Kingmakers for fathers

Mr Asif Ali Zardari has expressed the very legitimate desire of seeing his son as the prime minister of Pakistan. With a lineage including such names as Z A Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto, the idea has a genuineness about it.

Indeed, the renowned pretender hardly needed a reiteration of his claim on power and the only explanation here is that his backer Zardari Sahab didn’t want anyone to place him outside the long and growing line of parents out there currently who are shown in the public domain to be taking actions to ensure a better, more secure future for their beloved children and heirs.

Also, the revealing portion in Zardari Sahab’s remark pertained to the timing. May Allah give him a long life; he didn’t insinuate that he was looking to immediately use his legendary magic to create a throne his son could immediately occupy with all his royal pomp and glory. The statement hints that the proud father is ready to wait or he has no option in the current situation to bide time. This would in turn show the PPP’s willingness to continue as junior partners in coalitions in the near future.

There is never any harm in parental boasting about children who are going to be your continuation in more than the manner decided by nature. And this happens to be the time when the joint parent-children choices are most starkly reflected in the talk about the departures our younger generation must make in a departure from their current family positions. The buzz would have us believe that the fathers have ceased to selfishly be beholden to their own little ideologies and their own.

Take the example of Chaudhry Pervez Elahi. He is too deeply moored in the art of loving the establishment but that does not stop him from firmly siding with a man who could strain his old ties with the old benefactors. All for the sake of securing the family’s political position.

There are other, even if unsubstantiated but much in discussion, alleged incidents where the youngsters are said to have prevailed on old wisdom and as would be befitting a popular movement they appear to be aiding Imran Khan’s advance.

Zardari Sahab could have hardly prevented himself from promoting the hierarchical order amid this increasing incidence of parents acting as their children’s professional patrons or mentors in accordance with the wishes of the younger lot. It is about time the patriarch who has been managing the PPP chairman must realize which way the traffic is moving. For a party like the PPP which never tires of singing accolades about its glorious progressive, pro-people past, there has to be a movement which leads to the conversion, if not an exclusion, of the old wisdom represented by Zardari Sahab.

According to voices from within the Pakistan People’s Party, this reverse transformation is possible. Only days before Zardari Sahab was showcasing his household’s prime ministerial potential, cadres in his party were (angrily) discussing the reasons behind the current legal positions taken by 'Traitor 1' Aitzaz Ahsan and 'Traitor 2' Sardar Latif Khosa. Before long it was revealed that it was not these long-time jiyalas but their children who were determining what actions the two PPP rebels decided to take.

The young were keen to follow the trend and in the present circumstances it often culminated in the fun and frolic at Zaman Park. What it leads to in the future is unclear and surely there are generic and specific reasons to be wary of the leader here. But who is discussing the outcome for now. The focus is on the new kind of charisma that the new leader has built around him over and above his previous avatar as a player and playboy. Surrounded by the youth, down to young children, he will easily pass off as a pir.

The vital question is whether these children who have been born out of our current circumstances can grow up challenging some fundamentals of our patriarchal system. Just how many times have we, the older lot, craved the clarity of the past! Despotic or not, those periods of governance in Pakistan were so much less strain on the mind. What is being currently done to us in the name of some superior-quality rule seems downright cheating to old timers. It was so much better with the ‘Abba Jan’ with his danda in hand ordering people to follow the discipline in the true Ziayee fashion, if you like.

Life today is less direct than it used to be. The nuances demand a revision of the formula. Some of those who want their sons to be king must quickly correct the balance in favour of the people away from the old patriarchal order. Asif Zardari may be too heavily reliant on the old patrons for his wish about his son to come true.

The writer is a senior journalist.