Short of explosive public incontinence after another crane fall, I couldn’t have come up for a more satisfying way for Naya Pakistan to take a nose-dive into Never-Gonna-Happen-Land. Indeed, the entirety of the last week has been a master class in political screw-ups.
After protestors apparently belonging to the PTI and PAT violently stormed our parliament, much of the goodwill that Imran Khan had acquired with his theatrics was seen to dissipate, proving once again that his leadership is as unreliable as his politics. For him to blatantly violate a public institution while hiding behind the rhetoric of a democracy he so clearly doesn’t value convinced me that someone somewhere had told this guy his future was golden (I’ve never doubted TuQ’s army cred). Maybe it was. Our country’s elusive, all-powerful military had until then played mediator, calling for peace between IK, the PM, and TuQ (“Flee! The Canadians are coming!”). Basically, the Army was trying to portray itself as Switzerland in this war.
Turns out they were Japan.
They stood by while people broke into national buildings, did nothing when PTV was stormed, and subtly convinced the public, with carefully worded ISPR statements, that the burden of proof for the allegations was on the government and not its accusers. In short, they did everything possible to make it as much like 1999 as possible. (Imagine Army dancing to Prince Song ‘1999’.) No one doubted that Khan would be willing to do anything in order to get into PM House. Now, after a certain divulgence, no one doubts who told him that would happen.
I am thinking of Javed Hashmi, the President of Khan’s PTI, who confirmed every non-amnesiac Pakistani’s darkest suspicion with his press conference on Monday afternoon. Claiming to have parted ways with Khan after the storming of the parliament, he let it be known that this long march debacle was the Army’s way of gaining control over civilian leadership and that Khan had been assured his hissy fit would bring about new elections.
To me the real intentions of these soap-opera actors became obvious when those PTI/PAT protestors stormed the PTV studios and temporarily suspended its transmission. That made no sense. And yet it made perfect sense. I mean, Why take over the state broadcaster? This ain’t the 90s, you know. PTV going black was, back in the day, the surest way of knowing the government had been ousted by a coup. And though that may have worked when PTV was the only news outlet, a decade on all it did was to give twenty other news channels their top story.
The only thing Khan has done for democracy is to weaken it, and that is exactly what he intended to do. Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri, along with that professional defamer Mubashar Lucman, basically called for the Army to take over from an elected government. Isn’t that construable as treason?
This pathetic excuse for a “people’s movement”, this proxy-coup wrapped in a protest and dipped in crazy (FYI: ‘Azaadi Square’ is the most misleading, not to mention unimaginative, phrase I’ve heard since ‘Memogate’) was nothing more than a way to destabilize the very system of government Khan claims to want to protect. Here is a man who says negotiation is the only way to deal with the Taliban, a group he’ll have us believe are basically fuzzy teddy-bears with trust issues, and yet he refuses to negotiate with an elected Prime Minister because he apparently “stole” Imran’s “mandate”. (Observe a moment of silence for that ill-chosen metaphor of the “tsunami”.)
After years of witnessing hateful outbursts from his badly informed supporters online, I’ve actually begun to feel sorry for the PTI ‘Youthias’, as they are increasingly called. Yes, they are irritating; and yes, most of their logic is cyclical, but it’s never fun for anyone to be proven as massively and irredeemably wrong as they have been in the last week. One might even call it a tsunami of truth, but that would be unkind. The president (President!) of their own party just said that they were being used as a cover to weaken civilian supremacy. The worst among the Youthias is now rationalizing that even that is fine since the present system is so corrupt. Was this your inquilaab, then? Your derivative, Obama-wannabe “campaign” of “change”? Was this your precious little revolution? A barely concealed Martial Law??
[quote]Aitzaz Ahsan's speech in parliament was the most satisfying thing I have seen since Jennifer Lawrence fell at the Oscars[/quote]
The saddest part is that not everyone aligned with PTI is as vain or shortsighted as its leader. There were people in that march who really did want justice. It’s a travesty that they put their trust in a man who lied so blatantly and dashed their hopes so wantonly for personal advancement. But the PTI’s loss is no one else’s victory. No one in our democratic system came out looking good after this, except for Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, whose speech in parliament was the most satisfying thing I have seen since Jennifer Lawrence fell at the Oscars.
Let me tell you a little about our present system: it’s all we’ve got. It is far from perfect, it is corrupt (as is every other aspect of public life in this country, mind you, from customs-checks at the airport to plush arms deals in Rawalpindi) and it’s deeply poisoned. But it’s getting better slowly, and slowly is the only way. These elections were better than the 2008 ones, which in turn were better than the ones we had in the 90s. The only way to promote “governance” – a favorite word of Youthias and anti-political Army-lovers – is to hold the offices, if not the personifications, of our democracy and judiciary and state broadcaster as inviolable.
Pathetically, the PML-N seems not to remember that. Sharif is an elected leader. Why, one wonders, isn’t he leading? He acted from Day 1 like a defensive weasel, scurrying from one foxhole to another, whereas the power of his office, to say nothing of its dignity, demanded that he conduct himself with more strength. You were elected to lead, dammit, so lead!
Part of the rhetorical battle against this ridiculous march was that to be against Imran Khan meant you were pro-Nawaz. No, life isn’t that simple. I’m not pro-Nawaz. I think he has serious Saudi issues. But I am, after having been raised in a witches’ brew (i.e. Purana Pakistan) of oscillating opinions, pro-democracy. And I think the way you change the system is by nurturing and improving it, not vandalizing it at the behest of its sworn enemies. Wait for five years, gain momentum, get elected and make your changes. (And yes, that includes local government, a woefully under-addressed aspect of this “system” that everybody has a raging opinion about.) But please don’t hold everyone hostage like a 13-year old who didn’t get a car for her birthday. That sets the most dangerous precedent of all. Anyone can take a few thousand people to Constitution Avenue and shout and rave and rant in order to impose their version of improved nationhood (no girls’ schools, no Shias alive) on over 180 million.
And what, by the way, has Nawaz Sharif done in the last year to deserve this temper tantrum? Yes, I know, you will throw at me here such choice accusations as “rigging” (proof?) of the election, the “massive corruption” (as per ARY), the Model Town incident (yes, a tragic and terrible occurrence for which an FIR should have been registered right away). But guess what? The world – I mean The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and every last speck of civilization that still pays attention to our troubles – is unanimous and unequivocal in stating that his real crime, his big transgression, was to desire a simultaneous improvement in ties with India and a cutting-down-to-size of the hawkish, self-serving military establishment. This is a fact, folks: peace with India – and an abandonment of the Army’s cynical, horribly damaging “strategic depth” fantasy – is a prerequisite for peace and prosperity within Pakistan. It’s what they teach you in South Asian History 101 all over the world.
So I’m sorry if you were in that march and genuinely desirous for change. You have your leaders’ arrogance to blame. And for those of you who were skeptical of Naya Pakistan from the start: Congratulations. It looks like we might have just fought off a coup.
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