Striking Out
The Opposition put on a very public display why they have failed to unite by themselves for over two years; it took the Government of Mian Nawaz Sharif a combination of a series of blunders and mis-governance to bring the Opposition’s act together. Having staged a successful strike on Saturday 4 Sept and a moderately successful one next Saturday on 11 Sept they had nothing to show for it except for a rush of adrenaline in playing hide-and-seek with the police near the Quaid’s Mazar in Karachi. On the shaky foundations of the protest against the GST by traders they decided that they had achieved omnipotence and grandly announced that the succeeding Sunday and Monday would see a continuation of their political protest by strikes. Except for Hyderabad the result was embarrassing, bad enough for us to keep hoping that in the face of a lack of credible alternates with any sense at all if not common sense, Mian Nawaz Sharif will at the very least feel sorry for the country he rules over as a virtual monarch and decide to govern it properly as per his promise and the mandate given to him, all 16% out of a voting populace of 50 million, 6% if one takes the whole population of 130 million.
Incurable optimists like me see silver linings even in the darkest of moments. The fact that MQM had to depend upon PPP and other allied Opposition parties to embark upon a strike call in Karachi is very significant. That it completely failed on subsequent days except in District Central should be of concern to the MQM. This is the same city which lived on the word of one man and his whims. The reality that Karachi as a whole belonged to the MQM has now become the subject of myth. One has no doubt about the MQM stamp on District Central but Malir District and District South are definitely out of the MQM camp, Districts East and West being marginal at best. While Altaf Hussain’s once dominant party continues to command the greatest majority in the city, its days of total control over the city are over. With sought-after (by the law enforcement agencies) MQM stalwarts surfacing in UK at frequent intervals, one expects that the coming Altaf initiative will be meant to be detrimental to the interests of Pakistan, however one believes we should welcome this now as we are far better equipped to deal with separatism rather than the early 90s, moreover Altaf Hussain is now increasingly out of sync with the mood of the vast mass of Mohajirs who remain patriotic mainstream Pakistanis. Leadership by remote control seldom succeeds particularly when the leader lives in luxury in contrast to those whom he professes to lead. Karachi is in for interesting times if any attempt is made to turn this city hostage to the anarchy we witnessed for a decade or so at the hands of MQM militants.
And what is Mian Nawaz Sharif likely to do? In the circumstances why should he do anything but continue with more of the same bad governance that has brought us to the verge of various individual dooms as a country, economically, diplomatically and politically? When the sum total of governance is survival in office, virtually to the exclusion of anything else, what should one expect? It is all very well to say that Mian Nawaz Sharif has not been equal to the task but in the absence of an alternative is it a responsible proposition to attempt bring him down, knowing that in 1977 a somewhat similar situation brought about third party intervention that lasted more than a decade?
Does all this mean that the Mian Nawaz Sharif regime may be headed for extinction again? And soon? As much as Mian Nawaz Sharif was incapable of bringing down the government of Ms Benazir Bhutto despite all the excesses of Asif Zardari, the present Opposition lacks the teeth to bring down the PM. And he is hardly likely to repeat the hara-kiri of July 1993 again. A chain of sorry circumstances that began with Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s death in the crossfire near 70 Clifton on Sept 20, 1997 and the estrangement of the then President Farooq Leghari and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Sajjad Ali Shah brought about Ms Benazir’s downfall a second time with the active connivance of the Army, albeit “acting on the instructions of the Supreme Commander”. Kargil has emasculated the Army’s hierarchy at least for the month from taking active part in such “internal” exercises which previously would have been no more than at most a casual whim of one such person. Without the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the Opposition lacks the street power necessary to take the streets to anarchy and thus the country to boil. Very few people in the Opposition command the type of respect among the masses as credible alternates. Moreover, individual motives that bind the Opposition together on a single-point agenda are suspect. So unless something somewhere out of the ordinary happens that jolts the country out of the routine, we should become used to seeing Mian Nawaz Sharif on PTV for the balance of his term.
In any democracy, the Opposition has a very crucial role, almost the same as that of the Fourth Estate. It has to keep in check the excesses of Government, to keep those who administer authority within the ambit of the rule of law and thus to protect the citizens in the exercise of their fundamental rights. In Pakistan, the Opposition has shown itself to be generally toothless except in regional matters, and when they did discover their teeth they were found to be without the basic common sense that governs politics. The result is that minions in the government tend to get away literally with murder as the repeated demise of MQM activists and others in police custody has shown. When bad governance becomes endemic, something’s got to give, whether nature plays a part or artificial means succeed is a moot point.
Domestic affairs already holds pride of place in deepening the crisis of national proportion, however foreign policy also continues to be an active minefield. Despite the lack of voters in Occupied Kashmir, the world is not ready to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the Indian Government. The Taliban of Afghanistan continue to talk with the Northern Alliance in a “fight-fight talk-talk” formula that defies logic and our age-old friendship with Iran. Most of our former good friends have a grouse or so against us, some of the facts we are blamed for are blatantly incorrect, not the least being the presence of guerillas supported by us (and even our troops) in various insurgencies in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Dagestan, etc. This is a real failure of our information set-up, an amateur handling that believes in personal image projection in contrast to the country, a damaging injury to our credibility that can end up going beyond repair. It is only the resilience of our goodwill among the nations that we have not ended up in “rogue-nation” status in the company of North Korea, Libya, Sudan, etc.
What is of most serious concern to all of Pakistanis is the economic slide that simply does not seem to stop. Unfortunately our economic team is bereft of answers for the present, what to talk about the new millennium. We spend all our waking moments hoping for funds from the IMF, who keep on upping the ante. We have to take some concrete measures, particularly to shore up a flagging financial sector beset with the likes of Bankers Equity Ltd (BEL) scandal and probably about to haemorrhage again for the “Mera Ghar” scheme, conceptually good but disaster-prone if not implemented under strict control and supervision. The only saving grace is that unlike yellow cabs, these flats will remain in Pakistan and not end up in Kabul or Amritsar. Investment has dried up because we have been trying to tap the wrong sources, we should have concentrated the incentives on expatriate Pakistanis but our bureaucracy froze their entrepreneur instincts out of Pakistan. Because of the freeze of accounts inward cash flow through regular channels has slowed down to a trickle, lack of financial credibility is a major problem.
The combined Opposition struck out after a successful first strike, unfortunately the government and they are two sides of the same coin and what is to prevent them from striking out each other into oblivion. What we need badly is fresh leadership with original ideas that can be implemented; we do not need rhetoric about dream-castles in the air or on government-reserved land.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment