Rulers, my foot!

There are few now with us — the septuagenarians and the octogenarians — who can recall Partition and even fewer who have any memory of the British Raj and its rule. Yet, there are those with no recollection who tend to place blame for this country’s woes upon its past experience of colonialism, whilst at the same time, dwelling somewhat in colonial mode.

Our media commentators, in many instances, refer to those who have sporadically been thrown up by what are now recognised as ‘unfair and un-free’ elections as our ‘rulers’. Now, democracies do not have ‘rulers’, they have people’s representatives who govern (we leave the Generals out of this), they, in no way ‘rule’. Remember, first amongst equals. This obsession with ‘rulers’ perhaps, goes back to the very beginning, to the great Founder, who opted for the colonial post of governor general, rather than prime minister, when he won freedom for his country.

In latter days, when restraints upon the press were lifted, that formidable ruler General Ziaul Haq was mysteriously mango de-materialised, MAJ’s now famous speech of August 11, 1947 was held up by the liberals (no aspersions cast) as his creed. That he made the speech is a fact, but nevertheless, the bigoted brethren and their multitudinous followers maintain it was an aberration, that the dying man was hallucinating. Mr Jinnah, all his life having been a colonial subject, as governor general, was indeed a ‘ruler’ in the true sense, his appointed lieutenants being just that to his generalship. He, apparently, and later on as we find with good reason, had little trust in their abilities or purposes. During his one-year rule, he dismissed assemblies, dictated policies so much so that it was then that the first tussle came with the rather distant half of the country over a question of linguistic discrimination.

He ruled, and during that one year what he had to say to the people upheld his August 11 creed. Six months after he died, his trusted lieutenant, who he had placed in the subordinate position of prime minister, betrayed his trust and introduced into the two-year old country, the lethal mixture of religion and politics, which has thrived and blossomed as the ‘rulers’ have come and gone and come again and again.

The colonial mindset, alongside religiosity, coupled with an ever-increasing national corruption, has persisted. The sole man to attempt, for his own electoral reasons, to break the colonial code and convince the untermensch that they did have rights was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but then, when power was his, he forgot. He became a ruler who ruled with a highly wonky hand — and look where it got him.

Skipping ruler Zia, we come to Bhutto’s daughter, who donned the garb of her father, and ruled — twice. The second time, in an effort to ‘secure’ Afghanistan, adopted the Taliban, children of Zia’s Mujahideen. Her ‘rules’, notable not only for that but for a spurt of alleged massive corruption, ended tragically when she attempted a comeback after the Pervez Musharraf genuine ‘rule’.

Zia’s adopted son, Nawaz Sharif, also ‘ruled’ twice, amid allegations of corruption, and where did that get him? Come Bhutto’s daughter’s husband, a relic of 1988, and where did his rule get him? Relegated to one corner of Pakistan, and who does he have to hob-nob with — Zia’s and Sharif’s and Musharraf’s former Chaudhry mob.

Sharif’s third comeback is far from glorious; how it will end is anyone’s guess. How it is, is a disaster. The point in all this is, what right do these rapists of the people’s rights, who rob and plunder the state at will, have to be described as ‘rulers’? They are neither rulers, nor are they, even if they wished to be for they are incapacitated, ministers of governance in any sense of the word. To them all, in Oliver Cromwells’ words of 1643, “Let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2014.

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