With political vagabonds playing around its Constitution, Pakistan is in peril today
Pakistan is in peril. It is not about who will succeed Imran Khan. Somebody surely will. Merely swearing in another Prime Minister is no solution. Never has the country’s democracy been so shabbily treated and misused to the point of being ignored completely. Even the militarists shied away from cocking a snook at their Constitution. Imran did that with impunity and little remorse. That is the issue. A country can come out of a political crisis. It can weather an economic crisis. Can it survive an attack on its Constitution? The worst thing is, such a realisation is perhaps farthest from people’s thoughts today. The focus is on the I-won-you-lost school of politics. The focus is on keeping elections in abeyance so that a Government, however short-term — the National Assembly is set to dissolve in August 2023 — can come to power. The focus is on returning as fast as possible to dynasty politics. That is one blame Imran escapes. Shehbaz Sharif, PML-N president and Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, is presenting himself as the Prime Minister-in-waiting. He calls for a gathering of dynastic forces after Imran’s exit when he says “neither I, nor Bilawal…will interfere” as the law takes its course. He is saying he will carry no vendetta against Imran. What is important is to include Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, in the “we”.
Bhutto, as if on cue, welcomes people to “purana” (old) Pakistan. That is all that the two families are interested in. Restoring the status quo. They want to get back to enjoying power like in the past. Imran broke the party in 2018 and now it is time to pick up the pieces. Imagine the mockery of Pakistan’s tottering democracy if Shehbaz takes over the hot seat. He is an accused in a money laundering case and was in jail till the courts released him on bail. He is the brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom the courts disqualified from holding public office and sentenced to prison in the Panama Papers case; now in London on expired bail. The more corrupt or morally compromised the leader, the easier it is for the Pakistani military to control such a person. Then are the minor issues of the FATF threat for terror financing, local jihadi bodies that find shelter in Pakistan, the regressive communal and blasphemy laws, the cracking economy and Pakistan’s diplomatic faux pas that no leader ever took seriously. Simply put, Prime Ministers come and go but they neither govern nor subscribe to the rule of law or governance. The former cricketer was once asked by his President to return to captaincy. He repaid the trust with the World Cup. He belied the trust the second time, ruling by rhetoric, conceding ground to the regressive far right, gunning for the Opposition, trusting in populism and pursuing a non-existent Islamist welfare State.
