Daily Times

Historians will not be very kind to Imran Khan and Mr Qadri for what they have done to the political culture of this Godforsaken country. In the guise of freedom and revolution, what has been exercised and glorified will come to haunt these characters, should they ever realise their dreams of occupying the Prime Minister’s House. In short, hooliganism is the order of the day and anarchy is the new face of new age democracy in the so-called ‘new Pakistan’. What lies ahead will be relatively similar to the ideology of the Taliban. Tolerance was never in the reservoirs of those warriors and these revolutionaries are following in their footsteps by demonstrating their brutal anger in a relatively similar fashion. The world has seen images of police officers being beaten by mobsters armed with sticks and uniformed, armed servicemen just standing by witnessing their ruthlessness. Perhaps I am making an argument of double standards here when it comes to obeying the writ of the state. The lens of the camera is capturing all of this for the rest of the world. These container-bound revolutionaries have even openly threatened civilian law enforcement personnel. I humbly beg both Mr Qadri and Khan to try this in front of 10 Downing Street or in front of President Obama’s official residence to witness how the writ of the state is established without fail by uniformed policemen within minutes. All this noise is to basically challenge and erode the writ of this state. Speaking of that four letter word ‘writ’, one is painfully reminded of how a former general established it not very long ago in the same capital. No one is implying that this government must take its cues from that ugly episode, though it is part of our glorious history and engraved in our collective memories.

We constantly hear that our elected government is handling the current standoff with immense restraint and patience. Agreed, well and good, but it is at a very hefty cost. The entire world is watching our demise as a sensible, law abiding and law obeying society at the hands of a ruthless, senseless and utterly crazy mob. The thrust of the project being carried out by the firebrand leaders is to instil this as part of regular imagery so the rest of the world can determine that it is dealing with a weak, impotent and toothless prime minister. What irony that a prime minister who holds a comfortable majority and has his opponents in parliament watching his back, is totally backed into a corner. I hope I am seriously mistaken but I had expressed my unrestrained criticism on this farcical process of negotiations on Twitter. The government’s mouthpieces brag that five out of six demands made by Khan have been accepted and that there are modalities that are being ironed out. To confuse matters a tad, there is an opposition jirga (council) playing a facilitative role as well. I know I am a very poor and inexperienced political observer but does anyone honestly think that it takes this long to reach any sort of logical conclusion? It almost seems like both parties know what the actual conclusion is and both are trying to buy as much time as possible.

One has to honestly question the state of mind of the besieged premier. Yes, it is understandable that he is a victim, yes he has sympathy and yes the people challenging him have crossed all lines of decency. His mouthpieces use all kinds of flowery language to express their dismay about how the poor prime minister has been paralysed by certain anti-democratic forces. I know I am not very bright and perhaps not so well versed in politically correct jargon but in my very humble opinion, he basically has three options. The first is to have a face to face with both his adversaries and have a heart to heart conversation. Rather than going through everyone and their mother-in-law as an interlocutor and facilitator, the premier should just break the ice himself, use an unannounced visit to offer a handshake himself and break this deadlock. If he is unable to stoop to the level of the mischievous duo, he must man up and exercise the writ of the state, not by bullets but exhibiting that there is presence of law and order in the capital. Anyone who practices violence is met with the strong arm of the law. If the revolutionaries try to turn that situation to gain political point scoring then let the media expose their duplicity. No one, whether rich or poor, should be able to raise their hand on uniformed law enforcement personnel, whether civilian or military.

If this solution is too much for the prime minster to bear then he has one final option left. If he has an ounce of dignity left in him to handle matters then he should dust off his suit, come on national television and have a heart to heart talk with the nation. He should expose all the hidden hands that have tied his hands and made him a laughing stock in front of the world. The state and its writ are far more important than a challenged premier or two unreasonable bozos. If the argument of not caving under pressure because it will set a poor precedent holds any water, then our respected prime minister has set another dangerous precedent by his inaction. I repeat: the writ or its semblance is far more important than any individual.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar