The penultimate benchmark on this road, and one which can turn this impasse into a violent confrontation is the drawing into this fray of sectarian parties, like Ludhianvi’s supporters, and the JUI which, we are told, has started its march to Islamabad from Peshawar. If a clash is allowed to occur between these forces and the PAT and PTI protesters in Islamabad, it is difficult to predict its end.
So, in the near term, what was it that started us on this road to a potentially violent confrontation?
It is almost universally agreed that the last elections were rigged. Those who support the government also agree with this, but their position is that the rigging was not of a scale which would have made any material difference to the overall results.
Imran’s stand is that these elections were indeed massively rigged, and the present government is lording it over Pakistan on the basis of a stolen mandate; it is therefore illegitimate; and should therefore go.
He started asking for a recount on four seats, which none has denied was his right. In pursuance of this right he has knocked, without success, on every conceivable door for more than a year. The comparatively more candid elements in the government or its supporters do not deny this either. But here they hide behind a palpable untruth. They say it is not for the government to grant a recount, but that of the election tribunal to do so, and that this tribunal is independent of the government. Thus, the government cannot force its hand. This is a total out and out lie because [saving the army] there is no office in the land which is independent of the government. This is common knowledge. Denial of this fact may help in winning an argument but does little to alleviate hard reality.
Imran’s strategy seems clear enough. He would have liked to demonstrate election fraud in four cases, which would have led to calling into question the validity of the elections as a whole. It is for this reason that the government could not allow this recount. And by not allowing a very small, reasonable demand, in the public mind the government has been found guilty: “had the government nothing to hide, why did it not concede to a very small, legal, and reasonable demand!”
If for the sake of our country, we were all to break free of the pull that partisanship exercises on us, stop trying to win an argument, and admit this one fact, that the election tribunals or the provincial election commissions are entirely partisan and under the pernicious thumb of the government, all the rest will logically fall into place; that the police and the administration has been relegated to playing the role of personal servants of the government; that basically the government enjoys the freedom of functioning above the law and is entirely unaccountable; that unless it is put under immediate check, this situation can only get worse; and that very soon this government shall exercise such complete power that its displacement will not be possible through elections, but only by the ultimate unraveling of the state, towards which the unhindered accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a chosen few is inevitably leading us.
Today this is the main theme on which Imran is continuously harping. Like the messenger or not, I find it very difficult to disagree with his message.
In an earlier post I had quoted two definitions of democracy as: ” a system which is designed to hold the government accountable.” And as, ” a system which keeps plutocracy and oligarchy under check.”
One of these is by Noam Chomsky, and the other by Robert Fisk. I quote these from memory and cannot say if they were quoting a third person, or these definitions were their own formulations. But I can say that both are short, pithy, and logical enough to resonate with me. It is our misfortune that our government is fully resolved to making it a government of plutocrats with an entrenched oligarchy, which is increasingly taking itself beyond being held accountable.
Below I give my understanding of the benchmarks in our intermediate past which have led us to the present pass.
-Within three months of taking over, Musharraf started toying with the idea of riding to eternal political power on the shoulders of the Chaudharys of Gujrat. At that time NAB was about to start investigations into the fraud of the Cooperatives in which the role of the Chaudharys would be center stage, but Musharraf dubbed them holy cows. He then started adding more cows to this herd. Gen Amjad, a man who could not be bought, but could be frustrated into leaving, asked to be posted out of NAB. This basically spelled the end of accountability, and a beginning was made to validate corruption. This did not come about immediately because Gen G.A. was a strong check on Tariq Aziz who was trying to arrange this marriage of convenience. But then GA was tragically killed. The vacuum he left was filled by Tariq Aziz, and Musharraf landed in the lap of the Chaudharys.
-Musharraf found this lap extremely comfortable and decided to extend his stay there, in perpetuity. Towards this end he allowed the U.S to goad him into signing the NRO, the most notorious document in legal history which validated corruption in a country which was mortally afflicted by this disease. From accountability to the NRO was a U-turn so shamefully blatant that no similar incident in history can contend with it for infamy. What a change of direction–starting out for the arctic and ending up in Antarctica!
-This opened up the way for Zardari, the most egregious thief in our history, to take power. And around him he formed a most frightful galaxy of rogues to help him take the country beyond the point of no return. As Chief Justice, we got Ifitikhar Choudhary, who ran the apex court like a bull gone wild in a China shop, preaching probity while his son filled his pockets. As army chief we had Kiyani, who for six years stood guard for Zardari as he plundered the country, because the “brothers Karamazov” were being thrown their bits of crumbs which they eagerly lapped up. And for the leader of the opposition there was “friendly” Nawaz Sharif, the second biggest crook in the country.
-During Zardari’s tenure at the helm, the country underwent the biggest change of perceptions in the realm of morality. Corruption became the accepted mode of transaction in the country, so that it stopped being discussed. Thus, we lost the very consciousness of the disease which was killing us. And having lost this consciousness we also lost the quest for its cure and became eternally damned in the process. Whether Imran and Tahir ul Qadri succeed or fail in getting us out of this hole, reviving within us both the consciousness of the disease and its cure is something they will deserve our eternal credit for.
-During this period, in one of the many negotiations under the rubric of ” Charter of Democracy” Zardari and Nawaz Sharif met in a back room and decided our fate. They agreed on the the “system”. The system was understood as corruption being elevated to its rightful place in society, free from any form of interference from any direction, and the army was to be kept out of politics at all cost. With Kiyani being at the helm in the army this was easily done, so that even as the country was being hollowed out, Kiyani’s “democratic” vision could not see this massive corruption as a national security imperative of the first order–something that went towards ensuring that a state would be reached where economic collapse will make it unnecessary for enemy exertions on the field of battle to seal our doom.
-And finally, we have reached this state which allows our most eminent thieves to conflate themselves with democracy which they prefer to call ” the system.” And what this system is, is so easy for all to see. Every rogue who has to protect his ill-gotten wealth and needs immunity, wants to stay inside this “system”. While the one person whose record is clean and needs no such immunity is standing outside it and is demanding accountability. Indeed a “system” which requires the likes of Asif Zardari to come rushing in from Dubai to shore up its ramparts is an adequate commentary on its antecedents and its pedigree. He is here to make sure that Nawaz Sharif does not get into a tottering fit, because this may eventually lead to the parting of the thugs from their ill-gotten wealth. If it was not so tragic, hearing mournful pleas of support for “democracy” erupting from the likes of Fazal ur Rehman, Sherpao, Asfandyar, Altaf Hussain, Nawaz Sharif, and Zadari and their partners in crime, would be so comically pathetic.
What is not so comical is the new threat which looms–the marshaling of the forces of JUI and Ludhianvi in support of “democracy.”
Now there is absolutely no option left but for the army to act. And it must act BEFORE the first drop of blood is shed, and do so in concert with the Supreme Court, whether there is a provision for this in the constitution or not. If there is no action now, in a few weeks perhaps all references to the constitution will become irrelevant. The army must not commit the mistake of trying to rule the country even for a day. It must put in place an interim government, have it announce fresh elections, make certain that these are fairly held, and move back into the barracks. When a constitution has been so undermined by the government itself, that it only functions to perpetuate and protect entrenched interests, it sounds the death knell of the state. This is precisely what this constitution is doing now. Its provisions meant to vouchsafe public and national interests have been undermined by the government by totally subverting the levers through which its provisions find implementation–levers like the police, the judiciary, the election commissions, the bureaucracy etc etc.
This government has handed down a stark choice to the nation–either save the constitution in its present state, of which the parties sitting in the assemblies see themselves as a personification or save the state. It is truly ironic that an army which had cut itself off from all political interference, is now landed up with this choice to make. That this choice has been forced upon the country is an unforgivable sin committed by those hiding behind ” the system.” They must at long last be made to pay for this, and the last pernicious vestiges of the NRO must be finally excised from our body politic.