The fish-head syndrome

We must fervently thank whatever powers there be for the football in South Africa, for the tennis at the wonderful Wimbledon and for the cricket in Sri Lanka for having taken us away in mind and spirit, if not in body, from the awfulness of this present thing known as government.

It was impossible prior to 2008 to imagine that there could be any assembly of men and women as depressing and unwholesome as those that sat in the assemblies glued together by our erstwhile failed dictator, former president General Pervez Musharraf — but the impossible in Pakistan does not exist.

This government under the tutelage of party chief and head of state (the importance of the dual position in that order) has done little but ride relentlessly on the back of Benazir Bhutto for the entire length of its existence. The members of the ruling party are direct beneficiaries of the NRO which has been declared as non-law, illegal and immoral, even unconstitutional (for however much the constitution counts in this deity forsaken land).  Thus, their backgrounds are all questionable if not downright dubious.

The president – whose public outbursts are verging more and more towards the fanciful have little to do with policies and all to do with party power – has even boasted how the PPP flag flied atop the presidency and what it symbolises. The point here is should it be there? The presidency may well have been converted into PPP-Z headquarters but there should be some limit to shamelessness. But there is not. One could only laugh when reading that Hafeez Shaikh, who has laid himself on the line and taken up the task of guiding this bankrupt country’s finances, suggested in that House known as ‘august’ that ministers who have grabbed six official cars should be ashamed of themselves. Hafeez has to be out of touch — there is no such thing as shame and no limit to shamelessness when it comes to parliamentarians and politicians.

Take for instance the presidential spokespersons who lay themselves bare, defending the slightest move of Asif Zardari’s little finger. One should surely feel sorry for them that their desperation is such — and particularly for Fauzia Wahab, once a loyal follower of Benazir and a sound party worker who leapt into the Zardari camp like many others in the wink of an eye.  She is a disaster, poor thing. One of her latest gaffes was about parliamentarians who are where they are on the basis of false degrees, i.e. cheating and swindling.  Forget about them, she said, what does it matter now that the requirement has been done away with?  To blaze with honesty and morality, welcome in corruption, jobbery, nepotism, amorality and all that accompany such PPP-Z desired traits.

Whilst grading the team assembled to ensure that governance is nil, perhaps the top award should go to the man put in charge of legal affairs whose record as far as deviations from the law is concerned glows brightly.  Babar Awan embodies the blatant contempt for the people and the judicial system of the land which he shares with his fellow ministers. One of his latest escapades was the chartering of a PAF aircraft so that he could fly and buy a bunch of lawyers, members of a distinguished Bar Association. We can be sure that he was successful.

It is futile exhorting us sub-citizens to stand together and ‘make a difference.’  Nothing can change, there can be no semblance of governance whilst the head of the fish is in the state it is — and has been for more years than many can remember.  Rottenness permeates at will and with ease from the top, downwards. The ballot box has for decades made no difference.  Civil society, or by whatever other name it may go, cannot stop the erosion eating away at the foundations of the Pakistan state.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2010.