Well-heeled MPA more equal than ‘peasant’ MNA
‘Particularly galling and hurtful was the attitude of the Speaker of the National Assembly, who after initial dictated comments that Dasti’s illegal action disturbed provincial harmony, washed his hands of the whole affair, and maintained a deafening and undignified silence thereafter.’
But first a prelude, the comment by Monsieur the Marquis (not the notorious Marquis de Sade but someone closely resembling him) from Charles Dickens novel on the French Revolution, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’: ‘Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky’. One mentions this for two reasons, first as it also closely approximates to the self-serving and regal outlook of our own various wannabe Caliphs and Amir-ul-Momineens and second because they have truly divided the people into two nations, a paper-thin upper crust with vast wealth and political power, and the have-nots, to them, human nothings and political nonentities.
Citizen Jamshed Dasti, MNA, whose prison ordeal has just temporarily ended with his bail from an Anti-Terrorist Court, is a true son of the soil, of peasant background, the only ‘true producers’ in any society. Although there has been some progress since the time serfs in Russia were part of the dowries of the nobility and gentry, serfdom, in the form of bonded labour and absolute control of powerful feudal landlords over their tenants and ‘haris’ is still commonplace in backward parts of our country. People like Dasti, who is an MNA twice over, may come and go (ideally to jail) in the eyes of the ruling elite, but their own estates are permanent and immortal. So, devoid of any distinguishing or ennobling title or surname, he was considered fair game in a petty display of vindictive politics, of settling personal scores, by PML (N) leaders at the receiving end of his caustic and sometimes contemptuous tongue, who no doubt considered it a clear case of lese majesty.
After a public opening of the sluice gates of a canal to meet the ripe wants of desperate local farmers, he was picked up and produced before an Anti-Terrorist Court, and his terrible odyssey of being shunted from one jail to another, kept in isolation, denied sleep (an extremely effective Stalinist invention), and starved over many days, not to mention the scorpions, rats and snakes allegedly inserted into his cell by no doubt well-meaning wardens. As for his original crime, ‘there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves’, but of all the water-thieves there are none so notorious as the ones running the Irrigation Department, and no recipients of illegal canal water so unscrupulous and ruthless as the Herrenklub of the feudal lords.
Particularly galling and hurtful was the attitude of the Speaker of the National Assembly, who after initial dictated comments that Dasti’s illegal action disturbed provincial harmony, washed his hands of the whole affair, and maintained a deafening and undignified silence thereafter. Sadly, no prompt and concerted action was taken by politicians (including the tearful Senate ones), by otherwise raucous Human Rights organisations, the legal fraternity and civil society. No wonder the coercive apparatus managed to break him, reducing him to a sobbing and nervous wreck within weeks, but this was probably due more to his valid fear of being eliminated in a staged police encounter: ‘Shot while trying to escape’, or ‘jumping out of the window in an unguarded moment’, are always hard to pin down.
On the other side of the economic divide is the unrepentant countenance and swaggering figure of the Baluchistan MPA, Dr. (Death?) Majeed Khan Achakzai, who hit an unsuspecting traffic policeman performing his duty in Quetta with his speeding luxury vehicle, killing him on the spot. The CCTV captures both the horrific moment, and thereafter how the arrested legislator, who belongs to a prominent and flourishing family or flock of provincial legislators, allied to the PML (N), was shown being feted as if he were a conquering hero, his meals reportedly prepared at home, a room cooler clearly visible outside his cell, the Old Boy Network no doubt reassuring him at every turn, his jailers polite and deferential as they rightly should be, and the swirling rumours, denied at the present moment of a diyat deal with the heirs, but one knows full well how these things work out in the end, and who walks away scot-free.
‘But then he is a ‘racial’ and caste comrade of the elect and of course nothing untoward must be allowed to happen to him. And the foxlike self-serving elite only prefers smiling slaves and Uncle Tom’s n—roes, bending and fawning and curtsying to them, while they look down on ordinary people as if from a great height with a cold domineering eye and a forced, false affection.’
But what shocked people most was the hulking and unremorseful demeanour of the guilty man, unapologetic, unabashed, and overflowing with pride, boastfulness and an insulting scorn.
But then he is a ‘racial’ and caste comrade of the elect and of course nothing untoward must be allowed to happen to him. And the foxlike self-serving elite only prefers smiling slaves and Uncle Tom’s n—roes, bending and fawning and curtsying to them, while they look down on ordinary people as if from a great height with a cold domineering eye and a forced, false affection. And so, salvation in our present environment, will never, ever, come from above.
