A case for cranks

To receive media attention, all one needs to do is form a political party called PML and add a suffix or prefix to it.

In other countries, receiving media attention in inverse proportion to importance requires a lot of effort. Building a brand, ala Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, takes, at the minimum, the release of a sex tape. In Pakistan, all one needs to do is form a political party called PML and attach a prefix or suffix to it.

If there is one thing we enjoy doing more than interviewing, harassing for comment, transcribing every utterance of the Musharraf-Sheikh Rashid-Pir Pagara brigade, it is complaining how much the media obsesses over these political pygmies. It is taken as a given that they will never attain power again and that is supposed to be sufficient explanation for their irrelevance. What has never been considered is that these curmudgeonly cranks, who also include in their ranks Imran Khan, Ejazul Haq and other assorted political no-hopers, may have an important role to play without ever being handed responsibility for the affairs of the state.

Irresponsibility, in fact, should be the calling card of the cranks. That is where they are at their most useful. Since they too, at their core, know that they are unelectable, the cranks can articulate those uncomfortable truths that are considered taboo in mainstream debate. Take for instance, Musharraf’s interview with Der Spiegel two months ago, when he admitted that the army had trained militants to fight in Kashmir. This is something Musharraf never would have said while in power and which the PPP and PML-N keep silent over for fear of offending the military. Now that Musharraf is a fringe political player who relies on his controversial utterances to get attention, he, and others as marginalised as him, can say what no one else would dare.

The cranks must be megalomaniacal by design. It takes supreme self-confidence, to the point of delusion, to keep plugging away despite being rebuffed by the voters at every turn. We can excuse, then, Imran Khan’s belief that he will be prime minister one day or Musharraf thinking Facebook followers constitute a scientific opinion poll on popularity.

Like the village idiot in Shakespeare’s plays, the crank should keep articulating his truths without sacrificing his role as a figure of mockery. If, heavens forbid, their radical rhetoric, useful as it may be on the fringes of debate, gains widespread popularity then we get the likes of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As an outsider criticising the status quo with his radical-for- Pakistan ideas of nationalisation and anti-US rhetoric, Bhutto was the perfect man to keep the ruling class on its toes. Bhutto had all the qualities of a crank — passion, smug glibness and an outsized ego. In power, he ruined the country’s economy and its standing with its western allies. Where he could have caused a slight rethink in Pakistan’s policy as the rebel with a cause, once entrenched in power his demagoguery and Messiah-complex took over. All cranks are dictators-in-waiting. Since they are so convinced of their superiority, their totalitarian instincts will always take over, as they did with Bhutto.

For cranks to remain useful, they need to not only be kept out of power, they shouldn’t even be allowed a sniff at it. When that happens you get someone like Fazlur Rehman, a crank whose ability to engage in realpolitik makes him doubly dangerous. Thus, his JUI-F somehow always manages to get nearly as many cabinet positions as the party has seats in the National Assembly.

The next time the cranks appear on the hustings, keep this in mind: listen to them intently, just don’t vote for them.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2010.