Firstly and perhaps, most importantly, nobody of my acquaintance from the domestic staff to local businessmen and a few landowners I know — has revolution at the forefront of their minds, at least not in the conventional sense of a mass popular uprising followed by the overthrow of the government.
Viewing the media over the last week, particularly the electronic media, it would not be difficult to convince oneself that Pakistan is gripped by revolutionary fervour. It is not. Something less than 60,000 people are currently camped on Constitution Avenue with who-knows-what in mind beyond a set of increasingly unlikely demands from their leaders. That is not a revolution. It is undoubtedly an expression of discontent, and the protesters may be voicing what many think or feel, but a revolution it aint. Nor is a revolution likely in the foreseeable future.
Whilst I have detected no sign of imminent revolt around me, there is a pervading sense of weariness, and it is very specifically focused. To a man and woman, all those I spoke to in preparation for this column were weary, fed up to the back teeth — with politicians. And that is all politicians everywhere no matter what party.
There was a real sense of hope when I joined with other members of my family to go and vote last year. A feeling that this was the ‘make a difference’ election. There as an upheaval and two parties trounced the incumbents and just for a while it looked in the month after the election that dreams, some of them, might come true.
It quickly became apparent as the summer of 2013 advanced that this was not so. The promises of the campaign trail in many cases came to naught. And then the pols fell to squabbling among themselves and then there was an invisible prime minister and then there was the red herring of ballot rigging that has led us up the garden path to the point at which we are currently marooned.
People are weary of being lied to, deceived time and again, cheated, bullied, robbed in some cases especially those who pay their taxes yet see little by way of recompense for them, and they blame, almost universally, those they voted for a little over a year ago.
When asked what could be done different there is a smile and a shrug and the eternally crippling ‘This is Pakistan’ statement that is the single greatest impediment to getting anything changed, anywhere, anytime, by anybody.
When asked again if they would vote for the same people if offered an opportunity in the coming few months, there was that shrug again and the other half of a crippling binary — ‘What to do…’ And round in circles it goes.
There is no emerging — and clean — political class that is going to drag Pakistan kicking and screaming into the early 20th century (the 21st century being a jump too far). There are no leaders in the wings awaiting the call on to the stage. The one that is currently demanding our attention is not The One, that is now clear enough, and the rest of the motley crew of cardboard cutouts waving dodgy degrees and having more skeletons in the cupboard than the average graveyard — are only going to offer more of the same in perpetuity.
They will carefully nurture the national weariness because it is in their interests to do so. A bone weary populace cloaked in ennui can in small and noisy part be stirred into action, but mostly there is a crushing torpor. The very last thing that our leaders want is a vibrant and energetic people with ideas above their station, particularly if those ideas amount to anything like real change. Revolution? Not today thanks. (Shrugs and wanders off.)
Published in The Express Tribune, August 21st, 2014.
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power is needed 24/7 that is it ..nothing more nothing less .
Qadri has exposed Nawaz beyond question. Anyone who still backs him should question if the money was worth it.
We don't have a democracy. We have a PM of whom if there was no law enacted that he has to show up to work he would have sat out of parliament for 5 years. What kind of PM would insult "democracy" like this? One who knows it is anything but. That is the truth.
Pakistan doesn't have a democracy. It should stop pretending it has a democracy until more people on the ground are informed about it. Then at least they won't need to be bribed every 5 years to show up at voting booth.
Well put. Which is why this revolution talk is a charade. They - the politicians, the generals, the bureaucrats, the feudal lords - all know very well that their elevated status will be the first victim of genuine and real change in Pakistan, if it ever arrives. A couple of days ago the governor of the largest state in the US went down to the police station for a mug shot and to get fingerprinted as result of an indictment. Just like an ordinary citizen. In Pakistan no politican, no general, no bureacrat, no feudal can countenance anything like this. IK and TUQ talk about it, as did all of our uniformed saviors, but out of fear and/or out of favor none could or would deliver.
Imran Khan and Qadri belong in a lunatic asylum. However, even lunatics have their uses. In this case, by failing (as they were destined to do from day one) in their efforts to overthrow an elected government, they have united all political parties, as well as civil society against attempts by anti-democratic forces in Pakistan. As they say, that which does not destroy me makes me stronger. Democracy will emerge stronger despite the treacherous attacks on it by Imran Khan and Qadri.
Stop comparing Pakistan to Western Democracies & things will start to make sense. Pakistan has to shake off thousands of years of social inequity, feudalism, religious cross-currents, and being used as fodder in the cold-war between the two super-powers. It will find its' bearings, have no doubt about it.