Doctrine of the hundred onions

Pakistanis are familiar with this tale. A man condemned to punishment was given a choice between eating a hundred onions or receiving a hundred strokes on his back. He settled for the onions, taking this to be the easier option. But when he could no longer stand the onions he shouted for the slippers. When he could stand the slippers no more, he once again wanted the onions. He ended by eating all the onions and receiving all the strokes.

Something of this higher wisdom has been evident in Pakistan these last few weeks. President Asif Zardari has done what he had vowed never to do: restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to his rightful place. He could have done this himself and saved himself a great deal of trouble and wounded dignity. But he did it only after his hand was forced, by a combination of street power and subtle prodding from the direction of General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.

This is being hailed as Pakistan's velvet revolution although it is never safe in Pakistan to take things at face value. The revolution, in any case, is far from complete. Punjab remains unsettled and there are many constitutional knots to be untied. Still, one might be tempted to think that everyone has learned a lesson. But this would be to discount the subtleties of Pakistani politics.

Take Zardaris' man in Lahore, Salmaan Taseer -- who played no small part in getting Zardari into this mess in the first place -- who gives every indication of not resting until, walking in his master's footsteps, he too has had his full share of onions and slippers (although the word slippers does no justice to the Urdu word, chittar, the leather device in all self-respecting sub-continental police stations used as the first, although by no means the last, resort of criminal investigation).

Governor's rule in Punjab will have to go sooner rather than later and the PML-N will have its own chief minister but not before Taseer learns a few more political lessons. In any event, he is turning into a novel constitutional expert maintaining, against the clear provisions of the Constitution, that he will call a session of the Punjab assembly to elect a chief minister only when two out of the three major parties in the assembly form a coalition.

It is none of the governor's business to ascertain who has a majority. That is a function for the assembly to perform. But Taseer, trying perhaps to avenge the humiliation he has undergone, is trying his best to muddy the waters. He won't succeed but that won't him prevent him from trying. He could still do the graceful thing but don't count on it. That wouldn't be Salmaan Taseer.

Taseer, as Zardari's creature, can't be doing what he is doing without directions from the presidency. Which puts the presidency in an odd light. Has it learnt nothing from its recent ordeal? Full marks to Zardari, however, for achieving what the PPP's original nemesis, General Ziaul Haq, could never do: mortally cripple the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Zardari's own credibility was always close to ground zero but the PPP deserved better at his hands. Leading party lights look dazed and downcast, as they have every reason to be, given the wholly unnecessary tribulations through which the PPP has been marched in recent weeks.

Thanks to his moderating role in this crisis, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has added a few notches to his stature. But since he can never be party leader, and probably doesn't have it in him to fulfil that role, he will always remain a leader of the second division. But he can continue to play a useful role provided he keeps his distance from Zardari and becomes his own man.

Now for something almost calculated to make the liberati choke: the central figure (out of respect for the liberati I use not the word hero) of Pakistan's velvet revolution on March 15 was Nawaz Sharif. He defied house arrest and came out on Lahore's roads. It was as if Lahore was waiting for something like this to happen because people poured out in their thousands to greet him. All this was being caught on TV cameras, live coverage playing no small part in galvanising the people of Lahore. (Freedom of television is one thing which makes me remember Musharraf with gratitude.)

The impression one got while watching television was that something very important, and perhaps even seminal and defining, was happening. The impression of drama was heightened by the fact that by then any semblance of administration in Lahore had just melted away.

But while Lahore was the epicentre of this movement, its tremors were felt the strongest in Islamabad. Pakistan's central problem as this crisis erupted -- a crisis sparked by the disqualification of the Sharifs by the Supreme Court -- was to get Zardari to read the weather signals correctly and then to somehow come to his senses.

General Ashfaq Kayani (the army chief), the Americans -- from their ambassador in Islamabad to Hillary Clinton in Washington -- Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, had all being trying to get Zardari to back down a bit.. But locked in his ivory tower and cut off from reality, he was deaf to these counsels, insisting that he would not step back under pressure. And perhaps hoping that if he stood his ground he could ride out the storm.

But Lahore is what tipped the balance against him. To verbal 'advice' was now added something more concrete and telling. Finally he was left with no choice but to succumb to the mounting pressure.

Even so, as we celebrate this velvet revolution -- whose full results we yet await -- certain questions arise. In which other country is the American embassy such an active player? In which other country is the British ambassador taken so seriously? And in which other country is the army chief a regular political interlocutor? We lean heavily on foreign powers, or they lean heavily on us, in the realm of external relations. But as this crisis has shown, even in our domestic affairs it will be some time before we arrive at a measure of true autonomy.

But to refer to another aspect of our domestic scene, if Taseer is proving incorrigible, so too are the two cousins, Chaudhry Shujaat and Pervaiz Ellahi, who for reasons hard to fathom carry a reputation of being very savvy politicians. Far from learning anything from these events, they are busy covering themselves with more mud as they collaborate with Taseer in his fancy schemes of preventing the PML-N from returning to power in Punjab. They can delay the inevitable. Can they prevent it?

Shujaat and Pervaiz have long worshipped at the altar of military power, turning into the biggest and loudest spoons in General Pervez Musharraf's collection of exotic political cutlery. Pervaiz came near to political immortality by his ringing claim that the Q League would elect Musharraf as president while still in uniform not once but ten times. It would be more becoming of the Chaudhrys to take a vow of silence for some time to atone for these and related sins. But perhaps something inbuilt in our political class prevents its leading lights from seeing reason unless they regale themselves to the full with what seems their favourite repast: onions and slippers.

A bit of Chinese-style self-criticism is also in order. I thought that as long as Zardari was president Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry's restoration would never happen. And I did not think the lawyers' movement strong enough by itself to force Zardari's hand. I may not have been all that wrong about the lawyers' movement which left to itself might not have made much of an impression on the containers with which Herr Rehman Malik had ringed Islamabad. But what I, and perhaps no one else had anticipated, was the popular outpouring in Lahore on March 15. That, as already stated, is what tipped the scales.

But even this would not have happened if Zardari had not, with his hard-to-explain actions, ignited this crisis in the first place. His inexplicable folly thus was an essential ingredient of Pakistan's still half-cocked velvet revolution. In a sense then we should be grateful to him.

When will we start concentrating on the real problems facing the country? The answer is pretty obvious. Not until all the onions are eaten and all the gluttons for self-punishment have had their fill.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com