Pakistan makes history as president serves full term

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari (C) inspects the guard of honour during his farewell ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Islamabad on September 8, 2013. Zardari stepped down and left his official residence on September 8 to become first elected president of the country completing his full term and
leaving charge gracefully. PHOTO|AFP.  

In Summary

• Media reports are he will work to revitalise his Pakistan Peoples Party.
• What might have been a joyful event was marred by bloodletting, mainly between Hindus and Muslims. Their gods must be still weeping.
• Like many countries, Pakistan also, as a society, allows ideas that are out of step with its long history of human innovations.

By CHEGE MBITIRU
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In what qualifies as a golden moment, good news came from Pakistan at last President Asif Ali Zardari got a guard of honour and was then driven in a luxury car from the presidency on a hill in the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

From there he headed to Lahore, a city dating from the days when people cared about simple things like flower gardens in perpetuity.

Media reports are he will work to revitalise his Pakistan Peoples Party.

It’s unclear why newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and three military chiefs gave such a historic event the cold shoulder.

In 66 year of Pakistan’s statehood, Mr Zardari was the first elected president to serve a full five-year term and to be succeeded by an elected individual.

There’s still hope for the country.

The country, including, what’s now Bangladesh, and then East Pakistan, gained independence from Britain in 1947.

What might have been a joyful event was marred by bloodletting, mainly between Hindus and Muslims. Their gods must be still weeping.

Mr Zardari’s Pakistan would emerge amidst another bloodletting between West and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1971.

While India went on to become the world’s largest democracy—with all the catastrophes that accompany a myriads of thoughts, behaviours, phoney love, treachery, and things that don’t up to decency or common sense — Pakistan became a nation of a military possessed with an insatiable appetite for political power.

No wonder Pakistan has had three successful military coups. Nobody can accurately say how many plots were hatched, foiled or aborted.

Like many countries, Pakistan also, as a society, allows ideas that are out of step with its long history of human innovations.

For centuries, it has been a crossroad of human beings very good ideas. A little problem, it might seem, but it’s real, remains. That’s so in many societies.

That’s not an excuse, though.

Hardly a day goes by without news of the following: an 8-year-old girl married—and her anatomy, vaporised by gaunt males, some kind of Methuselah one might say.

The same day people explode bombs for no reason at all. Some blow themselves into martyrdoms.

Wring hands

Fortunately, deities don’t wring hands. They might, though, in Pakistan.

Allah must also been having problems with people—with their earthly and, sometimes nebulous image of the self—killing each other—and all showing up for his, or her, embrace, in paradise.

Battles don’t belong on Earth, let alone Paradise.

Once a country of tolerance society—‘Let’s think about this, let’s talk about it, let’s agree, disagree, live and talk about it some more, if we keep each other alive, et cetera—Pakistan, as a society is, tearing itself apart, throwing away its rich history, its contribution to human “live and let live” practicality.

That’s why Pakistanis should cherish the day Zardari went home, hopefully to do work for the maintenance of Pakistan’s known long story as a crossroad of “Live and let live” existence.

That’s so for any country, on and on, and finally, individuals.

It’s, what makes and sustains, living creatures, individuals, nations, and, it may turn out as human knowledge increases, the universe.