Horse-Trading: Name of the Game in Pakistan
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
 

It’s crunch time for Imran Khan’s (IK) government in Pakistan. The combined ‘opposition’ to IK has already fired its salvo, in the form of the no-confidence motion in the National Assembly against IK as PM of the country.

Courtesy Bolan Voice

The man leading the opposition’s charge against Imran is Fazalur Rehman—a sworn enemy of his. This pseudo-religious leader has currently no office, except being the head honcho of an obscurantist religious outfit, JUI. He’s not a member of the Assembly, nor of the Senate, but carries a huge chip on his shoulder against IK who had the gall to call his bluff.

Incidentally, Fazal’s father, the Late Mufti Mehmood, was amongst those who earned notoriety in opposing the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Millat, Liaqat Ali Khan. The son, more than moving into the vacant shoes of his patriarch, is leaving no stone unturned to rally disparate political factions into a cohesive team to try dislodge a popularly–elected IK.

In the heat of the moment—and there’s a lot of heat to go around in the super-charged political ambience triggered by the move to unseat IK—the game of thrones is banking a lot on horse-trading.

Horse-trading isn’t something new, or novel, in the arcane political culture of Pakistan. There’s a long history to it—which could easily be something that’s so endemic and persistent in Pakistani politics.

Why is horse-trading such a persistent factor in Pakistani politics is a question easy to answer.

To the abiding dismay of anyone familiar with the core essence of democracy—in its classic sense, a system of governance of the people, for the people and by the people—the Pakistani version of democratic governance is skewed. Much against the universal sense of democracy being like a pyramid—with its base widely spread among the common men—the Pakistani pyramid is inverted. It stands on the slim base of feudals, those of landed-gentry, hogging the base, entirely.

The feudal social culture is steeped in privilege that transfers from generation to generation. It’s clannish and, as such, privilege remains entirely concentrated within the feudal clan and is not shared with the serfs, the lesser-mortals supposedly born to serve their feudal master, or masters.

This flawed sense of privilege being ancestral and non-transferable or non-sharable with the common man flies in the face of the classical definition of democracy.

To the legions of feudals hogging every national or provincial Assembly in Pakistan, since the passing away of the founding fathers of Pakistan within less than ten years of independence, politics is business, nothing else. They, the feudals—as well as those non-feudals sharing this archaic philosophy of limited privilege—think politics is the means to expand, proliferate and augment their business interests through the privileges that elected office bestows on them.

Horse-trading, in crunch times like the present one, is an ideal means to garner support amongst those who may be out of the ken of supporters. It has been practiced with impunity in the past and seems to be in full swing in this combined effort to dislodge a man, like IK, who doesn’t share the belief of politics being the ladder to reach the lard of privilege.

Since the opposition have thrown the gauntlet to IK, tales of horse-trading have multiplied exponentially. The rate being offered by the Zardaris and the Noonies (Nawaz League partisans and henchmen) to fence-sitters among the ruling PTI and its coalition partners to break rank with IK is said to be from 150 to 200 million Rupees. Which may force a layman to ponder where is all that money coming from to purchase loyalties?

The answer is not hard to come by. The Zardaris and the Noonies have billions of ill-begotten funds stashed away, not only within the country but also in safe havens abroad. In a moment of real need, like the current one, they can reach into their very deep pockets to dole some of it around. But knowing how political office of privilege and power works in Pakistan, 15 or 20 million invested in purchasing loyalties of ‘others’ is small change, and could be easily recouped once the ‘munificent’ purchaser gets back into power, to indulge into money-making, all over again.

The lid from the game of horse-trading has been blown off the top by none other than Pervez Ilahi—the younger of the twin Chaudhris of Gujrat, whose party, Muslim League (Q) is a coalition partner of the ruling PTI.

In an interview with HUM Television channel, Pervez made a clean breast of what had only been a rumor until he spilled the beans, himself, that he has been offered Premiership of the key province of Punjab, if only he would desert IK at this crunch moment. Pervez Ilahi is currently the Speaker of the Punjab Assembly but has long been known to have an appetite to lead the province, an office he held under the military rule of Pakistan’s last Bonaparte, General Pervez Musharraf.

Flaunting his indispensability to IK, in this crunch moment, Pervez, unabashedly, added that he would like his coalition partner, IK, to make a similar offer to him. He didn’t quite say if he had decided to accept the offer of IK’s nemeses to desert him in return for the lucrative job of Punjab’s CM. But his body language, during the interview, and his loaded innuendoes against IK having missed the bus suggested, in spades, that he wasn’t averse, at all, to throwing his hat into the opposition’s ring.

He isn’t the only one of IK’s coalition partners to openly flirt with the likes of Zardari, or Fazal or Shahbaz of Nawaz League. MQM, supposedly holding the banner aloft of the Urdu-speaking ‘Mohajirs’ of Karachi has, in the past few days, met with every leader of any substance among those arrayed against IK. The Baluchistan Awami Party (BAP) leaders, from the trouble-ridden province of Baluchistan, have, likewise, had no qualms in hobnobbing with IK’s adversaries.

These splinter coalition partners of IK in governance, saying, in their defense, that they are talking to the opposition stalwarts only to keep their options open. But ‘keeping-options-open' is just another name of blackmailing.

Morality isn’t a strong suit of politicians anywhere in the world. But in Pakistan this morality deficit has time and again been translated, by pedigreed politicians, into blackmailing and horse-trading, in order to jack up their market value. Horse-trading is a favorite bargaining counter, used with impunity and remorselessly, to whet appetite for power and pelf.

IK’s pronounced mission in politics, and governance, is to clean up Pakistan’s deeply tainted political culture. He hasn’t lost any of his zest or zeal to reach his target. But those arrayed against him are a people to whom politics is an endowment of power, to be used solely to feather their nest.

The no-confidence move by IK’s combined opposition is a watershed moment. Never has a Prime Minister in Pakistan been knocked off his perch through a no-confidence motion. This history is likely to repeat itself in the present instance, too, despite all the tall claims and bone-crunching rhetoric of the opposition stalwarts relentlessly baying for IK’s blood.

The remaining days, until the no-confidence motion is taken up in the National Assembly after March 23 and the OIC Foreign Ministers Conference (March 20 to 22) are going to throw up, for sure, many a theatrical performance like the one Pervez Ilahi has come up with. But it will be worth watching what IK does with his new lease of life once—as expected—he vanquishes his opponents and adversaries and comes on top.

One would only hope that, with decks cleared off the no-confidence debris, IK would go after the cabal of corrupt politicos with a rejuvenated vigor, worthy of his reputation. His puffed-up opponents, basking in the glow of cheap popularity, may not know what they have bargained for. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)