Keeping our goats and cows as well

Maulana Fazalur Rahman of JUI-F headed a weak provincial All Parties’ Conference in Karachi and if this is taken as a reflection of what is to come the opposition would do well to give up protesting and stay at home. Good leadership has to be a good reader of the situation and the opposition must clearly read the state’s current orientation and the collective and mutual state institutional build-up. Military’s requirement of a stable political setup under an environment of external threat, judiciary’s instructions to the government to set up more accountability courts and the renewed impetus with which the CPEC projects are being rolled forward — all this demands an honest appraisal of the political situation by the opposition.

While Maulana’s eyes are set on fresh elections, the state is clearly looking to the other side. There is an absolute state and institutional resolve to reignite the anti-corruption campaign with renewed vigour and a spirited drive. Under the current strategic environment, the state can only afford to allow ‘situation specific political flexibility’ to the opposition and dharnas and long marches, the opposition’s favoured protesting tools may no more be part of that permissible flexibility. How can any system be ever reformed by just being patient? Pakistan deserves a state that is not only patient but is involved — involved to ensure and guarantee a fair playing field for all. The state needs to decide that it has to have a bigger say and be ready to make big sacrifices. The midcourse corrections and state’s participation in them is essential, they would actually be the difference in either reaching the ultimate destination or falling off the cliff.

So far we have sickened and harmed our country more than we’ve healed it. So far, neither the fear of people and state accountability here, nor God’s accountability in the hereafter guided the actions of our leadership at the top. Something well described in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He writes about a village where people are afflicted with a strange plague. The plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects. But one young man still not affected tries to limit the damage and puts labels on everything that this is a cow, this is a chair, etc. But at the entrance of the town he puts up two large signs. One reads “the name of my village is Macondo” and another larger sign reads “God exists”. The writer’s idea of having the boy put up the large two signs outside the town seems simple — we may forget everything but if we forget where we belong to and that there is a God, we are profoundly mistaken to call ourselves even humans. Those that looted this country were hardly thinking about their ‘musalmaniyyat’ and their ‘Pakistaniyyat’. They brought shame to us as a nation and as a society and that is the reason that the state cannot allow them to go unpunished.

The arguments and counter arguments on the two JIT reports will remain meaningless and inconclusive unless the state gets involved and speaks. The ‘merry-go-rounds’ of democracy on which the leaders have made us sit have moved us in circles and taken us nowhere. What we are witnessing today is not the revenge of democracy but of kleptocracy.

Kleptocracy gets formulated when corruption infects all key functions of the state system (customs, privatisation, tax collection, regulation, etc). When leaders and their appointed officials and regulators consider that the rules don’t apply to them; and make billions of dollars through corrupt practices in cahoots with local mafias — taking control of ‘others private businesses’, their residences and even state-controlled assets which they privatise and are acquired below market rates. Haven’t we all seen this happening? We were not blind or deaf that we couldn’t hear and see what happened to our country; yet we debate the JITs; the artificial boosting of real estate prices and the investment of ill-gotten money in real estate and stock exchanges to become billionaire overnight? How do I explain this ‘robbing and ripping off’ to a student undertaking his 18^th year of education at university? Working very hard, can he believe that skill, talent and specialisation will be rewarding in a country where a corrupt and choked system has been created by politics that gave political patronage to killers, criminals and mafias to rule this country?

About America it is said that it is a system designed by geniuses so that it can even be run by idiots. Our system has no map and no design because idiots don’t make maps or designs, they only utilise their power and authority to extort whatever money they can from the public, investors, businessmen and the state itself. If they are geniuses, it is only in the matters of corruption and they forget that there is a country and a God and both will eventually hold them responsible.

Our political culture is well depicted by a joke about Asian and African ministers for infrastructure who exchange visits to one another’s countries. The African visits the Asian minister in his country and at the end of the day the Asian takes him for a dinner at his place. Living in an absolutely palatial residence he is asked by the African, “Wow, how can you afford such a home on your salary?” The Asian minister takes him to a big bay window and points to a bridge in the distance and says, “You see that bridge over there?” Then he points a finger at himself and whispers, “10%”. A year later the Asian visits the African minister in his country and discovers that he is now living in a more palatial home than himself. Now he asks him, “How can you afford a home on your salary?” The African pulls him over to a big bay window in his living room and points towards the horizon. “Do you see a bridge over there?” The Asian replies, “There is no bridge that I can see.” “That’s right,” says the African minister pointing to himself, “100%”.

We have had enough of the 10%, 20% and even 100%. Those that made such big money don’t even allow an independent judiciary to pursue corruption. However, the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has rekindled hope in these dire and testing times by speaking about the speedy process of accountability by the accountability courts. That demonstrates the judicial willingness to go ahead against the corrupt. Will the state rise to the occasion and bring a change in our corrupt system?

Under Suharto, Indonesia had a saying, “If your neighbour steals your goat whatever you do don’t take him to court, because by the time you get done paying off the police and the judges, you will end up losing your cow as well.”

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the state is ready and willing we can turn around our fortunes and not only keep our goats but cows as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 12^th, 2020.

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