The No-confidence Vote and after
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

There’s an old saying, in chaste Urdu, from our erstwhile Indo-Gangetic culture. It roughly translates as ‘you can be sure about the flavor of the rice cooking in the pot by sampling just one grain of it from the pot.’

The agenda of what’s being already decried by millions of Pakistanis—at home and abroad, among the 9-million-strong Pakistani diaspora—as an “imported regime”, of Shahbaz Sharif, the younger of the notorious Sharifs-duo—Nawaz and Shahbaz—may well be deciphered from its actions on day-one of its being in office.

The very first official act of the ‘imported’ regime was to declare three private residences of PM Shahbaz as his ‘camp offices.’ This is an old trick from the bag of corrupt practices of the Sharifs to put the cachet of ‘camp office’ on their private properties, thus milking off official funds to pay for all their expenses.

The second act of Shahbaz, in power, was to send orders to the Pakistan High Commission, London, to issue diplomatic passports to his elder brother, Nawaz, and their family’s major-domo, Ishaq Dar—also in self-exile in London like Nawaz Sharif. When the High Commission informed the PM that Ishaq Dar wasn’t entitled to a diplomatic passport, another command was sent to give him a regular passport, but urgently.

Both Nawaz and Dar are proclaimed offenders, on the run from the reach of the judicial sentences against them. They are fugitives, for all intents and purposes but have been living in plush comfort in the British capital, thanks to a benign UK official machinery to whom these absconders may be of some utility. What kind, one doesn’t know. But that’s one of those imponderables which Pakistani authorities haven’t been able to plumb, as in the case of another absconder, MQM’s Altaf Hussain.

But these two initial actions of the Shahbaz claptrap do amply provide a clue to their full agenda on returning to power. It’s to re-start their favorite game of plundering the resources of the country with the sole objective of feathering their already bulging nests and coffers. But before plunging into it, they would like to have their full mafia strength. Hence the reason for urgent travel documents for prime Don, Nawaz and his Mr Fixit, Dar.

Of course, the mafia has been extended undisguised and unalloyed help from the country’s ‘establishment’ and top judiciary.

Come to think of it, these two pillars of state have been the bane of Pakistani democracy. There’s a history to how these two institutions have, at regular intervals, disrupted the democratic process by throwing their combined weight behind those ready to do their biddings against the interest of the people of Pakistan.

Starting with the first breach of constitutional order, in 1954 when the then governor general, a sick man, Ghulam Mohammad with a decayed mind, sent the Constituent Assembly packing. His daring was blessed by the then Federal Court (there being no Supreme Court, then, because Pakistan was, still, a Dominion under Britain). The court’s chief, Justice Munir sanctified Ghulam Mohammad’s brazen action on the concept of ‘necessity.’

Armed with that abrasive idea of necessity, subsequent apex courts lent their own blessings to all Bonapartes   and military bounty-seekers: Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq and, last but not least, Pervez Musharraf.

But this time around the apex court went over its own roof of legitimizing illegitimate attempts at seizure of power by those not entitled to it. The PDM had used billions of rupees (they have no dearth of looted money—Pakistani money, of course) to buy off renegade members of Imran Khan’s (IK) ruling party. Besides, they also bought off IK’s parliamentary allies—MQM, from Karachi and BAP (Baluchistan Awami Party) of Baluchistan. IK was denuded of his wafer-thin parliamentary majority through this naked legerdemain.

But the apex court turned a blind eye to this wanton sacrilege of Article 63-A of the Constitution which pontificates that people of shady characters and compromised values will not retain their membership of the parliament. Nawaz Sharif was booted out of power on this ground. But no, this apex court seems to have a different take of the requirement of honesty and integrity for parliamentarians.

Not only that, but it dilly-dallied on the reference from President Arif Alvi to give a legal opinion on whether the defecting members (‘lotas’ in popular parlance) could retain their parliamentary rights or should be thrown out of it. But the same court had no qualms in rubbishing Article-69 of the constitution, which categorically provides total immunity, from any legal intervention, to an action or ruling of the Speaker, or his deputy, given during the parliamentary proceedings.

The apex court gave itself the ‘right’ of being the judge, prosecutor and hangman—all at once—and dictate a hectoring order to the custodians of the parliament to act like a puppet on the court’s string. One, not necessarily a legal mind or a jurist, would find it hard, if not impossible, to find another example of such an assault on the ramparts of the parliament, anywhere in the world.

Flouting all canons of justice being impartial, the apex court became so brazenly partisan that its honorable judges wouldn’t mind donning their elegant robes, at mid-night, to ensure that their hectoring diktats were honored. It would be hard to come up with another example, from any corner of the world, of a superior court thus strangulating a supposedly sovereign parliament.

The establishment played its own game of intimidating IK’s tottering regime with its muscle power. A show of force was triggered, around mid-night. A red alert was issued to all airports of the country, as if IK and his colleagues were planning to flee the country. Prisoner vans were parked outside the parliament building, with the undisguised intent to knock the fear of power-that-be in the hearts of IK and his entourage. Again, one would have a tough time likening it to any other show of raw power, deployed in the interest of the mafia of corrupt politicians anxious to wash its hands off IK.

So, now, with the tarnished pillars of state standing four-squares behind it, the corrupt mafia, whose past shenanigans are so well-known to even a layman in Pakistan, can indulge with impunity in the only game known to it: how to plunder Pakistan.

A blue-print of Shahbaz regime’s game-plan has been articulated by Miftah Ismail in the news media. As expected, he has shed a sea of tears of the economic ‘mess’ left for him by the departing government. But this self-anointed messiah plans to stem the rot by selling off the country’s prime assets—PIA and Karachi Steel Mills—to private enterprise.

This is a leaf from this mafia’s old book of plunder. Selling off national assets to cronies, disguised as foreign bidders, is an old ploy. These ‘foreign bidders’ are, mostly, decoys to hedge the real buyers—the likes of Zardari, Nawaz, Mian Mansha, et al. So, if the mafia is allowed to rule for some time, as it would desperately want to, then the nation should be mentally prepared to kiss off these prime national assets.

Miftah, the messiah, is also going to face the nation with ‘hard’ choices, as per his own saying. In simple language, electricity tariffs, already beyond the reach of common man, would see a spike. Subsidies given by IK on some other essentials and utilities, like petroleum, would also be withdrawn. This, of course, would be acting on the directives of IMF, which would now be more sympathetic to Pakistan, with IK removed from power.

So, the script is all ready to be enacted. The missing link is the deadly duo of fugitives, Nawaz and Dar. They could be flying homeward any day, before long, to complete the ‘dirty-dozen.’ Then, with the mafia don in place, the game of plundering Pakistan to their hearts’ content, would be kicked off in right earnest.

They can, of course, count on smooth sailing with the powerful establishment and a benign, patronizing, judiciary. They couldn’t ask for a more levelled playing field than this.

But IK could still spring a surprise and throw a spanner in their work. If the people of Pakistan kept up the momentum of their massive protest—unprecedented in the history of Pakistan that the world has witnessed on the heels of IK’s engineered ouster from power—and take it to a crescendo, then all bets will be off. The mafia and its patrons may have erred in their calculus of popular response to what is seen—by both the intelligentsia and the layman—as a conspiracy to usurp and sabotage Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity, coupled with an obscene catapulting of robber-barons to power.

The Kaptan still has the centerstage in Pakistani politics. The game is not over, by any stretch of imagination. It may well have just begun. The last ball of the match is yet to be bowled. It will be bowled by the people of Pakistan. Beware of it, mafioso! - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)