By
Ayaz Amir in The News
If this system, as we like to call it, falls apart, let the blame not rest on General Headquarters (GHQ), the inner sanctum from which have flown over the years the sum of so many of our national follies. The blame will have to be shouldered, in differing proportions naturally, by the political class, or rather its leaders, who with each passing day are showing in ample measure that the challenges facing this luckless nation are simply beyond them.
Lucklesshow else should one designate the Islamic Republic, to the bright-eyed an impregnable fortress of Islam, high on fantasy and hype but, alas, somewhat low on what is generally understood by achievement?
If Zardari, the national Demosthenes who cant get a word right when he speaks in public, were the only problem we faced there wouldnt be much to cry about. But throw a wearisome eye around the political arena and occupying the choicest seats MQM, Maulana Fazlur Rehmans JUI, a startling collection of orators in the PPP itself is a cast of characters who would make the Lucky Irani Circus (I can think of no other comparison) look like a solemn gathering of the Church of Rome.
As if the antics emanating from the ruling coalition were not enough Maulana Fazlur Rehman trying out a new line of indignation and making the prime minister his principal target, for reasons too irrelevant to enumerate here, and the MQM Fuehrer, Altaf Hussain, blowing hot and cold (we must have done something to deserve him and his alarming talent for amazing histrionics) we have the bemusing spectacle of the PML-N and the MQM engaged in an exchange of public insults that in this winter of multiple shortages we could have done without.
Although my friend Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan could have avoided saying a few things his tone at least was measured. But the response from the MQMs Haider Abbas Rizvi and Waseem Akhtar was totally unrestrained. They said things of which a schoolboy with his senses about him would have felt ashamed. And they were frothing at the mouth, playing not so much to any kind of gallery at home but to their distant leader in London. They simply went too far, and this from the supposed legatees of the Urdu civilisation of Central India.
Whats happened to the art of the elegant insult? Churchill saying of Attlee that he was a modest man and had much to be modest aboutDisraeli asked about the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe and explaining that if Mr Gladstone (his great political rival) were to fall into the water and be in danger of drowning that would be a disaster, but if someone were to pull him out that would be a catastrophe.
Or Noor Jahan being told that Sardar Muhammad Iqbal, once-upon-a-time chief justice of the Lahore High Court, spoke very well baatein bohut achi karte hain saying that, yes, he spoke very wellsaari raat baatein hee karte rahtay hainthroughout the night he only speaks, said with a half-smile on her face, no doubt on the basis of experience. It cant get more subtle than this.
In the context of Pakistan, Churchillian or Disraelian analogies are perhaps far-fetched. We are a nation of orators and poets. When we have to say something we declaim and hold others by the collar to grab and preserve their attention. Conversation as such is not a sub-continental talent declamation is. Even so, politics, a grim business most of the time, can do with a bit of humour and sarcasm. There is no insult imaginable, right down to questioning someones parentage or casting aspersions on his manhood, which cannot be conveyed given the right use of words.
The MQM resides in a claustrophobic world of its own. Engaging it as if it were an equal, which it is not, is hardly a mark of wisdom. The PML-N is a national party, twice having led the country, and waiting in the wings to lead it once more. If a further response from its side is called for, it should be dismissive and, with luck, withering. There the matter should rest. The PML-N does itself no service by stooping to the MQMs level.
As interior minister, Gen Naseerullah Babar did not bandy words with the MQM. When things got out of hand in Karachi in mid-1995 he started an operation which ended by breaking the MQMs back. It was Musharraf whom Gen Wahid Kakar as army chief used to call my MQM general who helped the MQM back on its feet. In exchange for the MQMs unqualified and indeed blind support the keys of Karachi, so to speak, were handed over to the MQM. It was not the MQM which crushed Afaq Ahmeds Haqiqi. The Haqiqis were quarantined and the threat they posed to Altaf snuffed out by the armys intelligence agencies.
There is a time for action and a time for words. The ANP is playing a far shrewder game, fighting a turf battle in Karachi with the MQM, using much the same methods as the MQM has perfected over the years. The PML-N should be concentrating on building its own base in Karachi. The time for words will come later.
The present, it hardly needs saying, is a very critical time. The PPP government at the centre has arrived at the last stages of exhaustion. Zardari, the kingpin of the present order, has no further tricks up his sleeve. Trying to mollify Maulana Fazlur Rehman or further molly-coddle the MQM is not even funny any more. Governance is at a standstill, the economic situation threatening, with no miracles in sight. This is not power, or any remote exercise of itthis is merely hanging on to power, grimly and with the skin of ones teeth, in lieu of a better, or more workable, alternative.
Pundits and political observers are trying to find a rational explanation for the goings-on on the national scene. But there is no rational explanation for these seemingly disconnected events. The political class is performing to no set score composed by a higher authority. For the most part unwittingly, it finds itself caught in a danse macabre, dance of death, in which the end result, as far as mortal eye can make out, is not the consolidation of the present order but its steady dissipation.
It has all happened very quickly, in fast-forward motion: the rumblings from the Haj scandal; the public spat between Haj minister, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, and Maulana Fazlur Rehmans nominee and wealthy sponsor, Azam Swati; their sacking from the cabinet; the JUI-Fs departure from the federal cabinet; and the Maulanas assault on Prime Minister Gilani, asking for his head from President Zardari. And on the edges of these gathering storm clouds, the exchange of insults between the PML-N and the MQM,
the MQM the clear winner of the vulgarity prize on offer.
It is not so much a question of numbers as of a demystification of the political order. The political process no longer is in anyones control, not even in that of our temple of last resort, GHQ and its supposedly subordinate agencies, the fount of so many of our national sorrows. We are adrift on the tide of events, with no hand on the rudder and both Zardari and Gilani etching their names in history as the most helpless of that long line of tribunes who took it in turns to screw what could have been a fairly worthy enterprise.
The great danger, or call it the great temptation, in this increasingly fluid situation is for the revival of the saviour complex in the army, a sentiment which has already brought the country to grief four times. Appearances may suggest otherwise, to support PM Gilanis oft-repeated assertion that the army, and its current chief, will never intervene. But appearances are of small comfort when the pilots on deck are no good and the way ahead is dangerous.
Whats to be done?asked Lenin in a famous essay. He gave the answer and, when the time came, acted upon it. There is no Lenin around and not too many people even asking this question. But Allah being on our side, let us hope for a happy conclusion.
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