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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Occupy Faizabad

By Shahzad Chaudhry
November 24, 2017

How it built up; how it got here, and how it has now reached that notional critical mass sticks like a bone in the gullet. There is simply no running away from it. 

But grow it did, right under our eyes; and foolishly, despite prior examples of how in each such case the state looked silly.

Remember the very first test to the Nawaz government when a certain Malik Sikandar held Islamabad city hostage for six long hours after images of him and his family were beamed across the world as he went about cavalierly disregarding any supplications for letting the city be free from his gun-toting and cigarette smoking ways – straight from a script of a Hollywood blockbuster. 

Every now and then he fired, in the air and at the people, just to assure curious onlookers that he was the real deal and not to be messed with.

Surreal, yet true, it was played out live on TV screens. The government had no answer. One man spited the collective intellect of the government.

Then Imran Khan sat at D-Chowk for 126 days as the entire city went up in a turmoil around him. 

This could be attributed as political agitation though after the initial fancy had worn off the tolerance-thresholds of the citizens began to crack and the sheen of the PTI’s politics began to wear thin. Ditto this time. 

A bunch of clerics and members of a recently registered political party have resorted to holding millions of citizens to ransom in the name of religion.

 They came with the intent to register their objection to the changed format of the undertaking for being a Muslim in the newly legislated Electoral Reforms 2017 and have decided to stay to relish the limelight without caring how it impacts anyone else.

Someone facilitated the group to congregate for a day in Faizabad, permitting it to travel from Lahore, across the breadth of Pakistan through its most critical arteries to gather and then occupy the capital city’s most critical choke-point, control of which can literally paralyse Pakistan’s twin cities wherefrom hundreds and thousands commute daily. 

It has been 17 days and there aren’t even signs yet of them yielding to decent coexistence.

 The group called Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah makes the Islamic Republic of Pakistan look quixotic; the only nuclear state of the Muslim world, one in dire economic straits though, and fighting a critical war against terror and extremism while virtually standing on the anvil of a political meltdown, is devoid of any ideas or will or interest to return the city back to its people.

The slogan that this group employs is most sensitive to any Muslim and seemingly has also straitjacketed the state into a voluntary restraint and thus ineffectiveness. 

But what really betrays is the lack of intent, interest or right thought from those who mind the state to obviate its malignant fallout.

 To some, in this may lie the comfort of the paradox which gives respite to the ruling party from its debilitating predilections by diverting public intention while it corners itself into virtual absence. 

The citizens and the nation hauntingly ask: complicit or incompetent? The dharna group has the government in Islamabad in a fix and is not letting it go.

This may seem to be an administrative failure but hop to more fundamental governance areas like policy formulation and one seems to be peeping down a gaping hole. 

There is no one minding the fort these days. It already is a cliché, sadly reeking of truth, but there is no government and matters of the state remain unattended. Without decent recourse the state appears jaded and weakened.

 One element of credibility of exercising state power is that it remains the most potent, never in doubt of its immense effectiveness – whether that be inside the borders or against an external threat. 

What this sit-in has done is to shake these assumptions about the state. This bodes poorly in terms of the state’s deterrence value externally or in its impact against internal disquiet. Pakistan is in the throes of such buffeting.

The economy is imploding under the weight of twin deficits and an ever burgeoning debt basket and this government cannot replace its ineffectual, indicted and now proclaimed offender finance minister with another.

 That is ultimate paralysis. The best that the government can do is to declare the finance minister on leave, not daring to replace him even as he has declared himself sick and unable to perform his functions. 

The sit-in at Faizabad wishes to secure the resignation of the law minister who in their opinion has wronged on the point of a fundamental religious belief – even though the omission now stands corrected – and have successfully mutated the connotation into a rallying cry feeding their other interests. 

What was a rag-tag assembly has now assumed a character and proportion of its own. Dealing with it now would entail a cost.

And finally, when any position of relative importance opens up, the most common name touted to fill-in is of Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal.

 In effect, he is already half the finance minister for he sits in the National Finance Commission and the Council of Common Interests, and leads the JCC on CPEC, even as he presides over the Planning Commission in the executive position of its deputy chairman. 

Were he to also be formally appointed the finance minister that will perhaps be a first – for someone to hold as many portfolios with diverse specialisations. 

And of course he is still this country’s interior minister responsible for controlling and clearing the sit-in which continues to spite the central authority of the federal government even as it continues to deny millions their fundamental right of free movement.

Why so? And this is interesting. The more popular refrain is that were Dar and the law minister to be replaced it could threaten the safety and security of a disqualified and now-indicted Nawaz Sharif.

 Because the two might spill the beans – Ishaq Dar adding to his repertoire of admissions that later became known as the Hudaybia testimony; and Zahid Hamid, a roving technocrat of many former governments, who may fill in with even more evidence in the ongoing tribulation of NS before the courts.

Left to the incumbent, PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi would have been happier to see an ineffectual cabinet member go, replacing him with someone present and functional. 

But so arid is this assembly of politicians that but one individual alone has the make-up to attend to this state’s multiple malignancies.

 Where pray, are the technocrats of the Senate meant to provide specialised assistance in governance of the state? Swept away into oblivion by their convenient replacement with failed politicos who must still be parked in good humour regardless of their merit for any good other than the din to fight a leader’s corner? We remain captives of an autocratic mediocrity cloaked in the hallowed sham of democracy. Dictators at least got things done.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com