The long lost middle ground

In the olden days when our national television channel had monopoly over airwaves, a public service message always stood out among other such spots. A game between two kids playing the park turns into a quarrel the news of which reaches their families. Parents, family members, neighbours all emerge from their houses and start fighting. A short while later, the kids who started the fight are shown back together riding a bicycle with the inscription on the screen ‘Bachay tau bachay hain’ (kids are only kids.)

It took me over a decade of close interactions with the country’s crème de la crème to realise that the above-mentioned message could as well have been about our ruling elite. In the higher echelons of our nation where everybody defies basic physical laws of gravity, words like ideology make no sense. The only word that matters there is opportunity. And yet the purpose here is not to berate the elite. The purpose here is to remind them of the consequences of each action and decision which in every case are very serious for the working class and the poor of this country. Compassion is a virtue that continues to defy class barriers and this is what we can count on. The truth is, sirs, that when you pick your fights your followers, real, good human beings, perish fighting for your petty differences which hardly mean anything to you.

Consider this. A noticeable part of our elite fell in love with Pervez Musharraf when he was ruling the country. The man was accessible despite being a military dictator, rational, intelligent and on the face of it, quite moderate. But almost like a law of nature, history has its own laws one of which is that no one can rule a country forever. Some commit fatal mistakes, others grow old and fade away. Musharraf chose to opt for the former. He may remember many among us through our writings were almost begging him not to impose emergency for the second time and to show readiness to open the government for democratic reforms. And yet, in a moment of weakness, he gave in to the fascistic temptations and is still paying the price for that.

Another part of the elite simply hated him. Why? Because he, at least, paid a lip service to the dismantling of our grand jihadi industry. I call it industry because from weapons smuggling to the drug trade, the offshoots of this infrastructure have been quite profitable to many. Sadly, both subgroups among our elite did not realise that the Godfather novel they live in is coming to a close where even the most hardened Mafioso has to settle down with a legitimate business.

As things are Pakistan cannot continue to live in the state of adhocism it has stayed in for over 67 years. As a nation-state it will have to accept full accountability for the territory it controls. The best way to do it is to give people ownership, a crucial sector where Musharraf failed miserably. The ideal method to do that is to build institutions. Whether you like the dusty musty poor folks or not, they will have to learn how to rule themselves. That is precisely why we need uninterrupted democracy. The process of choosing your rulers and sacking them at the end of the term repeatedly matures the voters and builds ownership. This cannot happen with the opposition constantly complaining about rigging and people like Tahirul Qadri telling us there is no democracy in the country just because they have constantly been rejected by the electorate. Democracy is a soft power after all and something that is part of our default settings.

Today, when even the worst critics of the fight against terrorism are, albeit reluctantly, owning up the war and the country is on the way to vanquish the terrorists, let us not give further opportunities to their apologists. The broader reform will come eventually. Right now what this nation needs is patience, focus on eliminating terrorism and rebuilding the war-torn country.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2014.

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