Most Pakistanis seem to have reacted positively to Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States. His proposal to appoint former president Bill Clinton as special envoy on Kashmir seems to have pleased Pakistan. According to a report in The News, analysts like General Talat Masood have welcomed theidea. Others like Shirin Mazari seem pessimistic, since in their eyes Obama has only mooted such a proposal for fulfilling America’s interests in the region.

Meanwhile Dawn (November 6) reports that “ President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani have congratulated US President-elect Senator Barack Obama on his victory and expressed the hope that the US would ‘continue to be a source of global peace...’”

Nation (November 7) reports “ In a bid to bring a shift in current American policy for Pakistan, Islamabad has decided to activate its diplomatic channels to reach out to newly elected US President Barack Obama even before his taking oath of the office in January 2009”.

Ijaz Ahsan in an opinion piece in The Nation commends the US for its system of democracy and urges Pakistani politicians to learn something from their American counterparts. Says Ahsan “Obama’s election shows the beauty of democracy. In contrast in our country, every so often a man comes in, throws the country’s laws into the dustbin, and keeps the people under his heel with the force of arms... In our present anarchy, the over thirty years of lawlessness of repeated periods of martial law has been the biggest factor. If we wish to progress as a nation, our politicians should not fight each other... so that the army does not get an excuse to intervene again...”

... contd.