Civilian Interlude

Source: The News

Friday, January 15, 2010

Harris Khalique

 

Pakistan oscillates between a military oligarchy and a civilian plutocracy. In the binary world of "either you are with us or you are against us", it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold an objective view and then not get branded either pro-establishment or pro-democracy by the hawks on the one side and apologists on the other. Depends how either party interprets the argument you are propounding and then rejects you for being misdirected, confused, disloyal to the country's interest, or even as pushing a narrow personal agenda. I, however, maintain that two people can't be right at the same time if they are presenting conflicting views but both of them can be wrong at the same time.

 

The mindset of the Pakistani establishment, prevalent in the military and civilian elite and large parts of the middle class alike, finds everything wrong with the incumbent president and wants him removed as soon as possible. Their impatience is evident from the way the media, intelligence agencies and segments within different factions of the PML and other smaller parties are single-mindedly pursuing the agenda of the president's removal from office. Even due credit is not given to the PPP-led coalition government. The NFC Award is a case in point. Although it is not comprehensive in terms of resolving outstanding resource distribution issues among the federating units, some credit must be given to the incumbent government for getting the agreement pulled along. The government has also been successful in creating a near-consensus on the army operation against the anti-state militants in the north-western parts of Pakistan. I am not so sure about the efficacy of the Balochistan package after going through its wishy-washy text but at least an effort is made which must be acknowledged.

 
On the other hand, we have people who have an answer to every question that you raise about the inability of the government to show us the path we need to tread, let alone immediately start being effective in delivering services to the people and ensure their constitutional entitlements. They ask you not to criticise any act of the president or the government because it would be detrimental to the survival of democracy and therefore the survival of the country. You can't talk about rampant corruption because one, terrorism is a bigger issue and two, who else is not corrupt. Undoubtedly, Benazir Bhutto is an undisputed martyr in our political history. But she as well as her opponents ran plutocratic governments in the 1990s. What an irony that those who now shamelessly sing the great socialist poets Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib in public meetings crushed trade unions in their own factories. Unlike different factions of the PML, Benazir's PPP did have a marginal representation of the underclass in its folds. Most voters of the PPP come from different tiers of working people but by design they only get to elect members of the idle rich class. The ANP has only letters in its acronym which may allow it to lay claims on the political past of its predecessor National Awami Party (NAP). The MQM refuses to change its coercive nature and the course of pressurising its constituents, partners and opponents alike even after being in the electoral mainstream for decades.

 

What we now see is a civilian interlude between martial rules. The military must never be allowed to intervene but at the same time, if new representative political forces of people from middle and working classes do not emerge, the idea of a federal democratic Pakistan will remain a distant dream.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaigner. Email: harris@spopk. org