Losing the script

Pakistan is shrouded in multiple crises with each day seeing the dawn of more grievous ones with painful monotony. If ever we had a script to go by, it seems to have been lost. A new and more audacious one that some are trying to replace it with has proved to be nothing more than stillborn adventurism.

From the initiation of the move to remove Khan as the prime minister and institution of over 180 fake, frivolous and fraudulent cases against him, to the induction of a bunch of criminals to run riot and escape the clutches of law, to the caretaker government, concerned with little caretaking, with eyes on a prolonged stay at the helm – it has been a sequence of mindboggling experimentation to cover up the innumerable wrongs of an ill-conceived agenda-driven malfunction which has caused grievous damage to the state and its institutions.

President Alvi’s tweet regarding not having signed the Official Secrets (Amendment) Bill and Pakistan Army (Amendment) Bill and having instructed his staff to return the bills unsigned “within the stipulated time to make them ineffective”, but his staff having undermined his will and command, has raised a constitutional storm, and underpinned a malaise that runs deeper than one had imagined. While acknowledging that the bills had been returned unsigned, the government wrongfully invoked the ‘deemed to have been approved’ clause to turn them into law and issue a gazette notification to the effect.

President Alvi has moved on to relieve his principal secretary, Waqar Ahmad, of his charge who has scribbled his own defence in the matter, requesting the president to withdraw the letter regarding “surrendering his services to the Establishment Division”.

Invoking the clause regarding presidential assent ‘deemed to have been given’ is both malicious and mala fide. This clause is relevant only when, after the president has returned a bill unsigned for reconsideration of the house upon its first submission for assent, and the same has been passed again by a joint session of parliament that such assent, if not granted, will be ‘deemed to have been given’ after the passage of ten days.

The two bills were sent to the president for approval for the first time on August 2 and August 8. He instructed his staff to send them back unsigned within the stipulated time frame. The bills were never received by the president a second time as required in article 75 of the constitution as the national assembly had been dissolved on August 9.

But the powers that be, in violation of the relevant provision of the constitution, proceeded to wrongfully invoke a clause that did not apply in the matter and declare that the bills had become laws. Quite obviously, there has been an uproar of protest, and the matter is likely to end up in the court of law. In fact, a petition challenging the validity of the bills has already been moved in the apex court.

Disturbing news has filtered out of the Presidency since the incident. Understandably, this has caused deep consternation among those responsible for this malicious act and remedial steps are being put in place to avert a crisis and a possible reversal of a single person- and party-specific enactments which bury constitutionalism, democracy, and morality under mounds of debris.

Such desperation and patently wrongful interjections only prove that the script has been lost which has generated a deep sense of foreboding. The perpetrators are visibly struggling but are not able to find a platform to stand on. That is why they are now resorting to engineering fictional alibis to push their project forward.

But this too will soon unravel, thus taking away the last straw of hope which they may still be clinging to. A script that is enacted in the hate of people does not usually make a successful play as the existent one is also proving. While it never has enough substance to sustain a credible story, it also suffers from narrative and production hiccups which turn into incurable cancerous growths.

I am wondering whether the people I write this about are abreast of the consequences of their deeds and whether they have the ability and capacity to ponder, take in a deep breath and think dispassionately about the disaster they are wreaking? While I am not a pessimist, I must concede that I am beginning to lose hope. The severity and ferociousness with which this disastrous project is being pursued and pushed beyond the realm of reason and logic make for an utterly scary sight. Is there no coming back from the brink that we seem to be perched at, staring into the deep and dark beyond?

Like I said I am not the one to lose hope. During the treatment I underwent for my cancer, I learnt the art of holding on to the last vestige of promise. That is what my doctors wanted me to do, and, in the end, it proved to be a key ingredient of my ultimate recovery. I survived the nightmare. But I have carried this trait into the life I have lived since. Despite seeing my country slide inexorably into disaster, I refuse to lose hope. It has become an undying ingredient of my person and I cling to it even in the most hopeless of times as we are enduring at this juncture. In such times, I always borrow of Faiz sahib:

“The dawn of the sorrowful and the stricken/ Does not appear in the skies. Where we stand, you and I,/ A bright horizon shall emerge from here. Here shall unfold the sparks of sorrow,/ Like an oasis of morning glow.

And here the axes of murderous inflictions/ Lined up in multiple neat rows, Shall become the fiery garlands of light.” Let me recount what I have been saying of late. We have to banish the demons of hate and spite and embrace the culture of dialogue. Infallibility not being a known feature of human personality, let’s all concede that we have made mistakes and try to create some common ground to start from. I am sure that, given meaningfulness of purpose, such common ground can be found. It is not a war we are fighting. The country that we belong to calls us to back off and tread the path of sanity.

After all, it is not such a difficult proposition. It is within our grasp - only if we cross over the river of hate and animus that separates us. Let it be the script of hate that we have lost. Let it be a script of sanity and understanding that we write together.

The writer is the information secretary of the PTI, and a

fellow at King’s College London. He tweets @RaoofHasan