PML-N and PTI: debasing the coinage of politics

Islamabad diary
The number one issue facing us is terrorism/religious extremism, leaving all others far, far behind. While paying huge lip-service to this fight, but that too only after the Peshawar carnage, the ruling PML-N has not shifted its real priorities for its heart continues to lie in expressways and motorways.
(Read I A Rehman’s account in another paper about the expressway planned to connect Gulberg with the Motorway. A loonier and more useless scheme would be hard to imagine. But for ingrained obsessions even the great Hakim Luqman had no cure.)
As executive heads of their provinces the role of the chief ministers is crucial to gear up the home front in the battle against religious extremism. But you wouldn’t guess this from the attitude of the Punjab, KP and Sindh CMs for whom, heavy duty rhetoric apart, it is business as usual. Do we see any attempt at police reform or improving health and education, vital fronts in our anti-terrorism war? None that is easily discernible.
Meanwhile the mismanagement of the economy continues. Circular debt is higher than ever before…but we must have our expressways and further ruin what is left of the beauty of such cities as Lahore.
(I can’t help adding that the Rawalpindi/Islamabad metro-bus project is such an assault on the senses, let alone an assault on the environment, that by itself it is enough reason to provoke divine intervention. Which all-parties conference demanded or approved this madcap scheme? The Punjab education development budget for this year is 18.6 billion rupees. The cost of the ‘Pindi metro-bus project stands at nearly 40 billion rupees. Work out the maths for yourselves.)
But as if to invoke Dante’s spirit… “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”…Imran Khan in his own way is beyond redemption. Is he really planning another round of agitation against so-called election rigging? If he is, he is clearly not grasping the shift in public mood caused by the slaughter of schoolchildren in Peshawar. If there is such a thing as ‘enlightened’ public opinion in this country its focus now is on terrorism and nothing else – not on election rigging, not even on vague and abstract slogans about ‘change’. This public opinion wants the state to become more active about religion-inspired or religiously-motivated terrorism. It has had enough of civilian drift and apathy.
Precisely for this reason it is rooting for the army because, as opposed to the humbug stance of the civilian leadership, it sees the army fighting this fight. Go anywhere and conduct your own public survey and you’ll come away with this feeling. This is quite a turnaround for the army, its stock at an all-time high. What its past role may have been in stirring Pakistan’s extremist broth is forgotten. Looming in the public eye is its current performance. Added to this is the realisation that huge as the army’s previous blunders may have been, it is atoning in blood for them now.
So if Imran Khan thinks that at the switch of a button he can restart his agitation from the point he had called it off he had better think again. He got a rough wakeup call in Peshawar the other day when with his wife he went visiting the Army Public School. He could end up getting more such calls if he is not careful.
As the alternative leader, virtually the leader-in-waiting, his foremost task should have been to point out the shortcomings of the PML-N leadership and give a political lead to the war against religious extremism. He should have been mobilising public support against the ruling setup’s harebrained ‘mega-development’ schemes. He should have been able to give some kind of a blueprint about police and judicial reform. He should have been out there raising public awareness about the threat of misguided mullahism and false religiosity in all its forms. But he is singularly tongue-tied when it comes to this subject. Thus on the most important issue facing the country the ‘party of change’ and the ‘messiah of hope’ have nothing to say.
So we face a double bankruptcy, the PML-N’s and the PTI’s. The PPP doesn’t count because it declared bankruptcy long ago. All this is having a consequence because as the politicians wallow in the depths of their listlessness and incomprehension, the generals seem to be in control of their game. Already the impression is, and not without reason, that the army is calling the shots. Between them Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan are reinforcing this impression.
If nothing else, the civilians could have raised the quality of the discussion about terrorism and extremism. If they had it in them they could have taken the intellectual lead. If only they had it in them…
Small wonder then if appearances are working against the civilians: the army chief everywhere, visiting frontline troops, receiving important visitors, making the important trips overseas and being feted where he goes, crucially because the army, with crucial help from the PAF, has taken up arms along the Pak-Afghan border. And even as officers and men die the army is not flinching. When Gen Raheel goes abroad he is received not just as head of the Pak army but as head of an army winning laurels, and rendering sacrifices, on the battlefield. From battle honours flows more real prestige than from any brass on your shoulders.
The real military-civil imbalance is thus this: it comes not from any usurpation of power but from the fact that while the military are seen to be performing, the ruling politicians come across as a joke. Nisar heading the anti-terrorism effort on the civilian side…is he to be taken seriously? Pervaiz Rashid excites the laughter of the gods when he chooses to speak, which is every day. This is tempting fate…it is tempting the furies.
And Imran Khan is stuck on his wretched vote recount or variations on the rigging theme. August was a long time ago; the climate has changed; other issues now weigh on the public mind. But he remains stuck on his metaphorical container. I suppose he will have to find out for himself, there being no teacher better than bitter experience. He could have shown leadership in the war against religious extremism. He could have given the nation a lead. But he’s stuck where he was, as if time also has stood still. Sadly, it hasn’t.
So next time we talk about democracy and the dangers threatening it, we should spare a thought first for democratic performance. Forget about other climates. In our milieu the defence of democracy comes less from the constitution and the courts as from democratic conduct. If the currency of democracy is debased while the military’s star is on the ascendant, no amount of hand-wringing can correct this imbalance. Lawyers are crying about military courts, little realising that the situation has gone far beyond the mere matter of military courts. A power shift has already taken place…without a single twig of the constitution being broken.
What did de Gaulle say? “The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.” Not only is the army wielding the sword it is doing so with some panache and aplomb, even as the politicians dither. The framers of the constitution failed us. They left no remedy in the constitution for incompetence.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com