Daily Times

Immy is having a ball. Not least because he can now officially dance on the PDM’s (Pakistan Democratic Alliance) grave. And no one or their cat can blame him. Though it was a tad miffing that his own government’s social media blackout prevented such frolics from going viral. No matter. For while that rag-tag coalition of the unwilling was busy score-settling within their own fractured ranks — Kaptaan swooped in and stole the show. Leaving the TLP (Tehreek-e-Labbaik) cuckolded in his wake.

And just like that, the honeymoon is over. Without so much as a by-your-leave. Those poor and pesky Islamists are now left with nothing more than the memories of inglorious days spent demanding Asia Bibi’s head on as stick alongside those of the three judges who acquitted her of all blasphemy charges. Never again will the greenhorn regime get on its knees and beg the highest court in the land to revisit its verdict.

Pakistan can never be a country for minorities while those who boast of reading from a single bookmarked page collectively turn the other cheek in the face of incitement to religious murder. While threats to the country’s global partnerships suddenly cross all red-lines

Yet Kaptaan knew he had a home-run. After all, this time around it wasn’t some illiterate Christian peasant woman under fire; the wretched kind that gives Pakistan a bad name. But, rather, an EU wide-boy. With cash to splash. And as everyone and their cat knows, money still talks in this rich man’s world. Thus Immy soon forgot about the pledge made to the TLP in unholy matrimony, about the prospect of expelling the French ambassador and boycotting all imported goods from gai Paris. This last, quite possibly the news that daily wage earners living hand-to-mouth had been waiting for. One has to take love where one can find it in the time of Covid. Immy, ultimately convinced he could score better — broke things off permanently to make it Insta official with his papa-gâteau. And now the TLP has been cast aside for a better-endowed financial partner.

Seemingly, some chicanery is at play. But whose?

Far from being dismissed as a fanatic collective, the TLP represents the biggest success story of the un-hidden paw militant-mainstreaming project. The group was able to contest the last general elections on equal footing with established political parties across the great divide — winning some 2.2 million votes (4 percent of the electorate). This translated into two provincial seats in the Sindh Assembly. In the Punjab, the TLP emerged as the third-largest party; after the PTI and PMLN. Not too shabby for a band of un-merry men who got together just three years before going ballot-boxing.

The question therefore remains as to what went ‘wrong’.

That current leader Saad Khadim Rizvi was quick to call his henchmen off the streets suggests the civvies and the establishment are still batting for the same team. The proscription of the TLP likely signals a last ditch attempt to save this government and an economy that was inherited but continues to haemorrhage. If these efforts are genuine, the state must act sooner rather than later and de-link the TLP from the election commission-approved party on whose ticket it contested the polls. Yet in the absence of mechanisms to monitor regrouping and rebranding, even this will be a meow-point.

In the midst of all this, one message rings loud and clear. And every man, woman and cat can hear it. Pakistan is no country for minorities. Indeed, it never can be while those who boast of reading from a single bookmarked page collectively turn the other cheek in the face of incitement to religious murder. While threats to the country’s global partnerships suddenly cross all red-lines.

Sadly, it doesn’t look as if any sort of change is in the offing. The current set-up may or may not offer token criticism of the moves afoot to protect the Fifth Republic from ‘Islamist separatism’. But what matters more is safeguarding all minority rights here in this country. And if Immy can work with a committed secularist to promote cultural tourism in Pakistan — he can surely initiate dialogue over de-weaponising blasphemy in this hardest of countries.

Only two year remain before the cat will be set among the pigeons once again. But by then, it may be too late. At least for minorities living in Naya-Naya Land.

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