Daily Times

In the third and final US presidential debate in Las Vegas on October 20, 2016, Hillary Clinton boasted of her 30 years of public sector experience. Donald Trump was quick to respond that it was “bad experience.” He went on to explain that looking at international turmoil created during Clinton’s leadership of the state department there was nothing to be proud of. Trump talked about the conflicts in Syria and Libya, and the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and Iraq that had de-stabilised the entire region.

Trump’s response prompted me to think about the differences between experience and bad experience in our local environment, as they are blatantly and deliberately confused. Experience is defined as knowledge or traits acquired by trials or repeated involvement, some call it practical acquaintance, whereas bad experience is classified as unskillful or not coming up to a certain standard. Players indulging in bad experience should be snubbed and discarded and not allowed to play repeated innings after jumping parties, as has been the case in Pakistan. We continue to slide as a nation; there is no end to our bad experiences.

Then we go for elections hoping fair play but the bad dominates there as well. The electoral process has been rigged 10 times in a row between 1977-2013, and will follow the same pattern in 2018 unless serious electoral reforms are carried out including biometric confirmation of all votes that are cast. Gloom and doom will persist till we break the stranglehold of the bad experience players in the country as well as political parties.

There is a general consensus that Zia-ul-Haq’s 11 years and four months of misrule was disastrous for the country and its institutions. Unfortunately, the players of his bad experience era continue to dominate the political arena of the country. Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship was another debacle, yet his bad experience team players continue to operate in all political parties including the change-seeking outfits like the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

On December 25, 2011, Javed Hashmi, a political stalwart, left the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and formally joined the PTI. After the rally at the Mazar-e-Quaid in Karachi, we were driving to the hotel where my friend Ahsan Rashid had arranged a dinner. On the way, praises were being heaped on Hashmi sahib’s joining the party, and when I couldn’t it any more, I intervened with a question, “Why did he join Zia’s cabinet if he was such a champion of democracy?” For a while there was complete silence, and then came the typical reply: “Those were different times.” I could not understand how an important player of the bad experience background could transform into a good experience team member. My hunch proved correct. Hashmi’s innings within the PTI was disastrous. From award of party tickets in the 2013 elections to the ‘betrayal’ at the dharna (sit-in) in 2014, there were major letdowns for the party. Imran Khan had to publicly expel him from his team.

While the PML-N initiated a case under article 6 of the constitution against Pervez Musharraf, the party is trying to protect the person who drafted the Emergency Order 2007 as his law minister. If Musharraf and his team were responsible for the bad experience of the last decade then how can this individual transform his approach from bad to good? What new traits has he developed to erase the bad deeds of the past?

Musharraf’s prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, was another disaster for the nation. On his last day in power he had arranged a farewell dinner for his cabinet after which there was a photo session as well. The parting words were “Till we meet again, gentlemen.” The “Shortcut Aziz” never made it back to the Prime Minister House; in fact, he has never again visited the country that he claimed to have served. It was indeed a bad experience. His last cabinet photo should be publicised to show the faces of the players of this disastrous era with their team leader.

It is high time that we moved from the era of bad to good experience, otherwise, change would allude us. Trump is right; bad experience has to be rejected, and its players knocked out of the political arena for the nation to move forward. The mother of all evils is the bad experience at the ballot box. Voters are blamed for making bad choices while the stuffing of boxes decides the outcome. Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator, rightly said: “Those who cast votes decide nothing. Those who count votes decide everything.”

The birth of democracy around 325 BC was propelled by the desire to move away from bad experience and its players. It was the beginning of a new era for mankind. Since then there have been major advances in human rights with Magna Carta being one of them. Perhaps, the world is now ready for ‘Magna Carta II’ to put an end to the era of bad experiences. A fresh start has to be made with new players; the unskillful non-performing oldies have to be moved out if good experience is desired. Imran Khan himself carries no baggage of bad experience as such, and he is also in a position to get rid of it, while other parties and their current and former members carry with them the basic traits and ingredients that invariably lead to bad experience. It calls for a strategy review for the party of change in order to move in the direction of good to finally put an end to bad experiences of the past.

The writer is ex-chairman of the Pakistan Science Foundation. He may be contacted at fmaliks@hotmail.com