|
Pakistan News Home ->
PakTribune Authors ->
Author Detail
|
 |
Muhammad Karim |
 |
PakTribune Columnist |
|
|
Recent Articles
|
|
|
Reader Comments |
|
|
|
narvin
United Kingdom
11 August, 2005
|
Empowering Pakistani Woman
This article is a wake up cal for the government of Pakistan as well as wake up call for the citizens of Pakistan. This is 21st century and if Pakistan has to stand shoulder by shoulder with the world these religious-political leaders need to be forced out. Young men and women together need to build their country to a nation where freedom is rule of the land. Women these days are judges, Layers why can't they be in political stream. Religious people cannot keep the old rattling about women. Today's woman is well educated and knows and understands her responsibilities inside and out side of the house. The time has come where educated and intelligent women need to come into main stream politics of Pakistan. Please give these women a chance and let Pakistan be a well and alive country with freedom for all. |
Sher Mohammad
Pakistan
11 August, 2005
|
Empowering the Women
The ending of the above insightful story represents its essence:
"More importantly, women should combat these problems by asserting themselves together with view to have an access to the power corridors of the state."
Women by all means wield great power in the families and societies. They are sure to get the needful empowerment by getting more involved in political democracy. The missing point lies in their lacking a dynamic and forceful weekly magazine to educate them in the working of a functioning democracy. Here below is an extract from a "Survey on Full Democracy" published in the venerable magazine: "The Economist" of London:
"Democracy: A Govt. By The People:
"The next big change in human affairs will probably not be a matter of economics, or electronics, or military science; it will be a change in the supposedly humdrum world of politics. The coming century could see, at last, the full flowering of the idea of democracy. The democratic system of politics, which first took widespread roots in the 19th century, and then in the 20th century the attacks of both fascism and communism, may in the 21st century realize that it has so far been living, for understandable reasons, in a state of arrested development. Those reasons, however, no longer apply; and so democracy can set about completing its growth.
The places that now consider themselves to be democracies are with a handful of exceptions run by the process generally known as “representative democracy”. That qualifying adjective should make you sit up and think.
The starting point of modern democracy is the belief that every sane adult is entitled to an equal say in the conduct of public affairs. Some people are richer than others; some are more intelligent, and nobody's interests are quite the same as anybody else's; but all are entitled to an equal voice in deciding how they should be governed.
Part-Time Democracy: There is something odd in the fact that in most democracies the voice of the people is heard only once in every few years, in elections in which voters choose a president or send their representatives to an elected parliament; and that between those elections, for periods of anything up to seven years, it is the presidents and parliamentarians who do all the deciding, while the rest of the democracy is expected to stand more or less quietly on one side, either nodding its head in irrelevant approval or growling in frustrated disagreement. This is part-time democracy.
There exists in a few places a different way of doing it. It is called direct democracy. In this straightforward version, the elected representatives are not left to their own devices in the periods between elections. The rest of the people can at any time call them to order, by canceling some decisions of the representatives with which most of the people do not agree or, sometimes, by insisting that the representatives do something they had no wish to do, or perhaps had never even thought about. The machinery by which this is done is the referendum. It is a vote of the whole people. IF DEMOCRACY MEANS RULE BY THE PEOPLE, DEMOCRACY BY REFERENDUM IS A GREAT DEAL CLOSER TO THE ORIGINAL IDEA THAN THE EVERY FEW-YEARS VOTING WHICHIS ALL THAT MOST COUNTRIES HAVE."
The most important catalysts are: One: A renaissance and charismatic leader to put roots of democracy for all. Two: The media, especially electronic and Internet ones.
I envision the essential requirement of two viable and strong mainstream political parties. Do we have them? No, is the answer. Whatever we see in the political arena are the broken threads of the Grand Old Party (GOP): Muslim League. The only other mainstream party, the PPP, succumed to Bhuttos cult personality. And the PML is more a shadow than a living body. Look at its so-called obscure and antique "Secretariat" at Islamabad. I will come back in my outputs about the formation of political parties and their reach to the people at the grass roots.
Coming back to the women, there is already a wave of educated young blood outperforming the boys and very soon they would fill important jobs in the development of the country.
The episode in "Dir" and in similar "back water" areas should be treated as an isolated case. But there also the matter needs to be pursuid to its logical end.
Sher Mohammad
Email: sher_apr@yahoo.com
|
Mohammad Iqbal
Pakistan
16 August, 2005
|
Woman for education
The most important role a woman in man-dominated society can paly is to assert her right of eduaction, as so much emphasis in Islam is for woman education. An educated woman is a blessing for society and keep check on men. Women are deprived of their right to get eduacted. |
|
|
|
