WHO WILL CLEAR THE FOG?

The period of the Abba Jis needs to end

Fair is foul and foul is fair

Hover through the fog and filthy air

(Shakespeare, Macbeth)

For sixty nine years we have hovered through the fog and filthy air. Two generations (the founding and the first) have been consumed by this struggle. Today, ‘Abba Ji’ and his disciples rule and are achieving their ends. The underlying principal being that is that every man has a price, pay it and get the job done, fair or foul does not matter.

Pakistan started off well. By and large foul play and its linked filthy air was contained. There were politicians like Abdur Rab Nishtar who kept a log of their private calls from the Governor’s house and paid from his own pocket. In Jinnah’s cabinet meetings only water was served. There were judges like A. R. Cornelius who lived in a private hotel all his life. Ayub Khan the un-crowned King allotted him a plot in Islamabad thus starting the era of plots and permits. Cornelius Sahib had the moral courage to decline the offer with a letter of thanks saying “I don’t need a plot as I am happy with my current living arrangements”. The first mansion on the hill in Islamabad near the Marriott Hotel was built by the dictator. After his death his heirs decided to get rid of it. It is now the Hishwani House.

It took rather long (9 years) to enact a road map for the country. After the constitution was passed by the legislative assembly in 1956 there was no justification to abandon it. Perhaps Pakistan is the only country in the world that needed four constitutions (1956, 1962, 1972, 1973) and several unwanted and uncalled for amendments by dictators and usurpers. As a nation we must stand by our constitution and the associated rule of law.

My father actively participated in the Pakistan Movement both as a student and them member of All India Muslim League. He was awarded the prestigious Tehrik-e-Pakistan Gold Medal on August 14, 1990. On his passing away on September 02, 1991, I had to take over the reigns from where he had left. It was not an easy task as he believed in black and white or right and wrong or foul and fair while the world around him had turned grey. He was firm on principles and strictly followed merit, neither approached people in authority nor bribed them.

In his prime he would fight the wrong with brute physical force but in his later years sought legal remedies. There were twenty cases pending in the courts that I had to cater for after he was gone and they ranged all the way from writ petitions against the Excise and Taxation Department to damages and properly ejectment suits. The best lesson in law I got from his lawyer and perhaps the greatest legal brain of the country, the late Mian Nisar Ahmed, was that courts don’t dispense justice, at best they provide leverage which should be encashed positively rather than dragging on the legal battle as he used to do.

As a young school kid with him I was a party to crime for law. My father had received a properly tax notice from the Excise and Taxation Department. I accompanied him to the Mozang Road office of the authority. We approached the area inspector and presented our case. He made some calculations and then gave his two part solution. If you give me this amount your tax will be reduced otherwise it will remain unchanged. In broad daylight and in the presence of the entire staff my father turned his table upside down and grabbed the inspector from his neck. As a scared child I tried to stop him saying that this action was illegal, it infuriated him further and he yelled, ‘his asking for bribe is legal?’ It became a scene, the Director arrived and pacified him. After this incident, till his death no one ever dared to fudge his property tax calculations and accurate demand notices were sent by the department which were always paid  by him on time as social responsibility.

Filthy air is spreading as there is no one left to fight. The founding fathers have mostly perished or gone home. The first generation is either comfortable in their own domain or consumed by the struggle for an upright existence with clear distinction between foul and fair. It is a defining moment for Pakistan. Panama Leaks is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption and foul play. The youth have to determine the future course of the nation. Either the filthy air will be cleared for all times to come or will it be business as usual. ‘Naya Pakistan’ calls for fresh clean air with honest, able and upright politicians like Nishtar or judges of the integrity of Cornelius. The period of ‘Abba Ji’s’ Pakistan with its filthy air between Jinnah’s and ‘Naya Pakistan’ will then be remembered as the dark ages of a new nation that finally corrected its course. My appeal to the comrades is not to give up and be there as role models for the young and directionless who have neither seen nor experienced the ‘Real Pakistan’ and it founding/ building members. The fog and filthy air created by the Abba Ji’s and their likes has to be cleared for the sun to shine again on this tormented land. Fair is fair while foul is foul no matter what cost one has to bear.