Two months later, unbeknown to Benazir Bhutto, the sun rises on the wrong side of the horizon. All day, she’s swamped with work and meetings. In the afternoon, she addresses a huge election rally at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat National Bagh. There are chants and slogans. PPP flags flutter across the arena. The euphoria is palpable. She knows she has to fight tooth and nail to be the next prime minister.
Even at the cost of playing Russian roulette with her life?
As the daughter of Zulfikar leaves the park in a bulletproof vehicle, she raises her head through the sunroof hatch to wave at the jubilant crowd. And just then, a 15-year-old boy points a pistol at her head. Shots are fired at point-blank range. She takes a tumble. Soon thereafter, an explosion rocks the ground. The maverick has been silenced.
This is us. Human beings. We have been here on this tiny planet in this immensely vast universe for about 300,000 years. For a long time, we used spears to hunt. We had no guns or rifles. About 8,000 BC, we started agriculture along the Nile River. Villages sprouted along the Tigris and the Euphrates.
This is today – less than 300 years from the First Industrial Revolution. Today, we are blessed with rifles and tanks and fighter jets and bombers. We have already killed millions of people.
There on the map, that’s us. That’s Pakistan – a country we love. We are a people of infinite accomplishments and triumph. We are a nation of incomputable failures and turmoil.
There on the map, that’s us. That’s Pakistan – a country we love. We are a people of infinite accomplishments and triumph. We are a nation of incomputable failures and turmoil.
The undulating terrain of Pakistan’s political fiefdom is home to whirlwinds known to have swept many powerful titans and self-proclaimed demigods to oblivion. This is the denouement when the die is cast. It’s the demon called politics. It’s the nature of the beast.
In the natural world, the life of man was “nasty, brutish and short”. So believed Hobbes. Man needed a powerful sovereign, he thought. Rousseau disagreed with Hobbes. “Man is born free – but everywhere he is in chains.” Now, Rousseau was a romantic. He was smitten by the goodness of man. He believed in the sanctity of “social contract”, not power by coercion. “Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent.”
Unfortunately, representative democracy in Pakistan failed to stand the test of time. We don’t have to go as far back as 1954 when Governor General Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. In the last 25 years, Benazir Bhutto had her government dismissed twice – in 1990 (charges of corruption) and 1996 (misgovernance). Nawaz Sharif was kicked out thrice – in 1993 (charges of corruption), 1992 (military coup), and 2017 (charges of not declaring assets).
On March 8, 2022, Prime Minister Imran Khan was faced with a no-confidence motion introduced by the Opposition in the National Assembly. With his back against the wall, he consulted with his cult of advisors to dodge the bullet. This gave birth to the “Lettergate” scandal that plunged the entire nation into a harrowing abyss of information and misinformation.
Maleeha Lodhi, former ambassador to US, UK and UN, put it succinctly: “Khan and his loyalists went on long rants about this conspiracy, misusing a diplomatic cable to make the claim…” (Dawn, April 11, 2022).
We are at war with ourselves. Our self-righteousness reeks of bigotry. The hatred and vitriol spewed from the corridors of social media are becoming endemic in our social and political culture. Our moral commitment – that defined the zeitgeist – is breathing its last. Our future is hanging in the balance.
On a suo motu action, the Supreme Court took up the case and rescued democracy putting a damper on Khan’s insidious plan.
Once the National Assembly session commenced on the morning of April 9, the unexpected, or perhaps the expected, happened. Contrary to the spirit of the Supreme Court verdict, PTI members, instead of allowing the no-confidence vote to take place, made superfluous speeches all day wasting precious time. The untoward burlesque bordered on contempt.
The entire day, we were in the innermost circle of hell. I wonder if Khan, a self-aggrandizing autocratic evangelist, was fighting for Pakistan or fighting for himself. I also wonder if the Opposition, now given the opportunity, would fare better, especially since their previous governments were marred by allegations of corruption.
The bottom line is: we must respect law and the democratic process.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. We are at war with ourselves. Our self-righteousness reeks of bigotry. The hatred and vitriol spewed from the corridors of social media are becoming endemic in our social and political culture. Our moral commitment – that defined the zeitgeist – is breathing its last. Our future is hanging in the balance.