Pakistan’s depleting options

In every sense of the way the world is closing on Pakistan. When out of options one is in the darkest depth of a hole with no escape. One is desperate. Pakistan is desperate with no options. Our current political turmoil is dark and desperate without hope. Economic and security situation in the country is dire. The common man lives barely and sometime not even that. Food inflation is touching fifty percent. On a larger scale, the country is on the verge of a default and were it to happen will be known and declared bankrupt. Currently, all its indices are worse than Sri Lanka’s, which itself has been through the worst and was an international defaulter just a few months back.

The political parties of Pakistan including those in power and those out seem to be unconcerned. Their only focus is to NOT conduct elections when due, hold on to power even after their constitutional terms are over, keep the opposition (read Imran Khan) out of power (forever if possible despite his popularity, dented now with the proceedings of May 9^th), manipulate the deteriorating judicial, security and economic environment in their favour for ungainly ends by accentuating institutional fault-lines and weakening those to the point of submission, deny them their constitutional freedom compromising the inherent balance in the trichotomy of power, and exploit such unrestrained control to absolve themselves of acts and allegations of massive corruption and sleaze — some indicted and some awaiting trial. Legislation to tweak NAB laws are hurried in without debate and applied retrospectively to gain absolution. Most cases of alleged corruption under investigation have already been squashed.

As they duel on the streets to eliminate the other causing death of the innocent and destruction of the infrastructure, they also take the pillars of the state and state-power down to obviate challenge to their unmitigated rampage of what is in their trust as a government or a polity. The country and the people remain innocent bystanders ruined in this entirely selfish, oligarchical slugfest. They don’t count. Even their power to choose a government through elections stands usurped through political machinations. They have been effectively disenfranchised in this war for exclusive supremacy between opposing political conglomerates. Democracy and the country both are existentially threatened.

Often, when such was the case in the past, the military-judicial combine intervened to forge a path out of the political impasse. It was quite the norm in the 1990s for Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto to upstage the other. In that one decade, power changed hands four times between the two. Each time the Troika — the President, the Chief Justice, the Army Chief — or a combination settled matters to set the country back on democratic path through a fresh mandate. A Charter of Democracy between the two signaled temporary truce giving the nation two uninterrupted tenures of the assemblies when democracy returned. Imran Khan has challenged that status quo and is now the common target for both — an outlier who has rushed the gates and crashed the party. This is the basis of the current turmoil and chaos.

An extraneously enthused division in the Court, already simmering with palpable discontent, has impacted Court’s ability to play the arbiter while the military has its own ends to mend. This leaves the fledgling ‘system’ un-minded, in the hands of those who manipulate and exploit it to their purpose at the cost of short-circuiting constitution and democracy.

With the slide so rapid and fear of unravelling of the nation-state so real, the moment of reckoning is upon us. None will survive the crash. Politics is in no mood to resolve its feuding — a blood-sport they intend to take to the end failing the agency they carry. Not all is lost — the CJ in a review petition before him has time and again advised the contestants to resolve their differences politically which includes holding elections. Rather than heed, the PDM hankers for more blood; this time of the CJ.

IK, embittered and isolated, hasn’t been prudent with his strategy either and has sleepwalked into turning a perfect political party to a militant outfit. That places at risk his and his party’s political credentials and future. An opposition that was in the hunt for something to pin him with has their moment. Unscrupulous elements chose to ransack military installations amidst misplaced, misguided and contrived anger labelling the PTI a violent group on the verge of being shut out from the political process. A graver mistake by a political party may not have been committed. From a hugely popular political party to one being haunted is quite a climb-down.

Events of 9^th May were truly dark and a travesty against those who still held hope in times of dismay. IK proved too gullible to repeat Sri Lanka in Pakistan. He had already threatened such a consequence. Poignantly, he failed. He easily becomes victim to personalising what should remain patently political. ‘Otherising’ infuses hate which then eats at the good attached to political purpose. Not that others are angelic but to so quickly debase to the point of creating and nominating ‘enemies’ is surely not how nations and political systems prosper. Certainly not a party which is still learning the ropes despite capturing people’s imagination.

The army is rightly hurt. Though how brazenly PTI’s political opponents have tended to exploit the 9^th May debacle is sinister. These are mind games meant to institutionalise a chasm which is on the verge of being created between the military and segments largely subscribing to the PTI. Any military will, one, do well to stay above political machinations and fray, and two, ensure not being snared into a political position in a divisive social backdrop. The military must be seen as a unifying force still able to galvanise the nation. While we pursue those who perpetrated violence and demeaned the military, we may do so with utmost prudence and only charge the guilty proportionate to the gravity of their act. The aim is to deny insidious elements the chance to exploit and manipulate a sense of wrongdoing to widen the schism.

The army must also consider that minus all else, with no solution emerging from the political stakeholders, it may yet again fall to it to do the yeoman’s work to reset the broken system — whether it comes by way of piecing together what is shattered and unworkable or through a direct intervention as has been the default recourse, howsoever unsavory. The military shall need the support of the entire nation when any of the two options becomes inevitable. Carrying the support and wider appeal is the key to success. In it lies ultimate salvation. Taking a punch at times is far more prudent and braver than delivering one.

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

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