Boarded bus heading towards statelessness

There seem to be no law, the constitution is being violated, democracy has become irreverent, the economy has lost its sight, the people are stressed, their lives besieged by miseries and plagued by the ever-rising cost of life. Poor people’s will and resources to carry on with the daily business of living and managing their lives is shrinking yet the cabinet of this unpopular government keeps expanding and the Prime Minister despite being so ill-advised needs more and more advisers who all come with a status of a federal minister. In Pakistan advice comes at a heavy cost and with huge perks and privileges.

The central authority — the government with the power to organise, regulate and administer Pakistan is not failing but has already failed. No more a noun but a verb — the Pakistani government today represents indecision, inaction, delay and dysfunction. Pakistan is fast approaching the state of statelessness. This mixed gathering and political outing of the PDM leadership without hijab has ruined the politics of all these parties that politically collaborated to oust Imran Khan’s government. Out to seize political space and power, this 13-party collation government has today no clue how to handle power and manage the political space. PPP is only interested in giving its young leader the global exposure and hence Bilawal Bhutto is out on a visiting spree — in Germany today, Estonia tomorrow and Hungry later. What the PPP doesn’t realise is that the problem with Pakistan is not about the outer space but the inner space and its administration and management.

It is only when a party is well rooted in the land that it can form a political core and then manage the land and the people around that core. Most parties in this collation government are cut off from their root and their political core has cracked. People no more want to stand up with false hopes, fraud and lies. Their political narratives are not selling and the coercive attempts by this government to subjugate and conquer the will of the people is proving to be a failed strategy. Pakistan today looks like a seized territory being governed by autocrats with absolute power who insist on nothing less than complete obedience. This is not a free Pakistan but a geographic space that increasingly looks like an imperial territory.

Immobilise and stifle PTI seems to be the grand strategy of this coalition government. The three-prong strategy of the coalition government to exercise power in seizing all PTI initiatives, controlling political spaces through coercive means and utilising technology to unify domestic strategic audience against PTI has so far not worked. This imperialist strategy of coercion and violence to explore, occupy and finally bring under control the political spaces and the people living in it didn’t work for the imperialists in the past and will not work for these ‘left behind’ and ‘remnants’ of imperialism in this country.

Unfortunately, PDM today is creating in Pakistan new ground conditions for politics in which everything foul is fair and everything fair is foul. They are introducing an imperial political system that cannot be doubted and questioned. The people’s representatives sitting in PDMs parliament are all scared of elections. How can they call themselves the representatives of the people if they are reluctant to go back on people’s trial and offer themselves for re-election under the constitution? The strange thing is that all major powers in the country have staked their claim in the continuity of this unpopular government. The military says it is neutral, the judiciary is quiet, the bureaucracy is not concerned and the businessmen and traders are not yet scrambling to take a non-negotiable position. This imperialist government seems to have exercised control on all stakeholders except one — the people of Pakistan.

People’s power like all other powers cannot be subjugated except through persuasion. But PDM as a government and a polity is a great influence spreader not through persuasion but tactics and strategies that utilise pressure, intimidation and coercion. Our political gaze of the past history of imperialism tells us that from 1870 onward the Great Powers of Europe embarked upon an unprecedented programme of imperial expansionism and territorial acquisition and created overseas colonies and executed continental empire building. The Gora Sahib from Europe built 30 new colonies and protectorates in Africa acquiring 10 million square miles of territory and 110 million new subjects. But their influence and domination were challenged by the people as they fought for their rights of self-determination and won back their land and freedom from the invaders.

It is in the context of this imperialist defeat that one finds the origin of the achievement of the ‘will of the people’ and ‘people’s power’. The surface of the African map that was occupied was freed not because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court passed a judgment, or the military became apolitical and stopped taking any side, or because the pseudo intellectuals on mass media came up with theories and assumptions that incited revenge and favoured independence. None of that — the only factor were the people.

The damage done by PML-N to the politics of Pakistan is so immense that for many coming years the history of politics in Pakistan will be scripted in as a three-scene conflict — pre-Sharif’s, Sharif’s and post- Sharif’s politics. In the pre-Sharif scene of politics, the balance of power in Pakistan was with the military. This favoured Pakistani politics as every time politics decided to go overboard or overshoot a central authority checked it from overstepping its domain. In Sharif’s scene of politics which is characterised by its challenge to the military dominance of politics as and when it came in power and which has now reached the current times, there is no respect for constitution and there is no rule of law. We are heading fast to a destination where on a large billboard on the entrance is written — ‘Welcome to Statelessness’.

Post-Sharif scene of politics can be very messy and if the Supreme Court of Pakistan doesn’t stand up and ensures that the constitution is implemented and there is rule of law then no power on earth can stop this bus that we have already boarded from heading to the destination gifted to us by the current Sharif’s political scene.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2023.

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