Camouflaging dirty game with noble intentions

Gang of self-righteous hypocrites is feverishly working to subvert the holding of next election on time.

Politicians need to have a thick skin and no spine to survive and thrive anywhere in the world. I pity the lot we suffer in this country. Most of them have begun behaving oversensitive regarding their image these days. During off the record meetings, they take no time to turn delirious and start holding the “recklessly independent media,” especially the electronic part of it, exclusively responsible for projecting them as icons of everything bad under the sun. “You never dare to take on the permanent government of civil and military oligarchs with such ferocity,” they complain.

No doubt, some of their grievances are justified, but tell me the last time you ever found any of our top politicians taking concrete initiatives and making concerted efforts to correct the collective image of his or her community. The national assembly, for example, is a directly elected house of our parliament. Our representatives can only establish their worth and relevance by actively participating in its proceedings and just consider what happened there Friday.

Not more than 30 members were sitting in the house, when it started after dismal waiting stretched to 70 minutes. Yet, immediately after recitation from Holy Quran, the lack of quorum was pointed out and the house was prorogued without doing any business. I didn’t notice any legislator blushing in shame. Most of them were rather feeling good and giggly. The hardcore types need to stay put in their hometowns anyway to prepare for electoral battles that have already begun on ground, even without a clear schedule for the next election.

Thanks to the tangible heat and dust prevailing in their “home grounds” many of our so-called veterans of electoral battles are rather found suffering from the defeatist fits. Chaudhrys of Gujrat take the lead in this context. Instead of accepting the inevitable with a large heart, they are now desperate to extend conspiratorial support to a gang of self-righteous hypocrites. This gang is feverishly working to subvert the holding of next election on time, although by camouflaging its dirty game with noble intentions.

Apparently the sage pretending gang sounds desperate to ensure that only the SADIQ and AMEEN types should be allowed to ask for votes in the next election. Fakhro Bhai’s Election Commission, this gang wails, is not fit to conduct appropriate vetting of candidates for elections in an Islamic Republic. After suddenly landing in Pakistan, a Canadian Qadri had turned into a strident voice of this gang. After staging an impressive show for TV cameras in Islamabad some weeks ago, he has now approached the Supreme Court to ask “reconstitution of the Election Commission.”

Although not joining him as petitioners, formally, both the Gujrat Chaudhrys and the Tehrik-e-Insaf of Imran Khan had furnished ample moral support to his cause. Our so-called mainstream parties should have come forward for spinning the counter narrative. The PPP didn’t bother at all, however, and the PML-N woke up too late and tried to stage a laughable dharna in support of the Election Commission early this week.

Little wonder, in the end it became the exclusive burden of Fakhro Bhai to play the counter shots. After an exhaustive meeting at the Election Commission Thursday, he forewarned the world in clear words that any tinkering with composition of his institution would lead to absolute chaos.

He showed tremendous grace by not telling us that many people around him were aggressively suggesting to him that all members of the Election Commission should tender collective resignations, even if the apex court merely admitted the petition filed by Qadri for regular hearing. Fakhro Bhai preferred to stay cool. He knows full well that the government and the opposition will not be able to replace the current Election Commission by another through holding instant and smooth consultations as prescribed by the 20th amendment in our constitution. Only ‘they’ will take advantage of the X-factor, once the Election Commission exists no more, and eventually concede putting up a government of “honest, able and patriotic technocrats” for running this country for at least three years. The vicious game does not end here.

There is another set of presumably non-political but awesomely wealthy and influential at right establishment quarters “friends and well-wishers” of President Zardari, which seems behaving hyperactive in Islamabad for the past one week. This set of friends does not feel comfortable with “intrusive conduct” of the superior judiciary for expedient reasons. Its active members strongly feel that the Chairman NAB, who is alleged to have attempted scandalizing the apex court by writing a “private letter” to the President, should be encouraged to tell-all while defending the contempt charges against him.

The President is acting deaf to their egging so far. Reliable sources have revealed to me that he will make the next move, only after having a heart-to-heart meeting with Nawaz Sharif. He intends to visit the Raiwind residence of the PML-N leader to express condolence for the death of his younger brother. The two can obviously not keep their meeting confined to a ritual formality. Hard political issues have to be discussed there as well and we have no option but to wait.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2013.