Giving context to chaos

As Nawaz Sharif and Maryam dispense pretensions pitching political establishment against the military establishment

It is important to differentiate between chaos and anarchy. Anarchy is when a society makes do by itself through parallel arrangements of existence and function; when a state is no more with its authority of a rule-based order. In chaos the state and its rules are very much present and continue to determine social, economic and political outcomes but a part of the composite decides to defy the order. Chaos is limited in spread and hence short-lived. The state ultimately regains control. Chaos is entropic which translates into energy and in some moments can be liberating, creative and productive. Anarchy is destructive and produces arrangements which replace the status quo.

Last week, chaos began to brew in the political tea cup. Anarchist Nawaz Sharif and his mercurial daughter Maryam Nawaz dispensed pretensions pitching political establishment against the military establishment. It was warpath. They alleged that politics in the country is engineered, contrived, controlled and constrained where politicians in power are unable to function freely. This is partially true and conveniently selective. The gains are mutual as are the liabilities which are equally shared. But that is how Pakistan has been governed under any order for the last 75 years. Governments find their way into power on the back of some understanding with the military establishment and function with mutual consent. When they lose power or exhaust their turn they turn on their benefactors. Frankensteinian and opportunistic. Whether it should be the case is the issue.

That is the face. What lies beneath is patently different and equally important. Having exhausted all options to find a ‘new’ accommodation with the military establishment — stories abound — including reversion of conviction by courts, the duo have come out all guns blazing. That's the farce. For company they have the veritable Maulana Fazlur Rahman who is equally piqued for being left out of eminence in his traditional strongholds by none other than Imran Khan’s PTI. He has been spoiling for a fight for long now to upset the applecart of the PTI government. The All Parties Conference (APC) so painstakingly put together by PPP’s Bilawal Bhutto — where all others, including the Maulana, had failed in garnering one — mustered all opposition parties on a single platform in unified rejection of PTI government’s policy on accountability and its major anti-graft arm, the NAB. Nawaz Sharif gate-crashed that party with his confrontationist speech so plainly delivered as an agenda of war from his confines in London. This too has a convenient cover: ‘the final stand for democracy’, and embedded common interests. Other than the Maulana who is beaming all others are forced to weigh their options in becoming the foot soldiers for a battle they didn't choose, while Bilawal still smarts from Sharif literally snatching away from him the centrality as well the agenda.

There is however a common thread to it all even if there is a patently tribal interest that Sharif and the PML-N betray. The PPP and its leadership is equally in the crosshairs for massive plunder and hence a fellow ‘victim’ of this government’s sworn policy to bring the corrupt to book. The opposition also has a point in noting some worthy exceptions from the ruling party or its larger cohorts from similar prosecution but that doesn't exempt a misdemeanour in office of those who are alleged to be guilty. The clear objective of the APC even before Sharif dictated his agenda was to push back on such governmental assertiveness against those engaged in corrupt practices and financial misappropriation — loot and plunder by the so-called democratic governments is fabled. To simply wish it away is neither practicable nor feasible when the country is laden with exceptional debt in a drowning economy. Serious remedies are needed within the political system to correct both perceptions and proclivities. The power elites also find convenient assistance to tweak the law in their favour for preferential treatment. IK has upended this arrangement and hence the ruckus.

The APC wants the graft cases against politicians dropped, NAB to be abolished and accountability redefined to protect their interests. The PML-N leadership states the same plainly and has chosen to go for the jugular hoping the military will step back from its support of those engaged in the accountability process. The temperatures will heat up on this count even more in the coming days. Over time this agitation will need oxygen to sustain and turn into a movement, if at all. To that end the opposition will mutate the message to include issues impinging on the common man. But it shall not be the common man that shall lie at the heart of this effort, sadly. Once again he will only be a conduit for the elites to escape a dragnet of retribution of their misdoings. The PPP has another compulsion — to re-find its footing in Punjab in particular and in each of the other provinces outside of Sindh. There is thus another reason to why the PPP might support this wave of agitation and give political purpose to it. Even if the objectives vary the means to the ends of the main political players are lain in the same strategy.  

Taking the PML-N at face value — of which there is considerable merit too, one might add, even if it is a subterfuge to another purpose — it is time to investigate how might real, pure, unadulterated democracy where the votes should count as much as the conduct of those in power after the votes are counted be incarnated and ensured. The entire edifice of governance and delivery will have to be scrutinised. That the army should have nothing at all to do with governance and policy and in preferences in such an unadulterated system is understood. That the political parties must be unimpeded and undisturbed in their conduct of the business of the government and the state is a need. The minor trouble in such clamouring is the repeated saga of plunder and misgovernance over repeated turns in power of these political players. How do they propose to remedy such errant conduct in power? With both, civil society and the media gratuitously fraternised, the military takes it on itself as an extension of the people to save from the pillaging of public money. All other institutions meant for such tasks either stand fraternised or compromised by the political and social elites. 

It goes without saying that the military has had its role in politics, one way or the other, and it is time to review it. But what causes for that to happen must also find introspection. Proclivity or need? Failures of policy, governance, administration and conduct all add up to make failing democratic political dispensations. That pulls the military in rightly or wrongly. There is a need to resolve this structural distortion. The political establishment will have to exhibit and personify fidelity of intent and conduct when in power and in delivering to the people and prove themselves true to their word and commitment. And the military must keep its finger out of the pie. None should have a free run on what belongs to the people. They are constrained by law and the covenant.