Shedding bitterness

WHICH country has not lamented, as the poet Kahlil Gibran put it, that its leaders are either in the cradle or in the grave? Look around the world. Bankruptcy is not a financial condition limited to poorer countries. Even the most affluent or enviably developed are suffering from a dearth of dependable, trustworthy leadership. At these critical times, Pakistan needs something more than the revivifying fiscal fix from the deep-pocketed quartet of the IMF, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Never before in its turbulent history has it needed the strong hands of an experienced leadership to guide it back to a semblance of normalcy. The politicians after Quaid-i-Azam passed democracy from hand to hand as if it was a cushion in a child’s game. Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq and Musharraf put tin helmets on their mannequins of democracy. Elected leaders like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto and their PPP successors, and alternately the dynastic Sharifs, offered promises in empty envelopes. The present leadership continues to blow from broken trumpets. Our country, yet again, finds itself trapped in a trough of despondency.