A disaster mercifully avoided

Islamabad diary
“Up until now we have tolerated all this and acted with decency and patience,” declared a reanimated Lord of the Mandate in Jand, Attock. “Otherwise it’s no hard task to clear the way and clear the streets.”
Truer words were never spoken. The Punjab government with all the might at its disposal tried to clear the narrow street in front of the Sheikh-ul-Islam’s house in Model Town, Lahore. And we know what became of that exercise in chivalry. Has the memory of that debacle been erased from the PM’s mind?
Under the active orders and with the full participation of the interior minister, Nisar Ali Khan, the Islamabad and Punjab police forces tried to clear Constitution Avenue, more rubber bullets fired than in the entire history of the capital. But PAT and PTI workers stood their ground. The majesty of the law had to step back, egg on its face.
It was a day or two after this display of arms that protesters forced their way into PTV headquarters. Had it not been for the timely intervention of the 111 Brigade, for much of Pakistan’s history the constitutional court of last appeal, it could have been much worse.
There is no more demoralised force in the country today than the Islamabad police force – Islamabad’s finest, so to speak. The other day when PTI workers surrounded a police van with some of their comrades inside it took no less than the arrival of the inspector general of the Islamabad force to push the protesters back. If inspectors general are reduced to this, it should give us an adequate idea of the excellent state of law and order in the capital.
Why wait? Why not hurry with the use of force again? Not only would it be quite a spectacle. It would be the vitamin shot, the shot in the arm, his grace the archbishop of discontent, the Reverend Qadri, and Imran Khan would need. The waning fires of their oratory would be relit. Some of the fun would return to D Chowk. And respected parliamentarians once again would have to enter parliament by the back door (the joint session of parliament, by the way, is fast turning into a joke). If anyone thought no space was left for more egg on the government’s face, this might just do the trick.
This was not the only stellar pronouncement coming from the PM. He also said that as elected tribune of the people – why do we keep saying 18 crore awam?...all of the 18 crore don’t cast their ballots – why should he resign “on the wishes of 5000 people”? Again well said. It is, however another matter if instead of ‘5000 people’ just one man in uniform twirling his stick were to insist on the same or, to make matters sure, were to move a battalion of the 111 Guards for a fresh variation on the eternal Pakistani theme of necessity.
A defiant PM…it is clear that after the pressure on him has eased he is rediscovering his voice and some of his shattered confidence. A truly confident man, however, would not have mentioned the D Chowk protests at all, unless he had something worthwhile to say. He would have spoken of other matters, of higher matters perhaps, if he had the mind to speak of higher matters.
It was a captive audience of party loyalists and officials the PM addressed in Jand. It is a fair bet that after being heckled at various places during flood visits the PM from now on would prefer such gatherings instead of leaving himself open to impromptu events with their unpredictable outcomes.
Mark this change in Punjab. There was a time when village crowds wouldn’t dream of putting themselves on the wrong side of authority. In Muzaffarabad, at Chak Khana next to Sial More on the Motorway, and at the Shershah bund near Multan the PM was roundly heckled – at Sial More where I went personally to check it was much worse than heckling – and he had to cut short his speeches.
About time too that this verbosity, an insult to anyone’s intelligence, was cut. Does our political class take our masses for sheep who forever will be satisfied with empty words and false concern? It is the job of PMs and CMs to crank up the machinery of government and plan for contingencies in advance rather than to wait for disasters to strike and then pose for the cameras and dish out platitudes that everyone by now knows by heart.
This refusal of the flood-hit masses to feed themselves on platitudes, the readiness of D Chowk protesters, whether of the PAT or PTI, to give the finest of the Islamabad and Punjab police forces a taste of their own medicine when they act in a highhanded manner – the Punjab police, especially, being born to highhandedness – are signs of a new awareness. Even the way my friend Rehman Malik, the former interior minister, was given the order of the boot by angry PIA passengers when his princely late arrival delayed their flight, is a welcome sign of the rebellious mood now finally coursing through a populace for too long given to submitting before all forms of brute authority.
The Sheikh-ul-Islam with his defiance of the Punjab police and Imran Khan with his outbursts against corruption – although I keep hoping the great Khan would improve his skills at oratory – have done their bit for the inculcation of this mood. This may not have been their conscious aim but this they have achieved. The PML-N was lord and master of all it surveyed in the blessed land of the five rivers, the powerhouse of Pakistani politics. Not anymore. It has formidable challengers to contend with. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Now for the disaster escaped. When the PTV headquarters were occupied civilian authority in Islamabad seemed to have suffered a meltdown. Pictures on TV suggested that it was only a matter of time before other government buildings were taken over. The storming of the Bastille…to my eyes, all too easily aroused to hope, it looked like that. Power lay on the ground and all that the army needed was to pick it up…if it was of that mind.
PM and voluble cabinet were nowhere to be seen. Ministerial guns had all fallen silent. Things lay in the balance but the army despite the conspirators and the cheerleaders – such as occasionally, it has to be confessed with a heavy heart, myself – did not step in. Instead by the afternoon when the army chief came calling on the PM, the worst of the scare was over and the government had recovered its breath.
Suppose it had been the other way round, and the conspirators had won and the army, against its better judgement, had indeed moved in, the buffoon class, its sins forgotten, the memory of its crushing incompetence blurred by the rush of events, would have been raised instantly to the status of martyrs. Not for the first time either, Pakistan having gone through the same experience in Oct 1999.
And remember this was just before the floods. And with the floods would have arisen a chorus that if only the Sharifs had been around how mightily and with what concern they would have cared for the flood-affected. The higher the rivers rose, the more the army would have been cursed and the fallen heroes praised. Thank God we have been spared that. Pakistan can do without political martyrs of whom it has a surfeit. It could more usefully do with capable living souls.
The lawyers’ movement did not overthrow Musharraf but it weakened him. The PAT and PTI agitations will not secure the PM’s resignation but they have already done something better: shown the Mandate to be without its clothes. The process we are witnessing is not an assault on democracy – no line of argument is more absurd – but the slow unravelling of the past as represented by the twin and matching symbols of the PPP and the PML-N. This is an exciting prospect and something to look forward to.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com