Pakistan's Guy Fawke's days.

Britain, the world's bastion of parAliamentary democracy, has a strange annual spectacle on NoAvember 5. A pyre of logs is lit almost in its every street and the effigy of a funny figure in tattered rags is burnt on it. Potatoes and meat roasted in its embers, are then served with spiced wines. The event at places is followed by feasts, fun, dancAing or prayers to protect the British Parliament. At some placAes, the effigy before burning is paraded through the streets and the masked chilAdren ask for a penny to burn the Guy.

The guy thus burnt, is Guy Fawkes, a catholic zealot who joined the gunApowder plot to blow the Parliament. He stowed tinder under the House of Lords and wanted to explode it on NoAvember 4, when the king was to open the parliament. An anonymous letter, however, spilled the beans, Guy was captured, tried and executed on Jan 31,1606. November 5, since then has been observed as a thanks giving day and execration for the detractors of naAtional parliamentary system.

Pakistan, unlike this solitary abortive venture in Britain, has already endured the destruction of its Parliaments by four dictators. Generals Ayub and YaAhya Khan's thirteen years of dictatorAships alienated and lost East Pakistan. The decade of Zia, the third dictator left even more draconian and dangerous precedents for the next perpetrators. He was also somewhat similar to OliAver Cromwell, the only dictator to imApose the Rule of Generals in the BritAish Isles. He like Zia, also disbanded the Parliament and hanged the King. He was also supported by some of Guy's sympathizers. He also detested the ParAliaments for betraying the great ends that Lord had marked out for the ChrisAtians'. Anxious to accomplish them, he also like Zia, created a parliament of his own by selecting 140 most sterling stalwarts from various churches. InauAgurating this exemplary House on July 5, Cromwell declared that 'a manifest glory of the Christ will now prevail till the end of the world'. Yet, exasperatAed with its inefficiency and squabbles, he dissolved this parliament just 160 days after its installation. It would be far fetched to surmise if Zia's coup on July 5, was a mere coincidence, or he had actually mulled over the events in Cromwell's life. Two other parliaments called by Cromwell also met the same fate. The first, after 131 days and the second after 18 months.

Any analogy between Cromwell and Zia, however, ends there. For Cromwell conquered Ireland and Scotland and...

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