Drowning in our delusions

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.

On New Year’s Day this year, I advocated a responsible optimism for 2011. Three days later Salmaan Taseer was murdered by a man that taxpayers sustain to protect them and their representatives. A day later, a man appointed by the legitimately-elected government of the PPP, Mr Rehman Malik, declared that he would kill blasphemers with his own two hands. A month later, the unanimously voted-in prime minister of Pakistan threw what seems to be the last PPP MNA with any dignity and sense of righteousness, Sherry Rehman, under the bus.
Being responsible requires a firm commitment to the truth. Any optimism we seek in Pakistan needs to be regulated by the truths that shape us. Some of these truths are deeply disturbing. We can turn our faces from them, or we can embrace them. There really isn’t any more room to equivocate.
The starkest revelation in the post-Taseer scenario is that the quality of journalism in Pakistan is in grave danger of becoming entirely hostage to ratings, profits and fear. For staunch defenders of the Pakistani media, this is not a pleasant reality to come face to face with. There is very little, however, to mitigate the cold hard facts.
Taseer’s position was pretty simple. He believed and stated that the Pakistan Penal Code provisions on blasphemy cause procedural lapses that endanger the lives of innocent Pakistanis. He believed and stated that there are skewed incentives, built into the provisions, for people to misuse them. Finally, he believed and stated that procedural change is required to give greater functional fidelity to the legal regime dealing with blasphemy.
This is not a particularly sophisticated position. It has long been shared by reasonable Pakistanis on all sides of the faux ideological divides we create in this country. It is a position that human rights advocates, political leaders and others have long taken.
Yet not only was this position rarely represented in the news media, it was repeatedly misrepresented. Watching young talk show hosts in their twenties make careers out of aggression is not unique. But when that aggression helps fuel paranoia and lies about someone that can then threaten their safety, we must draw a line. One such talk show host recently won the equivalent of the TV talk-show host lottery – a new job after a bidding war broke out for the host’s services. The new job is a reward for having repeatedly insinuating Salmaan Taseer’s blasphemous intent on a talk show. While one channel fired the host, it hardly matters. The new show will be even more bombastic. It will not fear facts, because facts often get in the way of ratings.
Of course, picking on one talk show host alone is ridiculous. The majority of the news media has treated Sherry Rehman roughly the same way as it treated Taseer. With contempt, and little regard for facts. Rehman’s private member bill was submitted to the assembly but never tabled. There was nothing for her to withdraw. Yet the PPP’s decision, announced by the prime minister, to not even consider the bill is being presented as an all-round victory. The bill did not even approach talk of repeal, but rather sought to give legal legs to the procedural changes required to make the provisions of the PPC work harmoniously with the objective of the law – which is to provide justice and prevent injustice.
Of course, just how the national conversation can become so deeply bereft of facts and reason is no mystery. Decades of military rule and its dangerous ideological choices have helped create an ill-informed and hyper-emotional national discourse. We don’t need to discuss controversial political issues to see just how cancerous it truly is.
The narrative surrounding Mohammed Amir, the young Pakistani fast-bowling sensation that has just been awarded a five-year ban for deliberately cheating for financial gain, is perhaps the most telling parable. In an exclusive Geo News interview right after the ICC verdict, Amir is repeatedly asked how he feels. He is asked to speak to his fans and tell them everything will be all right. He is asked if he has given up hope. Repeatedly, the interviewer says, “Amir aaya, Amir chaya”, but woe! What will happen now. Poor young Amir.
Of course, as the interview proceeds, Amir is no longer Amir, the teenaged sporting sensation. Amir is Pakistan. Amir is Aafia Siddiqi. Amir is the PPC provisions dealing with blasphemy. Amir is izzat. Amir’s arms are not made of muscle. They are made of enriched uranium. Amir’s quick release is a Hatf, a Ghauri, a Babar. Amir is honour. Amir is pride. And the big, bad whiteys at the ICC, under direct orders of their Hindu overlords in Mumbai, are out to get Amir.
None of this is actually said. But all of it is implied. It may not be implied by the specific interviewer. It certainly doesn’t seem to come from Amir. Yet it seems silently spoken because the most important truth of the spot-fixing scandal is utterly unspoken.
Three Pakistani cricket players cheated, and financially gained from cheating, at the expense of the honour of the Pakistani Test cap, at the expense of the integrity of the sport of cricket, and at the expense of the dignity of the millions of young boys and girls, mouths agape, eyes lit up, that once watched Amir and his conniving friends Salmaan Butt and Mohammed Asif.
Butt, Asif and Amir are not the victims here. Pakistan’s children are. Pakistani advertisers that pay to endorse these players are. Pakistani housewives and bankers. Pakistani jingle writers. Pakistani fast bowlers. Yet if you watch the interview of Amir, there is not a single mention of Amir’s wrongdoing. The viewer has no chance of hearing whether or not Amir is contrite, because within the narrative, Amir has done no wrong. If you don’t raise the question of his wrongdoing, it is akin to erasing it altogether.
How then can we possibly hope for any improvement? How can we possibly be “optimistic” if we are not responsible?
Optimism doesn’t mean blindness. Our patriotism should be an unstoppable engine for seeking and speaking the facts, instead of fearing them. Real optimism is about creating positive vision for the future despite the negativity of the past and the present.
Pakistan is being poisoned by false pride, self-pity and moral asymmetry. If we want Raymond Davis to burn, we should demand the same for Mumtaz Qadri. If the murder of three Lahori boys is unacceptable, we should be even more outraged by the untold death and destruction in Tirah Valley, in Bajaaur, in Orakzai, and across FATA that has been showered upon it by the Pakistani military. If we don’t like drones (and we shouldn’t), we must ask questions about what our helicopters and F-16s are doing in the north. If we don’t like targeted killings in Karachi, we should raise our voice against them in Balochistan too.
Pakistanis are too resilient, too beautiful and too good to drown in a sea of delusions. Now more than ever is a time for Pakistanis to be optimistic. The degree of responsibility in our optimism will make all the difference between perpetuating fantasies, or stemming the rot by promoting facts and reason.