World11 News
Why Is Grace so Conspicuously Absent from Pakistani Politics?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Imran Khan (IK) and legions of his aficionados across Pakistan have good reason to celebrate. In the highly contentious case of who should, legally and legitimately, lead Punjab, their man—Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, from the famous political family of ‘Chaudhris of Gujrat’, has come out on top in the tussle with the scion of another ‘notoriously famous’ political clan of Punjab.
Justice has not only been done but seen, across the length and breadth of Pakistan, to be delivered, as such, by the apex court in its historic judgment of July 26.
Hamza Shahbaz, pretender to the ‘Throne of Lahore’ and his father, Shahbaz Sharif, apparently managing the shop, but not quite ruling the roost, in Islamabad, had contrived to be clever by half. On cue from the father-and-son duo, the Deputy Speaker of Punjab Assembly, an upstart and brash Dost Mazari, had done what he had been commanded to. His indiscreet dismissal of 10 votes cast for Elahi by his party members in the Assembly polling, last July 22, on his behalf had paved the way for Hamza to become CM of Punjab in spite of polling fewer votes than Elahi.
But the Supreme Court called Mazari’s bluff and ruled out his Assembly verdict as contrary to Article 63-A of the Constitution, thus giving the coveted post of CM Punjab to Elahi.
Knowing that there were more holes in their dossier than there are holes in Swiss cheese, and sensing the mood of the apex court to right the wrong done to Elahi, stalwarts of the ruling mafia, in Islamabad, had started crying wolf on the eve of the apex court judgment.
The motley crowd of loud-mouthed nihilists that PDM is composed of, first tried to intimidate the apex court by demanding that a full bench of the court be constituted to hear the case. Maryam Nawaz—who has acquired a notoriety of sorts as PDM’s Cassandra—went to the extent of saying, theatrically, in her usual bombastic that the three-member bench hearing the case was—like a ‘fixed match’ in cricket—a ‘fixed bench.’
Maulana Fazalur Rehman, never one to miss an opportunity to hog the stage in front of TV cameras, thundered that PDM, under his command, will not accept a verdict given by the three-member bench.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister—Rana Sanaullah—had no shame in declaring that the ruling mafia will not entertain a verdict unless its demand for a full court was acceded to.
To its abiding grace and dignity, the apex court—and Chief Justice Ata Bandiyal—refused to be intimidated by crude arm-twisting and blackmail of the mafia in Islamabad and delivered its verdict without any hint of compromise or indecision.
But the mafia’s strong-arm tactics wouldn’t cease, even after it had come up with a lot of egg on its face, in the wake of the historic apex court judgment.
The court had ruled that the Governor of Punjab should preside over the oath-taking by the newly minted Chief Minister before mid-night, July 26. However, the Governor, a crony of the ruling junta, wouldn’t let Elahi and his caravan of supporters enter the precincts of the Governor’s House, in Lahore, much less administer the oath to him. Consequently, Elahi and entourage had to be flown to Islamabad where President Arif Alvi performed the oath-taking of Elahi, past mid-night.
It remains to be seen if the apex court would proceed against the puffed-up Governor of Punjab—a little-known factotum of the Sharifs—for contempt.
But on the heels of PDM’s bizarre show of defiance to the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution of Pakistan, a natural question has cropped up: why is there so little civility and grace in Pakistani politics?
However, before seeking an answer to this question, one needs to just scan the history of PML-N, which is the leading component of the ruling mafia and has a tainted Shahbaz Sharif, its parliamentary leader occupying the seat of PM of Pakistan.
PML-N is a family concern of the Sharifs, and their politics, since they rose to prominence as Punjab’s leading political clan, has been anointed by strong-arm tactics and blatant use of raw power. Nawaz Sharif—their leader in exile, who has since become a fugitive felon—picked up fights with every Army Chief, some of whom had been hand-picked by him.
He earned the abiding disgrace, in the history of Pakistan, if not the world, as the PM whose goons and minions, on cue from him, had the gall to attack the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Like father like daughter, his anointed heir-apparent, his brash and spoiled daughter, Maryam, has acquired a reputation of her own as an adept blackmailer. She has the reputation of keeping closets-full of videos and audio-tapes on prominent politicos as well as serving and retired generals of the armed forces. She, in her frequent media outbursts, takes leave of civility and grace associated with the female gender, in our cultural mores laced with Islamic injunctions. She’s hardly ever shy of saying, pox on your house, to her political adversaries. IK, of all the main characters in our political galaxy, is her most frequent quarry.
Why is Pakistani politics so hospitable to gangster theatrics, normally associated with Bollywood block-busters, is not so hard to decipher.
The joker in the pack is Pakistan’s endemic feudal culture and its fallout on our political traits and habits.
The leitmotif of the archaic feudal mindset—a hallmark of Pakistani politics—is not to distinguish between difference of opinion, a sine qua non in a democratic polity, and rivalry. It’s the feudals that have been hogging Pakistani politics since soon after its independence. Feudal culture lays its store by not giving any quarters to its adversaries.
The way adversaries are dealt with has a set pattern in feudal mores. Try, first, to buy off your quarry. If he takes the bait, fine; if he doesn’t then finish him off, physically.
This pattern has been followed—to the dismay of those who pretend to know how a democratic polity works in a civilized society—by almost every exponent of dynastic politics in Pakistan. The Sharifs excel in this heinous business of getting rid of their rivals through brute use of force. In recent memory, a director of FIA who had assembled a thick dossier of the Sharifs corruption—an official by the name of Dr Rizwan—was suddenly found dead in his house. Another notorious character, Maqsood ‘Chaprasi’ (peon), came to an abrupt end in Dubai; he’d been taken there by the Sharifs who’d used his name and identity for fraudulent bank transactions.
Other political parties and characters strutting on Pakistan’s political stage, have their own skeletons aplenty in their cupboards. The feudal mindset has no room for shame or remorse for the use of these tactics—taboos in civilized societies—to take care of those arrayed on the other side of the political divide.
But dealing with IK is something not found in their playbook.
IK, with his charisma and making full use of the ‘victim’ card handed to him by the sponsors and facilitators of the mafia installed in Islamabad, is proving to be an entirely different kettle of fish for his political rivals, who find it so hard to shirk their baggage of traditional politics of ‘liquidating’ a rival or adversary.
The apex court’s historic verdict has dealt a knock-out blow to the jaded practitioners of power-politics. They are totally out of their wits, while IK marches on to take one turf after another from them. Sindh, in hog to Zardari, may be the next citadel of power for IK to conquer. The mafia’s grazing grounds are shrinking at an alarming pace for them. They know not how to stop IK’s rolling juggernaut. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
