The Emperor has no clothes

Pakistan’s worst kept secret is not a secret anymore: There is something very rotten in the corridors of power, and there is something very sickening in the games that rulers play.

The seemingly never-ending story unfolding on D-Chowk is now gradually folding up. The capital’s Red Zone resembles a gaping red festering wound on the fair face of this normally manicured locality. The wound however is not just physical; it has seeped puss out of the decomposing body of governance in Pakistan and exposed the terminal illness that plagues the system. The disease has finally been diagnosed.

Yes, it had to take a thousand megawatt shock for the limp body to respond. But respond it has, perhaps fighting for its last breaths. And the rulers — PML-N and their allies and the rest who infest Parliament — are suddenly talking about issues that everyone except them had been talking about for years and years. It had to take a shock for these zombies to lift their chins, look around, and see a tidal wave of discontent, frustration, anger and loathing roaring towards them.

No, this tidal wave is not measured in the numbers gathered outside Parliament on Constitution Avenue. No, this tidal wave is not gauged by the inflammable rhetoric of Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, or the pitched battles of their supporters. This tidal wave, in fact, is not even registered by the cacophony on TV screens or the blistering headlines in the morning papers. No, none of this is a true measure of the loathing that is steaming and bubbling like red hot lava inside Mount Vesuvius.

This loathing is a natural reaction of a society in transition. It is a loathing borne of greater exposure to the outside world and the ideas that drive the future. It is a loathing that wraps itself around a new realisation among the rapidly urbanising population of Pakistan that is forced to beg for its natural born rights. It is a loathing that is triggered by the hypocrisy of the ruling elite and the inequality bred by a system twisted and manipulated to serve the interests and agendas of those who have clawed themselves into the corridors of power and privilege. It is a loathing of the disenfranchised and the disbarred; a loathing of those who are denied their fundamental rights and their basic privileges as the citizens of Pakistan. They may be born free, but everywhere they are still in chains.

It is indeed the beginning of the end of the era dominated by rural grandees and urban tycoons. The end may take a while, and it may experience violent convulsions and sporadic eruptions, but the end is nigh. It has to. There is a change in the air. No, perhaps not the change defined by Imran and Qadri, but a change all the same. This change is spurred by harsh realities of a world in transformation. Indeed this transformation is too rapid for the traditional elites to grasp. It is everywhere. Like an angry wave crashing against stony shores, the change is manifesting itself on TV screens, computer screens and cell phone screens; in 3D and 3G; flooding minds with information and awareness and spreading ideas and knowledge at warp speed.

No, this is not our Daddy’s Pakistan. Can someone tell this to the uptight and pompous men and women in Parliament?

The fabled kid has finally pointed out that the emperor has no clothes. For this fabled land has been ravaged by those who have been blessed with all. But it seemed the land was frozen in an era long time ago; an era in which the landed and the privileged grew fat on the sweat and blood of the weak; an era in which time moved in slow motion and progress in slower motion. This was an era when only the selected few rose to positions of power and then exercised this power without restraint, without accountability, without checks and balances. In this era the dispossessed remained without possessions, and the marginalised stayed on the margins.

And everyone accepted this state of affairs. The mighty played their electoral games on their own rules. They mimicked their ancestors and their ancient traditions; drawing strength and self-proclaimed legitimacy from regressive practices and degenerate rituals. And they ravaged this fabled land with a ferociousness hard to imagine.

But now change is in the air. Such hypocrisy and duality cannot endure. The rotting and crumbling status quo cannot endure. This state of affairs — where children go hungry and rulers build temples to democracy — cannot endure. This blatant inequality before law cannot endure. A system that rewards the corrupt and pulverises the weak cannot endure. A governance structure that lets the police torture people while the mighty feed on the bounty of this land cannot endure. A parliament that speaks for its privileges and traditions but cannot legislate true justice cannot endure. A cabinet that makes policies to suit itself while our children cannot go to school, such a cabinet and all that it represents cannot endure.

The last three weeks of turmoil has reminded us that this nation called Pakistan has had enough. No more. The system either reforms, or dies. That’s it. For all our sake, the men and women entrusted with our destiny must see the reality for what it is, not what they would wish it to be.

The fabled kid has spoken.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2014.

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