The Brutuses murdering our democracy
The writer is Dean Social Sciences at Garrison University Lahore and tweets @Dr M Ali Ehsan
It is never easy to categorically say which one of the Shakespeare’s play is a history, comedy or a tragedy but broadly speaking one cannot either say the same thing about Pakistani politics too — comedy, tragedy or history?
Political integrity was never set as an achievable benchmark by politics in Pakistan; and like the one phrase ‘Fair is foul, foul is fair’ chanted by three witches right at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play ‘Macbeth’ summarises what is to come in the entire play, the over 70 years drama of politics in Pakistan can also be summarised in one phrase — ‘how to rob the nation’s wealth?’
I don’t know why PDM and its leadership can’t understand this one simple political message: had their leadership not resorted to the abuse of public office in the past for their private gains, people would have come out in hoards to support them. Their abuse of ‘entrusted power for private gains’ is the story of Pakistani politics and this gives no alternative choice to the people and despite the difficult times they stick with the hope given by PM Imran Khan. Our politicians have breached the trust of the people; and for now they are making a clear choice — between those public leaders, public representatives and public officials who are following the lucrative political paths of self-enrichment and those that are standing up to fight against their corruption. This today is the most relative story of politics in Pakistan. But for now, let me refer back to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar’ is categorised as a tragedy. I am reminded of this play because even Shakespeare wouldn’t have imagined how a famous phrase in it would evolve. A soothsayer calling out to Caesar and warning him by saying, ‘beware the ides of March’. But Caesar ignores this warning only to ‘seal his blood-soaked faith’. The word ‘ides’ comes from Latin meaning ‘in the middle of’. PDM has announced 26th March as the date of its long march towards Islamabad. It is not exactly in the middle of the month but people who believe in superstitions still show their concern and see this time as a bad omen.
It seems as if the storm is already gathering: the federal employees are protesting, the lawyers are attacking the Islamabad High Court. Poorly led, these protesters resort to violence to act as cheap attention seekers with lack of knowledge and intellect but they are actually the gifted end products of years of politics of neglect. Most of them, it seems, are being sponsored and utilised by political forces as great diffusers to postpone and delay the likely process of reform. Anyone in Pakistan who these days wants to get out on the roads and streets of Islamabad to protest will immediately earn political patronage because there is no better way but this to demonstrate to the outside world our ‘cultural angst’. With 79 diplomatic missions located in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad, there could be no better place to showcase ‘growing political instability’ in the country. Is there a Brutus behind all this planning and scheming?
We all remember ‘Brutus’ but we hardly ever mention the name of ‘Cassius’ who in the Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar’ is the most shrewd and active member of the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. Both characters in the play believe that the rise of Caesar ‘could not be the work of fate’. Pretty much in how the PDM leadership thinks about PM Imran. Both blame each other for their lack of will for allowing Caesar’s rise to power and Cassius fills the ears of Brutus telling him about Caesar’s ‘poor qualifications to rule’. The plot is actually hatched by Cassius who resents how Caesar ‘has become a God-like figure’ and thus draws Brutus in a conspiracy to murder him. I could not miss the similarities of the conspiracy hatched in ‘Julius Caesar’ and the political conspiracies being engineered today by PDM to oust PM Imran and his government. Not a ‘God-like figure’ but extremely charismatic and without any stain of corruption while holding the public office, Imran still carries the hopes of many people in this country on his shoulders. While the opposition and government fight it out for achieving personal glories, power and fulfilling promises made to the nation, what is it that the people want them to do?
Be patient. But our power hungry politicians only travel in the fast lane, the lane of speed that can take them quickly to the corridors of power with speed. But speed without reflection and thought is a dangerous thing.
Politics in our country must slow down and must create room for ‘reflection and thought’ but is that room not already available in the form of parliaments and their committees? All knowledge including political (the valuable resource of democracy) is fed by information and if the gathered information is not well reflected upon and only handled in haste, we will continue to showcase mediocre political developments that will not resolve our problems in the parliaments but push them out in the form of protesting citizens on the roads and streets. So, who are the Brutuses of our democracy? The true Brutuses of our democracy are those who lay claims to their ‘timeless political wisdom’ but in fact all they puke out is their ‘outdated political biases’. These are the people who are contributing to the slow murdering of democracy in this country.
The real story of this country that my children and the next generation will narrate will be ‘How we fell behind and how we came back’. Those who don’t want to be part of that story and this change have no room in the future politics of this country — and that should be our national narrative. Let’s accelerate in taking back our lost place in the region and the world and let’s accelerate getting there. Let the rate of change get faster and politics (with outdated biases) that cannot stand (adapt) with that rate of change be made to step aside.
In any case many politicians have just been sitting on their ‘political merry-go-arounds’ for a very long time now and the revolving platforms they occupied made them individually merry but kept us all in this country unimaginatively static — at one place. It’s time to move on.
The crowds that they speak to are the poor and underprivileged whose lives they have exploited. This mismatch of those who stand at the PDM platforms and make speeches and those that ‘fill the grounds in front’ is at the centre of the politics of landlordism and feudalism in Pakistan which must end. Looking at them it seems that people in this country are still living in the 11th century instead of 21st.
Lastly, reform in this country will only speed up if politics will stand on the shoulders of the poor; if they will become the real stakeholders. Else it will take us forever to reform. Seeing the neglected state of Karachi the 18th amendment to me looks more and more like a child — ‘not born of the mother constitutional womb but untimely ripped from it by a cesarean section’. This child is unnaturally sick and unlikely to survive and give anything back to the parents.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2021.
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