For some time now I have been reading Babar Sattar’s pieces, as they have landed on my P.C. He is fluent and logical. His style has grace of simplicity. Generally, he has written on democratic norms and practices and where they have been in danger of being traduced. And he has often striven to educate lay people on points of law and the constitution.
Last week someone forwarded me his article entitled: ” As a doctrine descends.”
In the latter half of this article he takes issue with Gen Bajwa’s take on the 18nth Amendment. So far so good. But he goes on to suggest through innuendo that the General’s unhappiness with this Amendment is probably based on more funds going to the provinces, which would leave less for the center, and this in turn will leave less for defense!
I’ve heard criticisms of the 18nth Amendment before, and have some myself. And these generally are the doing away of the right of parliamentary/democratic dissent; making the prime minister all powerful by taking away all meaningful powers of the president; the power to make school syllabi being given over to the provinces etc, and from a federation, converting Pakistan into a confederation. But never have I heard it being suggested by anyone that the defense establishment finds this Amendment hard to swallow because indirectly it somehow promises to impose cuts on the defense budget.
Thus I concluded that Mr Sattar, like some of us lesser mortals, was also prone to bouts of overheated imagination.
And so decided to revisit Mr Sattar’s earlier writings. I find all these having the following commonalities:
— I have never found him writing on the most burning issues of the times. For example the economic situation of the country should have drawn the attention of someone of his intellectual heft. One expected him to wonder about how Pakistan’s unprecedented internal debt has been accumulated, and especially how foreign debt contracted by the country in its first 65 years as a state, has been doubled in the last 4.5 years! Is there a relationship between this debt and bulging coffers of the country’s leaders, mostly stashed abroad? And what are the existential implications for our country going into default as a result etc etc?
But there is not word nor a whimper from Babar Sattar on the sheer enormity of the situation staring Pakistan in the face. A situation which has the potential of taking the country down!
–Not a word about the disenfranchised millions living in cities outside of the gated communities, who have a rich mix of refuse in the water they drink; who do not have enough food to eat; who have no schools and have no medical care; and whose only respite from the reality of life is to be able to gaze at the metros and clap their hands with glee!
–Yes, the man has often educated us on the intricacies of the law. But he has never touched upon those issues, even of the law, which the average Pakistani may want answers to. One would have liked to be enlightened by him on Qazi Faiz Isa threatening a lawyer with jail, should this lawyer persist on quoting a Supreme Court ruling/observation on the Hudaibiya case! And this in a country where lawyers plead their cases on the basis of legal precedence! We would have liked to be educated on how the government screwed up the Kalbushan Yadav case in the IJC and what should have been done to put that right. One would have liked to know how the ECP could have found the election of a proclaimed offender to the Senate to be lawful, and whether the prime minister ought to be cited as an abettor in Ishaq Dar’s absconding from the country in the P.M’s personal plane. Even on the legal plane, it seems, Babar Sattar has avoided agitating the real issues.
But when he has been pleased to comment on legal niceties, the dangers being encountered by democracy, or threats to the constitution, I find his methodology most disingenuous. His basic argument is posited mostly on a theory. This theory may be legal, social, or democratic etc.
But then he often proceeds from there to an unwarranted presumption that the subject theory is not just a theory, but is an operating reality. The moment he has made this switch, verbal legerdemain is in play and he has taken the unwary reader for a ride.
For example it will go something like this: this is a democracy, and in a democracy such and such a thing is against the norms, or is illegal etc.
In this example the theory of democracy is confused with its operative actuality. The operative actuality is that this is not a democracy. A democracy cannot be rooted in a “return on investment” system in which a potential legislator is willing to spend ten crore rupees in order to win, and then make a hundred crores from this investment. Such a system must assume that the government is not to be held to account. And from a system which is grounded in such an assumption, no democracy can sprout. Not now. Not ever. And from a government which is not expected to be accountable, to expect good governance, is much the same as expecting swine to lay eggs.
But our intellectuals, like Babar Sattar, among others in this haloed fraternity, must continue to call a system which is basically fraudulent, promising fraud in its wake, a democracy!
And then I question myself and ask, why will Babar Sattar not take on the most burning issues of our time; nor why will he not expatiate on the culpability or otherwise of our prime minister from arranging the escape from our shores, of a crook of Ishaq Dar’s notorious ilk? The answer to me is painfully clear i.e the man has far too much intellect to leave space for any conscience or guts to hold up even the tiniest of mirrors to the government. Thus I have yet to read a piece by him where he has held this most notorious of governments to account.
When I have time, I must look up two aspects of his litigation/legal practice:
- Where lies the reality in what is supposed to come to us in his forays into public interest litigation? I have a suspicion that in his case this will turn out to be a front for self-projection. I can almost touch and feel a masquerade here.
- And I want to know the briefs he holds. Again, it is my suspicion that he must be getting some of his fattest fees from cases thrown in his lap by the most thoroughly corrupt government in our history. I have begun to believe this must be the reason why the most momentous issues of our times escape his scrutiny.
I smell a mercenary here, but shall withhold that label, till I can get some verifiable information on his briefs.
In his more recent articles, he seems to be arching to have his name being etched among the sorry “intellectual” martyrs of the land. He appears to be straining towards speaking truth to power. Among the two favourite institutions his masters pummel, he excuses himself where the judiciary is concerned. He artfully skirts around the sensitive judicial toes. Obviously he knows where his toast is buttered. He thus strains to take on the “establishment”. But his strain is muffled in innuendo. He desperately wants to hit at the Chief of the Army, but goes no further than calling him a gamekeeper.
In a sorry assortment of sold and suffering people among whom we can count only Chaudhary Nisar, Farhatullah Babur, and Raza Rabbani as the heroes of our suppurating “democracy”– heroes who made periodic promises of standing up, but always slunk back into their supine postures, not having the courage to speak a word against the thieving masters they served, Babar Sattar was just the young hero our youth needed!
Here is a man promising to electrify his generation with the gift of unvarnished truth, but the furthest his flight takes him to is an innuendo! The only truth this physically and morally emaciated exemplar of probity can utter, he will so utter, from behind the protective bulwark of plausible deniability!
What an elevated position to truth, has its young and energetic champion allocated to it !
What a great example of wasted intellect, morality, and courage he is to the youth of this nation! What a great gift he is to us from Harvard!