“It’s My Turn to Eat”
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg . CA
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation”. James Freeman Clarke
The title of the article is borrowed from John Githongo’s book, but with a little tinkering, replacing “our” with “my”. The book is about a Kenyan Whistleblower. The Economist of February 28, 2009 gives a snapshot of this book under the title, “How to ruin a country”. Both the captions (‘It’s our turn to eat’, and ‘How to ruin a country’) graphically stick to Pakistan as well. John Githongo in this book tells “how an entire country can be munched in the clammy claws of corruption. It is also a devastating account of how corruption and tribalism - the author prefers the grander term ethno-nationalism - reinforce each other, as clannish elites exploit collective feelings of jealousy or superiority in an effort to ensure that their lot wins a fat, or the fattest, share of the cake”. And hence the title: “It’s our turn to eat”.
The interesting part is that Mr. Githongo himself had been one of the closest colleagues of the Kenyan President Mwai Kigbaki. He blew the whistle on the president after he discovered that “the president acquiesces in corruption of the grossest kind”. Tribal, clannish, and elitist affiliations, corruption and the Divine right to rule, tore apart Kenya as never before.
Is Pakistan’s story any different? Political parties in Pakistan by any definition are like the tribes and clans of Kenya, nor are they any different from the tribes of Baluchistan and Frontier province; sort of personal estates and fiefdoms of their respective leaders, who and their progeny lead them always, often in person, and sometimes in absentia. So call them political parties, but “What’s is in a name! A rose by any other name is a rose”, Shakespeare.
The saying is that not to know is bad, but not to wish to know is worse. President Zardari and his coteries just do not wish to know how critical the patient, Pakistan is. Otherwise he would not have invited the crisis he is embroiled in by imposing a governor’s rule in Punjab and by engineering a verdict against the Sharif brothers from a court that is boycotted even by the lawyers that facilitate it in reaching any verdict. The words of President Roosevelt uttered in 1932 could mean a lot to President Zardari, “The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics”. And Bill Cosby perhaps said this thing for the current PPP government, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody”. Packing the courts and the cabinet with “Jialas”, has become a perfect recipe for PPP’s disastrous rule. The Wall Street Journal of February 27, 2009 sounds correct in its estimation of Mr. Zardari’s government. “Mr. Zardari has surrounded himself with a small cadre of advisers, many of them unelected, including family members and associates whom Mr. Zardari got to know while in jail or in exile, leaving even government officials unsure of who runs what”. Add to all this mess his intemperate language. Thus the words of Mr. Farhatullah Babar sound so empty when he says, “Mr. Zardari is seeking to bring the best people into Pakistan’s government”.
As if the verdict of the Supreme Court had been any less controversial and less lethal, that President Zardari chose to replace a democratically elected provincial government with a governor rule in a comparatively well-managed largest province of the country. More than half the population of the country lives in Punjab. Thus he through sheer ineptness upgraded the situation from what was already worse into worst. According to the Economist of March 7, 2009, “With Mr. Zardari in the driving seat and his judges winning, Mr. Sharif’s supporters have taken to the streets. While the two leaders have fiddled over who sits on the judges’ benches, the flames threatening to engulf Pakistan have been rising”. Pakistan is being equated with Somalia, Sudan, Kenya and Nigeria, and the comparison does not sound very far-fetched.
The problem confronting Pakistan is thus two-fold. Pakistan really is caught between the proverbial devil and the deep sea. To borrow Oppenheimer’s (the father of nuclear bomb/technology), analogy which he used in order to explain the rat-race about the nuclear build-up between America and the Soviet Union in 1953, “We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life”. If President Zardari had been bad, then Mian Nawaz Sharif had not been an angel either. A good doctor does not care about the cholesterol count when the patient is at the death bed. What use it would be if the patient, Pakistan, had been dead for a decade that they, the politicians, reach a consensus about who should head the apex court. They are repeating their mistakes of the 90’s with a vengeance. One reason, the medicine of “Reconciliation”, about which both the rivals chirped so much, did not work was because it was never used wholeheartedly and in complete sincerity. Chronic mistrust had never let their hearts beat in rhythm.
Pakistan is trapped in a situation in which Japan was caught in 1945 and Iraq in 1991 and 2003. If America had spared Japan in 1945, the Soviet Union would not have. Its invasion and destruction had been sealed. Same was true of Iraq. Can Pakistan avoid this writing on the wall? I don’t even wish to speculate because the whole scenario is terribly scary. Even if spared by America, its two neighborly hyenas, one in the North and one in the East would not let go so easily their share of the left-over. The indigenous implosion perpetrated on Pakistan by the terrorists and extremists that is impacting Pakistan from within is far fatal in its consequences than the thunderous sounds of the impending storm around its borders.
It is the height of government’s incompetence that 12 terrorists come riding on motor bikes from nowhere in Lahore; commit acts of terrorism in a very composed and calculated manner for 25 minutes, and then fizzle out in the air. And not a single one of them got shot, wounded, killed or arrested. The government and its unimpressive interior minister, along with those dealing with the security, keep retaining their portfolios. My recent visit to Lahore in January, 2009 tells me that being the most crowded city in Pakistan, it is a matter of routine to get stranded in traffic jams any time of the day. A Corps Commander sits there. Almost every citizen carries a cellular phone. Where were the Gujars and Butts of Lahore during those 25 minutes when Lahore stood virtually handed-over to a dozen terrorists? Please do not tell me that the Lahorites do not possess any arms. They fire more bullets on the circumcision of their newly born, on Basant and in matrimonial gatherings, than soldiers fire in actual war situations. The terrorists killed those foot-constables who came in front of their bullets. The watchmen employed to guard the banks and shops did carry guns which in most cases were either fake or dysfunctional. Should we then believe those who have begun whispering that it was all arranged by the government with a view to pacifying the Indian anger. Or should we now stop believing in a government that is good at cracking down at the country’s lawyers, but chickens out when it comes to dealing with the hard-core terrorists and extremists.
The way it let Swat, the “Alpine week-end getaway”, slip into their hands, or the way it handled the insurgencies in FATA and North and South Waziristan substantiate the point in view. Someone asked Dr. Dale, the famous chaplain, “Do you pray for the Senators?” “No, I look at the Senators and pray for the country”. BBC, in its March 11, 2009 Q&A: Pakistan’s political instability rightly says, “In recent years, militant sanctuaries in the tribal areas have gradually spread across government territory in the north-west where they have established their own system of justice and revenue collection…but the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team by militants in Lahore in March 2009 showed just how powerful the militants have become - and how weak and poorly prepared are the authorities”.
The latest gaffe of Sufi Muhammad with whom the government has struck a peace deal is, “A Qazi’s status would be higher than that of a Judge… there is no need of lawyers in a Qazi court”. “Only he deserves power who every day justifies it”, said Dag Hammarskjold in 1951.
Michael Bakunin in “God and the State” in 1882 aptly said, “There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the route of the wine shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution”. Chances of bringing about a social revolution by the lawyers’ movement and by the civil society under the impact of the political instability and in the wake of the conniving and crafty nature of the current PPP leadership, with the passage of each day are becoming dimmer. The other two options (wine-shop and church symbolically) have already gained enough ground. Utter wretchedness and helplessness has turned the people of Pakistan more cynical, and in desperation more religious than they ever were in the past decades. Drinking and party-making are also equally on the rise as one can witness in social gatherings in any farm-house or on a Basant festival. “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die”, so said Khayyam.
“These are the times that try men’s souls”, said Thomas Paine in 1777 when America was fighting its war of independence. But not so in Pakistan. Nobody’s soul is under trial here. Maulana Rumi explains why. He says that when you hit a dog with a stone, the dog does not run after the stone that had hurt him. The dog knows that the stone is helpless. It cannot act on its own. He knows that the stone has just been used as a tool. He runs after the man who had thrown the stone. Our politicians do not possess even this much commonsense. They have not been able to diagnose as to what actually is the main cause of Pakistan’s ailment: religious fanaticism, extremism and Jihadism, or lack of justice, merit, education, bad governance and corruption. For them, it is America, but not American dollars. The country is in a virtual state of conflagration; it is burning. And they are fighting over their share of the pie in power. President Woodrow Wilson once in a speech in 1912 said, “The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open space”. Pakistan also needs some fresh air of tolerance, some fresh ideas, and not mere, what is called, “Chutr Chalaki”
Pakistan is back to square one… “Just like the bad old days”, says The Economist, February 28, 2009. “The two big mainstream parties are at each other’s throats again… Pakistanis! Rise and revolt!” said Mian Nawaz Sharif after he and his brother were declared disqualified from holding any public office by the Supreme Court on February 25. Mian Nawaz Sharif, against all expectations, did not act as gracefully as he should have. This was a chance for him and his party to prove on to the People of Pakistan that politics is not all a game of tit for tat or of wreaking vengeance and settling old scores. If a donkey brays at you, it is not wise on your part to bray at him.Why to poison an already dying person and get accused as a murderer. Bad governance of the PPP government was already doing the job. Why did Mian Nawaz Sharif, belittle himself by choosing to play a nastier role? The Economist of March 7, 2009, commenting on the terrorists’ attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, thus comments, “The ambush also came as Pakistan has produced fresh evidence of the besetting sins of its polity, which so handicap it in combating its lunatic terrorist fringe: the venality, petty-mindedness and short-sightedness of its civilian politicians; and the lack in its armed forces of a wholehearted commitment to the complex business of uprooting Islamic terrorism”.
Presidents and prime ministers are remembered not for their fancy neck-ties and the number of palaces they reside in. They are remembered for acts of sterling leadership. Living in America, in today’s economic situation, should we not feel grateful to President Roosevelt who secured our deposits in the banks through FDIC, and financial independence in our old age through Social Security benefits. In Pakistan, people call Mr. Zardari as “accidental president”, which actually is not true. The real accidental president was, President Gerald Ford, who had never been elected, and who had never even run for President or Vice President. He had even given up his dream of running for the speaker of the House. In 1974 after the Watergate scandal, when President Nixon resigned, it was he who “stepped into the presidency and helped the nation heal its wounds”. Did President Zardari as president heal any such national wounds after the assassination of Ms. Benazir Bhutto, or did he inflict some of his own on the nation?
L. B. Johnson had a degree in Education, and he actually had taught English at the Sam Houston High School in Houston. When he became president in 1963 after the assassination of President Kennedy, he pushed hard for the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In 1965 “he signed the Act at the One-room school near Texas where his own education had begun. He invited his first teacher, Mrs. Kathryn D. Kate to sit at his side, and he also called his former students to attend”. I am personally grateful to President Johnson, who is popularly known as the “Education President”, because it was by virtue of this Education Act of 1965 that our kids got free textbooks in schools, and low-interest loans when in college. Parents who have children with disabilities should feel even more grateful to him because of this Education Act.
“If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”, said Harry Truman in 1960. If presidency is too much for you, Mr. Zardari, then please do what Nelson Mandela once did, “You can serve by quitting too”.
