Defiance is a complicated matter. Resistance of convention, in any form, is not a simple undertaking and although exercised by most, it can only be tempered by the most gifted among us. The orthodox reputation about defiance is that it belies sanctity. Truthfully, it may very well be a consequence of reverence, too advanced perhaps for a general overview.
Javed Jabbar’s new book ‘But Prime Minister’ was an arduous assignment, not because of its subject matter or hefty bulk, but because of its pursuit of humanising one of the most polarising entities in Pakistani politics – Benazir Bhutto.
Jabbar’s intention of reflecting upon a 14 year journey is sanguine, but to be able to do so objectively? That in itself would turn out to be a different story.
The former senator and federal information minister chronicles his interactions with the first woman prime minister of Pakistan from the year 1986 (to 2000), which officially began a few years later, when as acknowledgement of his inherent skill set, she invited him to join her cabinet as the state minister for information. At once both obliged and uncertain, he felt a swift jab of being cut down to size when she made it clear that the portfolio of his position will remain with her. Clearly, he had a long road ahead of him to make a strong impression but he was not alone in his exercised disdain; belonging instead to a small faction within the Pakistan Peoples Party who disagreed with many of the sweeping overtures Benazir made, he does state that she was successful in continuously and effectively retaining the bulk of the members’ support.
‘But Prime Minister’ by its very title, is indicative of the dynamic between Mr Jabbar and Benazir Bhutto and the author accredits its conception to his colleague, Salim Abbas Jilani who noted in his generous observations how Jabbar was known to regularly convey his dissenting stance to the prime minister. This ‘unreasonable tendency’ of his inspired both wonder and revulsion amongst the party ranks, a spectrum the author does not care to comment on at length because ‘one was above such affairs’. It would be wise to note that defiance does often take a toll on humility.
The author waxes poetic about Benazir’s effortless charm and her innate intelligence, which seems to have fared her well in the face of an evident lack of experience. The youngest prime minister of the country, a Muslim majority nation no less, he writes, explicitly bypassed the criterion that her office warranted – merely due to her surname and the many doors that she knew it would open. To be a nation’s premier “you need to understand the inner workings of the system. You need to know how the bureaucracy works, how institutions coordinate with each other … the civil, military, the complexity of both…her lack of experience was a liability and a disadvantage which she strove with great courage to overcome. And to some extent she did, to her credit.” Only some.
With a master conversationalist at the helm, the book reads like a confessional, a well crafted oration that has been transcribed for the benefit of the reader; for the most part. Jabbar’s ability and command of the English language is common knowledge, but how long can organised syntax save one from banal punctuations. The tonality breaks every now and again where Jabbar deviates into facts and figures, percentages, and statistics. These droll recesses break the momentum, edging the reader away from what appears to be the brink of an insightful breakthrough, only to realise – that none are to appear.
A few fleeting instances of character insights are conveyed. For example, in the post-mortem of the PPP’s first government, at the end of August in 1990, there was a meeting of the central committee of the party. “I was a special invitee because I was not a member of the committee. For about an hour and a half, 18 to 20 other members were asked to talk about ‘why we were dismissed’. No one had mentioned a certain word. When she asked me to give my opinion, I said Prime Minister, we have to accept that one of the reasons why we were dismissed is corruption. That was like igniting an explosion because she was so upset with me. ‘There was no corruption, Javed, prove it, prove it, [she insisted].’ I said it’s not my duty to prove it. I’m only telling you that there are enough grounds that justify this. You may not agree with it, but that was certainly a perception and a conviction. Sometimes, on the other hand, she could be very reasonable. Sometimes when I disagreed, she would smile and accept dissent. So it was both.”
While the eponymous political memoir sets out to do just that, one can not help but wonder if this should have been categorised as a work of creative non-fiction instead. The decade and more that the author aimed to dissect is one of the most diverging epochs in the history of Pakistani politics, with many equally qualified pundits having extremely different points of view. In many cases, within this tome at least, the instances of condescension (for lack of a better word) are profoundly tasteless. A highly personalised analysis posthumously, of the key subject might I add, effectively removes the aspect of a gamble ergo a calculated strike which renders the text benign, if not completely rendering it as an exercise in vanity, especially since majority of the interactions articulated between the two figureheads were in public. Such is the convenience of hindsight. That one can take ample liberties with discussing two-decade-old politics through the lens of present cognizance. Lest we forget that Mr Jabbar’s entry into mainstream politics itself was an appointment to the senate without an election during military rule. We hope that that integrity remains intact since he has always been a pillar of democracy – even as far back as the 1980s.
Hindsight bias is a very real thing. The phenomenon known as ‘creeping determinism’ is a common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. After an event has occurred, some people claim to have predicted or perhaps even would have known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would have been before the event occurred. Otherwise referred to as hindsight bias, this may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred and is a significant source of overconfidence regarding an individual’s ability to predict the outcomes of future events. Jabbar’s preliminary interactions with Mr Asif Ali Zardari serves as a prime example of this principle, speaking volumes about this notion. The writer’s abhorrence of Benazir’s husband and father of her children is palpable from the get go. Self-proclaimed objectivity then takes a backseat when the text reflects not only upon the dialogues uttered by Mr Zardari, but even subliminal nuances - like body language, twists of a smile, flighty looks and a general aura of pretentiousness are all laid out, sometimes in painfully long (and barbed) monologues. Pardon the impression of the devil’s advocacy, but to suggest that the future could be ascertained by the Jabbar even as far back as 30 years ago, would be reasonably within the realm of the far-fetched.
Heartbreak would be far too suggestive a term to use in this context, but a potent disappointment is fairly noticeable. Jabbar never completely bought the premise that the leader of the PPP was so completely devoid of comprehending how deeply the corruption charges aimed at her trajectory lay. This constant ‘unwavering denial’ was the main reason why he reasoned and saw fit to exit the party, which also served as a wedge between Benazir and Jabbar – that perpetuated for the extent her life.
To write about anyone, let alone such a prolific individual, so deeply etched in the zeitgeist of the global community, is a tempestuous journey to embark on. One already realises that public perception will remain largely undeterred, so before sitting down to write then, one banks on delivering a deeper accuracy and stronger understanding to motivate such an effort in the first place. Unfortunately, in the case of this particular prime minister, this is an effort that fails to hit that mark.
An exercise in humanising a larger than life figure via an objective stance, falls short due to the constant inference of the ‘I told you so’ attitude, but kudos to Mr Jabbar for the reaching that exceptional word count. While the content does not come across as polemic in the least, it relies too much on a personal stance and a vetted 2021 opinion. Factoring in the 76-year toll that life can have on a person’s memory, one could suggest that the legitimacy of this text is rendered moot (amongst other things). But let us not.
CLARIFICATION
The article titled ‘The inconvenience of hindsight’, published in The Express Tribune’s T Magazine on August 8, 2021, erroneously mentions that the author of the book ‘But, Prime Minister’ Javed Jabbar was ‘appointed to the Senate without an election under military rule.’ It is pointed out that Mr Jabbar was elected to the Senate, contrary to the aforementioned statement. The error is regretted.