapped media. Foreign affairs were most immoderately handled, with the army calling the shots and a divided community of politicians pushing each other to the point of no return. The Raymond Davis case was handled in a curiously unbalanced manner without regard to consequences, pledging qisas (hanging) but falling back on diyat (blood money).
The year saw a new peak of the steadily gestated extremism in our collective national behaviour with the blasphemy law netting more innocent victims from among the minority communities. Moreover, the lawyers’ community, which everyone thought was tempered by the finer points of law, exposed itself as an extremist fragment that actually encouraged criminal behaviour.
Categories: Asia, Human Rights, Pakistan