An empire or a republic?

Politics in Pakistan has developed a certain tiresome predictability. The empire wants to hold on and the republic challenges the empire’s hold on power. Although a declared republic, yet Pakistani politics is like a pendulum that alternates between those that are not ready to accede to its termination as an empire and those that want it to become a republic — a country where the supreme power is held with no one except the people.

Politics in Pakistan is at war. Generally, it takes two sides to make war but it takes only one side to commit atrocities, genocides, exterminations and massacres and the history of the world politics tells us that these excesses are usually committed by the side that is in power. During the past one year or so the current repressive government has made the lives of common people extremely insecure and unsafe. It is not the job of any democratic government to use violence and create an atmosphere of fear and terror but this is exactly what this government has done. The motive of the government seems to be to weaken the opposition, weaken people’s resolve and force them to doubt themselves and lose heart and thus become afraid and cautious.

To the contrary, Imran Khan who leads the opposition and its fight for the creation of a republic tells his followers that being careful and cautious is not what we need. He keeps reminding them to break the idols of fear and instead double their resolve. Every time Khan addresses the people, he leaves behind for his followers an aura of intensification of motivation and confidence. At the moment, there is no other political leader in Pakistan who is as good as Khan in building, sustaining and projecting an appealing political perspective. This unrivaled leadership ability of Khan has transformed his followers from being passive and confused to being motivated and creative fighters. Amazingly, the younger generation and majority of Khan’s followers no more want to be identified by who they want to be but who they don’t want to be — crooks and criminals or part of the corruption brigade that has harmed and looted this country.

What empowers Khan and his fight to create a republic is his unwavering and unshuttering belief and confidence in his ability to achieve what he wants to achieve. Political distractions do momentarily split his attention but he never loses his resolve and never loses the sight of his higher sense of purpose — defeating the empire and creating a republic. Having joined politics two decades back as an outsider, he did well to insulate himself and thus even when in power he didn’t allow himself to become an insider. If he had become like all other politicians in Pakistan, he would never have enjoyed the public support like he enjoys today and his political ideas would never have resonated with the people like they resonate today. The best thing that an average follower of Khan likes about him is that he is one man against an army of men. Yet he stands up and fights and this makes people love him.

Khan’s critics accuse him of dividing the people and the country. Khan has not divided the people, he has actually polarised them. The two poles of Pakistani politics today are clearly the republic and the empire. In Pakistan, before Khan joined politics most people were comfortable residing in the centre. What Khan has done to Pakistani politics is to drive it poles apart. He has divided the politics of the country into pro-Imran and anti-Imran politics and has brought it to a point where it is no more a luxury to crowd into the centre and not be a part of the bipolar politics that Khan has created.

Since politics in Pakistan has come down to a grand contest between the republic and the empire, I am persuaded to give an example of how Rome became a republic from an empire. The colosseums where gladiators fought and which the Roman emperors built had twin purpose. Provide entertainment to the masses and appease the public discontent which was becoming frustrated from an unstable, disenchanting and disintegrating empire. Colosseums in Rome like the political circuses we witness in Pakistan today were the diversions. People in Pakistan are showing a similar tendency that people in Rome showed — they were no more in mood to align their interests with the interest of the emperor and his empire despite the theatrics at the colosseums. When they could see that Rome had ceased its expansion and all its sources of funding had dried up they stopped relating with the empire.

The 500-year-old Roman Empire ended because it could no more fund the over 60 legions spread out on the Roman frontiers; because the frontier borders got weakened; because when Rome needed an access to funds to defend its empire, it could not find those funds as its provinces were economically devastated and some of them even broke away; and because law breaking and crime became rampant and as a result many private armies came into existence. The core of the empire, the rich tax exporting provinces of Anatolia, Italy, Spain and North Africa, cracked. Rome only remained a successful enterprise as long as it could extract revenue and import funds from its core frontier provinces. When the economy collapsed so did the frontier. The simple difference between the Rome that was the Empire and the Republic Rome that replaced it was that the former was run by one man — the Emperor — and the later became a democratic society build on the aspirations and will of the people.

Maybe, like in Rome people in Pakistan are fed up of dynastic politics — of Kings and Queens of two families ruling them one after the other. The political experience of these families ruling Pakistan for such long tenures gave Pakistan nothing. In fact, I am reminded of a statement by King Fredrick the Great who, when once asked who was the most experienced in his army, replied: “Most experienced in my army is a mule which has participated in every campaign but none the wiser from the experience.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2023.

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