Daily Times

Imran Khan, with his thousands of restless followers, is in Islamabad for the long march in order to topple the Nawaz government. In another corner stands the fiery Pakistani-Canadian cleric Dr Tahirul Qadri with his zealot disciples for a ‘revolution’. While both parties have virtually besieged the inhabitants of the twin cities, the ‘vibrant’ electronic media has taken the whole nation hostage. This situation has plunged common Pakistanis into a dilemma.
Unfortunately, Pakistanis have not seen a genuine leader since the inception of the country. We have consistently been led not only by mediocre power hungry players but by puppets whose strings are held by certain hidden forces. These are dramas played at the cost of the poor people who happen to be many in Pakistan because of a national confusion infused in their minds by various narratives wrapped in the garb of religion, revolution or change.
Many of us take these events to be little more than dramas but the common people have taken their seats in front of their television screens to see what comes of the marches and sit-ins. These dramas have crippled the day-to-day activities of many Pakistanis. For instance, a number of scheduled conferences and seminars were cancelled in Lahore and in Islamabad because of this uncertainty. Many missed their flights owing to the unrest. Here in Swat, many hoteliers lost the expected number of tourists from Punjab and Sindh who used to enjoy their Independence Day holidays in Kalam, Bahrain, Miandam, Malam Jabba and Madyan. Similar is the case with Kaghan-Naran. While the marchers and their leaders are enjoying the rainy and romantic weather of Islamabad during the dog days of summer, the economy of Pakistan, macro or micro, is crashing.
Unaware of the woes of the ordinary people, these leaders are players of a written script written by some covert forces. The gestures, body language and warnings by both the leaders seem to be very much in accordance with the acts in the script. The apex court’s interim order and the consequent decision by the lawyers, announced by Asma Jehangir, too, point to the fear of some unconstitutional maneuver.
It seems that the script clearly describes what steps to take and whom to target first. Despite many flaws, the apex judiciary gained impressive independence under the former Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Chaudhry. He was the most vocal judge in the entire judicial history of Pakistan. Justice Chaudhry used to make headlines each day with his commitment to safeguarding democracy. The movement for his reinstatement constituted many decent people. Justice Ramday was another stalwart of the apex judiciary along with the great Justice Baghwan Das, who has so far not come under fire by Imran Khan.
In the last decade, a private media group and its private news channel has become a leading opinion maker in Pakistan. The news channel was in the forefront of supporting Justice Iftikhar’s court. It also played a critical role in the lawyers’ movement. Both the news channel and the apex court were acceptable as long as they were muzzling the government of Asif Zardari but as soon as the democratic government was shifted to a strong elected Punjabi premier with designs to assert ‘the bloody civilian’ regarding Musharraf, Afghanistan and India, he had to be reigned in. Justice Iftikhar was the hero of Imran Khan while the latter was made a hero by the private news channel.
However, political comedy easily makes a hero either a zero or a clown. The script had to hire the charismatic Khan with an impressive youth following to act, and act strongly. Both the judiciary and the private news channel were to be defamed first. To this end, Imran Khan had to question the credibility of both the apex judiciary and the news channel so as to create doubts about the credibility of both the institutions in the eyes of the nation. This was done deliberately by the force of his rhetoric and a credulous, unthinking charged youth following. As a climax, the script demanded the resignation of the elected prime minister in the aftermath of the long march and sit-in.
In order to add some tragedy to the comedy an otherwise seasoned religious scholar with an untiring power to hear himself speak, along with a following of ‘captivated’ minds, was for hire. He is now there with his zealot following demanding a revolution nobody understands. This comic-tragedy is now ongoing and we all wait for the denouement that can surely be in favour of the ‘scriptwriter’ at the cost of the economy and stability of the Pakistani brand of democracy.
This might be fiction but, as is said, “fiction is true history except for the names of the characters.” In our case, the script has always been the same except the names of the characters, directors, producers and scriptwriters keeps changing.

The writer is based in Swat where he heads IBT, an independent civil society organisation on education and development. He can be reached at ztorwali@gmail.com