Repeating history: latest version
The writer is a Clinical Psychologist and an Educationist, based in Islamabad
Karl Marx famously remarked that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce”. A tragedy is self-evident, and a farce is an absurd or distorted caricature of a serious situation or event, somewhat like a sham. For example, an election is a farce if its outcome has been determined before the voting. In Pakistan, history has been repeated numerous times and the resultant tragedies and farces are part of our legacy. However, we will focus on the events around April 2022 and after, when history was repeated once again by the removal of a federal government.
The removal of the sitting government was engineered through a series of farces. As events unfolded, a small but significant number of parliamentarians of the then ruling party, and its coalition partners, started saying that the sitting government was a disaster, though it took them close to four years to realise that. Interestingly this conscience-call occurred in parallel with large amounts of cash changing hands, clandestine meetings, and likely blackmail.
After some to-and-fro between the speaker of the national parliament and the higher judiciary, on April 9, 2022, the no-confidence motion was passed, and a new government was enthroned in the Centre. All of this was presented with the fig-leaves of democracy and the constitutional process, with compromised media pundits, intellectuals and political leaders outdoing each other in farcical verbal gymnastics.
However, most people felt that the government was unfairly removed and questioned the legitimacy of the new government, especially since they were aware of the documented lack of integrity of most of its leaders, their anti-people performance in previous stints in power, as well as their performance since coming into power in April 2022.
Since then, there have been ongoing tragedies in the daily lives of most citizens, with additional brutalities unleashed on many leaders of the party that was removed from power. As well, there has been a deluge of farces vis a vis governance, politics, and especially the criminal justice system. There is a brazenness to all this, and the clear message is that the niceties of the constitution, law, and citizens’ rights do not matter, and the engineers will do as they please through farcical façades of the executive, judiciary, and civil administration.
However, people are seeing through the farces and are becoming increasingly cognizant of the injustice, mendacity, and lack of integrity of the cabal that controls the system. While peoples’ political awareness and understanding has progressed, the ruling elites, especially the army (euphemistically the ‘establishment’), are largely stuck in the past, and indeed may have regressed.
Since the early 50s, the army has arrogated to itself the power to decide who would rule in Pakistan. They either ruled directly or felt compelled to hold elections through which politicians formed governments. However, elections were engineered (read ‘a farce’) and thus the consequent democracy was also a farce. Every so often the engineers decided that the farcical democratic rule must change hands from one political party to another. However, most people were unconcerned with these games, as from their perspective Tweedledee was replaced by Tweedledum.
So, the geniuses figured that that will be the response when the federal government was removed in April 2022, but they were wrong. Broadly speaking, the engineers ignored two major factors. One, the increasing use of information technologies like the mobile phone, the internet, and social media, which informed and thus empowered the people. Two, the five-year performance in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa of the party that was removed from power, and its performance in the Centre and the provinces of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa from August 2018 to April 2022. So, in their reckoning the engineers were once again just replacing Tweedledee with Tweedledum, but the people disagreed — vehemently. And the battle for democratic rights and freedoms is on.
The ruling elites have lost the battle of hearts and minds. However, due to their ignorance, arrogance, and insatiable greed for power and treasure, they are unable or unwilling to accept that reality. Instead, their actions indicate that they want to somehow win the battle through draconian administrative measures, combined with bending the laws, mudslinging, political spin, and subversion of the right of the people to choose their own representatives. But, people are getting angrier and reacting.
Through their actions over the past about 11 months the ruling cabal is digging itself, and the country, into a deeper and deeper morass. It is not possible to know how much blood and tears they are willing to spill before they accept reality and allow the people’s will to prevail. However, in counter-position is the increasing awareness and resolve of the people. Current trends indicate that the process of gaining real, not farcical, power has started, though the journey is likely to be hard and long. The increasing awareness and resolve of the people are a reminder of a broader truth encapsulated in Victor Hugo’s statement that “Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
Published in The Express Tribune, March 21st, 2023.
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