A country so breathless with excitement about the potentially transient matters of the moment is likely to lose its ability to comprehend the larger issues that are rooted in its historical experience. It hardly finds the time to do any soul-searching and decipher the challenges that relate to its survival. One feels that this is what is happening to Pakistan.
Yes, popular passions are stirred by the dark clouds that are gathering on the horizon. But the explanations that are sought in the daily headlines and in the inane polemics of talk shows on our news channels do not leave the consumers of the media any wiser about the state of the nation.
So, what does the Supreme Court verdict in the case against Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen, delivered on Friday, imply for the country’s political future? In the first place, just look at the kind of emotional upheaval this entire episode has generated. The timing for the judgment was announced on Thursday – and the countdown began in earnest.
It is true that this was a hugely important judgment and the disqualification of Imran Khan would have altered the entire political scene. In addition, the disqualification of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers case and how the PML-N leader had reacted to his expulsion had, in a sense, placed the Supreme Court right in the centre of the issue. Hence, that heart-thumping suspense was partly justified.
But the post-judgment debate in the media, marked by unabashedly partisan interpretations, has again served to play down or ignore a very complex and extremely critical situation. As for the judgment itself, there appeared to be a measure of balance in the rejection of disqualification of Imran Khan and the disqualification for life of Jahangir Tareen, secretary general of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
Incidentally, another very important judgment was delivered earlier on Friday by the Supreme Court. And it was a bit auspicious for the beleaguered Sharifs. A three-judge bench rejected the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) appeal to reopen the Rs1.2 billion Hudaibiya Paper Mills reference. The court was hearing the appeal against the 2014 decision of the Lahore High Court to quash the reference.
On Saturday, we were reminded of two separate national tragedies that we generally have no time to carefully ponder about. Obviously, I am alluding to the fact that Saturday, yesterday, was the sixteenth of December. While that ignominious surrender in Dhaka is fading out of living memory, the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Pakistan having been born after 1971, what happened just three years ago should still be throbbing in our hearts. Does it, really?
What is happening in Pakistan at this time and the issues that have almost shaken our confidence in the survival and solidarity of the democratic system make it all the more urgent that we heed the lessons of history. The sixteenth of December is one date that poses big questions – in both cases. It can be argued that the fact that we seem to have lost our way in the context of national cohesion and democratic dispensation is the consequence of not truly exploring and understanding the reasons for the breakup of our country.
This, to be sure, is not as easy task – to look at our present dilemmas against the backdrop of the sixteenth of December of both 1971 and 2014. There is a quotation of Milan Kundera that often comes to my mind: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. And to consciously remember something demands a certain respect for the truth. Naturally, this exercise will trigger a number of questions that we must honestly explore.
It is sad that when history is taught in our educational institutions, the events of 1971 barely find a mention. As an aside, it should be noted that the department of general history does not exist in perhaps most of our public universities. This is not how enlightened and forward-looking nations deal with the painful and problematic memories of their past. It would be a distraction, but Germany is one example.
If the surrender in 1971 has diminished in our memory, there was another surrender of a different kind that we suffered just a few weeks ago on the Faizabad Interchange in Islamabad. But this capitulation had some nexus with another sixteenth of December, that of just three years ago. This would not happen if we had understood the various facets of religious extremism and if we had fully enforced the National Action Plan.
There is no doubt that the massacre of our schoolchildren by terrorists in Peshawar three years ago had led to a mobilisation of forces against terrorism and violent extremism. It brought the nation together in a resolve to defeat terror. Yet, Pakistan has not changed to the extent that the unbearable tragedy would demand. We saw this in the spectacle that was staged in Islamabad and we see the seeds of bigotry and fanaticism that are sprouting across the entire country.
At one level, though, we are passing through a phase that is unlike any other political crisis of the recent past. A pall of uncertainty can be felt over the whole landscape. We are familiar with apprehensions that trouble our mind when we are waiting for a specific judgment. Much more excruciating is to wait for something unknown and unexpected.
How palpable this fear is was confirmed by the remarks made by Speaker of the National Assembly, Ayaz Sadiq, while speaking to a few news channels on Wednesday evening. He expressed the apprehension that the assemblies may not complete their term. One got the impression that he was privy to some kind of a plot to derail the present democratic arrangement. But he hesitated to be specific. All he projected was an acute sense of alarm.
Since Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was quick to assert that there was no threat to the government and that assemblies would complete their term, observers were intrigued by the state of the ruling party’s mind. Some leaders were upbeat about the party’s prospects in the coming elections and some saw serious threats from forces that are opposed to the party.
On his part, Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying that Pakistan was moving towards instability and the circumstances were “not satisfactory”. Unfortunately, polarisation has deepened to such an extent that there is no scope for an objective analysis. But they all seem to agree that a revelation is at hand.
The writer is a senior journalist.
Email: ghazi_salahuddinhotmail.com