He said, she said

With the explosion in the number of op-ed contributors in the country's dailies, the quality of the commentary has often been criticised. In an op-ed column for The Nation, Wajahat Latif began by attacking Dushka Saiyid, wife of Mushahid Hussain and a current Allama Iqbal Fellow at Cambridge, for allegedly ignoring the military's role in the country's brief experiments with democracy.

I e-mailed Dr. Saiyid and requested a response to Mr. Latif's claim. The following are excerpts from the e-mail exchange:

Cyril Almeida
To: Dushka Saiyid
Dear Dr. Saiyid, I am writing to you to seek your response to an op-ed piece in The Nation by Wajahat Latif that started off by referring to you: 'Ms Dushka Syed did not have the courage last night (19th August) on a private TV channel to blame military coups for the mess Pakistan finds itself in today. She blamed the political leadership for corruption and failure of democracy and justified army interventions without naming the army. According to her, the failure of the political leadership forced "a well organized body of people of the middle class to take over the government from time to time".' I don't know who Mr. Latif is and I haven't seen the show in question, so is it true that you 'blamed the political leadership for corruption and failure of democracy and justified army interventions without naming the army'? To my mind that would be disingenuous and I would be interested in reading your opinion, as a Pakistani scholar, on the issue. Regards, cyril.

dushka saiyid
To: Cyril Almeida
Dear Cyril, The following is what i said on the program:- a)that the failure of the political system and weakness of the political institutions is because of the dialectical relationship between the two, military and civil both. Political leadership fails, hounds the opposition, and the latter run to the military to takeover. b)Democracy flourishes where there is a strong middle-class. Pakistan has a strong landed class and tribal heads and so the constituents are captives and can vote for either one regressive feudal lord or the other. In other words my comments were very nuanced as an academic, and I certainly did not eulogize the army or its takeovers. I DO NOT believe coups are the answer, but i also believe that our country is hostage to corrupt political leaders. Best wishes, Dushka