Daily Times

Pakistan is a magnificent country and its people are made of the strongest clay in Almighty’s mud factory. He must have injected infinite elasticity into the country’s structure and fixed quite a few extra bones into our shoulder blades. Otherwise how could a country still be standing after being dismembered barely 25 years after its Caesarean birth? How else would we be carrying a huge load of leeches of all descriptions on our backs for so long?
We started off making a country by accepting the second best option and, thereafter, never looked back, perfecting the art of compromises just as it became our firm habit to go on accepting second, third and even forth options in all walks of our individual and collective lives. Sadly and very thoughtlessly we tossed away the noble pursuit of the best a long time ago. Had the Muslims in the Indian Subcontinent braced themselves for a purposeful and determined struggle to regain their political dignity instead of an interim lay-by, the map of the subcontinent could have been differently drawn and the state of Muslims from Chittagong to Peshawar would have been qualitatively more respectful. It is quite likely that the destabilising radicalism, irreconcilable political differences and irrational mutual equations between various components of all the three major states would not have taken root the way they have.
These spilled beans have turned into generators of immense misery, unyielding animosity and a kind of hissing hatred among the people populating the subcontinent. Our collective guilt and a self-destructive instinct have not allowed us to address this vital side of our psychological construct ever. By deliberate neglect we left this most precious turf open to religious, political and ideological jugglers who have poisoned our minds almost irredeemably. We have been fed, rubbed into and painted black with a maddening psychosis of destruction, hatred and hubris — an extremely explosive mix.
All that we have lamented about so far is what it should have been. What we need to do now is stand up and break this stranglehold on our lives by men and women of criminal, moral worthlessness and shoddy personal/family backgrounds. None of these and those whom they succeeded or replaced had any genuine or substantive right to leadership and power to order (or rather disorder) our lives and those of our children. They patronise men and women of dubious credentials, stand in for them if ever nabbed by the law and grease powerful palms for their release. Murder, bribes, coercion, deception and blackmail are their favourite tools, which they employ to the hilt under their apparently benevolent, populist and holy facades. They stink for miles.
And what about their children and kinsmen who are being foisted as the future leaders of our country? My goodness! What a pathetically degenerate lot most of them are. However, they have the dubious pedigree acquired through manipulations by their elders and therefore consider themselves perfectly eligible to be the future prime ministers and the chief ministers of the country. Here was one such cub who lectured kindergarten children in Lahore on the merits of living with corruption. The other, with his undetermined but double ancestry, sits in his teenage majesty while an 80-year-old chief minister repeatedly makes a perfect monkey of himself explaining things before him. Is there anyone left with even an iota of self-respect in our entire miserable pack of national and provincial political clowns to stand up and say enough? Their submission to these beanbags is revolting, undertaken only because it provides them an extended opportunity to go on plundering national resources under these pampered political protégés. Grace and character being unprofitable remain on hold. There are other blokes also on the floor. These featherweight men are our leaders. What a regrettable pass we have brought ourselves to.
We helped create these demons ourselves, therefore we are condemned to suffer as a consequence. However, that is neither divinely ordained nor indelibly etched into our fate. There is also no contract in which we wrote ourselves into their bondage and that of their insufferable children forever. To our regret, these men have crafted a constitution for us that is the next best document in South Asia after Lord Clive’s notorious masterpiece written to promise reward to Mir Jaffar for treachery in battle against Sirajud Daula in Plassey in 1757. That was never meant to be honoured and so is our Constitution? Clive’s crooked contract never delivered just as our celebrated Constitution has never protected the poor, the powerless and the national interest. It is in fact a splendid Berlin bunker for the swindlers and the dishonest; our daunting crowd of politicians, drooling mullahs, property dealers, drug pushers, bank robbers, calcified bureaucracy and supercilious judiciary. The entire circus is a marvelous piece of profitable constitutionalism and privileges, against and at the cost of the people of Pakistan. They simply subsist on worthless moral, constitutional abstractions and avarice.
Did anyone notice these men pale and unsure when the people of Pakistan mounted their first ever, and perhaps the last, challenge to their power and plunder in December 2014? They huddled together in Parliament House. Rotund mullahs, pseudo ideologues, the pony-tailed weeping willow, the fiery legal wizard, loud seaport men and the Roman senator from Balochistan all thundered as one to defend their privileges, not the Constitution. Their pillage kingdoms were effectively threatened for the first time; only the determined squatters were cheated out of their historic victory by their own leaders. For these men, Islam, Constitution, democracy and people’s rights are convenient smoke screens.
Our perverse preference for dynastic politics is a common legacy of Islam’s Syedism and the subcontinent’s tradition of royal rulership. This helped us to support a kind of authentic candidate for succession and avoid unnecessary bloodshed. But there is no monarchy in Pakistan and we are not bonded subjects of any imperial dynasty let alone those whose own pedigree is ambiguous, to say the least. Of all the people, a green kid still wet under the ears, unsure of which company to keep or a dumb mannequin whose tweets are in such bad taste as a prime minister? Have a heart; even Lady Almas could rule better.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com