The wrecking game

It is obviously fair to say that individual politicians and political parties all over the world are prone at times to self-destruction. Looking at the record of this Islamic Republic, a self-proclaimed bastion of Islam, the percentage of politicos and parties opting to self-destruct seems to be rather on the high side, discounting, of course, the large number of largely irrelevant parties and their founding leaders who perish naturally (too numerous to cite).

Right now, firmly in self-destruct mode we have, firstly, the Great White Hope of yesterday, our cricketing hero-cum-philanthropist, whose financial probity has not been challenged — though on the morally ethical side he is quite an enigma — who through many a quirky flaw is bent on undoing all that he had done to build up, relatively swiftly, his and his party’s high acceptability. Many believed he would be ‘different’ from the awfulness of the politicians and their skewed and highly corrupt politics that have haunted the land almost from day one. His initial primary stress was on the eradication of corruption, a stress that continues on but which, engrained as it is in the national ethos, will be impossible to fulfill — though of course it can be curbed if the will plus ability is there. Imran Khan very rightly took on the electoral system — rotten to the core — but his tackling process was wrong and unsurprisingly misfired. His once clean slate is sullied, his chosen team is suspect, he and his party are lost in a wilderness of his own making. A great pity.

And then we have the London Ranter, seemingly purposefully bent on self-destruction as that would seem the only explanation of the insane inanities emanating from a stricken mind, which ridiculously, rather than being laughed away, are taken by the civilian leadership in deadly serious manner. The uniformed lot is rightly after him and his acolytes — jointly partly the cause of the ruination of Karachi — and should be able, despite the civilian apathy, to dish out to him what is known as ‘just desserts’. It is all creeping along, the party clout no longer visible and the loyal MQMites, held by fear, are in disarray. Not much pity to be spent on that score.

On to the PPP, the once mighty party, loved and hated, that through the sheer determination and ambition of its founder captured the minds of a large majority of the nation, stretching from north to south, west to east. It was brought down with a crash from the dizzy height it had achieved, through means by no means fair according to many, within a decade of its founding. Though downed, throughout last century it was never out. Its founder, the greatest of the self-destructors, perished; it withstood formidable destructive attacks; it survived, until this century the founder’s gallant daughter who kept the fire alight, if not burning, was murdered — and one is still left wondering at whose hand. Asif Ali Zardari is certainly not in any way bent on self-destruction, quite the opposite, but his great achievement is to have imposed self-destruction upon the party whose leadership he assumed — fairly or unfairly, has not been established. The PPP is now a pathetic remnant, Zardari has done the job, seemingly with no regrets.

The one great survivor of self-destruction is none less than Mian Nawaz Sharif who self-destructed in 1999, but miraculously pieced himself together again, which may well turn out to be a pity for the country. Who is to say he won’t do it again? He and his fellow relics have abdicated in favour of the real power, for which we must be grateful as at least his namesake in uniform knows what has to be done and does it; the Supreme Court has come to his rescue (at some cost), he is beaming today, the straightened nation is led to believe that an economic boom is on the way — but tomorrow is unknown.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th,  2015.

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