The heading of this piece is the title of a poem written in 1667 by Andrew Marwell, during the reign of Charles the Second of England.
The poem is a severe indictment of the courtiers of the King, and that of the King himself for their corruption and reckless excesses which led to England’s defeat in the Anglo-Dutch war of 1667.
The most distressing part of the poem lies towards its end when Marwell sees England [in the guise of a woman in a state of utter dishevelment], come to see the King, to beg him to restore to her [i.e to the realm] its fortunes.
And the King, instead of taking pity on her, rapes her. And the poet suggests that it was the very distress of the woman [i.e England] which caused the King’s arousal leading to her violation!
For decades now Pakistan has been suffering the same fate as the woman in Marwell’s poem. Rulers have come and gone, each one leaving the country in a state worse than what he inherited, with the personal purse of each fattened by what he had stolen from the realm, with each advancing the destitution of its people.
And the people, the more they were devastated, invested the alternating rulers on the throne, with ever greater hopes that their lot would be improved by them.
But the leaders, aroused by the very state of distress of the people, subjected the realm to ever pitiless rape.
And we have now reached a stage where the state has been completely overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, weight, and commitment to criminality of the “leaders” who now define the state.
The state itself is like a person who does not know how to swim, drowning in the midst of an ocean, with his arms flailing about.
Those who have it in their power to save the state cannot seem to make up their minds, what it is they want to save, the state or the constitution, for the one stands squarely against the other. The constitution, which is supposed to protect the interests of the people against the state, protects instead the very people who are violating the rights and interests of the people, and thus the core ingredient of the state. The rulers, whether they be on the treasury benches, or in the opposition have in evil partnership, so hollowed out the coffers of the state, that it has now been made ready for the kill. Whether the fatal blow is launched from the east or from the west, the writing can be seen on the wall by all except by those who are willfully blind.
The Supreme Court is doing its best to salvage the life of the state, but it is falling woefully short, because every institution which is supposed to be standing with the Court, has been so criminalized by the despoilers of the state, that it is standing against the Court and the state. It should be clearly seen by the Court that as things stand now, the state is virtually ungovernable. Anarchy is a mere short step away, with the largest political party of the country, using the resources of the very state it seeks to undermine, egging on its cohorts to challenge the Court and the Army–the only institutions standing by the state.
The only institution standing by the Court is the army. Thus it is for the Court to make the Army matter. If it can invoke the relevant article of the constitution to use the Army towards carrying out all its decrees, orders, and directions, none of the other institutions which are now standing against the state and the Court will matter any more. They will be nullified. And without this nullification the state cannot be resuscitated.
By now it must be more than adequately clear to the Court that the central motivation of the rulers on both sides of the aisle is self-aggrandizement and immunity from accountability. This also means self-perpetuation in power.
Towards this end they have destroyed the bureaucracy, the police, and related institutions of accountability, and mangled the constitution. The “elite” of the nation has either succumbed to the “system” or willfully joined it. And this rotten suppurating “system” as a whole is being passed off as “democracy”.
And we have a political leader now declaiming daily, at the top of his voice, that the one who has the mandate, is above the law!
If the Court and the Army come to the conclusion that this country is worth saving, they will have to conclude also that this cannot now be done by any half measures.
They will have to conclude that corruption in high places is where the most lethal national malaise is born and nourished. They will have to strike an equally lethal blow against it. They will have to begin by putting all those against whom prima facie evidence of corruption exists, on ECL. They should try them on the charge of having assets beyond their means, so that the onus of proof shifts to the thieves to prove their innocence. This makes the process of investigations and prosecution much easier.
The conduct of the judge, the investigator, and the prosecutor in such trials must be under strict scrutiny.
The blow to fall on the corrupt of the land should be so telling, that fear of consequences should finally come in to take the place of the certainty of immunity which every top thief of the country now seems to be drawing comfort from.
The accompanying aim of these trials should be to get back stolen wealth of the nation. Without having our national coffers full again, the demands of national security cannot be met. Because national elections cannot be held before first demarcating the constituencies pursuant to the last census, there will be a long enough period for the interim government to bring to trial the worst offenders against the state.
This interim government must pass an ordinance to the effect that no one who is indicted for corruption may fight elections unless cleared and found innocent.
Only about two thousand people will eventually have to be tried. And trials should begin “from the top” and percolate downwards.
This therefore is a case of two thousand versus twenty-two crores who constitute both the nation and the state.
And it is now for the judges and the generals to decide where they stand. The choice is a stark one. There is no middle here. They can either choose to be heroes or join the ignominious ranks of those who quailed when the bell of ultimate duty to their state tolled.
They are the only two institutions that have the POWER to make this choice.
Times today are much worse than they were in 1971. For then we still had a West Pakistan. And now when the West is under mortal threat, there will be nothing left to fall back on, when this too is under water.
Thus, it is for about two hundred people [ the senior judges and the generals] to decide if the two thousand will continue the rape of the twenty two crores, or will a coitus interruptus mercifully be enforced, and the rapists be tried, hung, and quartered.
There is no Andrew Marwell here, but his plea for the realm where injustice and misgovernance rules the roost is ageless. The question is whether those to whom these cries are directed, are willing to hear them.