No one was listening

I’m grateful to my friend Fakir Ayaz for drawing my attention to the famous saying of Andre Gide (1869) that, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

I for one have written and lectured about our constitution, how flawed it is and how it needs change. So I will do it once more because it is the need of the times.

The Almighty has enjoined us to “Choose our leaders from amongst ourselves” (meaning from within the Muslim ummah) and to, “Choose from amongst the best.” That’s aptly said but has hardly ever been followed because of Western interests. Instead of obeying Allah, we opted for the British colonial political system. That system may be good for Britain (though I doubt it, with them choosing leaders like Tony Blair and Boris Johnson with a few idiots in between.)

As to the United States, which also follows electoral ‘democracy’ after a fashion, their system ends up putting a God help us like Donald Trump into the White House. Now as a reaction, they’ve elected a fuddy-duddy who frankly doesn’t know whether he is coming or going. This portends badly not only for the US but for the rest of the world. In fact, both the parliamentary and presidential systems are bringing their respective countries to their knees. I doubt if one will live long enough to see the outcome, but it’s about time we in Pakistan and the Third World in general put our systems in democratic order.

‘Choose from amongst the best’ is the operative phrase. How do you decide who is from amongst the best? For that you need ‘ijma’ or consensus. We have to look at the methodology. We already have the qualification and the disqualification articles in our constitution but they are not applied properly. One should apply them in time – before a candidate is cleared to contest an election. That candidate will have to first pass the qualification and disqualification tests.

We can decide who will comprise the committee which allows them to contest elections. Anyone with a tainted past or even serious allegations should not be allowed to contest. Sounds uncomfortably like Iran but it isn’t. There it is a council of mullahs that decides. Here it will be a couple of mullahs on the committee representing the two major sects. In any case, the other non-mullahs on the committee would easily balance off the mullahs. If somebody has a better idea, I would welcome it. And whether our system is parliamentary or presidential, this rule should apply.

We should now also desist from allowing a candidate from contesting from numerous constituencies at the same time because the leader of the party is afraid of losing the election. This just causes confusion and is unfair in the extreme. That our system is nearing collapse was evident by the rumpus caused in parliament a few weeks ago. As too in the Balochistan Assembly before the provincial budget was presented. They were both the most unedifying sights.

I was watching it on television, and I told my daughter who was passing by to come and watch democracy in action. The kind of abusive language that was being used one cannot even hear in a red-light area – that is what we’ve reduced parliament to. If you can live with it, I would say, “Welcome to Democracy” but people like me cannot tolerate it.

There is much more that needs to be repeated, like Imran Khan needs a better team. But what can the poor chap do when he is constrained to pick his team from amongst parliament, which is from amongst the worst? And these people on his team are his greatest weakness. They will pounce on anything, twist it and use it against the government.

He is already winning his battle against the FATF, but I am constrained to ask as a citizen of an independent and sovereign country, who the hell are these people to tell us to pass their test before they can accept us as normal human beings and do business with us?

I think we should also make a test like this for countries that suffer from Islamophobia, racism and unleash hegemonic wars and kill thousands of people with one bomb. And they sit there acting holier than thou and lecturing us that we have not done enough to stop terror financing and money laundering.

Who invented money laundering? They did. If we didn’t have their banks and institutions and tax havens, it would be very difficult to launder money and once laundered, if they did not allow it to be parked in their countries, where would it go? They harbor our criminals and will not give them up to us. And they expect us to respect them and believe them.

They are the worst criminals because they camouflage their criminality in various ‘democratic’ constructs, like freedom of expression and in Nawaz Sharif’s case, freedom to escape punishment. Just count the number of our criminals that they are harbouring and then of other countries, and you’ll get my drift. God protect us from this false democracy that is twisted to serve the purposes of the hegemon.

The writer is a veteran journalist, political analyst and author.

Email: humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com