Old Wine, Still Older Bottles

The dust is not settled. The tremors from the Chief Justice’s case don’t seem to halt any time soon. Pakistan is moving from crisis to crisis, while the crisis is deeper than most people think it is. It was foolish to believe that one landmark decision can clear up a mess of ages. Today, we are at a point when no decision is the right decision. There are dangers everywhere. We have not many alternatives.

The history of the third world is replete with the kind of struggle we have in front of us. The task is difficult and there are fewer politicians to rise up to it. The institutions also don’t back the struggle; they instead stand in its way. It is in this context that a judge, sitting on the bench hearing petitions against president’s dual office said that the judiciary couldn’t make a lame duck into a lion. Nor can it do much when political parties are still trying to make compromises with the military regime, while common people are striving to feed their children.

Unfortunate as it may seem, the political parties had thrown their entire burden on the Judiciary. We have seen how conveniently Nawaz Sharif stayed out of the country for seven long years and only planned to come back when he thought the danger was over. He also came up with a new twist to his already mysterious tale and argued that there was a deal for five, and not for ten years. One can ask Nawaz Sharif that if it was, in fact, the case, why did he not try to come back home two years before? And why did he, in the first place, enter into such a deal? Do you run away in trying hour?

Similarly, Benazir Bhutto has chosen to come not before but after the Presidential election due to be held on the sixth of October. But if the partly has made the decision, why is there this delay? On the other hand, rather than coming to Pakistan, she is flying to US. It is through the lectures that she delivers there that the people of Pakistan come to know of how big of a political crisis there is in Pakistan, and how concerned Ms Bhutto is for the lives of all of us. She says that she fears a civil war and that she is coming to Pakistan to save it from chaos.

And come she will, only when all roads are clear, as she seems to have understood the Pakistani politics right. She can’t bring the people out on the street now. Back channel deals and secret negotiations are the only road to power, and that the US is the guarantor of such deals.

This apathy has even traveled to second tier leadership, which many hoped could play a positive role in politics if ever the era of life presidencies of political parties came to an end. The second tier, however, has failed miserably. They have not been able to mobilize people in the absence of their leaders for life. Indeed, a poor show was staged by APDM on the arrival of Nawaz Sharif. The manner in which many of these leaders presented them for arrest only confirmed that no genuine attempt was made to cross the barricades and reach the airport to greet Mr Sharif—not that he deserved it any way, after he accepted the reality of a deal he denied for seven years.

Why should the judiciary do it all? MMA still acts as a holy cow as if it never did anything wrong. It is they who welcomed Musharraf and cleared the way for him to stay in power for another five years and that too in uniform. Musharraf was good till the time the crumbs from the table were enough. Imran Khan also chanted slogan in favour of the general. No wonder his ideal is Mahathir Muhammad and his model for development.

If they all claim today that they fell to Musharraf’s rhetoric, they should immediately say good-bye to politics forever. If they could not see through it, and if they could not understand that the dynamics of military rule are essentially different from those of civilian rule, they should take a course in basic political science. And then, to top it all, they have made such sweeping statements as ‘the judiciary has become independent after 60 years,’ without realizing that such landmarks are not achieved in one day, or as a result of one judgment. It is not the job of the judiciary that you ruin the pitch and they come and level it for you, and you ruin it again.

No one can blame a general. He is not a rightful ruler. He does not have to have his roots in the people, nor does he have to be responsive to public sentiments. But for a political leader, it is crime if he can’t gather even a thousand people behind him. If the people of Pakistan don’t take to the streets, the politicians are themselves to blame for it. They have chosen for them politics of convenience and non-agitation, while their workers die during protests. Who will pay for the blood of 40 common citizens of Pakistan in Karachi and of those Pakistani soldiers who die every day as a result political unrest in the country?