Pakistan has washed its hands off the controversy that has arisen on account of rejection of the nomination papers of over 100 candidates in Occupied Kashmir elections due to be held on 11th of next month. It says it has nothing to do with the rejection because the rejections were made under a provision in the POK Constitution. The Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam is emphatic that the constitution of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir was drafted by the leaders there and as such Islamabad has nothing to do with the exercise.
Only a naive can believe this. Who does not know that not even a namesake democracy exists in POK or for that matter in Pakistan itself? The candidates whose nominations have been rejected belong to the pro- independence parties who refuse to accept that Occupied Kashmir is a part of Pakistan. But that is what they are required to declare on oath that they “believe in the ideology of Pakistan and the ideology of states accession to Pakistan and the integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan.”
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front of Amanullah Khan, for instance, firmly believes in ‘independence’ for Kashmir. It is opposed to the very idea of Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. Naturally therefore its members make aloud protest every time elections are held in POK and every time these protests fall on deaf ears. And they stand debarred from entering the fray, as happened now. But who cares? Certainly not the rulers in Islamabad.
Look at the glaring contradiction. On the one hand Pakistan wants self -rule in Jammu and Kashmir on our side of the LOC which is already having full fledged democracy. Members of the state assembly here are elected through popular vote and Governments are formed and thrown out of power on the basis of the majority in the assembly. On the other hand Pakistan does not allow a free and fair election in the area of Kashmir under its occupation. Again, it wants India to admit that Kashmir is a disputed area but at the same time coerces the PoK leaders to declare that its accession to Pakistan is final if they want to participate in the elections. Funnily, this line is against the very stand Pakistan has been taking before the United Nations.
Go a step further and the contradiction becomes all the more glaring. In Gilgit and Baltistan, which Pakistan calls Northern Areas, no elections have been held in the last 60 years that is right from the day Pakistan occupied these territories and placed them under the direct rule of Islamabad. As such, the people there have representation neither in the State Assembly as there exists none, nor in the National Assembly.
Pakistan, as a nation, wants to call itself a democratic country but is not comfortable with elections. Neither Zia nor Musharraf can claim to have had an honest election to propel them to the Presidential palace. The elections that have brought in civilian rulers were engineered by the army and the ISI with votes at least in the case of one election being counted in the GHQ. Yet, Pakistan has the temerity to raise accusing fingers at India’s democratic set up - a country recognised the world over as the largest democracy of the world.
At a seminar in New Delhi recently the leaders from Gilgit and Baltistan lamented that they were being persistently harassed by the Pakistani authorities and were not being allowed to come to India. Doesn’t it sound surprising in the light of Pakistan’s assertions of free movement of people across the Line of Control (LOC)! As the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman put it. “Apparently Pakistan only wants it (free movement across LOC) selectively”.
Pakistan talks of demilitarization in Jammu and Kashmir but look at the way the strength of the forces is increasing in Gilgit and Baltistan! It talks of a fair deal to the people of Jammu and Kashmir but is itself busy plundering the natural gas reserves in Gilgit and Baltistan.
The saga of contradictions is best summed up by Shabir Chowdhury, the JKLF leader. “Pakistan claims to be a well wisher and an advocate of the people of the state but has already taken a chunk of its territory and is in the process of annexing the rest of it. It is busy exploiting its natural resources to its advantage”, he said. He is aghast at the rejection of nomination papers of several candidates, who had refused to swear by the accession of POK to Pakistan.
Even in the matter of resolutions of the UN about Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan has been crying horse that these should be accepted for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. But it was Pakistan which rejected the same resolutions soon after they were passed. It wants the Kashmir issue to be settled according to the wishes of the people of the state but ceded 5180 sq.km of the State to China to enable it construct the Koroakarrom Highway.
The duplicity in Pakistan’s attitude is clearly understood by the people of Jammu and Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control. If Pakistan thinks that it is befooling them, it is actually befooling none other than itself. If it wants to lend credibility and conviction to its assertions it must first set its own house in order. Right now Pakistan is way behind in this.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
Printer-Friendly Version
