Daily Times

Peoples around the world — from the Iraqi Kurds to the Catalan — are using the tools of democracy to fight for their fundamental right to self-determination. Yet here in Pakistan, we are expected to sit back and silently watch as our institutions are hijacked by those who had been charged with strengthening them.

The US should spare a thought or two for Pakistan. For while it is battling to scapegoat its way out of the Afghan quagmire of its own making — this country is facing a far more difficult task. Namely, extricating itself from the clutches of the ultimate comeback kid.

Nawaz Sharif isn’t going down without a fight. In fact he will have to wait until next week to see if he will go down at all for corruption. Recent manoeuvrings since he was deposed from the premiership over the summer have included: his wife contesting a local by-election on equal footing with the political reincarnation of a proscribed terrorist outfit; as well as the riding roughshod over Parliament to have removed all bars to him officially holding the presidency of the ruling PMLN. And he would have us believe that such moves are indicative of a desire to put the party’s political legacy above and beyond his own interests; a legacy that stands to keep the security apparatus in check.

Peoples around the world — from the Iraqi Kurds to the Catalan — are using the tools of democracy to fight for their fundamental right to self-determination. Yet here in Pakistan, we are expected to sit back and silently watch as our institutions are hijacked by those charged with strengthening them

Yet what has this tall claim translated to in real terms? Nothing much is the answer. Except to underscore how flawed our understanding of democracy is. The completing of assembly tenures, the transfer of power from one civilian set-up to another are the necessary building blocks of the democratic paradigm. But they are not markers in and of themselves of the aforementioned. Not when parliamentarians do not respect the authority of the judiciary. There is a reason that the numerous British inquiries into Iraq were government-run affairs and not placed before independent courts.

What Nawaz perhaps doesn’t realise is that his recent actions threaten his party’s electoral hopes. For if his intention was really to send a message to our men in khaki — he would have done better to go to Parliament to call for a cross-party boycott of the NA-120 polls, given the ‘dubious’ credentials of the Milli Muslim League (MML). It is not sufficient to outsource all responsibility to the Election Commission, as some PTI workers have done. For as their party chief always likes to (rightly) point out: Pakistan’s democracy is only as strong as its institutions.  Yet surely the burden of bolstering these lies with political parties borne of a representative parliamentary system. And even if the opposition hadn’t played ball — PMLN lawmakers ought to have brought this up in both houses. If nothing else, it would have afforded them a certain moral authority in the face of the security establishment’s attempts to mainstream — not disarm — militant proxies.

That they didn’t only lends weight to the conspiracy theorists who claim that Nawaz’s increasingly desperate clinging to power is partly fuelled by feelings of quiet resentment at how his handpicked Foreign Minister and, to a certain extent, Prime Minister, have commandeered the international spotlight in a way that he — despite his more than three-decades in the business of politics — never could. After all, Khawaja Asif’s straight talking on militant liabilities coming back to bite Pakistan where the sun is said not to shine; combined with his talking truth to American power in terms of Washington having actively courted these groups in the past — appears to be paying off. Meaning that just as he was readying to touch down in Trump town, the US said that it was ready to give Pakistan one last chance to do the needful across the border in Afghanistan. Asif’s naming of Hafiz Saeed, who has been under house arrest since the beginning of the year, was enough to, reportedly, have this globally-designated terrorist file a defamation suit against the Foreign Minister to the cool tune of just under $1 million. Which, naturally, begs the question as to who provided him with such legal recourse?

These should have been among the PMLN priorities before Parliament. Yet self-serving leaders have once again made a mockery of this institution. During the previous set-up, it was PM Gilani who was guilty of the same when he green lighted US moves to up the drone ante — all the while pledging that he and other lawmakers would make a fuss before Parliament before conveniently letting the matter quietly fade away.

So this is where we are in today’s Pakistan. Peoples around the world — from the Iraqi Kurds to the Catalan — are using the tools of democracy to fight for their fundamental right to self-determination. Here, we are expected to sit back and silently watch as our institutions are hijacked by those charged with strengthening them.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, October 5^th 2017.