Pakistani comedy: latest offering

Islamabad diary
Long march successful or not, the fun has already started. Whether Zardari bonzes or Punjab stalwarts, it is no little comedy seeing them running scared and getting hoarse in the mouth as they allege plots against democracy.
Their confusion has to be applauded too. They can’t seem to make up their minds as to who might be behind Professor Dr Tahirul Qadri’s sudden sky-lab descent from the Canadian skies: the army, MI6, the CIA or, and I am stretching the point, the World Council of Churches.
The march may come to nothing, although we will have to reserve judgement on this score until it actually happens, but by causing the cesspool of Pakistani politics to shake a bit, Dr Qadri has already earned the nation’s gratitude. Pakistani democracy will survive Dr Qadri’s long march. But the complacency of the Pakistani leadership has been shaken. Isn’t that something to be welcomed?
Spare a thought for Punjab’s redeemers. They had barely recovered from the scare caused by Imran Khan’s rise and fall. Now this ticking time-bomb from a quarter they could scarcely have suspected.
There’s a personal angle to this as well, accounting perhaps for the rancour of the attacks on Dr Qadri’s person. Once upon a time in the golden past Dr Qadri used to deliver Friday lectures at the leadership-owned Ittefaq Mosque in Model Town. Now this sudden appearance of the Reverend Allama on the political scene and the Punjab stalwarts think it is aimed specifically at them...to thwart their bid for third-time national power. The frothing at the mouth of their desperate spokesmen...does anything else account for this excess of sentiment?
A bit of calm may be more in order. Aren’t the US and the UK democracies with elected governments? Yet weren’t million-person marches held there against the Iraq war? Tony Blair lied through his teeth about that war. American officials lied and Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, to his everlasting regret, made a fool of himself when he peddled the same lies before the UN Security Council. Most of the American and British media behaved no better than trained poodles but there were lonely voices which tried to expose the lies and made fun of President Bush and his circle of neo-conservative warriors. And huge anti-war marches were conducted.
But no one said democracy was being undermined or that the defunct KGB was behind the marches. And Bush was re-elected president for a second term. And the debate about the war went on.
Dr Qadri says he wants to change the system. Short of preaching treason he has a right to say what he pleases. But will his long march really bring about the change he is talking about? I don’t think so.... unless the army, using the march as a pretext, steps in and puts a pistol to the head of the Zardari government. True, in the conspiracy workshops of Islamabad there has been talk of interim setups for quite some time now. But the climate in and around Pakistan is not exactly conducive for this kind of workmanship.
It is a leisurely army, which is tempted by the prospect of hard or soft coups. An army engaged in tough, protracted warfare all along our western marches doesn’t answer to this description.
Sure it would like corruption and incompetence, now permanent features of national life, to abate. Captains and majors and colonels, and senior ranks too, can be as worried about the country as the rest of us. They can be forgiven for thinking that, while the armed forces are at war, the civilian leadership seems pretty relaxed about everything. Will it have escaped anyone’s attention that since our Taliban wars began not one national leader has thought it fit to visit the frontlines? (Such apathy would be considered criminal anywhere else...but let this pass.)
This adds up to disquiet but does this disquiet mean army intervention in the wake of Dr Qadri’s march? For what one man’s opinion is worth, I don’t think so. Times are different and the army is too stretched out.
So what are the political paladins scared of? They either know something we don’t, in which case they should communicate their concerns to the nation, or they are so convinced of their inadequacies, their shortcomings, that the first scene to occur which is not part of the standard script and they take fright.
Their opening weapon was ridicule. Belittle the professor, point out the contradictions of his past, and the bubble he was creating would burst. Momentarily, I think, the professor was put on the back foot, so heavy and concerted was the assault of the ridicule batteries. But he has recovered and, as of now, preparations are on for the march and those who thought that they had the future safely in their pockets are displaying all the signs we associate with nervousness, chief among them the tendency to protest too much. They are protesting too much about the professor and his motives.
The truth, I suspect, is less fanciful than all the talk of MI6 and the CIA would suggest. The people of Pakistan may be stuck with the political choices they have but these are dull, lack-lustre choices, tested and tried over the years, and no longer capable of inspiring anyone except time-servers and opportunists, and those for whom personal salvation lies in hanging on to the coattails of power.
When Imran Khan appeared to offer an alternative the young flocked to his banner. But his batteries gave out before they had run their full course. Now comes another figure speaking a different language and he may have done nothing else but he has set people talking – the commentariat certainly is talking nonstop – and he has caused a ripple effect, if nothing more, on the lifeless waters of the Pakistani political scene.
Movement is life, stagnation death – this being the core of Iqbal’s message – and anything that tends to movement, anything that shatters complacency, which causes a flutter among the dovecots, is to be welcomed.
One of the things I liked in the professor’s Dec 23 address: when the asar azaan sounded, from the ramparts of the Lahore Fort I think, and he was speaking, without breaking his stride he said, “I offered my prayers before coming here, you also would have said your prayers, the conversation will continue, the Shariat permits this.” Anyone who can bring himself to say this at a public meeting in Pakistan rises in my estimation.
He is a clergyman who defies the clergy, someone whose interpretation of the faith is refreshingly different from the usual run-of-the-mill orthodoxy constantly drummed into our ears. I think we need more of his kind in the Islamic Republic. It can be noted in passing that some of the sharpest attacks on him have come from clergymen like Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Stepping into their protected kingdom...that’s what the professor is doing.
His detractors, and there is no shortage of them, make much of episodes in his past – that he was with Musharraf, etc. Talk of pots calling the kettle black. Who in the political arena of today doesn’t have a past, and much more colourful than anything the professor can lay claim to?
Yes, elections on time, no derailing of the system even if it is pre-ordained that we’ll get the same champions, a prospect enough to dampen the stoutest heart. But why should a march, and a voluntary one at that, be considered hostile to democracy? Elections on time and something to puncture political pomposity – for a nation down in the dumps just the right mixture of medicine.
Tailpiece: And the winter skies are clearing up, some of the dense fog dissipating. Alarming thought: are the heavens too on the Allama’s side?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com