The Elephant Is Heading towards a Tar Pit
Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“They conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear”. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Imagine a scenario in which an elephant gets stuck in a tar pit. It is obvious the slippery slopes would eventually engulf him. Mian Sahib’s moves suggest the way his elephant is heading. The crafty PPP government had one special knack: it knew how to get the cookies from the narrow-necked jar with an artistic skill. Except for the last few days of its regime’s corruption-spree clumsiness, the rest of its performance amply reflects that it knew the art.
The PML (N)’s very experienced government, in comparison, appears to be simply naïve, clumsy and artless. Its forty-day performance, at least, portends that it is hell-bound to repeat history. Like the new garments take time to make you comfortable in it, the government of Mian Sahib also appears to be somewhat uncomfortable under the new burden.
Maulana Rumi explains the government people relationship in this insightful anecdote. “A beggar came to a house and asked for a piece of bread-fresh or stale. The owner said, ‘What do you think this is a bakery?’ The beggar further said, ‘At least grant me a small piece of fat?’ The owner retorted, ‘What do you think this is a butcher’s shop?’ ‘Give me a pittance of flour?’ begged the beggar. ‘What do you think this is a mill?’ said the owner. ‘So how about some water from the well instead?’ said the poor beggar. The master once again sarcastically replied, ‘You think this is a river, or a watering hole?’ ”
When Mian Sahib took over for the third time as PM, he knew that the “House (Pakistan) had nothing in it”. Ex-PM Pervez Ashraf doled out Rs 37 billion during the last few days of his rule to the PPP and allied MPAs out of the development fund, and the tragedy is that quite a few of them were not members of the parliament either . In order to give the new government a fresh start, the PPP left the pot empty.
Even the very active judiciary could not do anything about it. The people of Pakistan like the beggar in the story, however, feel constrained to keep asking for the things that need, because they had been cajoled to believe that a dawn of peace and prosperity was about to commence, that they would get relief from load-shedding; from high prices; from insecurity and terrorism. Instead, what they hear is such euphemism as, “circular debt and its payments; electricity theft; bullet-trains; metro-bus systems; motorways; Musharraf’s trial under Article 6; Nawab Bugti’s murder and the Lal Masjid action”.
Precaution and transparency should have been the hallmark of the present government. Mian Sahib’s two governments got fired in the past on charges of incompetence, if not of corruption. Once bitten twice careful should have been the motto. Unfortunately, both - transparency and precaution - seem to have been set aside. Columnists like Rauf Klasra, Haroon Rashid and even Ayaz Amir, their own sympathizer, are going overtime in pointing out some of the very indiscreet acts of the present government that could easily have been avoided. For example:
Two planes, instead of one, were utilized in the China tour, ostensibly to save money; one carried the PM, his wife, his son Hussain Nawaz, Mr Tariq Fatimi and Mian Shahbaz Sharif, and the other accommodated Mian Mohammad Mansha, Salman Shahbaz and some others. What both the planes failed to accommodate was the Foreign Secretary, Mr Jalil Abbas Jilani and his seven colleagues from the Foreign Office, the men who were to substantially matter on such tours.
Aspersions are already being cast on an intimate closeness of the PM and his family with Mian Mohammad Mansha. People are naming him, may be for wrong reasons, as Mian Sahib’s Malik Riaz. In the first tenure as PM, Mian Mansha was given the control of Muslim Commercial Bank; now perhaps the headship of PIA and the monopoly of the Smart-Meters are being contemplated. Is there anything called “The conflict of Interest” in Pakistan?
A peculiar sense of jubilation overtakes those who are in the opposition when the government in power fumbles. The PPP would celebrate if Mian Sahib gets stuck in the whirlpool of the Musharraf case. This is a perfect recipe for disaster. If one thing that a politician can learn from the life of Nelson Mandela in politics is how to deal and how to forgive those who had been a cause of your sufferings. Even at the Robben Island, Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied upon. His motto was “Know your enemy - and learn about his favorite sport”. He learned Afrikaans, the language the white South Africans who basically exercised apartheid. Pakistan is a country where crowds and not the parliament decide the fate of the country. Mandela’s dictum was: “Lead from the back - and let others believe they are in front”. This he learned as a boy when he was being raised by the tribal chief, Jongintaba, and he often tended sheep. Another motto of his was: “Keep your friends close - and your rivals even closer”. Abraham Lincoln followed this principle and so did Mandela. Who in Pakistan, when in power, can claim to have followed the Constitution in letter or spirit?
Questions are also being raised openly about the 325 billion rupees paid to the power companies as their dues. This could have been done in a more transparent manner with details of payments posted. The issue is being trumpeted, may be out of proportion, and out of malice, but it is affecting the credibility of the government.
There is a Scottish saying, “A government too soft on big business, is as bad for economy, as a government too harsh on big business”. Pakistan Muslim League’s manifesto -1997 states, “Elected representatives engaged in any private business will be subjected to specific restrictions that will be brought in through appropriate conflict of interest legislation”. The party that wrote it is its biggest violator.
Mr. Shahid –ur-Rahman in his book, “Who Owns Pakistan?” on page 117 writes, “During Nawaz Sharif’s premiership, interior minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and later during Benazir Bhutto’s premiership her spouse Asif Zardari, defended their right to obtain bank loans, ‘like any other citizen of Pakistan’. All three have been to prison on charges of corruption relating to their business activities during their hay days, yet they see nothing wrong in mixing business with politics”.
Pakistan’s economic meltdown is the direct result of this liaison between money and power. Leaders in Pakistan get in power to make money, and then to protect money. Service to people does not figure out anywhere. The PPP government led by President Zardari suffered a Midas’ death-buried in gold. Mian Sahib and his family suffered because of this mess up. Just prior to October, 1999 when Mian Sahib’s government was toppled, there were about 14 political parties, including the Jamiat Islami, each demanding a pound of his flesh.
Pakistan cannot afford even an ounce more of corruption because it is already over-flowing with it. Democracy cannot sustain itself when its rulers, become the bed-fellows of the biggest businessmen, in an effort to become one like them. Failed economies give birth to evil people - this is the rule of God and of this world. Hazrat Shoaib’s people got inflicted with, not with one, but three kinds of disasters because they committed the social crimes - they indulged blatantly in economic irregularities. Yugoslavia’s economic mess gave birth to Slobodan Milosevic; the collapse of the Weimar Republic in Germany vomited up Adolf Hitler; the breakdown in Czarist Russia opened the door for Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Economic disasters, besides giving bad morality to people, also lead to political extremism, writes Chris Hedges in his wonderful book, ‘Empire of Illusion’, “the former manufacturing towns (in America) where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working classes into profound personal and economic despair, and not surprisingly, into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian Right who offer a belief in magic, miracles, and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. … unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed.” Page 183.
This description graphically underpins the cause of chaos and extremism in Pakistan.
Joseph Roth in his book, “The Emperor’s Tomb”, chronicles the decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and writes that “at the very end of the empire, even the streetlights longed for morning so that they could be extinguished.” Pakistan is yearning for a morning when the sun of peace and prosperity would rise, and when people would live a life full of empathy and compassion for each other. Pakistan appears to be losing everything because its leadership as well as its people are divided in their aims and are rudderless. Values have vanished; people are being reduced to objects; national myths have collapsed; communal madness is rife; regionalism and provincialism are fast replacing the love for the country for their militia and cult.
The world is scattered with the ruins of powerful civilizations that once ruled this world - Egypt, Persia, the Mayan empires, Rome, Byzantium, the Mughals, the Ottomans and the Chinese Kingdoms. Not all died for the same reasons, says Joseph Roth, but “at a certain point, they all were taken over by a bankrupt and corrupt elite. The elite, squandering resources and pillaging the state, was no longer able to muster internal allegiance and cohesiveness. These empires died morally”.
What should have come first as a priority to Mian Nawaz Sharif? The trial of Musharraf as a traitor, the introduction of metro-bus system in five cities, the motorways, the smart-electric meters, or a crystal clear message to the terrorists (after holding a meeting with the army chief, and the chief justice); grand-scale mobilization of all forces to restore law and order in the country; hunt for the kidnappers, bank robbers and money extractors; zero-tolerance for the corrupt government high officials; control over prices and adulteration; running of the trains on time; substantial reduction in load-shedding; over-hauling the education and health system on a war-footing basis, equality of law and its observance for all, especially in relation to the traffic; total stoical austerity; clean- up Pakistan movement countrywide. And above all these, the enactment of a special law, like India’s TADA, (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (prevention) Act) to deal with the terrorists. Enough is enough.
Those who talk about the Lal Masjid let them have the courage to re-play and watch the clips of what was actually happening in this mosque of the capital. Hamid Mir and others once took out a procession on the assassination of Syed Saleem Shahzad. Let them read his book, “Inside Al-Queda and the Taliban”. He writes on page 43. “By 2007, Lal Masjid had become an Al-Queda powerhouse in the federal capital of Islamabad, directed in the face of Pakistan’s powerful ISI in Islamabad, and the military’s GHQ”. The other day, on the TV Hamid Mir was seen spinning a theory that “the people inside the mosque were the ISI installed people , that it was a drama played by the ISI”.
Brig. Feroz Hasan Khan in his wonderful book, “Eating Grass-the Making of the Pakistani Bomb” writes the concluding sentence. “As the military balances multiple contingencies and its nuclear arsenal continues to grow and mature into a robust deterrent force, the Pakistan masses seem destined to ‘eat grass’… even go hungry . Perhaps it never crossed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s mind that his words would become a self-fulfilling prophecy”. Mr. Rauf Klasra in one of his columns narrates an interesting story. “A person fell from the roof of his house and died. His family members were busy in wailing and crying that a serious looking fellow came. He stood there for some time and then spoke thus, ‘Thanks God, the eye is intact and is not damaged.’ ” We have the best army; we are a nuclear power; we have close to 200 million resilient people who just keep going; we have rivers and mountains and all kinds of weathers and terraces, but we are like that man who does not see what is dead, but sees the eye and draws a conclusion.
Big matters even in 40 days have not been touched: important embassies in such countries as America, Britain and India are without ambassadors; a comprehensive action plan dealing with the most important matters is yet to see the light of the day; national security matters are in a limbo; terrorists’ activities have increased manifold and so have those of the kidnappers and bank robbers; the promise of self-sufficiency can get fulfilled unless steps are taken in that direction; people can live without YouTube, but they cannot live forever in fear, in poverty and in humiliation. Mian Sahib in his first speech in the Parliament had said, “Every moment is an amanat and I shall not waste it, and I shall not let anyone waste it.” Good words, but without substance. Why is he now in a state of trance? Where is the action?
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