Maulana — the Keyser Söze

Expect Maulana to scamper out-of-town after claiming victory, once the usual suspects have crossed Pakistani airspace

In the final scene of the movie, The Usual Suspects, the character Keyser Söze is indulged in a conversation with the local police officer who is investigating him and his aides. Söze creates a story about how the gang operated, which is full of fictional characters he made by looking at the text and little pictures on the wall behind the officer’s desk. The entire narration is done so flawlessly that even the officer’s trained eyes and ears couldn’t detect a modicum of fiction in it. But it’s all a distraction Söze creates for the officer to put him in the wrong direction.

Maulana in Islamabad has set up shop claiming to be on a crusade to purge the state of disenfranchised leadership. That claim is equivalent to Söze’s storytelling. That benign-sounding aim of Maulana offers a great distraction for the real dirty aim. Maulana too tries to create a charade by displaying innocence, honesty, and religion. I can’t stop to wonder whether he has set up shop for Islam or Islamabad.

But there appears to be a more sinister ulterior motive here and some of it may have been achieved already. Like Söze, Maulana has some codewords and stories of mass distraction. When he labels his dharna as “Azadi March”, I don’t doubt it is a protest for freedom. However, I’m not sure if the freedom is for the Pakistani people or the usual suspects, one of whom has developed a platelets problem behind bars. Zardari is believed to follow Nawaz abroad once the latter’s name is removed from the ECL.

Maulana says that the people’s mandate has been stolen. I am curious to know if he thinks the mandate has been stolen from him and his party. That is another distraction, but an entertaining one. Because even if Imran Khan resigns and re-election happens with the PTI banned from taking part in it, does Maulana think he will win and become PM? When he says the people’s real representatives and real choice must come to power, does he hint at himself? More importantly, does he hint at himself merely for public consumption or truly believe he is the majority’s real choice?

Maulana has now settled for a face-saving deal, if someone could offer it. He has brought the bar down, just as some of us set the alarm for 5am but keep pressing “Snooze” until 6am. He now says he would settle for something that could be the equivalent of a resignation. Perhaps Maulana would have been better served had he launched his “Azaadi March” with the slogan that we are out to snatch something that could be equated with the PM’s resignation; that ours is a struggle striving towards achieving the philosophical demise of Imran Khan’s rule rather than actually sending him to Banigala for good.

But Maulana’s distraction has created an illusion in the minds of many. I see many yellow shalwar kameez wearing stick-wielding men and you know what the late George Carlin said about such men; “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups”. And when imbecility is driven by zeal, religion becomes its fuel. What better fuel out there than Diesel? When the cunning and imbeciles combine, any irrationality can be rationalised. The great Pashto poet Ghani Khan said that religion, for some, provides rationality where none exists.

Nevertheless, behind the illusion, “azaadi” has been achieved for the platelets-wala. In the last act of the scene from The Usual Suspects, Söze shifts from limping to a straight gait, showing how much of a con artist he had been. Expect Maulana to scamper similarly out-of-town after claiming victory, once the usual suspects have crossed Pakistani airspace. For once, I will trust his victory claim because that’s the ultimate aim behind the “Azaadi March” charade anyway.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2019.

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