Grand national dialogue

Pakistan's future depends on national dialogue to resolve deep political divides and find lasting solutions.

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A new year brings new hopes and fears. I must confess that since childhood, on every New Year's Eve, my pulse would quicken at midnight, and my heart would race with the rush of undefined and unstructured hopes and expectations. This year was different. The pulse refused to quicken. The heart refused to race. Since it happened for the first time, I was curious. What caused it? Disillusionment? Peace with the maker? Or the realisation that I have done my part and now a long series of events will lead us to the goals I have always cherished?

The answer is slightly more complicated than these generalisations. For a quarter of a century, I have strived tirelessly for causes dear to me. Democracy, civil liberties, fundamental equality of all human beings, freedom from prejudice, stronger institutions and strength of my beloved country. At every turn, I have found people with more resources or influence subverting or even perverting those ideals. In many cases, my effort was weaponised by someone else or crumbled in my hands. If we have to live with the curse of Sisyphus, why bother pushing a boulder to the top? It is hope that kills you. It is not that no good things can ever happen in life. Many do, and some may happen this new year. But American soldiers have a saying: "Embrace the suck." Roughly translated, it means getting with the mindless tedium of life. Life offers many happy memories. But they are just highlights of your life. Most of your life is spent going through boring motions, doing dull chores that never deserve a mention. I guess the change of a year is now a part of that mindless tedium.

With that dose of realism, let us now turn to the possibilities that can improve every Pakistani's life. After a long, tumultuous decade where life was often disrupted by misplaced or, at times, manufactured rage, violence, protests, intrigues, inflation, fear of insolvency and sudden burnouts, Pakistan seems to be returning to some modicum of normalcy. The most prominent rageaholic party seems to be exploring the subtle rhythm of dialogue with its counterparts in government. After a long struggle to solve the riddle of the unstable economy, we are witnessing some semblance of stability. The judiciary, the parliament and other institutions are learning the virtues of a boring existence where they do not magnify their internal differences out in the open and seek validation through TV news tickers. By turning a blind eye to people's real problems and the intellectual brain trust that could offer some solutions, the mainstream media and pundits seem to have confined themselves to the perpetual state of irrelevance. Perhaps now is the time to think bigger and look for grand solutions.

We all know there are no readymade solutions in a country as diverse and polarised as ours. So, this scribe will not even pretend to offer any. Instead, we can ask ourselves: what better way to find a solution than inviting the sparring parties in a dispute to resolve differences through talks? There is none. If you are looking at the dialogue between the PTI and the ruling parties, don't bother. That dialogue has a narrow bandwidth. Don't get me wrong. I have high hopes for this one. But by design, even if it could extricate itself from the realities and modalities of the post-May 9 politics, there is only so far this dialogue can take you. Like 2006, it can produce a charter of democracy 2.0 where politicians may settle the rules of the game among themselves but nothing more.

Suppose the PTI agrees in principle to play by specific rules. What is the guarantee that another insurgent party will not emerge in the future supported by disgruntled billionaires, activist judiciary or disillusioned establishment? As long as there is ideological or political kryptonite in society, which renders the state powerless, people will use it. The state needs to tie up the loose ends in its greater interest. Luckily, our polity is young enough not to offer an infinite number of loose ends or unresolved issues. They are complex but not infinite.

Look at the cost of avoidance. The Pressler Amendment harmed us at a time when our civil-military divide was at its worst. Recently, when the PTI's conspiracy narrative about Donald Lu reached Capitol Hill, and a subcommittee hearing was held on our election transparency, it took a turn that even the PTI could not be happy about. After discussing the known grievances, the lawmakers started pushing the State Department representative (Lu) to pressure Pakistan not to import gas or oil from Iran. India has never stopped importing oil from Iran, even after getting a huge bribe in the shape of a civil nuclear deal. But Lu committed on record to use all means necessary to stop that outcome. Likewise, there was an absence of a broad-based dialogue at the time of Gen Musharraf's decision to enter the war on terror, which drove a wedge between the state and the country's religious elite, permanently losing the latter to the other side. Likewise, the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, the judiciary and politicians all have their concerns, doubts and fears. Add the business community, the clergy, the media and the civil society to the list. Bring them all together and work out the guardrails of the system. We should be able to take the diaspora into confidence, but our expatriate community is so diverse and widespread that you will need a separate outreach programme. Once a broader consensus is reached, it can be taken into confidence.

After a former senate chairman, we heard a former army chief and a former chief justice also supporting the idea. It has merit. We are living in the age of great transformation. There is no dearth of opportunities and challenges. But our feuds affect our bargaining position and imagination in such a way that India gets elected to the UNSC with our vote when America is withdrawing from Afghanistan, and Pakistan is locked out. And we get elected to the UNSC when Trump comes back to power and the UN itself is likely to be left out of serious debates. We have wasted seventy-six years of evolution over petty feuds. We need this dialogue to start as soon as yesterday.