by Steve Balkin, Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University <mar@openair.org> 312-341-3696

October 31, 1999

The New York Times had an excellent article documenting the plight of the poor in Pakistan and why democratic regimes have not helped them, but have, in fact, hurt them. We learn here why democracy failed in Pakistan, overturned by a military coup.

As I read the article, the parallels to Chicago seemed strong especially in the issues of Maxwell Street preservation, gentrification, and forced removal of public housing residents. The enemy, it seems, is insensitive and elitist authority, which, though technically elected, uses the power of the state to cavalierly help the well-off as the expense of the poor.

Read the excerpts below and you be the judge.

(See also Chicago as South Street, Philadelphia).

Excerpts from the New York Times, October 30, 1999, p. A7

By CELIA W. DUGGER

SLAMABAD, Pakistan -- An answer to the mystery of why so many ordinary Pakistanis rejoiced when the military smashed their democracy can be found right here within the city limits of the nation's capital, in a small, centuries-old village nestled into the Margalla Hills.

Here, just hours before the armed forces seized power on Oct. 12, Government bulldozers demolished more than 500 houses and reduced most of the impoverished village of Saidpur to a dusty pile of rubble where weeping children wandered in the chaos.

Saidpur was largely destroyed because politicians and their bureaucratic appointees decided that it was an eyesore and a nuisance on what one official called "the VVIP route," the road where very, very important people like Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif roared past in shiny black Mercedes-Benzes.

And its residents say they now must live with the bitter knowledge that they were unable to stop the destruction because they had no money or political pull like the rich and powerful people of Bani Gala, another village only 15 minutes away. They faced the gnawing power of the bulldozers for other reasons earlier in the decade but managed to save most of their grand mansions.

"For the poor there is no democracy," said Nisar Ahmad, whose house and shop in Saidpur were destroyed and who is now penniless and unemployed. "For us it has only meant trouble and oppression."

… Saidpur was obliterated without even a whisper of notice in the English-language newspapers read by the elite. Its young men were jailed for stoning the machines that came to knock down their huts. Its people, who scrape by on incomes of $40 or $50 a month, are homeless now as the cold winter rains approach, with no place to go and no one to turn to.

… Hazran Bibi, a gaunt 95-year-old, said she hobbled over to the bureaucrat in charge that day, gripped his chin in her gnarled hand and begged him to spare the home where she has lived all her life. But she said he told her: "I can't do anything for you. Prepare to remove your things."

Saidpur is just one of the many "encroachments" that have been "removed" in the year since the Prime Minister installed a close ally to head the Capital Development Authority, a man who was quickly removed after the military toppled Sharif and began installing its own people in the bureaucracy.

… Once the rubble is cleared, Saidpur will be planted with trees and will become part of the city's greenbelt, he said.

… So the people of Saidpur have been uprooted to make way for trees, but they have not given up hope that somehow the new regime will be their salvation. In the two and a half weeks since the coup, no bulldozers have returned to the village to finish off the job.

By day children play in the ruins. Little girls in dingy dresses walk on the craggy, broken walls like dainty gymnasts on the balance beam. Boys aimlessly toss the chunks of hay, mud and stone that once enclosed their families.

… Indeed, to the people of Saidpur, the Prime Minister's overthrow seems to be divine retribution. "We are happy," said Parveen Bano, 30, a mother of three. "He brought our houses down and he fell down."

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