So much heat, no light

By Ghazi Salahuddin
April 30, 2017

With meteorological temperature rising across the plains, the political weather is also steadily becoming more volatile. Imran Khan’s PTI and Zardari’s PPP – still inimical to each other – have launched their campaigns against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

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So, the post-Panama case verdict Pakistan is descending into a new political crisis. The pace of events is likely to pick up. In light of how they look at the verdict in terms of the survivability and credibility of Nawaz Sharif at this time, the political players are expected to hedge their bets. For many, it is a waiting game that they have learnt to play.

On Friday, for instance, Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Riaz Pirzada announced his resignation. He said that it was prompted by the suspension of the Pakistan Sports Board director general. However, he also alleged that there was high-level corruption in all parts of the government, adding: “I will not say anything about the prime minister’s situation at the moment”.

But the statement that has generated the most heat this week is Imran Khan’s allegation that the Nawaz Sharif government had tried to bribe him to not raise the Panama Papers issue. The bouncer was delivered by the ‘Kaptaan’ while speaking to party workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday. He alleged that he was offered Rs10 billion to not pursue the case.

In their immediate response, the PML-N leaders challenged Imran Khan to reveal the name of the person who had made this offer. Talking to a news channel on Wednesday, Imran claimed that the offer had come from a close friend of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. But he did not name the source and said: “He came to see me about two weeks ago and told me about the offer. Let me tell you that the Sharif family had even made him a very good offer and promised to ‘entertain’ him if he could convince me”.

This astounding charge has expectedly raised a whirlwind. There have been a number of highly-charged rejoinders. In some ways, Imran’s allegation has provided a tactical advantage to the Sharif family. But it has also raised the political temperature. Besides, the focus remains on corruption, and the figure that has been quoted has bewildered ordinary people because they cannot easily comprehend the extent of wealth that their rulers and leaders are seen to possess.

For that matter, the Rs10 billion mystery is bound to excite a lot of debate and speculation about its consequences. Many more episodes in this serial are surely in the offing. Like the Supreme Court verdict, this dramatic allegation is to be interpreted in different ways. In its editorial on Friday, this newspaper said: “The story does not add up. If the Sharifs were so terrified by Imran’s speeches and rallies that they were willing to part with a large fortune just to keep him quiet, why was it only casually brought up so late in the game, when the Supreme Court had already heard the case?”

Before Imran made his allegation, the Sharif camp did not appear to be in high spirits. It has been reported that in a meeting held at the Prime Minister House on Thursday, the government decided to “follow a proactive strategy by coming on the front foot” in the face of allegations made by Imran. The first step is to take Imran to court.

Meanwhile, the government has to deal with the agitation that has already been mounted. While the PTI has held its rally in Islamabad, the PPP had its first sit-in near the Quaid’s mausoleum in Karachi on Wednesday. It does look strange for a party to be in power in a province and still stage a protest within its own jurisdiction. Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah himself raised the ‘go Nawaz, go’ slogan. He said that the people have been forced to protest in such heat.

In the midst of all this uproar, what is the direction in which the country is moving? What crucial matters are coming under discussion and how serious are our political leaders in understanding and articulating the problems that have left society in tatters? Who is paying attention to the ground realities that have no direct linkages to partisan politics?

Unfortunately, the political squabbles that have almost monopolised the nation’s attention have pushed the various ills that we suffer from into the background. And more disturbing is the impression that no political leader in the current spectrum has the intellectual capacity to comprehend the challenges that are rising on every front. We may truly be in a very dire situation and something totally untoward might happen at any step.

It is true that corruption in high places is a major hurdle in advancing on the road to a future that would ensure our freedom and prosperity. But this scourge that afflicts so many other societies in varying degrees cannot be confronted in a lackadaisical manner with the raising of angry slogans or even with a change in regime. It demands a comprehensive strategy that will also take care of other similar maladies such as violent extremism, poverty, disease and cultural degradation.

This is a task that cannot be delegated to the military establishment, the superior courts or the bureaucratic mandarins. The responsibility of defining the national sense of direction and devising the strategy of action to move along that path rests entirely with the political leadership. It is in this perspective that the present crop seems so inadequate. It is just not equipped with the wherewithal to reinvent this country.

One may argue that the glaring variance of our professed values with the realities on the ground has created a revolutionary situation and that the conditions are ripe for a radical change. Irrespective of how social scientists would explain our society’s present disequilibrium, the absence of a party and a leadership that has the vision and capacity to bring about a revolutionary change is very disconcerting.

Still, it might help if our political leaders can find time to patiently examine the state of Pakistani society and then devise their political agendas. This they cannot do when they are operating in the mode of an election campaign. They are not fighting an election. Not yet.

For the time being, would they want to delve into what happened on the campus of a university in Mardan on April 13? And many more things are happening every day that do not attract a comment from the stalwarts of the PML-N, the PTI and the PPP.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddinhotmail.com

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