The din is raucous. Each sound is more ominous than the other. The combat continues, and as the world watches, bemused, amused, bored, the real victim goes unheard: Pakistan. Today, the leaders of Pakistan, a third world country, beset by the constant horrors of terrorism, inflation, power crises, unemployment and breakdown of law and order, wage their own battle. And the battle is not against what truly affects people but about who should be in power. The agenda may have been cloaked but the reality is there in all its starkness for all to see. Who is to rule Pakistan? The battle thickens before it sickens. Speeches are made. Rallies are organised. Marches begin. Barriers are put in place, defiant. Accusations fly fast and thick. As the lines of decorum blur, the rules of engagement are rewritten, the validity of allegations become murkier and the real issues are swept under the haze of rowdy utterances and rowdier counter-utterances.
It all commenced with the announcement of the results of the 2013 general elections and the party that had hoped to bag a hefty number of seats found itself as the loser in one constituency after the other. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), led by Imran Khan, watched in disbelief as results poured in from all over Punjab, the biggest electoral portion of the mosaic of what goes for power in Pakistan. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) swept the elections, bagging 311 seats in Punjab against 24 of the PTI and 126 national against the PTI’s 34.
Amidst the triumphant roars of the lion-symbol PML-N, the protesting taps of the cricket bat of the PTI went unnoticed. The election was rigged. Well, most of it, the PTI announced. And the PML-N, smug in its overwhelming mandate, the very mandate the PTI later refused to accept, ignored the protestations. Reports of rigging came in from all over Pakistan and Punjab, as usual, got the most attention because of the largest number of constituencies and the impact of the PML-N’s incumbency factor. The PML-N dug its heels in and, pooh-pooh-ing the allegations, termed it all as Khan’s inability to reconcile with his party losing. Khan the “sore loser” versus the PML-N, and the fight deepened, this time on social media, television and wherever there was a microphone/camera and a PTI or PML-N representative present.
The PTI’s initial demand was for thumb verification into the results of four constituencies: NA-110 Sialkot, NA-122 Lahore, NA-125 Lahore, NA-154 Lodhran. However, after months of toing and froing from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to the Supreme Court (SC), the party grew frustrated, given that its premise was to revolutionise the system of accountability and justice in a society beset with the ills of corruption and bad governance. The need to have electoral reforms was highlighted and the demand was made in all tones and contours. The PML-N disregarded all these assertions of the PTI and even its threat of a long march from Lahore to Islamabad, with a dharna (sit-in) at D-Chowk until its demands were met. And lo and behold, while the ruling party claimed all was well, thousands, despite being container-ised, harassed and arrested, have gathered in Islamabad since August 14, the additional demands being that of Nawaz Sharif’s resignation and the holding of new elections under an interim government of technocrats. Khan has not been able to amass the promised million-man crowd but he has, unquestionably, managed to create a tremendous noise, capturing national, regional and international headlines, brickbats notwithstanding.
Khan speaks to his party workers, supporters and curious attendees at regular intervals, and his thunderous addresses keep them glued to the sit-in that slow-marched to the new venue: Constitution Avenue. Yes, that is where you can see the Parliament House in the background. The azaadi (independence) march has come to stay until its demands are met. The nation watches in disbelief as the words get snarkier, the accusations stronger, the demands heftier and the stalemate stickier than the dynamics of the Cold War.
Matching Khan’s is the very strident voice of the eminent religious scholar and philanthropist-turned-inqilabi (revolutionary), Dr Tahirul Qadri. Dr Qadri wishes to enact social reforms in Pakistan and the only way for that to become a possibility is the expulsion of the PML-N that has been in power three times. The Model Town tragedy, where a simple act of the removal of encroachments in front of Dr Qadri’s house became a free-for-all, culminated in the deaths of 14 brick-and-stick-holding members of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) at the hands of the Punjab police. No FIR has been registered and the laments have mixed with the loud slogans to usher in change: that of a new government and a new Pakistan. As per the PAT, the old politics of the PML-N, strengthened by the Gullu, Billu and Pommi Butts, have reshaped the narrative and the ‘brutes’ must go.
As the azaadi and inqilab protests gather momentum in Islamabad, the government watches patiently and politely. Khan has been told that all his “legitimate” demands will be taken into consideration but the “unconstitutional” ones will be rejected, one being that of the resignation of an elected government, which has been rejected by parliament, barring the PTI members, all of whom have handed in their resignations.
And, as always, the master of the game is said to be the omnipotent army, blamed for being instrumental in creating situations that either lead to chaos or green-signal a military takeover of an enfeebled system. The denial of any involvement of the busy-in-the-Zarb-e-Azb-Operation military has been consistent yet the murmurs of its behind-the-scenes pulling of strings are audible in the liberal section of the intelligentsia.
There is no ignoring the fact that rigging took place and the complaints should have been investigated in full. There is no hiding the reality that the PTI, instead of becoming a strong opposition to play a positive role at the provincial (in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and national level chose a one-dimensional role: that of the victim. There is nothing to camouflage the self-righteousness of the PML-N that, despite being in power for the third time, chose to ignore the allegations of rigging by almost all mainstream parties. There are no ifs-and-but(t)s about the PML-N’s very shoddy handling of the entire spectrum of the demands for a new Pakistan. There is no escaping the change in the tone and demands of the PTI, going from the reasonable to the absurd before one could finish listening to one Khan-ditty in the jalsa. And there is no shying away from the simplicity of that very complex axiom: all is fair in love and war, this war now ostensibly being for that house on the hill. Khan seems to be losing the moral high ground as the PML-N seems to be getting the upper hand by just remaining politically correct despite its myriads of faulty judgment calls.
How did it get here? How did the most hallowed seat of a democratic set-up become frippery for these players of power politics? How did the obduracy of the majority party end up in turning the third-largest party in parliament into a petulant child who stamps his feet after a game of tag gone awry in a schoolyard? Why were the rigging allegations ignored when the existence of rigging is as established as the 33-year long military rule in Pakistan? Why did the PML-N think it was inconsequential to respect the legitimate demands of its rival parties even when it was secure in its obvious majority? How did Khan think it was just another day in politics to turn his demand of electoral verification into an ultimatum for an elected prime minister to resign? When did the call for justice twist into blatant slander and downright abusive language in the azaadi dharna? How did the counter attacks by the PML-N/allies on social/electronic media take on the resonance of banshees’ screams in a mud-fight? There are no real answers here. The only real victim is that ignored-as-always entity: Pakistan.
The writer may be contacted at [email protected]