Addressing a gathering of PTI officeholders and party ranks, Alvi likened the prevailing uncertainty of the country’s political system to a ‘pressure cooker.’ He warned that the pressure cooker could take it up to a point but could easily explode if not taken care of or not attended to - Photo South Asia Journal

 

Pressure Cooker or Purgatory? Pakistan’s Perpetual Cycle of Crisis
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

It’s said about Hakeem Ajmal Khan—one of the legendary early 20 th century pioneers of Muslims of India’s freedom struggle against the British Raj—that he could diagnose, with pinpoint accuracy, every ailment of his patient by just taking the patient’s pulse. He was hailed as ‘Maseeh-ul Mulk’ (the country’s Messiah) for his unmatched brilliance in his field of Eastern medicine.

Former President Arif Alvi—a dentist by profession—has no claim to being a Messiah. However, by virtue of the highest office of the land of Pakistan which he held for five years, he has earned the right to comment on Pakistani politics with an authority that few others command.

The latter-half of President Alvi’s five-year term was virtually consumed in literally crossing swords with those who were at the epicenter of toppling the government of Imran Khan (IK). It was IK who, as PM, had elevated Alvi to the highest office of the land because Alvi happened to be from the inner circle of loyalists of IK’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, in popular parlance.

IK could trust Alvi to the hilt and the latter didn’t disappoint him to the best of his ability. He had no part in overthrowing IK’s elected government and, as such, carries no burden of guilt in sabotaging, yet again, Pakistan’s meandering journey on the twisted and tortured path of democracy.

As these lines were being written, neighboring India, to Pakistan’s east, has just come out of a seven-week-long, marathon, exercise of its general elections. As usual for India, the exercise has been completed with utmost aplomb and serenity. What stands out as the hallmark of India’s universally-admired democratic proclivity is that there was no interference or intercession in this democratic exercise from non-political power centres, i.e. the Indian armed forces.

Much to the chagrin of every democracy-loving Pakistani—be that at home or abroad—no such finesse, or democratic maturity, could be attributed to Pakistan’s tortuous experience of democracy. It’s not only that non-political actor, i.e. Pakistan’s all-powerful ‘Establishment,’ the euphemism commonly used for the omniscient Pakistan Army, has arrogated to itself the right to poke its fingers in every electoral exercise; but it’s also to the abiding shame of every Pakistani democracy-aficionado that no elected PM has been allowed to complete his term in office.

It was in the backdrop of this nightmare scenario of Pakistan stumbling and lurching on its democratic journey that Arif Alvi recently sounded an alarm.

Addressing a gathering of PTI office holders and party ranks, Alvi likened the prevailing uncertainty of the country’s political system to a ‘pressure cooker.’ He warned that the pressure cooker could take it up to a point but could easily explode if not taken care of or not attended to.

Much has been said about, and written on, the blatant manner of the powerful Pakistani establishment in engineering IK’s downfall from his elected office. But the power-besotted generals, calling the shots in the corridors of power at Pakistan’s GHQ, haven’t been content with their nefarious role in seeing the back of IK in a command exercise. In their congenital hatred of IK, these generals went a step ahead and arrested IK on a trumped-up charge of inciting ‘attacks’ on military installations. IK has been in the slammer since August, last year.

However, the generals broke all their previous records of tinkering of the people’s right of vote in the context of the February 8 general elections. The blatant, and crude, manner of the intelligence outfit literally running away with the people of Pakistan’s mandate and doctoring the election results to suit the generals’ convenience, has added to the people’s frustrations, exponentially.

It’s catering to the generals’ whims and inflated egos that the bunch of bone-corrupt politicos dumped by the electorates has been foisted on them. This could only lead to the people’s anger and angst, which recently came to a boil in the Pakistan-administered ‘Azad Kashmir.’ It was an unusual spectacle that the people of Azad Kashmir literally chased the ‘Rangers’ out of their territory and gave them the boot.

The humiliating episode of Azad Kashmir should have opened the eyes of those in GHQ lording over Pakistan as if it were their fief. It was in this perspective that Arif Alvi shot an arrow of warning at their bough, with the intent of awakening those who are guilty of treating the people of Pakistan’s democratic mandate with utter contempt.

But those addicted to foisting themselves on the people’s democratic will are too infatuated with wielding raw power to lend an ear to Alvi pleading with them to come out of their hangover. Alvi may caution them that too much steam—of people’s frustration—is gathering under the lid of the pressure cooker, which may not be able to handle it for long and may blow over.

The generals’ hangover with power is, however, so old and intoxicating that they obviously shut Alvi’s warning out of their system. They have been used to lording over Pakistan for well over seven decades and are unlikely to be swayed by Alvi’s or anybody else’s advice.

To add insult to the people of Pakistan’s injury, the ‘Establishment’ seems to have decided to pile on greater heft to their clumsy crusade against the leader in whose favor the people spoke loud and clear, last February 8.

Unmindful of spiking the people’s anger, the generals’ proxies running the show, upfront, in Islamabad have instituted more cases (as if 200-plus cases wasn’t enough) against an incarcerated IK. This time, the new cases are in the context of IK calling upon the people of Pakistan to read the Hamood-ur-Rehman Report and educate themselves on who was the villain triggering the crisis of East Pakistan, which eventually truncated Pakistan and led to the birth of Bangladesh as an independent State.

IK is being slapped with risible charges of inciting the people to rebellion and insulting the armed forces, Pakistan’s Holy Cow, and its supposed ‘defenders’ and gate-keepers. It’s another matter, though, that these defenders were responsible for truncating the Quaid’s Pakistan.

IK is advising a people, kept deliberately in the dark by the power-brokers of GHQ so that their crimes in halving Pakistan are never called out. IK wants the people to learn from their own history so that it isn’t repeated in what’s left over of Pakistan. He wants them to have the right perception of who was the architect of Pakistan’s debacle: Sheikh Mujib or General Yehya Khan.

The officially sanctified—GHQ-kosher—version of the debacle in East Pakistan—taught to Pakistani children at the behest of those whose blatant interference in the democratic process led to Pakistan being sundered—puts all the blame of failure on Sheikh Mujib. However, what’s not being taught is that Yehya and his cohorts were as infatuated with their own importance in Pakistan as their progeny of today and disparaged the people’s democratic mandate given to Sheikh Mujib.

The history, of 1970-71, is being repeated with utter impunity by those too purblind to see that when history repeats itself is always in the form of a tragedy.

That’s where Alvi’s metaphor of a pressure cooker comes in so apposite and timely. But Alvi’s metaphor doesn’t, quite, do justice to the massive frustration of the people whose mandate has been stolen with an arrogance of power surpassing that of General Yehya and his bunch of cohorts.

The people of Pakistan have been experiencing the agony of the proverbial purgatory under the rule of the generals’ puny proxies for well over two years.

It’s an agony compounded with a hefty dose of insult. What could be more hurting and insulting to the people of Pakistan? Their chosen leader is behind bars and there’s no flicker of light at the end of the dark tunnel the generals have shoved them in. Those who stole their mandate are ruling over them.

The long night of generals blanketing Pakistan holds, to the dismay of an agonized people, no promise of an early dawn of democracy breaking out on the country’s horizon. IK is being painted with the same brush Sheikh Mujib was painted with, back in 1971. The result of this madness shouldn’t be different from its precursor.

But the generals lording over Pakistan, as if it was their conquered land, should be reminded of an old saying: ‘a people who forget their history are forgotten by their geography.’ - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)