The spirit of the letter

We were anyway meant to be a nominal democracy. Merely electing governments through a compromised process enabled a cover to what was anything but democracy. Political parties are under perpetual dynastic hold and contrive elections within to always choose ‘dear leader’. They never disclosed how and from which source they are funded. The common man is the most abused metaphor for their reason to arrogate power sanctifying elections and enabling them to lord over servile minions.

Laws are desecrated for targeted favour as the rich and the privileged find even greater succor; the constitution is violated at a whim with passion and shameless creativity. This by those who are to live by the promise to keep constitution relevant to the lives of the citizens and the state. In defence you will hear Pakistan’s seventy-five years history of how and by who all was the constitution manipulated, abrogated or modified, and which all laws were bent to benefit those in power. They are unfortunately right. They thus justify the mauling and the murder of the statutes meant to keep us civil. What we get instead mimics jungle-rule.

The farce that played out in the Parliament was seen on the screens across homes. If let to sustain it will set a precedent which will engender chaos and corrupt laws to the point of anarchic disruption. A constitution, other than being a mother document for all laws and rules that govern a state and a society, is also the contract between a state and its citizens. When it ruptures both the state and the nation lose their mooring and a spin ensues. The entire nation is in a state of suspended animation, uncertain who rules over them or runs the government. In effect there is no government. And hence without a body to take decisions, routine or emergent, we as a leaf float in thin air. Imagine a nuclear weapon nation – one of the eight only in the world (Israel included) – of 220 million people, sixty per cent of whom live below the poverty line – without anyone at the helm. A couple of institutions may give out a sense of order but that remains deceptive as most others sway to the tune of popular sentiment. Yet half the population celebrates dissolution of order and the inception of chaos.

Every few weeks the parliament mocks its way through manipulation, subversion or outright bulldozing of what stands for precedence, tradition, fair-play and fidelity of law. Every week one judge or another will adjudicate or shame the politicians into submitting before law which they enact and must therefore honour. Every week we see the travesty played out among those who indulge in deliberate subversion of law to chart their own route to undue favour. The entire system stands compromised, wrecked and pulverised to the point of non-existence if not abrogation. Country’s systems of governance have been brought down to their knees and there is no one to bring it back on rails. If the military intervened it shall give cause to another round of malicious propaganda against the army. Similarly the judiciary avoids indulging in political matters to avoid being blamed partisan. The entire system has been held ransom to the wishes of a few. Either it is their way or they are taking the entire house down.

A fiction is created and truth built over it with logic qualified from the past. Goebbels would be put to shame. A narrative is developed and unleashed. It uses contrived kernels of apparent truth to give it the trek. And so another chimera builds on when dreams are sold. This is the story of politics when the powerful can manipulate and exploit those who know nothing better. Those that can discern are sold fables around ideational promises and slogans that will sit but never materialise. Politics is not public service but an occupation for unmatched influence and unrestrained access. Rules be damned. A compliant bureaucracy serves at their will even if it barters its integrity for backdoor influence which saves it from oversight. The judiciary and the military exercise an outsized influence in national affairs and retain the power to influence political outcomes. This completes the culture of favours in which all stand compromised, only naked power sustains. This is when laws, statutes, rules and tradition take a back seat. When one component rots the entire system rots.

If we make the right choices we just may be able to cleanse the political and legal system of its malignance and malice and easy misuse by the highest bidder? If the system will not self-clean there will be those who will rise in its name and under a chimera of deliverance promise the moon which the unsuspecting will bite at as an article of faith. Ends justify the means. Laws have been trashed. Mediation has found permanence despite fourteen continuous years of supposed democratic rule as politics stands badly stagnated and compromised. SC has been invoked and may ultimately resort to the one persistent recourse, the dreaded ‘doctrine of necessity’ – an escape for not having to make a difficult decision. We remain a Banana Republic. Half the country celebrates it in a bankrupt and characterless display of absent morality for law and for rules. Constitution is half letter, half spirit. Even if the letter is justified the spirit is forever buried.

What does it boil down to? PTI calls the no-confidence motion against it a foreign inspired conspiracy. It claims a communication from a foreign envoy endorses the possibility. Beyond it there is little known to verify the claim. The contents purportedly have been shared with the cabinet and the cabinet committee on national security but the absence of concurrence fails to fully endorse the claim. The PTI however has turned it into its plank for fight for sovereignty against foreign dictation and manipulation and a popular ploy for its electoral contest. Anything against the US sells well in this country and the slogan has thus taken on even as it implicitly lionises IK. However, it renders Pakistan’s long-term security and strategic interests seriously vulnerable. PTI’s claim of foreign interference needs to be fully investigated and processed for veracity and if an insidious manipulation indeed occurred. Or, is it a fabrication intended to garner political advantage at the cost of nation’s long-term interests. It is time to close the windows of such manipulation through narratives developed for political gain and sold to a gullible public.

I fear for my country; for what’s coming. For the utter dislocation of minds where rhetoric will sway public opinion for personal motives; where people will be divided, for and against. For exclusivism and otherisation in the society; exactly what Trump has done to the US and most of Europe has seen in ultra-right movements exorcising the ‘other’. For Modi-isation of Pakistan and the end of a hint of hope for liberal democracy. We embark upon an ultra-right journey of our own, also called fascism. Power is blind yet we file behind one pied piper or another. Where will it end is anyone’s guess.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2022.

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