Politics as a soap opera

A family member, who lives in the US but whose umbilical cord remains attached to the womb of Pakistan, commented recently on the spate of accusations of corruption and the nightly exposes of billions of rupees being pocketed by politicians. He was aghast at the complete nonchalance with which we absorb such revelations and wake up the next morning to get on with business as usual. Truly, evening talk shows are taking on the guise of a serial drama show in which startling new evidence is presented as part of an ongoing saga of intrigue and manoeuvering — not to forget the merrymaking — that endures incessantly while the country burns. Politics as soap opera. But while audiences are riveted to their TV sets, no one is taking notes. There is zero concern for culpability.

The blatantly excessive use of state power as in the June 2014 Model Town incident and substantiated, not just alleged, financial transgressions by our entire coterie of politicians would fill a tome and some. The topping on the cake of course was the prime minister’s blatant lie on live national television stating that he had not requested the army chief to facilitate an intervention with the sit-in members of the PAT and the PTI, which was quickly refuted by the army’s Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). This was August 29, 2014, not so long ago but selective amnesia has led us to forgive and forget all.

These are a paltry few off-the-cuff, tip-of-the-iceberg mentions of the inestimable number of nefarious deals and events orchestrated quite triumphantly by the establishment and only presented here to create a backdrop to the real issue at hand. Many countries are besotted with problems of corruption and inefficiency at varying levels of magnitude but there is evidence of some moral compass pointing towards the true north. The point here is the complete apathy with which we as a nation disown issues of profound moral gravitas. Ethics, principles, codes of conduct, honour, and just plain decency have become increasingly irrelevant in the scheme of things.

The Pakistani scenario is uncannily similar to the dystopian landscape of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”. It is almost as if Beckett had envisioned the Pakistan of today when he wrote the play in which there is an endless waiting for someone named Godot, who is said to be coming but never does despite assurances that he is on his way. The people of Pakistan are waiting for a messiah to help them out of the morass. The only true opposition that has the mandate of the people is waiting for a pledge from somebody, anybody. In Beckett’s play, of the two central characters, Pozzo is blind and Lucky is dumb so there is a complete breakdown of communication. If we consider our legal system to have had its eyes seared by incompetence and corruption, and the legislative and executive bodies of the government to have lost aural sensation, there is left no hope for redemption. Now, imagine the effects of this spatial dystopian void on the psyche of the youth of Pakistan, who are by now convinced that this is the way of the world and the lines of morality and truthfulness have all but been erased. It’s a free-for-all and no one’s looking. All that proselytising by parents about truth, honesty, integrity and the need to do good has proved to be an eye-wash. The need of the hour is take whatever you want, no matter the means.

Meanwhile, the international community is having a great laugh at our expense. It is enjoying the antics of our politicians because the messier the imbroglio, the more access they have to its internal workings. Note the complete lack of news and analyses on the part of the international media about the recent tumultuous developments in Pakistan’s political panorama. The APS massacre got its due share of coverage because that was a simple good versus evil narrative to unravel. Taking sides was easy. Streets protests in Indonesia, Thailand or Hong Kong are covered with hourly updates but there was a blinding blackness when it came to the PTI protest. Devastatingly, the moral fabric of Pakistan is in tatters and even if we manage somehow, miraculously, to bring back the infrastructural integrity of our institutions, tragically there is little hope for the nation’s children, who now only want to get rich quick like their politicians.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  7^th,  2015.

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