Two gauntlets for Mr Sharif

Look upon Qadir as the catalyst of change, Imran as the trigger

The creeping coup continues as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif keeps needlessly ceding more and more space to the army with the contradictory idea of gathering maximum power in his office. Having handed Islamabad over to it for two months under Article 245 of the constitution, anything could happen. The army could even arrest him if his presence is considered inimical to law and good order to save Pakistan, which is the very justification of its existence and its first responsibility.

The question is: how does Nawaz Sharif deal with the two gauntlets thrown down at him by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri? It seems obvious that he is going to overreact and do the stupid thing as always. Qadri and Imran have common and uncommon objectives. Their common objective is to bring down the government. Their uncommon objectives are that whereas Imran Khan wants to force midterm elections while remaining within the political system, Qadri wants to bring the entire system down and replace it with one that delivers on Pakistan’s promise of 1947.

Because Imran’s party emerged as the second largest in the May 12, 2013 elections and formed a government in one province he has morphed from revolutionary to beneficiary of the system. Any wonder he only wishes to force mid-term elections while protecting the system that he thinks will now work for him? Times were when he thought that he could change our man-eating system from within. Instead, the man-eating system changed him. But his essential honesty remains strong enough to sublimate the mistakes that he has made. Imran remains the same Imran bent on salvaging his country. Revolution is forgotten for the time being, except for its sound effect. Now it’s all about power, not for power’s sake, but to use it to improve the people’s lot. Imran thinks that midterm elections will lead to victory provided that – and it’s a big proviso – they won’t be rigged this once. There is no gainsaying that he might not win, so fed up are people of the old parties and their decrepit leaderships long on rhetoric and short on delivery. The system is not programmed to trash its few beneficiaries and improve the condition of the deprived many. It is not in its DNA. Imran being convinced that honest elections will lead to fortune is fine, but the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Whatever happens, Imran should certainly emerge as an even more powerful force than he has already become unless he makes a complete hash of it. Between him and Qadri it is Ego Versus Ego – who is the alpha male? If it were just Pakistan and its people that they had at heart and nothing else, they would join forces and make it one big Intifada. But one has to be top dog.

Toppling a bad government is easy but revolution is quite another matter. Toppling can come by street protest, a military coup or a combination of both as it almost always does.

The times are interesting worldwide, perfect for a writer who thrives on seeing history in the making. The Leviathan is morphing, convulsing, shedding its old skin and acquiring a new one, bringing societal change with a massive shift in the global centre of gravity, the pendulum of power swinging back from west to east, a unipolar world becoming multipolar, geographies changing again, old states dying and new ones being born. Pakistan could either change course 180 degrees and upturn the status quo or go full circle once again and take another 360 degree turn, returning to the same status quo with some old faces or their Mini-Me progeny, as has happened so often before in our chequered history – from feudal to feudal urban or rural, leader to progeny, dynasticism prospers.

Imran Khan threatens to blockade Islamabad on Independence Day. If he is hindered, things could get badly out of hand. If blood flows or in the horrific event that Imran is injured or killed, all hell will break loose and the wheels of the creaky Sharif bandwagon will fall off. It’s a high price to pay though to rid us of these self-destructive morons who will commit another political suicide anyway.

Dr Tahirul Qadri says that he will mark Martyr’s Day four days earlier on August 10 (today) to commemorate the massacre of his workers, men and women, children and unborn babies, by the Sharif provincial government in Lahore. The day, promises Qadri, will also mark the beginning of revolution leading to the demise of the Sharif government by the end of August. One waits with bated breath to see how well or badly the government handles these two challenges. The portends are that they will overreach and invite their political doom again.

But wait a minute. Toppling a bad government is easy but revolution is quite another matter. Toppling can come by street protest, a military coup or a combination of both as it almost always does. Governments have been toppled before in Pakistan and elsewhere by a combination of agitation that provided the justification for the military to intervene openly or from behind the veil. Problem is, what to do the day after. Yet another election will throw up yet another bad government and we will be back yet again to square one. Young Imran’s notion that an honest and fair election can be held in this system without any significant rigging of the ballot is a delusion. Rigging and dishonesty are the hallmark of our system and the only politics our politicians know. And if Imran thinks that he can win elections without support from forces behind the scenes, and I don’t mean just the army but also the country that runs the world, he has another thought coming. However, if he becomes prime minister with their backing, what difference could he make? It will be the same old wine in a new bottle and different rhetoric. But considering how sceptical many people and much of the press were when Imran entered politics, and how some lampooned him, Imran has come a long way. Well done, Skipper. I for one am very proud of you. You are far better than the odious, smelly, corrupt political leaders we have had ever since we achieved majority. Actually, Imran doesn’t have to destroy this political system bequeathed to us by the British colonisers and their British India Act of 1935. It will destroying itself for self-destruction lies in the genes of any alien transplant. What Imran should do is to think what system should replace it, a system that delivers to the people and continuously and significantly improves the human condition starting from the poorest strata of society. Tahirul Qadri has thought on these lines; so should Imran.

Woefully short on imagination and untutored in “the art of the possible” the two Sharif governments, provincial and federal, are reacting in the manner that governments on the run usually do.

I have always said that one should separate the message from the messenger. Not being comfortable with the messenger should not detract from his message if it is broadly right. There certainly are some contradictions in Qadri’s past that need explaining but at the moment saving Pakistan should be the prime focus. Look upon Qadri as the catalyst of change, Imran as the trigger. However, if Qadri thinks that toppling the government will mean toppling the system, it won’t. It will mean just that – toppling the government. To change the system and bring in another, new constitution and all, will need genuine revolution that shakes the citadels of the great, awakens the poor, sets the blood of slaves afire and causes the little sparrow to engage the mighty falcon. For this he will need street power, ideologues, cadres, a vanguard and a propaganda machine that understands strategic communications and perception management.

Woefully short on imagination and untutored in “the art of the possible” the two Sharif governments, provincial and federal, are reacting in the manner that governments on the run usually do. Remember the ridiculous October 12, 1999 episode when Nawaz Sharif hijacked General Pervez Musharraf’s plane and tried to send it to India? It didn’t occur to this mastermind that handing over his army chief to the enemy would mean treason. He overreacted again when his kid brother’s Punjab government massacred 15 of Qadri’s people, smashed cars and injured over eighty. When Dr Qadri was to land in Islamabad Nawaz blocked off the airport and all roads leading to it, the police unnecessarily attacked his workers and got thrashed in return, and hijacked his aircraft to Lahore. Nawaz Sharif is a serial hijacker of aircraft and elections. He is doing the same again: blocking roads and arresting Imran and Qadri’s workers. If he arrests them too he loses. If one of them is killed, he loses. If people are massacred, he loses. If he cedes more space to the army, he loses. If he calls snap elections, he might win.

To spoil Imran’s show Nawaz tried to hold a parade on the dug up Constitution Avenue on Independence Day. Not unexpectedly, the army refused, saying that historically the parade had been held on Republic Day March 23 when Pakistan stopped being a British dominion. Anyway, the army was too busy in wars against foreign and native terrorists to be distracted. So the ‘Mastermind’ and his irrational henchmen went one better: they activated Article 245 of the constitution and handed Islamabad over to the army. Now only the houses of state remain. They think that by so doing they would make the army the fall guy in the event of any conflict with the people. Or is Article 245 Nawaz Sharif’s escape route that will keep him politically alive as a martyr of ‘democracy’? I don’t think so, because Nawaz is not so clever. More likely he and his entire cabal will run away. The times they are a changing fast and it is all going over poor Nawaz Sharif’s head. He is so mentally out of it (I hesitate to use the word ‘intellectually’) that it could well be that he doesn’t understand the import of what he has done and neither is there anyone in his ‘democratic’ junta to tell him, for they are as mentally challenged as he is.