The nation’s apex court has sent the elected Prime Minister packing when the country was hardly three weeks away completion of 70 years of independence. And, ironically it’s less than a year away from the general elections in 2018.
Many years ago, I had co-authored a play along with my erstwhile colleague and friend Muna Khan in our days in Newsline magazine.
The story was set in background of a psychiatry asylum centre. The characters in group of mentally challenged people of different ideologies, backgrounds, and identities ended up under the same roof in prison like barrack of asylum. The main protagonist was a character named Malika, playing as epic eunuch, always clad in cross dress (a drags queen). According to the script, she was falsely arrested by the police and framed up on the charges of kidnapping of a child from the streets. ‘Eunuchs abduct babies’ is one of the many stereotypes and prejudices they face in Pakistan.
She was sent by a self righteous magistrate to the prison. Being poor and vulnerable in the prison, she was unable to pay bribe to the corrupt jail authorities to spare herself from being tortured. So animosity of the corrupt prison and police system with a self righteous magistrate, Malika wrongly landed in the mental asylum.
Malika, by her charms and being over smart, earned the sympathies of the asylum staff and the fellow inmates who chose her as their ‘leader’, as the story goes further. Among the other characters were: one comrade Ahmed Nazeer, a graduate of London School of Economics and card holder member of the under grouped Communist Party.
He lost his mind first in failed love affair, suffered a deep culture shock later when he saw collapse of the then USSR and other countries of the Communist bloc. Irshad Ahmed, who was a school teacher, and a Bhutto die hard found himself in asylum after the execution of the then deposed Prime Minister. In his cell of the asylum, he would adorn pictures of Maummar Gaddafi alike leaders (as these leaders alike were thought to be friends of Bhutto) besides Bhuttos’ pictures printed in colourful editions of old but censored newspapers.
Another character in the asylum was Kabeer Pardesi who wanted to become former BBC’s legendary correspondent Mark Tully or novelist Salman Rushdie. But he had failed and instead ended up in the asylum.
One day, they somehow managed to escape. The whole country was on high alert as ‘mentally challenged with dangerous thinking’ were at large.
The search for the mental asylum runaways including Malika was intensified in nook and corner of the country. And one evening, the people of Pakistan, saw in the nightly national news bulletin at 9:00 PM, the new caretaker prime minister swearing in, following the news of the ouster of the elected Prime Minister.
This time the caretaker prime minister, we were told, ‘was neither man nor woman’ but the eunuch none other than Malika. The Queen, Malika of whom the ‘Aziz hamwatano’ (dear fellow countrymen and women) were told that the new caretaker PM was the one who had never committed big or small sin. The honourable madam PM was an immaculate Hijra.
Extending the hand of friendship to India is one of the ‘crimes’ Nawaz Sharif committed and one for which he has seemingly been punished
The other members of new caretaker cabinet were comrade Ahmed Nazeer, inducted as senior minister with additional portfolio of political affairs, Irshad Ahmed was minister of education, and Mr Failed writer Kabeer as the minister for information and culture. Malika was also supposed to appear on national Television to address the nation after the news bulletin.
This play was titled ‘Topi Drama 96’ and could never make it to the stage. What was staged in Pakistan’s political theatre was toppling of the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto through a déjà vu presidential decree.
Surprisingly, the deposed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, termed allegations against her as ‘Topi Drama’ levelled by Farooq Ahmed Laghari in his decree of her dismissal. This was merely a coincidence that the response of the deposed PM Benazir Bhutto to her dismissal coincided with the title of our play ‘Topi Drama 96’.
And now Nawaz Sharif was sent packing, through what this scribe wrote in its editorial, a ‘judicial coup’. The ‘topi drama’ is re-enacted on country’s political scenario time and again.
The people of Pakistan should be the better judge of the integrity of the politicians as their representatives. Extending the hand of friendship to India is one of the ‘crimes’ Nawaz Sharif committed and seems to have been punished for.
So the judges cannot steer the people and countries out of economic or political crisis. The state or establishment should give up their longstanding anthropological habits to send the elected prime ministers either to homes, jails, exile, or to the gallows. Period.
The writer is a journalist, poet, lyricist, writer and human rights defender, living in New York. He has worked with the Newsline and the BBC
Published in Daily Times, August 1st , 2017.