Daily Times

Treachery has not gone out of style since the Ides of March in 44 BC. That was when a group of Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death in Pompey’s theatre and justified their deed by claiming that they had committed tyrannicide and not homicide. Nowadays, you need to go no further afield than Constitution Avenue to see this phenomenon in action. Behind the scenes, intrigue remains much in vogue, although the head chopping has become strictly figurative. Javed Hashmi was supposed to be Imran Khan’s friend but he ended up stabbing his leader in the back, literally and figuratively. Does this make Hashmi a villain worthy of a Lemony Snicket novel? Not necessarily, but time will tell if he is the biggest backstabber ever or national hero. Hashmi’s decision to stab Imran in the back was not an easy one. He had to choose between his loyalty to democracy and loyalty to his friend, who seemed like he could be heading towards a pre-written script. When Hashmi heard how this would go down in history he became worried for democracy. It is difficult to ignore his timing but he could not live with this rekindled conscience. After killing his leader politically and washing his hands in his blood, Hashmi defends his actions. Fine, we believe Hashmi when he says it was hard for him to betray Imran but does his sense of patriotism really justify backstabbing a friend and a major political leader? It turns out that this is one of the most important questions in the current play, and there are no easy answers. Apparently, in certain circles, Nawaz Sharif is being congratulated on this match winning clandestine stroke.

At any given point in time, there are dozens of competitive political groups engaging in secret planning and activities and most do so in an effort to gain some advantage over their rivals, among others. Such behind the scenes operations are present on every level, from the mundane efforts of small scale back stabbing to the crucially important attempts by intelligence services to penetrate and manipulate each other. Sometimes the patterns of these covert rivalries and struggles are relatively stable over time, whereas at other times they appear fluid and kaleidoscopic, as different groups secretly shift alliances and change tactics in accordance with their perceived interests. Even internally, within particular groups operating clandestinely, there are typically bitter disagreements between various factions over the specific courses of action to be adopted. There is probably no way to prevent this sort of unconscious reaction in the current political climate but the least that can be expected of Javed Hashmi is that he carefully examined the available evidence before acting.

It does seem that this was an odd way to frame the issue. Hashmi alleged that Imran has been taking instructions from an outside source against party decisions and that he is working based on a written script to instigate chaos and disruption in the capital until he makes Nawaz Sharif resign from his post. Furthermore, he had supposedly been reassured about a sympathetic judiciary that would work towards ending democracy without imposing a martial law in the country. He declared that this was a secret plan being hatched by an invisible cabal and it was not in any meaningful sense a story but a conspiracy. The trouble with this negative view is that there are issues in civil-military relationships and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) refuse to negotiate for less than the resignation of Nawaz Sharif. The PML-N’s bleak fundamentals have so far done little extra to bring about the political solution needed for resolving this crisis. The PTI and PAT’s coalition is a child of necessity, apparently until they force Nawaz Sharif to resign. Undoubtedly, the government has had to operate under mounting fire from sections of the media and army and the most dramatic of these is likely to take effect if the Supreme Court (SC) intervenes. Nawaz Sharif knows that, if found guilty of rigging and fraud in the 2013 elections, the army will not intervene to stop him being convicted or save him from the consequences of the verdict. If ousted, a fourth time in power is not an option.

Conspiracy theories are like black holes: they suck in everything that comes their way, regardless of content or origin. The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire. The difficult part, for those of us trying to make sense of a complex world, is working out which parts of the conspiracy theory to keep and which to throw away. A related problem is in distinguishing between a conspiracy theory and an awareness of genuine political conspiracies. There is a growing assumption that everything we are told by the authorities is wrong, or not quite as it seems. That the truth is being manipulated or obscured by powerful vested interests. This does not mean that Javed Hashmi’s allegations are useless or that he did not produce breaking news. But when he said that the conspiratorial ties of Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri’s sit-ins are correlated with the judiciary and army, was he really uncovering a couple of conspiracies? Or has he simply been asking about conspiracy theories that people experiencing injustice and economic insecurity are more likely to believe? Anecdotally speaking, it is a plausible idea. But while everyone is capable of conspiracy thinking, Mr Hashmi does seem more prone to it than others. The real question is whether he is really more likely to embrace conspiracy theories in general, or just conspiracy theories of a certain sort. Critics warn that even if a vote were held after electoral reform, it could produce much the same result as last time. Opinion polls show Nawaz Sharif holding on to more than 57 percent of popularity, probably enough to produce a similar parliament. In spite of the pressing demands for justice and economic growth, it is becoming obvious that Pakistan’s elected representatives are likely to waste more precious time in the coming months.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com