Asserting that Pakistan's democratic government was taking bold steps to alleviate the "long neglected social and economic consequences" from years of dictatorship, a Pakistani embassy official on Wednesday took issue with the views expressed by a defence analyst on the country's political situation in an article.
"We were disappointed by defence analyst Shuja Nawaz's misleading piece on Pakistan's political situation," Nadeem Kiani, the embassy press attache, said in a rejoinder placed on PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek. The discussion is hosted by prominent American journalists David Ignatius of The Washington Post and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.
Rejecting Shuja Nawaz's claims about deterioration in several fields, the press attache said: "The economic and social crisis created by the previous regime have stymied Pakistan's efforts to build a robust modern economy and an internal social revolution. These crises have only been compounded by the international economic crisis that has rocked the financial markets on all continents".
Nevertheless, Pakistan's newly elected democratic government is boldly moving forward on an agenda that we hope and expect will dramatically transform Pakistan in the months and years ahead. We do not share Nawaz resignation that our past will dictate our future, he added.
With respect to the rather incredible allegation by Nawaz that Pervez Musharraf somehow engineered the current PPP government victory, we would point out that Musharraf did everything he could to postpone, manipulate and distort democratic elections, but was overwhelmed by the forces of history and the indefatigable will of the people of Pakistan to reject dictatorship and embrace democracy.