Revolution, alas, postponed again

Unhappy souls like Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi, and other hopefuls who jumped on what they thought was a rushing bandwagon only to see it lose speed faster than even unkind critics could have imagined...anyone’s heart would go out to them.
Unreformed cynics likened Imran Khan’s PTI to Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehreek-e-Istiqlal. But the Air Marshal’s bubble took some time to burst in 1979 (it’s a measure of his appeal then that even one Muhammad Nawaz Sharif was a member of his party, as was our friend Aitzaz Ahsan). But Imran’s air-burst, if anything, has been quicker and crueller – on the cusp of seeming triumph only a few months back, now the balloon if not completely deflated well on its way to that tearful conclusion.
Apparently, whom the gods would deflate, they first raise high and cover with pomposity.
Which genius advised Khan to boycott the recent round of by-elections? Or was it the Captain on a solo flight? It is a decision he will regret for the vacuum left by his resigning party men has been filled by the PPP and the PML-N.
And Imran’s Tehreek was counting on the dissolution of the old two-party hegemony. Far from dissolving the two-party battle-lines stand more clearly drawn than ever. Imran’s mummy-daddy voters, the burger elite, may still vote for the Tehreek – the starry-eyed enthusiasts perhaps having no other choice – but if they take it from a sinner it will be so many votes wasted.
Hashmi’s constituency is lost. Qureshi’s constituency has been taken over by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s son. In politics a vacuum once filled is not easily displaced. There are (unconfirmed) reports of Qureshi eating his heart out. It takes little effort to imagine his plight.
And to think that I went ecstatic about Imran Khan’s Oct 30 jalsa in Lahore, likening it to the breaking of a new dawn. In journalism too many adjectives are never a good thing, and a gushing attitude is the greatest sin of all.
But in Pakistan’s climate aren’t we familiar with friends of dictatorship becoming leading champions of democracy, sometimes overnight? So what’s a false step between friends? Let me perform penance at the next urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and may the Saint take me into his good graces.
There is no point in being sorry for Imran Khan. A railway carriage factory would not be space enough for his ego. He will tide over this bump in his fortunes and, who knows, grasp some other theory of reform and renewal. But for the people of Pakistan it should be a sobering realisation: there are no shortcuts to the Promised Land, and no easy escape from the bifocal dictatorship of mediocrity as represented by the two major parties.
Third party alternativism has not worked in the United States. It’s not been a staggering success in Britain. If Imran’s bubble is an example it is not working here as well. So we are left with the two poles of attraction, PPP and PML-N, around which Pakistani politics has revolved for the past 30 years.
Once upon a time it was Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Unlikely, nay impossible, as it seemed at first, it is now Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. Not only has Zardari stepped into his wife’s shoes, he has brought a hard and crafty edge to his party’s political performance, something it earlier lacked.
In the old days, back in the riotous and colourful 90s, when the aspect of things did not look as troubled as it does today, the PML-N, with no little backing from what we like to call the establishment, was always one or two steps ahead of the PPP. When it came to the politics of intrigue and operating from the shadows the Sharif combine, and it was little short of that, was always smarter than anything Benazir Bhutto could put in the field. Now things are different. Zardari, no one’s idea of an ethical icon, has proved himself a shrewd political operator.
A party lacking a majority in the National Assembly yet surviving at the head of a difficult coalition for four years, and all set to complete its term. This was almost unthinkable four years ago. In my other half as a reluctant politician I hate to say this but the Sharifs, who need no lessons in political fine-tuning, have met their match.
Memogate in Dec-Jan to bring Zardari down. Mehrangate in March to heap embarrassment on the other side. And the other side is already protesting too much.
In politics as in art less is always more. Too much self-righteousness, too much parading of virtue, too much protesting: such emotional excesses are off-putting and do little good. Younis Habib, the central character of Mehrangate, may be a rogue and a scoundrel – everyone is entitled to his opinion – but by lifting the lid on the shenanigans of a bygone era he has brought back some humour into the public domain. This he has done by reminding us that in the hamam – the bathhouse – of Pakistani politics no one is fully clothed.
The lawyers’ movement and the restoration of the judiciary had injected too much solemnity into our national discourse. Some of us in the political and chattering classes had begun to swallow some of our own fiction about a new national beginning and cleansing the national stables. With Zardari as the only target the winds of virtue were blowing only in one direction. Younis Habib may be in a wheelchair but he retains a twinkle in his eyes. He has played a variation on the theme of the one-directional winds.
Not that there are going to be any convictions or disqualifications. When were we this lucky? We have turned a blind eye to monumental happenings; Mehrangate is small change, ridiculous when set against the sum of our other follies.
If the Abbottabad commission set up to look into the Osama raid is still going around in circles, if Memogate has turned into an extended yawn, the comedy in it long since departed, why should Younis Habib’s financial exploits in the service of the national interest – this is a good one – lead to any conclusions? But varied music is still good. That’s the whole point of an orchestra.
Meanwhile, some other news from the political front. Dr Babar Awan, leading alumnus of that famous if also mythical seat of learning, Monticello University, would seem to have taken a fall. Elevated to almost dizzying heights by the favour of the one and only President (when was the last time the PPP had a sitting vice president?) Dr Awan has suffered an eclipse by faltering when he was expected to stand firm at the appointed hour...not appearing as a witness for PM Gilani in the contempt case before the Supreme Court.
When he was required to sign an affidavit to the effect that the PM was advised by the law ministry not to send a letter to the Swiss authorities, he was not to be found. Rukhsana Bangash MNA, a presidential confidante, was sent to his house but she kept waiting. (Reminds me of the Hardy poem, “You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb...”) Often all it takes is a moment of courage or weakness to draw the line between success and failure, triumph and tragedy.
Anyway, the clouds are lifting, revealing some of the prospect ahead. No elections this year, not unless winds of which we know nothing at present bear down upon us and the unforeseen comes to pass. Notice how the demand for early elections, the battle cry assailing our ears, has withered on the branch. Now everyone seems resigned to drink from the cup of patience. All this has happened in a very short time, the prophets of doom and disaster, sharpening their knives, discomfited.
A third path promised the moon but with the bursting of the bubble we are left with reduced expectations. The tall gates of renewal and reform have proved to be a mirage. And the bandwagon on which so many had pinned their hopes, the Qureshis and Makhdooms et al, is stranded somewhere in the desert of our desires.

Email:winlust@yahoo.com