Glamorising experience, misunderstanding history

Islamabad diary
"I see that you haven’t changed a bit in these last four years and more, captain," said Nikolay Vsevolodovich... “It seems in fact as though the second half of a man’s life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated in the first half.” Dostoyevsky The Possessed
Most election rhetoric is stupid. But this election season it is dumber than usual.
Take Nawaz Sharif going on and about maturity and experience. His way of saying he is the elder statesman who has seen it all, and Imran Khan the greenhorn who knows nothing. Elect a mature government, he exhorts the crowds...muddling the history of Pakistan in the process.
In the Pakistani context experience is a handicap not an advantage. Gen Pervez Musharraf has experience on his side: eight and a half years at the helm. If that’s what it takes, why don’t we bring him back?
Pakistan is stuck in a hole. Who has brought it to this pass, greenhorns or grandmasters of experience? Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister and not much to show for it, is saying, hand power back to the yo-yos. It is almost as if Manmohan Singh next door were to present himself as a symbol of change. The laughter this would evoke would echo across the mountains.
Imran is no innocent either. Didn’t he campaign for Musharraf’s referendum? Not quite his finest hour. True, he has bent over backwards apologising for it, which is more than can be said about other political riders, saying sorry not a prime Pakistani virtue. All the same, he did make a boo-boo of himself.
And in his October 30 jalsa – the day the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was reborn – he came onstage and prostrated himself on his prayer mat in public, an ostentatious display we could have been spared. Mercifully, there’s been no repeat performance. So one lives and learns.
Zardari’s experience in high finance, not easy to beat. Offshore companies, commissions on international deals, money parked in Swiss bank accounts, property here, there and everywhere...our man from Nawabshah having come a long way. If experience is the touchstone Nawaz Sharif makes it out to be, Zardari should be president for five more years, no questions asked.
Sharif could do worse than look at his own record. At the first Kargil briefing from the army brass in April 1999, he could barely understand the implications of the stunt Musharraf and his favourite generals had pulled: taking the nation to the brink of war. But the sandwiches served were good and he said so. End of meeting. Putting Musharraf on the mat? The idea crossed no one’s mind.
No civilian government could have asked for a more ambition-free army chief than Gen Jahangir Karamat – urbane, well-read and decent. But Sharif, riding high on his ‘heavy mandate’ (two-thirds majority in parliament), was flexing his muscles and got rid of him.
This was little short of tempting fate, for who should step into Karamat’s shoes? The corps commander Mangla, one Gen Pervez Musharraf, sailing over the heads of two other generals, including Ali Quli Khan, who whether more deserving or not certainly did not have Musharraf’s brashness. The rest is history.
The PML-N’s Mr Bean (Chaudhry Nisar), who’s always had a talent for intrigue, had a hand in this affair. People who try to be too clever, there is no knowing what they end up doing. Musharraf returned the favour, Mr Bean’s confinement after the coup in his spread-out house in Faizabad mild and lenient.
I find the following hard to resist. When fellow-Chakwali, Lt Gen Abdul Qayyum, was joining the PML-N, he said before the cameras that this was how he understood the initials MNS: not, perish the thought, just Muhammad Nawaz Sharif but M for Motorway, N for nuclear power, S for the politics of sharafat (decency). The look of near-ecstasy on Nawaz Sharif’s face as he heard this...brings a smile to my lips every time I recall it.
In the PML-N (ah, does this sound like more sour grapes?) buttering, at times raised to an art form, is a necessary adjunct for getting on. But even by those stellar standards I thought the general’s performance was smart.
Benazir Bhutto blew her two chances as prime minister. True, the army was breathing down her neck, and the second time round Leghari, her hand-picked president, did a Brutus on her. But she was also the author of many of her misfortunes. Some people can’t resist a fair ankle, others who find it hard to resist that last one for the road, or the one after that for the ditch. Zardari could never resist a deal, any deal, as long as there was something in it. As for Nawaz Sharif, he blew his ‘heavy mandate’ more thoroughly than Taliban bombers could have done.
Do we raise such experience on a pedestal and worship it? This is experience best forgotten. During his first term as prime minister, Sharif had fallen into the habit of getting into his helicopter every other day to fly off to a remote village to condole with – wait for this – rape victims. There with a long face he would sit, expressing sympathy, handing out an envelope of cash, vowing retribution, the whole thing elaborately shown on state television the same evening (there were no other channels then). The nuts and bolts of governance bored him. These photo ops he loved. They made for great theatre.
This is the kind of idiocy we have to put up with in this country where leaders are more illiterate than the led. Would, as governor Punjab, Nawab Amir Muhammad have gone for such pantomimes? He would have put the fear of God in the entire police force instead of making an ass of himself and his government.
Sharif’s second term as prime minister was spent fighting real or imaginary enemies – President Leghari, Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, army chief Karamat – or inspecting the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway. No kidding: just as he had taken to visiting rape victims previously, he now took to visiting the Motorway...to the exclusion of everything else. And before he knew it, Musharraf’s coup had crept up on him.
The PPP and the PML-N don’t realise it, and of course you won’t catch them admitting it, but in the long-run Musharraf proved a godsend to both parties because discredited as they had become by then, they received a shot in the arm by turning, almost overnight, from administrative disasters into democracy champions. By 2008 both parties were ready to stage a comeback which they did. Instead of reviling Musharraf they should in secret be thanking him.
Sharif now thinks he is on the cusp of another comeback. Stranger things have happened, so who can say for sure this can’t happen? I won’t pretend to be a card reader or an amateur pollster. But whatever the outcome of this contest, let’s just hope we can push past experience to one side and chart a better future.
Tailpiece One: Barring Musharraf from contesting elections for life, their stern lordships of the Peshawar High Court thus opine: “We are of the considered view that a person who has got not a little respect for whole of the constitution how he will pass through narrow and small compass of Articles 62 and 63.” Would some kind-hearted soul render this into language that mere mortals can understand?
Two: What can persuade Gen Kayani to stop giving sermons on democracy? He can never leave Islam alone, why must he exhort the nation about democratic values? It’s not his office to do so. Look at the ANP, the MQM and the PPP, braving terrorist attacks and yet remaining committed to the election process. That’s democracy at work. It’s also the resilience of the Pakistani nation on display.
Three: Imran Khan says the Taliban did not kill Benazir Bhutto. He’s right, Martians did.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com