Grotesquery on full display

Such lows of moral degeneracy

Addressed in bold print to the Ayatollahs in Iran, a terse, begrudging letter recently made its way to the Islamic republic. Ominous and bitter in tone, the letter reads as the hormonal outburst of a twice jilted ex-lover. No forlorn love letter though, this disparaging dispatch of vulgar threats and crude bravado is the handiwork of a certain Senator Cotton – Harvard Law graduate and former infantry officer.

In the letter, he, along with his troupe of idiots – forty-seven grown adults who just also happen to be Republican Senators – have made clear to Iran that any deal with Obama regarding its Nuclear plans will not outlast the president’s reign in the White House. In other words, Obama’s executive action without approval from Congress is not binding on the good Senators once the allegedly closet Moslem president has served his final term. Not surprising then that the calm and clinical, Ali Khamenei, has responded to this as “a sign of a decline in political ethics and the destruction of the American establishment from within.” Whatever one’s disposition i.e. the GOP madness of these lunatic senators on the one hand or the eerie stoicism of the Supreme Leader, one thing is clear: this action, constitutionally illegal in that senators are not allowed to reach out to foreign heads of state while by-passing the president, is a symptom of a larger metastatic disease in the US legislative/political system.

This begs the obvious question, is this level of senatorial lunacy the exclusive province of the Unites States? Perhaps, if one were to drop Pakistan from the equation. Pakistan is, to no one’s surprise, ahead in all things perverse. Anyone who doubts this is welcome to revisit the circus show that was sponsored by our Senate elections recently. When, yet again, our memories were refreshed, as they always are every few years, with hyphenated abominations like ‘vote-transfers’ and ‘horse-trading’. Yes, even our Senate elections are not clean. Irony, then, that the one institution the very existence of which is supposed to be grounded in principles of law and morality is also their greatest violator. This grotesquery was on full display this past week when seats in the upper house were auctioned out to the highest bidders in what looked more like the wheeling best online casino and dealing of black-market cartels and racketeers than the fair and regulated elections to the most esteemed legislative organ of the state.

Things were mixed in K-P. And while Imran Khan, not unjustifiably, cried foul over horse-trading, he quickly settled into a self-satisfied lull with Pervez Khattak doing the job for his party using tactics no less suspect.

Khawaja Saad Rafique from the PLM-N would agree. Tasked to secure at least five Senate seats from Baluchistan he could only get three senators from an Assembly that boasts more than thirty MPAs of his party and its allies. But more than incompetence on Rafique’s part, this reflects the politics of patronage and identity, of kinship and feudalism, and of tribal groupings and alliances, the bane of provinces like Baluchistan that keeps them trapped in the past.

Then there was that ghastly attempt to restrict the votes of MNAs from FATA, from four votes to one vote, through a presidential ordinance issued on the advice of the prime minister on the eve of the voting day. This was done when PML-N leadership realised that it does not have the support of most FATA MNAs.

Things were mixed in K-P. And while Imran Khan, not unjustifiably, cried foul over horse-trading, he quickly settled into a self-satisfied lull with Pervez Khattak doing the job for his party using tactics no less suspect. And then there is the curious case of Senator Gulzar Ahmed Khan, a man who apparently took the phrase “treating colleagues as family” rather literally, with his own clan and kin making merry in Parliament.

Elsewhere, in Punjab and Sindh, things remained predictable, the dominant parties got all the seats, i.e., the PML-N in Punjab and the MQM and the PPP in Sindh.

And much as it pains one to say this, Zardari won again. Finishing up with a majority, not only was PPP able to get veteran party member Raza Rabbani elected as the Chairman Senate, but the party was also able to form an alliance with JUI-F and have Maulana Ghafoor Haideri elected as the deputy Chairman. If only Zardari had used half his wily talents in fixing the country while he was in power.

But what can one really expect from a people who happily transact conscience for money. Inevitable, then, that our Senate is also for sale. The only thing missing is a ‘For Sale’ signboard outside Parliament just to dispel the lingering pretence of unity, faith and discipline

And this brings us to the meat of the issue. What is the point of the Senate other than serving as a sinister scheme to make the rich richer, the strong stronger, and to expose our pretensions of a lawful state look that much more absurd. As the highest legislative authority, the senate is supposed to reflect our highest ideals and our deepest commitment to truth and principle. The senate is also there to provide equal representation to provinces, something not possible in the national assembly due to population variation. With malpractices like vote-buying and vote-transferring, etc, how will that ever be made possible?

Have we plumbed to such lows of moral degeneracy that something like ‘secret ballot’, designed as it is to protect the voter from intimidation and coercion, is not a viable option anymore? That given our utterly foul and beastly instincts as a people, the ballot be made open, as proposed by Imran Khan? That a system as diseased as ours, and as untrustworthy as ours, cannot function otherwise? And what does that really say about us?

But what can one really expect from a people who happily transact conscience for money. Inevitable, then, that our Senate is also for sale. The only thing missing is a ‘For Sale’ signboard outside Parliament just to dispel the lingering pretence of unity, faith and discipline.

The great Bertrand Russell said:

“Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.”

We Pakistanis must sear these words in whatever is left of our conscience.