The role of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the restoration of democracy throughout history has simply been heroic. It has sacrificed its leaders. It has often accepted humiliating terms in order to ensure transition to democracy and it has only too often forgiven its arch enemies. Yet there is no gainsaying that it has never emerged unharmed out of these episodes. There might be many in our learned class who care two hoots about the future of the PPP for now the establishment’s figurehead, an ex-army chief and reigning president of the country, has fashioned himself as the champion of liberal thought. But there are uncountable among us who seriously worry about Pakistan’s only democratic force. The PPP has shown more than once that it is the only serious force advocating unadulterated democracy.
While it is grossly unjust to misjudge a government’s performance based on mere three months especially when we apparently had no problem in tolerating a nine year dictatorial regime, but the government should also not misjudge or misconstrue the situation. We cannot deny that there is terrible agony in the air. The people of Pakistan are in pain and the popular anger wishes to find as many people to blame as is possible. Then the fact that the establishment of the country has never quite accepted the PPP as a positive reality of life does not help even a bit. Indeed even before the return of Mohtarma Bhutto to Pakistan a media spin had already started. Whenever she gave an interview in the Western press hinting an important policy stance, she was quoted out of context here. Yet when she arrived here, the grand reception she had really made the establishment go berserk. Her life was cut short and those who had always hated the house of Murtaza Bhutto all of a sudden became its well-wishers in the party succession issue. The purpose was clear. Whosoever has seen Ghinwa Bhutto behaving politically of late knows that her leadership could only promise the destruction of the PPP.
Then as Asif Zardari took over the party charge, another defamation campaign began against him. Only this time quite conscientious intellectuals and journalists were also sucked in the campaign. The reason was simple. When Benazir’s last government was dismissed in 1996, the general mood owing to the establishment’s machinations and the party’s own follies had become only too critical. Nobody knew then that the corruption cases against Zardari and other party influentials will remain in the courts for a decade and even then fail to as much as indict anyone. Some leading lights of the media did not mind narrating the establishment’s version in the press without any problem. All these folks now felt threatened when they realised that Zardari could become the next PM. All of a sudden Amin Fahim became a martyr in their eyes and they felt affection for Nawaz Sharif too.
This betrayal of the intellectual class results in an unmitigated disaster. The new kingmaker was made so much insecure from the very start that his consultation process was reduced to a couple of unelected advisors. Since then while the PML-N has already vanquished the PPP in Punjab using the judicial and other crises as excuse, the PPP seems still struggling at the federal level. I say struggling because the party seems virtually clueless on the political matters. We have proven ourselves to be fickle minded already. It does not matter to us what your sacrifices are if you fail to ameliorate our lot quickly. We do not seem to care that it was during Nawaz Sharif’s rule when the Supreme Court of Pakistan was physically assaulted. We now consider him a champion of the judicial cause because he is paying the issue considerable lip service. He incidentally has become an advocate of media freedom also despite having broken all the hitherto records of media manhandling. In order to judge his pro-liberty credentials you should however wait for the day when he becomes the prime minister for you have already made him quite strong. Perhaps then you will know.
As for the PPP government I can only this: I know it is not incompetent. It actually has the best human resource available in my opinion. However to survive and make a difference in such testing times you need heroic will power. The PPP seems unwilling to work for the change which it had promised or was expected of bringing. As long as the presidency has Musharraf and the power to dissolve the Assembly the party rule will not be viewed benignly. As long as the judicial issue remains unsettled it will father further unrest. And in Pakistan it is very difficult for the people to digest the fact that the prime minister takes guidance from the party leadership for except for the case of the PML(Q) the party leaders have usually served as the premiers of the country too.
In my view the party cannot be blamed for the crises that the country is suffering. However as a voter, a taxpayer and a believer in the cause of the PPP it is my right to ask why is it allowing itself to be hurt so badly. Before the rule Zardari had repeatedly said that his party will not accept rule without real power. However, the party seems to have done just that. Today the democratic government seems only a sequel of the previous government. The cabinet seems to be signing on the dotted line and the prime minister only helpless. The arrogance of leaders like Rehman Malik and Farooq Naek’s continuous belief that popular perceptions can be hoodwinked do not improve the situation even a bit.
The federal government has now already presented and passed a budget that was actually tailored by the PML-N. The N-League has quite skilfully managed to shift this blame too on the federal government. We see action in Punjab and a confusing state of suspended animation elsewhere, particularly in Islamabad. Price hike and the unscheduled power outages have made life a living hell. It seems that either Islamabad will have to kill its own people or else the US will invade us. There is no coherent goal of governance in sight. If the people had given their mandate for the sake of roti, kapra aur makan and not justice then at least they should have been arranged for. But we are nowhere nearer even that target. And the fact that the public perception has worsened this much already will not let the old wounds heal. There is only one way in my view. A decisive course of action. The party chairman should drop those advisors who have become a liability, takeover the reigns of power directly and take decisive action to bring real change. If this cannot be done, and the party is ready to worry about its long term future then the prime minister should come on television, inform the people that the presidency and the establishment are not letting the new government work up to the people’s expectations and the democratic government has no option but to resign. This is the only way to win back support. Whatever deal was between the party, the establishment and the US administration is no more relevant owing to Benazir’s murder. The party is only too crucial for the future of the country to waste.
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Barrister Aitzaz Ahsen has been recognized by the Foreign Policy Journal as the world’s fifth best public intellectual. Here is the link: The World’s Top 20 Public Intellectuals. Read it yourself. Here is his introduction by the journal: It so happens that I am totally fed up with De Bono’s six thinking hats. After all, you have to pay dearly if you wear a hat in the scorching heat of summers here. But my problem does not end here. I mean it is quite often that in any corporate office or wherever you work you are asked to change your thinking hat for the sake of lateral thinking. These hats or ‘head socks’ as I am obliged to call them are colour coded. White is for facts and figures, red is for intuition, opinion and emotions, yellow for appreciation, black for criticism, green for creativity and blue for the holistic picture. But a hat often ignored by our master of self-help is the one which bosses usually wear – the hat of arrogance. ‘I know better’ is the constant mantra in such situations. Having worked with some of the politest and most principled centred team players I have seen how often a boss has to remove this hat and listen to his subordinates to make things work. But that was one hat missed. There are others. One that we Pakistanis quite often wear on our heads like a permanently stuck wig is the hat of Moaning Myrtle. I am evidently referring to a character from JK Rowling’s magnum opus who having being killed a painful death and turned into a ghost always takes pleasure in wailing out loud and always being in a sombre mood. There is no gainsaying that the times are tough. I know that the capital is on the flight, that the changes once promised are not coming by quickly, that the country has to sink even deeper to emerge out of this cesspool. And the fact that everyone from the Persians to the Yanks and Afghans many want Pakistan either colonised or fractured is not going to help either. But remember we are good at surviving if survival you can call it. If you take a peek into our history our very survival, very existence, this national life seem nothing short of a big adventure. But if life is an adventure death was an awfully big adventure for Peter Pan. If we do not fear death or national demise what is it that is bothering us? I know that we are a vulnerable nation. We are fully aware what chance can do to us. It is not very farfetched to think that just anyone can move in a bid to colonise us. Within our frontiers we are bickering and fighting among ourselves and two seriously blood stained operations already seem never ending. Money is getting cheaper and the daily household stuff very expensive. If only I start narrating my own troubles with my own worldview I assure you, you will get a nervous stomach. But despite all this folks, I must remind you that we badly need some patience and empathy. Is it not enough that we all are alive? Alive in this extreme weather. Should we not be thankful that the younger ones among us are keen to make some difference? Like we need strategies for life we need some graceful ways to accept loss, defeat and if the moment comes death. In this context graceful defiance is perhaps the only way left. I for one hence liked Sarmad Khurram when he refused to accept the prize and walk out on the US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson. I know many would like to see it as a harsh slap in the face. But I do not. This is the most civilised way of registering your displeasure. There is a reason why the dynamics of a walk out are different from a real slap. Some of our friends in order to enhance their stature in the Western eye forget about that. Still others of the overzealous stock misconstrue that such instead of walking out the young chap should have started a boxing match or worse refused to go back to Harvard. When I make this subtle difference I am certainly referring to the recently held long march by the lawyers. I was in Multan when I saw the crowds coming together. It was not a pretty sight. The marchers were less in number when they left Multan. But as they marched to Islamabad and the number was snowballed another fear gripped me. What will happen if such numbers just paralyse the state’s functioning? Yet I need not have worried. The show was very well organised. When some benighted ones from among the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) tried to assault the parliament, the veterans from within the lawyers’ movement stepped out to control them. I was much impressed particularly by the conduct of Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retired) Tariq Mehmood and the deposed Chief Justice. It was clear from that day on that whatever the lawyers want they do not want anarchy. And that the Chief Justice is not keen to get politicised even though the problem of his restoration has become political in nature. Lawyers from the PTI and the JI were later to attack the integrity of Aitzaz Ahsan and Justice Mehmood. It was plain that they were intolerant of any semblance of moderation. The reasons are evident. Both these parties boycotted the elections and since they missed out in an otherwise windfall of representation they want to send the parliament packing so that they can garner further support. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is already being subjected to a subtle character assassination and propaganda. Once the parliament is no more and the PML-N refuses to form another Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) the same machinations will be applied to it too. If I am saddened it is not because of the troubles this poor nation is facing right now. It is purely because of the utter hypocritical nature of the opportunism of these folks. And above all what really breaks my heart is that liberal men like Imran Khan and Achakzai are also allowing the discredited zealots to use their names to sabotage a system which eventually would bring hope to them too. But despite that I have reasons to be in high spirits and live with optimism. Not all hope is lost. Where is my hat of hope, that you see often with a magician? Wait and see! I usually do not drag the comments of my readers to the new posts. However there was a comment on my previous post If November comes by a fellow blogger which necessitated longer answer. When I wrote it I thought that it should be shared with the general audience too because I have tried to do away with many misconceptions regarding Pak-US relationship, Pakistani establishment and other such contextual problems. Those who need to understand the context should use the above hyperlink to peruse my original post. The original comment of the reader I am reproducing here nevertheless. Riaz Haq wrote on June 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm: Wow! My Response: Thank you very much Mr Haq,
It is true that Dick Cheney, perhaps understanding his unpopularity and bad health, never showed interest in entering into the presidential race. This decision ensured that his neo-con friends would never get a serious chance of regaining power at the centre. But that is not where the real damage has been done. The radicalisation of politics is not a great issue for in a democracy that is always reversible. The actual threat of such deformation is usually to the state institutions which in nature are already quite hostile namely the bureaucracy and the armed forces. I am sure when the American armed forces have produced men like FDR, Colin Powell and Senator McCain there should be some lofty tradition in place yet soldiers the world over usually are taught to be supremacist both in profession and in nationalism. And that is not all. When you have Fox in media and neo-cons in power it is easy to open up to more radicalisation. It is Pavlovian really. When every kind of commendation and promotion for eight years is possible through reiterating the neo-con values it really takes quite a while to undo the damage. Two examples are already in front of us. One of the Indian establishment under the BJP and the Pakistani establishment under Musharraf. Those who look at the Congress rule in India cannot understand the paradigm shift that has taken place already owing to the BJP rule. Bureaucracy during those days was stuffed with saffron clad bonkers who further radicalised the establishment. How can we forget that in uncountable public gatherings cow’s urine was served instead of water? Even after Congress rose to power the space it has lost to the extremists like Narendra Modi seems impossible to reclaim even though it has to pose radical contestants. Likewise in Pakistan, the establishment under Musharraf lost all self-esteem and became almost a vessel of the US belligerence. When we pointed that Pakistan should calculate each and every concession made to the Yanks based on the national interest we were reminded that Washington was our paymaster. The slant we had to endure was almost obnoxious. The same retired army officers who are ready to gouge our eyes for advocating some patience towards Musharraf, used to skin us alive whenever we suggested that the army was enduring huge losses owing to its prolonged stay in politics. Unfortunately today when it is proven the same folks are over the top without paying any heed to what we say. The damage done to our establishment during the last military rule may not pose any serious threat to any of our neighbours but it has ensured a permanent risk to democracy in the country. For almost nine years now supporting Musharraf could take you to any coveted post. That ensured that quite a few servicemen inhaled the official propaganda of their chief being the promised Messiah and then regurgitated it whenever they got a chance. Now apparently the state of things have changed a bit and these men have stopped chanting pro-Musharraf slogans but almost a decade of service is quite a long time and the middle tier of the officers corps has to live with the same biases for its entire service life. The facts that the circumstances are daunting and that the democratic government is being pressured not to make fast paced changes are not helping even a bit. We then cannot be too hopeful about the change in the US establishment. Those endowed with wisdom who have seen the peril without any spin are already fighting the establishments the world over. Again the fact that except for a lunatic fringe no one is averse to Senator Obama’s election to the coveted throne purely on racial basis shows that there might be some hopeful sparks in the air already. Obama’s own talk is also very impressive and promises hope and change. But I am afraid that whosoever is brought to power in November will have to endure almost an instant propaganda that the People’s Party had to face in Pakistan or the Congress in India. While we can tolerate the neo-cons, the BJP and in our case a dictator for almost a decade we are not ready to give the true standard bearers of democracy, moderation and humanity any chance to survive. Senator Obama my prayers are with you but you need to be please just as good as you seem for otherwise the future of the species hangs truly in balance. As for the neo-cons I have this to say. It is wrong to consider them a group of psychopathic Dr Strangeloves. They are not mental. They are opportunistic and mean. I don’t know whether this contagious political disease of taking things to the very brink for personal gains has spread from India during the BJP rule or has evolved from Enron. Yet I have no problem in believing that all this global reign of terror is not merely for psychological issues alone. They are the prophets of crony capitalism. They want the world to be restructured so that the business on whose board they sit next may not have any problem in rising to the top. Their purpose of entering Iraq, Afghanistan and quite soon it seems Pakistan is not to crush some rising radical cult but to restructure the entire resource rich region. If you view carefully Osama bin Laden is equally an ambassador of the Saudi BinLadin Group as are Bush and company the standard bearers of the crony capitalism. If you can trust my drift it is Pakistan which should fear a likely invasion from the US in the coming days rather than Iran. They have not forgotten that a poor country like Pakistan equipped with the nukes and a professional standing army can really become a mid range power once it succeeds in establishing trade and strategic ties with the Central Asian Republics. This is where Musharraf and Karzai figure in. Musharraf during his rule paid considerable lip service to the idea but always vetoed anything practical that could give Pakistan some alternative breathing space. Karzai’s presence in Kabul has ensured that the Taliban insurgency never dies down and Pak-Afghan border is never peaceful. While I do not see how Pakistan, an almost slavish US ally, could pose any serious threat to the US had it succeeded in establishing strategic ties with the CARS, I am deeply concerned that the US establishment cannot see the most probable fallout of its blind policies in the coming days. The fear now is that the two band brothers across this border are now ready to stage a drama in the coming days which will lead to the annexation of Pakistan even before November. Before November because it will be far easier for the new administration to tolerate another foreign colony because then it becomes a management problem and not imperialistic. If not removed as soon as possible or his powers truly curtailed our man can prove to be another Gorbachev. You have already been warned. You definitely need to know. Accept it or not Pakistan is the next target of the US invasion. It is already clear from the US assault and the blabbering old fool Karzai. While Karzai and another man nearer to us might soon be thrown out like dead rats, before they go they have to fulfill some crucial tasks. For more detail you’ll have to wait another 24 hours to read my column If November comes. So stay tuned. (THE COLUMN NOW AVAILABLE: CLICK HERE)
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When they started off from Multan it was not a pleasant site. The participants of the Long March were not many in numbers. Scorching heat, fear of a terror attack and uncountable other such factors must have worked to stop as many from participating as was possible. But it was a dismal sight. Where were all those elements of the society who had vowed to stand with lawyers for the restoration of judiciary? No one had any clue.
The presidency just seems to have had another attack of madness. We are told that the administration in Dubai has asked the Geo Network to either shut its transmission or then to close down two of its best selling programs Capital Talk and Merey Mutabiq again. Since the presenter of the latter program Dr Shahid Masood has already been nominated for the Chairmanship of the state owned Pakistan Television by the democratic government it is clear that it does not have a hand in it. It is the presidency which now has the problem with the PTV as well for not showing enough of Mervez Pusharraf. It is plain then that an embattled president is now showing his colors again.
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