BB’s assassination reshaped history of Pakistan: Sherry Rehman

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ms Sherry Rehman said on Friday that Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination at the hour of her greatest triumph has reshaped the entire history of this country and is indeed a reflection of the underlying conflicts that beset the strategic equations in this region.
In a speech at Socialist International Asia-Pacific Committee meeting here she said, “the PPP’s core values in pacifism and democracy have always been powered by the joint vision of two great leaders, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Shaheed Mohtrama Benazir Bhutto, as both dreamt of a South Asia free of hunger, want, disease and illiteracy at a time when war and conflict was the favoured model of engagement in the region.”
She said that despite the loss of a decade wasted on curbing political space for progressive forces in Pakistan, the people have mandated a return to Benazir Bhutto’s vision for reconciliation. In fact, it was her process of composite dialogue with India, laid down in 1988, which is now internationally flagged as the only model that profits form both the democracy and the peace dividend for the one-fifth of humanity that dwells in South Asia, the Minister added.
“Today, on both our eastern and western borders we stand committed to this vision of peace, trade and social accommodation in the region.”
Sherry Rehman said that with India, the newly elected government has already jump-started the fourth round of a stalled composite dialogue in Islamabad earlier this month. When there is political will there is always a way forward. Already,she added, we have come to agreements on fast-tracking communication links, consular access, trade expansion, exchange of information, and have begun to lay down a blueprint for a joint anti-terrorism mechanism.
She was of the opinion that the biggest outcome of the meetings is that bilateral process, bogged for half a century in the now famous trust deficit, now has a clear commitment on both sides to begin dismantling the infrastructure of conflict to replace it with the architecture of peace.
On our Western border,the peace process involves a pacification of our own border regions with Afghanistan, where a long, porous border measuring almost 4000 kms leaves both countries with a clear dependence on each other’s formal mechanisms for monitoring cross-border crime.
In our Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where in some critical pockets militancy was allowed to reach critical mass, our policies are clear and unambiguous. “We retain a close-range security option for any actors that challenge the writ of the state, but on the whole we adopt a multi-pronged approach to tackling extremism through political engagement’,she told the meeting.
The Minister made it clear that the Pakistan government will not negotiate with terrorists. It will use peaceful locals as stakeholders and partners in enforcing law and build an economy of hope by creating jobs and schools for those that seek to invest in their futures.
She said that the government’s actions are already drawing slow dividends, and we are able to involve citizens as owners of this battle against extremism and the use of force in the name of religion. For the PPP government it is not anyone else’s war, it is very much our own battle, and we will succeed because our actions are anchored in the solid bedrock of political legitimacy. That is precisely why our peace strategies will not allow Pakistan to be used as a launching-ground for terrorism both within and outside our borders, she said.
“We hope that as in the past, the Socialist International will share and support our vision for change; by trading guns for ploughshares and bombs for basmati, we will seek to transform the political economy of the region into a new zone of growth, opportunity and social justice to all”, she said.
Sherry Rehman said the PPP is the only mainstream political force in the country that remains committed to the goals of social democracy in Pakistan, and in that context, our search for peace and security in the region has laid the foundations and working template for all governments to follow as a formula that in its essence privileges dialogue over the use of force.