This week in the Valley
This week was a real treat. Pervez Musharraf came to talk yesterday about “Extremism and Terrorism”. His actual speech, imploring for a “holistic” approach to tackling terrorism by addressing the “root causes” which lead to extremism, was nothing special. The Q&A session that followed was a cracker though. The first audience member came out swinging: “Given that you seized power illegally, given that you suspended the constitution twice, given that you have engaged in gross human rights violations…” The moderator had to stop him and ask him whether he was there to ask a question. “Yes, this is a question,” he said before rattling off another list of accusations ending with, “why should we believe anything you had to say today?”
The audience applauded. But Musharraf is, of course, a seasoned hand. He has been in world politics for many years now and has fended off numerous assassination attempts. This was nothing. His reply shut his accuser down quickly and Musharraf in turn received applause. The questioners were disproportionately from the subcontinent (India, I’d wager) and predominantly confrontational, but for the most part things were civil.
One of the courses I’m taking this semester is Internet Business Law and Policy. The course syllabus was designed in partnership with Google’s Deputy General Counsel, and each week someone comes in to talk to us about a particular topic. Surprisingly, there are only about 12 people taking the class, so it’s a reasonably intimate environment. On Wednesday, Vint Cerf came to talk about trends in internet architecture development and related policy implications. I was stoked. Most people wouldn’t have heard of him, but he’s one of the designers of TCP/IP, the protocol on which the net runs, and is considered to be one of the net’s founding fathers. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts (our ex-PM John Howard just received one too).
Finally, I’m taking a course at the business school which teaches about starting up a start-up. Our team mentor is a venture capitalist and we had a meeting at his office which is located on the fabled Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. There are only about three blocks of relatively non-descript buildings in which the who’s who of the venture capital industry are located (including Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, and the VC firm that Bono is a partner of – yes, Bono from U2) as well as some private equity firms like KKR and TPG. It’s a highly concentrated area, and it’s somewhat peculiar that such a small zone comprises the core of the Valley’s VC powerhouse. The area is unique – 80% of America’s start-ups originate from the Valley – and there certainly isn’t anything even close to resembling it in Australia. There are expensive cars in the parking lot interspersed with Priuses, and financiers whose net worths are equivalent to the GDPs of small Pacific islands interspersed with hopeful entrepreneurs in their early twenties sitting in meeting rooms waiting to make their pitch…
1:14pm (GMT -8.00) 
Just came across your entry and was interested to read about the Q&A exchange. The first thing that was impressed upon me was that the moderator allowed the question after all. Neat! But I guess the term ‘accuser’ used to denote the audience member in paragraph 2 comes across as a little too harsh. I mean he did do those things after all not to mention sacking the Chief Justice too. And I was a little curious as to what did Musharraf state in his reply. Would you remember his statement? Would be nice to be privy to the nature of the General’s retorting skills.
Yeah I can see how “accuser” might be too strong, but it really was a chance to take a stab at Musharraf under the guise of a question. Musharraf basically said that there is a valid reason for why he did each and every one of those things, that he could speak for another hour in response to each of them, and that it was misleading to blast all those claims against him without hearing his backstory. So, for example, he explained the firing of the Chief Justice as done wholly within the procedure set out in the Constitution, and described that procedure. He was of course more eloquent than how I just presented it. I don’t know much about Pakistani politics, so I wasn’t sure what to believe at that time, but I guess the thing is that his response gave him credibility with the less knowledgeable members of the audience (like me) that there might have been some validity behind his actions.
Thanks for that. But I would seriously doubt the sincerity of Musharraf. This is the guy who infiltrated Indian territory in 1999 right after the Indian Prime minister had signed a peace accord with their former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore.He wasn’t thrilled about it as it doesn’t do anything for the Pakistani Army which has always seen itself as the rightful arbiter in Pakistan’s affairs be it domestic or foreign. So he infiltrated Indian territory, something for which he was condemned by the then American President Bill Clinton in a visit to the subcontinent.
The current president Barack Obama on the campaign trail had himself accused Pakistan of spending the roughly 10 billion US dollars in aid it receives against India to conduct a proxy war in an interview with Bill O’ Reilly. And the firing of the Chief Justice was not done against the constitution as the former Chief Justice was reinstated by their Supreme Court which is arguably the interpreter of the Constitution unlike Musharraf. This is also a man who apparently received 98% of popular vote in a trumped up referendum he held to legitimize himself.With respect to the recent attacks in Mumbai, he said that there was no proof of the terrorists being from Pakistan when the father of the surviving terrorist has claimed him as his son. The same fact was later admitted by their NSA for which he was sacked a few weeks ago.
It is no secret by now that he was far from earnest in wiping out the terrorist groups from Pakistani soil. You would be interested to know that when a terrorist group such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad or Hizbul Mujahideen are ‘banned’, the ‘ban’ is not applicable to their portion of Kashmir and FATA(Federally Administered Tribal Areas)!! So no surprises there. This man had roughly 9 years in power and Pakistan hasn’t improved across many economic indicators and has veered dangerously close to being declared a failed state and a rogue nation. It’s only because it is a frontline state against or rather the source of present day terrorism that it has been dealt with softly over the years.
I again don’t think that the member of the audience can be faulted for asking what he did. He did point out facts and from what I can make out asked him a legitimate question about his credibility-something which has always been in doubt. He might have been aggressive in asking him the question but if that isn’t a question then similar toned inquiries which have been directed at former president Bush over the past few years are just stabs too. The issue is that when you present yourself to be the person in charge then you’re accountable for the welfare of not only your citizens but also answerable to other nations whose safety and security are threatened by your action/inactions.
<And the firing of the Chief Justice was not done against the constitution as the former Chief Justice was reinstated by their Supreme Court which is arguably the interpreter of the Constitution unlike Musharraf.>
Sorry for the apparent error there. I meant that the firing was against the constitution.