Requiem for PDM!
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

Like a test-tube baby, the high-sounding Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) was artificially conceived. From the moment of its conception, it was feared that the baby may not live long because of its deeply-flawed DNA.

It wasn’t too long ago that the two main pillars of PDM—PPP and PML(N)—were known to all and sundry as mortal enemies sworn to uproot and destroy each other.

Nawaz Sharif, in his hey-day as the blue-eyed boy of Pakistan’s omniscient ‘establishment,’ had tilted at all windmills to destroy Benazir Bhutto’s political career. The so-called ‘Lion of Punjab’ had stooped down to the meanest level of skullduggery to malign BB. Lahore was witness to crudely-worded leaflets dropping on to its citizenry from hovering helicopters, carrying obscene caricatures of BB and filthy slogans against her. It was all at the command of the then CM of Punjab, Nawaz Sharif.

It was the same NS who, in his first stint as PM, instituted a witch-hunt against Asif Ali Zardari under a sham accountability drive. It was none other than Nawaz that saw to it that Zardari was kept in jail for years. Later, Nawaz was joined by his younger sibling, Shehbaz, in their crusade against Zardari. Shehbaz’ phlegmatic and theatrical threats—to drag Zardari on the streets of Lahore if he didn’t cough up hundreds of millions of dollars looted from Pakistan—are still a matter of record and can be accessed any time.

Zardari, on his part, didn’t lag much back, either, in his own clumsy, but consistent, campaign to denounce the ‘Sharif Brothers’ for their loot and corruption. Of course, he wasn’t as crude or banal as the scions of Lahore. But the venom of his stings wasn’t lost on the Sharif Brothers, their acolytes and minions, and on the pundits keeping a watchful eye on the shenanigans of these two arch-rivals of each other.

But all that cut-throat animosity of Pakistan’s two most notorious political clans melted like early spring’s fluke snow and evaporated into thin air the moment they smelled trouble in the air.

Such characters are known to have an extra-sensitive nose to pick up the threat of trouble, even from long distance. Zardari and Nawaz, who, between them, have systematically ransacked the country over the last three decades of their political lives, could sense that IK’s accountability drive against them was dead serious and imminent. IK had painstakingly constructed his political campaign, over more than two decades, on his unerring and unflinching determination to bring to book all those ‘hereditary’ politicians who had robbed the country clean.

Political thieves, of all shades and stripes, had the uncanny sense to realize that IK was cut from a different cloth than General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s last Bonaparte. Musharraf’s lust for power nudged and coaxed him into cutting a deal with these two robber-barons that paved the way for their return to active politics from which they had been banished.

But IK had neither Musharraf’s unbridled lust for power, nor was he prepared to allow an easy exit to Pakistan’s plunderers from the blind alley they had painted themselves in because of their own doings.

In short, when Nawaz and Zardari were dead sure of not getting an NRO from IK did they decide to join hands to save their skins from the reach of IK’s accountability.

They found an obliging chaperon in Maualana Fazalur Rehman—better known to the Pakistanis as ‘Mulla Diesel’ because of his making merry on Diesel permits and outlets generously awarded to him in the thieving ‘Raj’ of these two bounty hunters. Himself a carpet-bagger of notoriety, Fazal, too, had an axe to grind against IK, who had given him the boot from the Chairmanship of the Kashmir Committee of the Parliament. Fazal had lorded over that committee for nearly two decades, bagged billions of rupees but did precious little for the cause of Kashmir.

However, perceptive pundits of the Pakistani political landscape knew, from the word go, that PDM—with its grandiose ‘mission’ to ‘rid’ Pakistan of IK’s ‘tyranny’ and ‘restore true democracy’—was a marriage of convenience between thieves scared for their lives. It was, in every sense of the word, an artificial construct of dubious intent and origin.

There’s an expression, of chaste Urdu, which could best describe this claptrap PDM. It was, verily, Bhanmati ka Kunba, a coming together of shady and fraudulent characters.

PDM, from its inception, had a one-item agenda: NRO. Each of its components had tried, separately in their own domain, to coax, cajole or blackmail IK into cutting a deal with them. But they had failed. They tried to appeal to the ‘umpire’ they had routinely accused of thrusting IK on Pakistan but found no takers there, either.

The formation of an alliance—for a dubious agenda, no doubt—was the last throw of the dice for its proponents. Their skewed sense might have told them that they could mount greater pressure on IK—and his mentors in the establishment—by coming together on one platform. But even that bargaining counter failed to yield their hearts’ desire. IK would neither resile from his principled plank to hold them accountable for every penny looted from Pakistan, nor would he give them a way out of the blind alley.

PDM, over the months since it was formed—after Nawaz had fled the country on bogus excuse of getting treated in London for his multiple ailments—tried every trick in its bag to impact IK’s no-deal-stance. But nothing worked.

All those public meetings and rallies, put together in Pakistan’s major cities—from Quetta to Karachi to Peshawar et al. — fizzled out like damp squibs. PDM big-guns may have thought of igniting a popular uprising against IK but the people of Pakistan have grown wiser. They can see through these corrupt actors pretending to be innocent cows. Their shady past is catching up with the people of Pakistan who, now, refuse to be led up the garden path by these notorious time-servers. The dismal failure of the public meeting at the Minar-e-Pakistan a couple of months ago broke the backs of all the pompous magicians trying their worn-out art of pulling wool over the people’s eyes.

The recent Senate of Pakistan elections opened up the fissures in PDM’s ranks for full public viewing. It took the fig-leaf off their ballyhooed ‘unity.’

PDM looked at Yusuf Raza Gilani’s bid for election to the Senate as a master stroke to pull the rug from under IK’s feet, right in the heart of his power—Islamabad. But PML-N lent no support to Gilani, a supposedly-joint candidate of PDM alliance. His trouncing of Hafeez Sheikh, IK’s nominee, was pulled through entirely by Zardari’s billions.

The perfidy of PML-N repeated its dirty game when Gilani lost out in his bid to become the Senate Chairman. But Zardari, stung by the backstabbing at the hands of Nawaz’ acolytes and minions, has richly returned the compliment by refusing to play ball on the Nawaz’ ploy to resign, en-masse, from the federal and provincial Assemblies.

Zardari, a canny practitioner of dirty politics, knows well that if his party resigned, he will never regain power in Sindh. But he has gone for the overkill, in daring Nawaz to return home and face the music. But returning home doesn’t figure, at all, on Nawaz’ list of tricks to deploy. Every pundit and observer of the Pakistani panorama knows what a chicken Nawaz is. He doesn’t have the guts to face the wrath of the law of the land that he so richly deserves. Zardari is rubbing salt into his wounds by boasting his own credentials as a seasoned jail-bird. Nawaz has nightmares to think of the prison where he belongs in Pakistan.

So, PDM is in total disarray. The much-trumpeted ‘Long March’, earlier slated for March 26, is off. A pretentious Maryam Nawaz—desperately seeking to step into the vacant shoes of BB—has no clue what her next move should be. The only thing she’s sure of is that her fugitive father must not return to Pakistan.

The greatest loss, in the drama that was doomed to fail, is that of Fazal ur Rehman. He has been in political wilderness from the day he lost his bid to remain in the parliament. PDM’s mentorship was the last throw of the dice for him. He’s, for all intents and purposes, an outcast and a pariah. His ‘allies’ have used and discarded him like a Kleenex. There’s none to wipe his tears.

The only one smiling after the debacle is Zardari, the master exponent of Machiavellian politics and guiles. He may think he has the last laugh, now that the curtain has come down on PDM’s macabre act. But pundits may have every reason to ask: should PDM be given a burial or cremated? Try your own imagination in guessing an answer! - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)