When denial is strategy

First, the concluding thought: when will Pakistan catch up with reality and what will it be like after that?

Under the darkling sky of Covid-19, this is budget time. We have to wade through numbers that are beyond most people’s understanding. And this incomprehension extends to other spheres of our lives. What is easy to see is that we are lost and our rulers are unable to strike a clear path out of this wilderness.

Take this coronavirus conundrum. We were warned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Pakistan was ranked among the top 10 countries in the world that have reported the highest number of new cases of Covid-19. The WHO also expressed concern over the hasty lifting of restrictions and noted that Pakistan did not meet any of the prerequisites for opening of the lockdown. It strongly recommended a two-week lockdown and more tests.

It was a message that should have alerted us for some urgent action. However, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza sought to downplay this WHO warning. He argued on Wednesday that Pakistan had been making appropriate policy choices from the beginning, keeping in view its national context. He said that the WHO is looking at the virus situation through a “health lens”.

On Thursday, when Prime Minister Imran Khan spoke to the nation, against the backdrop of an alarming rise in cases in the country, he made an extensive defence of his ‘double-think’ on why a lockdown is not viable in a poor country like Pakistan. Strangely, he did not at all respond to the WHO warning. As if it had not been there.

Not unexpectedly, Imran Khan did remember to cast aspersions on opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif. This has been his refrain even in these critical times. It is not enough that others from his party vilify the opposition on a daily basis to distract attention from the various lapses that are made by the government. It is some kind of a chorus in a Greek tragedy.

Essentially, the purpose is to evade a serious, informed and rational conversation on the existing state of affairs, marked by the ineptitude of the present government in handling the situation. Not that the opposition is better equipped to decipher the many crises we confront. In any case, the antics of the PTI spokespersons take the cake.

Among the things that these detestable political wrangles have camouflaged is the suppression of the freedom of expression. Consider, for instance, the treatment that is meted out to someone who personifies the growth and the glory of independent media in this country.

Anyone familiar with the oppression of the media in Pakistan knows that arresting Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman for a property matter of 34 years ago was a mere excuse for going after the largest media group. The ignominy of all this is that MSR was taken into custody about 100 days ago and no case has yet been registered against him.

Such are the barriers to freedom of expression in this country that PTV censored part of the speech of parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar, an MNA from Fata, when he was speaking in parliament.

This week, a teacher of Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Prof Sajid Soomro, was arrested on charges of blasphemy. He teaches Sindhi language.

Also disturbing is the threat given by the leaders of a religious party to Dr Arfana Mallah, president of the Sindh University Teachers Association. She is a prominent social activist and a member of the Women’s Action Forum. One may sense, in this threat, the misogynistic mentality of bigots. Since Arfana Mallah is a campaigner for academic freedom and women’s empowerment, she has to be a thorn in the side of obscurantist elements.

Nearly 1,500 blasphemy cases have been registered in Pakistan between 1987 and 2017 and more than 75 people have been killed extra-judicially on blasphemy allegations, some of them after being acquitted by courts. There is the case of university teacher Junaid Hafeez, under arrest on blasphemy charges in Multan since 2014.

Let me quote a line from Yeats: “The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told.” Our society is littered with unshapely things, speaking in a poetic sense, and the rulers seem to have no remorse for fostering intolerance, religious extremism and bigotry.

On the other hand, they suppress progressive and liberal thought and remain eager to placate religious elements that have manifestly blocked social advancement and progress. There are religious leaders who have more clout than all the vice-chancellors of our universities combined.

The spread of Covid-19 has laid bare this inconsistency. There was a certain mindset that saw it as a conspiracy. There were others who scoffed at it, as if it did not pose a threat. One governor prescribed hot water so that the virus is killed in the stomach. Another suggested some herbs as a cure. One maulana, a very familiar face, was sure that hospitals were getting big money for every coronavirus death.

What is the message in the fact that they have been proven wrong? It is that we should be more rational and accept scientific truth. The protest in the US and other Western counties is an evidence of how the pandemic can incite reflection and change. It can be a learning curve for nations.

But our people have been conditioned to be irrational and biased and superstitious. I plead guilty to watching a clip of a programme on a religious channel in which the teacher is telling young boys that the earth does not rotate or move in an orbit and that it is static. I saw disbelief on the faces of those young boys but they had to nod.

We can laugh at these things but this is not a laughing matter. This is a large segment of Pakistan that our rulers seem to be happy with. This is how Pakistan is tottering on the wrong side of history.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com