Living through history

D-Chowk scene is a clear manifestation of endemic weaknesses of our fossilised governmental system that must change.

They say history is no longer history when you are living through it. Today, even more than two millennia after his death, Socrates, with his truth, remains as relevant as ever. The immutable lessons of rising against the hypocrisies of society and the state live on more than 2,400 years after his death. As today in our own benighted country, the Athenian public was fed up with their corrupt rulers. The people were totally disillusioned with the then prevailing ‘democracy’ with gross inadequacies of governance, justice, morality and law and order.

Socrates understood their pain and anguish. Claiming loyalty to his state, he challenged the course of Athenian politics and society. He praised the better governed Sparta, the arch-rival to Athens, and blamed his own state’s corrupt politics in various dialogues. One of Socrates’s purported offences to the ruling hierarchy was his position as a social and moral critic. He spoke out against them and against the corrupt practices they were perpetrating in the name of ‘democracy’. It was a challenge to the status quo of ‘loot and plunder’ in which was rooted the deeply entrenched Athenian culture of ‘power and privilege.’

By rebuking the rotten system and its exploitative corrupt practices, Socrates had shown the truth to his people. The situation in Pakistan today is no different from what Socrates had challenged to save his state in 399 BC. The Athenian scene is being enacted in Islamabad’s D-Chowk for more than two weeks now. Like the Athenian public, the people of Pakistan are also disillusioned with ‘gross inadequacies of governance, justice, morality and law and order’ in their own democracy. For the first time, they are hearing clarion calls for the long-awaited change in their rotten political culture which they believe will never come through elections under the present system.

Like Socrates who, according to his great disciple, Plato, had become a ‘gadfly’ for Athens’s men of status quo, the D-Chowk flag-bearers too are no less than a ‘gadfly’ for Pakistan’s men of status quo. When Socrates stood against the immoral politics in his state, the Athenian politicians cried foul in unison claiming democracy was in danger. The same reaction was seen from our own political fraternity which for the first time in history felt seriously threatened. Like the birds of a feather, politicians of every breed and brand from across the country rising above their party lines flocked together to resist any change in the system that keeps them in power.



The last years of Socrates’s life saw Athens experience constant political and economic upheaval. The Thirty Tyrants — a junta who overthrew democracy — ruled for about a year before the return to democracy came about. At this point, a status quo-driven ‘amnesty’ was declared for all recent events. This was like our own notorious foreign-brokered NRO that provided illegal amnesty to most of the political elites of today for cases against them during the period from 1986 to 1999. Socrates had challenged the amnesty just as in our own case the NRO was challenged in the Supreme Court which in its historic verdict of December 16, 2009 declared it unconstitutional and illegal.

Socrates, rather than accepting what he considered an outright power-driven atrocity against his state, berated the ‘amnesty’ as legalisation of the notorious ‘might makes right’ dictum. He believed the state was more important than the Athenian politics. ‘State, not politics’ thus became his slogan. The status quo forces accused him of heresy by refusing to accept the gods recognised by the state and corrupting the youth. In fact, they considered him a threat to their own ‘power and privilege.’ They lost no time in staging a mock trial. Socrates was arbitrarily sentenced to death.

In our case too, the elitist NRO beneficiaries remain powerful enough to dominate the political scene. The Supreme Court’s NRO ruling remains unimplemented. If we had a jury system like the one they had in Athens during Socrates’ time, perhaps we would also have been witnessing a Greek tragedy of our own. But with a crisis-laden chequered history of our independent statehood already replete with endemic crises and self-created tragedies including loss of half the country within less than a quarter of a century, do we need any new tragedy? We seem to have learnt no lessons from our own history, much less the Greek past.

Surely, the parallels of our situation with Greek history must not detract us from the need to address our issues in accordance with our own laws. No doubt, for any state in the contemporary world, its Constitution is its solemn and inviolable ‘social contract’ which guarantees fundamental freedoms and basic rights of its citizens, and besides delineating the powers and duties of the government, solemnly establishes the legal basis for its institutional structure. In our state, unfortunately, all these concepts remain merely philosophical expressions with no practical relevance. Ours is a dismal record of constitutional and political delinquencies with no respect for the basic democratic norms.

Someone has rightly said: “Nothing goes off suddenly, not even the earthquakes set in motion from the depth of the earth to the rooftops of villages.” Our current crisis is also an eruption of a long brewing popular anger and frustration over the failures of our governmental system. The D-Chowk scene today is a clear manifestation of the endemic weaknesses and vulnerabilities of our fossilised governmental system that must change.

In its deeper sense, the current crisis is not about elections or personalities. It is about the state and the system which are more important than the corrupt politics and its hereditary ‘children of fortune.’ Unfortunately, when the gravest of problems stare us in the face, we tend to ignore them only because we cannot do anything about them. As an expression of our helplessness, we like to carry on with life as usual, at times even ridiculing those who speak of the need for change in the country’s rotten political system.

To avert the vicious cycle of known tragedies, a serious and purposeful national effort is needed for a holistic review of our governmental system before it is too late. On the electoral issue, besides a judicial inquiry, a genuine systemic reform is necessary to prevent recurrence of electoral frauds in future. For now, if any heads are to roll, the process must begin with those in the ECP where the onus lies squarely for the 2013 fiasco. Also, the culprits of the Model Town tragedy no matter who they are must be brought to justice without further delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.