Political notes

Constituency politics is why it is difficult to get a median voter in Pakistan; nor does voting depend on issues.

Let’s begin with former General-President Pervez Musharraf. He is back — finally. Why he thinks he can make a difference is beyond me. As for a deal orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, since I don’t know anything about it beyond speculation, I shan’t speculate. Not even when people point out that Mian Nawaz Sharif has been surprisingly silent about Musharraf’s homecoming.

Too many people bay for Musharraf’s blood. In this, Musharraf has united many disparate elements, from the abominable Taliban to the foreign-funded Baloch separatists to the gullible liberals.

The video that the Taliban released a day before Musharraf’s arrival was less interesting about their desire to kill him and more fascinating in how the Taliban were reaching out to Baloch separatists, inviting them to conduct a joint operation. Perhaps that says something about the “roots of the Taliban rage” not just in targeting Musharraf but the overall violence they and other groups have unleashed in Pakistan. Murky waters these, and getting murkier while we eat muesli in the morning and think that the world outside is full of seraphim and the serpent crawls on its belly inside.

Musharraf did many stupid things but unless we resort to selective amnesia, he also did some good things. In any case, he is now in the political arena and will have to atone, directly or indirectly, for what he did or didn’t do. What is unacceptable, as it should be to every Pakistani, is that he is now at the mercy of groups that want him dead. The issue of Musharraf’s security, whether we like it or not, is a matter that goes beyond his person. He represented the state and initiated a war against the terrorists groups (though the conduct of that war under him is another story). If they manage to get him, it will be a reflection, yet again, that the state is unable to protect itself and its interests. And we must remember that a crime against any citizen is a crime against the state. That is why all criminal cases are titled as the “State vs XYZ”.

The day before Musharraf’s homecoming, we had the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rally at Minto Park in Lahore. The detractors have invested much in telling us that the rally was a damp squib while the Insaafians think they massed some half million people at the venue. I think someone needs to, for once, scientifically work out the capacity of all political venues in Pakistan to get the nation out of this guessing game. As for the half-million figure, let’s put that number somewhere so people could see, for once, what that crowd looks like. Incidentally, the Pakistan Army’s total strength is 550,000 men!

Then there was the issue of passion. Was there enough passion; was it more charged than the October 30^th rally etcetera? The answers, again, depend on which side of the divide people stand. I was there and it looked quite passionate to me. The grounds south of Minar-e-Pakistan were full, except for the western stretch (which was sparsely populated). But the questions of numbers and passion are irrelevant. Elections in Pakistan are not about passion; they work on the basis of constituencies and constituencies, for the most part, are very local, municipal affairs.

Constituency politics is why it is difficult to get a median voter in Pakistan; nor, for that reason, does voting depend on issues. So, the relevant question is not how many people could the PTI gather at the Minar or whether there was enough passion. The real question — and challenge — is whether the PTI can translate its supposed numbers and passion into the banality of vote-getting in a political system that is structured to lock out issues — unless there is indeed a tidal wave, as happened in 1970.

This brings the wheel full circle to the (in)famous tsunami: are we about to witness a PTI deluge? More power to them if they can do it. But going by conventional wisdom, and counting out black swans, it doesn’t seem possible. The irony, though, is that while the PTI’s detractors never tire of pointing to the fact that rallies don’t win elections, they, nonetheless, continue to quibble over the questions of numbers and passion displayed in the PTI rallies.

The PTI’s next challenge, if it were to win, would be to tweak the system such that it becomes more responsive to issues than municipal concerns. The thought that a system allowed to run uninterruptedly will, for that very reason, cleanse itself is as optimistic as the charge of the Light Brigade.

Finally, on that note, the issue of making history: this government, we are told, has made history by completing five years. Since making history is not just a function of doing good, as history itself shows us, this government has made history. It successfully kept breathing even after rigor mortis had set in and if that is not remarkable, politically and medically, I don’t know what is. Three cheers to it for that.

We are also told that a milestone has been achieved in working out, constitutionally, a neutral caretaker government. That might be so, except I am not sure a mature political system does indeed need a caretaker government. Far from indicating maturity, it signals a situation where an outgoing government is so distrusted by the political opposition that a fair election can only be conducted by a neutral government. If the reflection of this distrust through a constitutional mechanism to prevent a government from loading the dice against others is an achievement, then it indeed is. But to present such a guarantee as reflecting maturity is a bit of a stretch.

What can, however, be argued — and correctly — is that it is an achievement that not only reflects the immaturity and fragility of the system but also a proactive effort by the politicians to try and address that weakness until there is greater regard on all sides of the normative aspects of politicking. Allah be praised!

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2013.