The perfect compost

I hate to admit but we grew up believing that politics was a dirty game. Anyone who massaged or manipulated his way up the ladder was popularly abhorred and ridiculed. Submission to authority to win favours was not let to slide by easily among fighter pilots. If it has now changed, I wouldn’t know. It just might have because there were signs already of influences slowly diluting the ethos that made the air force culture unique. And we prided in it. Perhaps we were naïve, because the real world needed attributes not usually found in fighter cockpits.

Being a fighter pilot was an onerous undertaking, of being a worthy part of the collective and a constant battle to meet up and excel beyond expected standards. If we did well on a certain day, we put our collars up a bit higher and were it below par the crestfallen face told that story the entire day. But then you sprang back up to prove your frenemy wrong. In my 33 years of active, operational service, politics per se, as is practised on our national scene, was never even a moment’s concern in our work, nor discussed. Collectively, as a nation, yes — when one watched the proverbial 9’O Clock News or read the Papers, (some of us did) — there was a lurking fear of which way were we heading. And if one carried the bug for reading — which changed taste as we grew along — we could make relative comparisons with the rest of the world and slowly but surely deepen our sense of engagement and inquiry.

As a generation we came of age in the early 1970s. I was part of the 1971 war as a 19-year-old with duties compatible with my service experience. I was also the generation who had Bengali friends, some very close. We saw it coming in our shenanigans, politically manipulated and militarily misguided, and in the eyes of our East Pakistani friends where recognition was soon replaced with deep hatred. And yet, we thought this too shall pass. Friends will revert to being friends. They did not, and then separated to never return. We cried, literally, not because we were young and naïve but because we had suffered the biggest pang in one’s life, of losing a part, of being dismembered, of never feeling whole again. Yet, we stood up and rebuilt and fell in love again with what was now the home and served it to our very best at the peril of our lives if it came to it. It did on more than one occasion, at various points in our professional career and at different times of our lives, always beckoning the very best out of us to never fail the expectations of who we were, who we thought we were and what was expected of us.

In all this there were the vibrant and dynamic times of ZAB — some mercurial and inspiring, some fascist and egomaniacal. The world was changing and so had Pakistan. It was impossible not to be influenced by the times if you read and reflected and your heart felt a pang. Zia’s was a dampener. In some ways palliative and soothing frayed emotions triggered by ZAB’s unpredictability and whimsical temper and some ways deadening because suddenly the light was all gone. We were back to sedate even if predictable existence. The wars and the cultural shocks ensued. We haven’t looked back since.

The 90s brought a period of restraint in national affairs as the military smarted from time under Zia. He was persistently vilified as a dictator especially since he also carried the blemish of hanging Bhutto. That blot never washed. If politics changed after Zia, it can be related to the defiance which his rather tyrannical tenure had induced among those who gave it a different meaning. Ideological mooring now anchored in defying nation’s military, rightly or wrongly. Such resort gave rise to heroic figures slowly turning politics into a tribal, familial and exploitative corporate. We have failed to recover from such misplaced nuance of politics losing the meaning of why politics is, and its role in making democracy relevant. Unfortunately, national politics has not been able to break out of its restrictive reclassification limiting its essence in popular perception to defiance alone against the military than a means to execute governance in the interest of the people. It is thus slowly losing its relevance.

In the 90s, under Article 58(2)(b), it was possible to dismiss an elected Assembly by the President and his two cohorts, the CJ and the army chief, if they found a sitting Prime Minister acting differently. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were removed twice each during the decade. Zia had introduced the amendment in the constitution which made the clause a hanging sword on all prime ministers. The clause was eliminated by Nawaz Sharif in a slew of amendments in 1997 securing the Assembly and his own position from draconian elimination. But, when he tended to now use his uncontested power to sack the sitting army chief to stamp his authority, Musharraf resorted to the only possible means of overthrowing a government, with a coup howsoever unsavory. Laws were changed to condone his action. Many thought 58(2)(b) was a shield from martial laws and when removed it paved the way for one. Another CJ, in another time, found Musharraf guilty of usurping power, some say to avenge his treatment at Musharraf’s hand.

General Bajwa, faced with another challenge from Nawaz Sharif in the carry-over case of Dawn Leaks and haranguing of Musharraf, a former army chief, devised what was subsequently termed a Bajwa Doctrine. Hardly a doctrine, it was essentially a via media to guide democracy by keeping the dynasties of Sharifs and Bhuttos — who had till then earned quite a notoriety — out and bet on a new horse. The objective to move the country forward under an honest, hardworking and sincere leader of integrity — who could also be beholden to the military for his elevation — may have been clever but backfired badly. Politics, as dirty as it was, marred and maligned those who got sucked in by its enamour. Bajwa left the army yet again smarting with lessons relearnt.

What began in 1988, a period of ‘chaperoned democracy’, has stayed on under one guise or another forever shaping the politics of this country. The army, judiciary and the politicians are thus embroiled in a system in which each seeks assurance of the other to function and govern even passably. The bureaucracy, as per normal, assists as a humble servant. The ‘system’ thus prevails. The mould will only be broken when a more assured, capable, statesman of vision and integrity ever takes the helm. Till then it remains the system alone that will work even if it creaks under its own weight.

Ghair mumkin hai k halaat ki guthi suljhay,

Ehl e daanish nein bauhat soch ke uljhai hai

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2023.

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