A blood-dimmed tide

In itself, the statement was not a revelation. Prime Minister Imran Khan has expressed similar views a number of times. Besides, it was an exact reiteration of what he had said about two weeks ago. But one was a little taken aback by where and when he expressed his frustration on not being able to round up all the corrupt people in Pakistan, ostensibly his political adversaries.

This is what he said while addressing the China Council for Promotion of International Trade in Beijing on Tuesday: “One of President Xi’s crusades has been against corruption and I have heard that some 400 ministerial-level people have been put in jail in the last five years….I wish I could follow President Xi’s example and put 500 corrupt people in Pakistan in jail”.

This potentially autocratic desire of an ‘elected’ leader raises a number of questions. In the first place, invoking a contentious domestic political issue during a foreign visit is not such a good idea. But he had said the same thing at the Council of Foreign Relations during his visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. There, admiring China, he said: “The way they have tackled corruption, unfortunately I can’t do in Pakistan. Four hundred and fifty ministerial-level people in the past five years have been put into jail on corruption. I wish I could that in my country, but I have limitations”.

The difference here is that this week he was in China and referring to the host country’s purported strategy to deal with corruption. Yes, Imran Khan has frequently admired the Chinese model of development. So, is putting corrupt people into jail the crux of this model? What about other fundamental ingredients of the Chinese system, such as social mobilisation and discipline, quality of education and its professed Communist ideology?

We know that the journey of China’s phenomenal economic growth began a long time ago, at least more than three decades ago. Imran Khan is talking about the past five years. And he is not quoting any certified figures. “I have heard”, he said. In addition, the figure was four hundred and fifty for the audience in the United States and it was just four hundred in his Beijing address. This problem with numbers is now well established.

Though I was tempted to go into some details, I want to put Imran Khan’s proclaimed yearning for an authoritarian dispensation in a wider context. In many ways, the entire society is so brutalised and intolerant that the common people may approve of speedy justice that borders on vigilantism. After what they have suffered, people are losing their patience. A sense of violence, also metaphorically, permeates all levels of society.

Because of the distress that is proliferating in the present circumstances, this situation is very likely to worsen. There was an occasion to reflect on the mental health situation in the country on Thursday, when the World Mental Health Day was observed and a number of functions were organised to project a picture that is unbearably dark and dreary.

Unable to fully grasp the challenges of this situation, many so-called educated people easily lose their cool when they begin to prescribe solutions for the existing disarray and deprivations. They tend to believe that public executions and making criminals of heinous crimes and high corruption a “nishane-e-ibrat” would really make a difference.

For that matter, one of his federal ministers wants a tenfold increase in the list to not just put behind bars but, yes, actually put to death. This idea I have not lifted from a dystopian work of fiction. You would remember that our own Faisal Vawda, who could very well be an imaginary character, had some months ago called for hanging 5,000 corrupt people “to transform the future of 220 million-strong nation”. He admitted that the constitution would come in the way of this project.

Incredibly, Faisal Vawda had the immoral courage of repeating this prescription for eradicating corruption in the sacred precincts of the National Assembly, but with a devilish rider: the corrupt should be tied to a vehicle and dragged on the streets before being hanged. I am not making this up. And this is what we have to live with in this country. What country, for God’s sake, would be the model for such a barbaric venture?

Now, I do not know how to handle the report of the NAB Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal saying that if he is given the powers which are available to the anti-corruption authorities in Saudi Arabia, he would bring back the looted wealth in three weeks. He did qualify the remarks that he reportedly made while addressing traders and industrialists in Lahore.

All said and done, there is a growing impression that, to recall that Yeats phrase that has become a cliché, “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”. I may be excused for repeating some more lines from The Second Coming: “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity”.

In a political context, there is this grim foreboding of popular agitation. On Friday, Nawaz Sharif, who is already in prison, announced his full support to Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s ‘Azadi March’. The PML-N leader was speaking to the media when he was brought to an accountability court from Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore. Maulana’s plan, of course, is to descend on Islamabad on October 31 with the intention of overthrowing this government.

What would a visionary leader do at this time? Political struggle for power aside, the real task would perhaps be to find ways of healing a deeply wounded society and make it more human and more enlightened. We need peace and social harmony. We need social justice through a manifestly democratic process. But, to be honest, there is little hope for this kind of ‘tabdeeli’, irrespective of the number of U-turns that are taken.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com