Pakistan Still in turmoil

It was thought with the sacked judges' restoration a measure of sobriety and normality would return to our body politic. It has not. Rather, the nation is looking dismayingly into new political feuds, court battles and power games, with Punjab becoming a bloody battleground. Worse, mob politics seem gaining currency to settle disputes that should be resolved on the negotiating table, if not in the parliament, reduced into a poor thing by the very ones even now quite ludicrously proclaiming it to be supreme. But what demon is that has possessed these egotistic partisans? So blinded are they by their craziness that they see not what a deeply perturbed citizenry is seeing with so much of horror: their enactment of a Greek tragedy. Quite evidently, the country is in the throes of existential threats, a frightful economic meltdown, and a ravaging mass poverty. Yet these partisans are wholly engrossed in their own fracas and vendettas, as if the country is wholly at peace, with not a speck of trouble spot. Not bothered a wee bit are they even about the vile prowling extremism with its roots at home and abroad, which if it succeeds in its sinister design to throw this country into utter anarchy could spell death for their very power ambitions, of which they have made a hostage of this unfortunate nation as also an unwilling spectator of their ugly power circus. So blinded are they that they show not the least concern about how injuriously is going to be made a scapegoat of this country in the days ahead by the American and the NATO occupiers of neighbouring Afghanistan for their failures there. Already, in unison they are raising a noisy cacophony that for pacifying Afghanistan, Pakistan has to be tackled first. And their shrill is sure to become deafening if their contemplated changed strategies and surges in Afghanistan fail to deliver. Yet, this upcoming storm has made no appearance at all on these feuding partisans' radar screens. Nor do they show even bleak awareness of how perilously have our strategically-placed tribal regions, settled areas and Balochistan been softened up by foreign powers for their geopolitical objectives. And as the global economic crisis has hit hard even the world's most prosperous and robust nations with their leaders struggling desperately to somehow hold together their teetering national economies, these warring partisans of ours are behaving as if we are an unshakeable economic giant, not the ones living on foreign aid and dole. Mass poverty, mass unemployment, mass deprivation, mass denial, and mass sickness have become the eternal fate of a whole lot of our citizenry. Yet these partisans, most of them wallowing in dirty wealth and slush cash with their leaders counting among the world's billionaires, seem to think that no home, no family on this land has an economic problem but only a political woe. More worryingly, by flaunting unthinkingly their irrational contrivance to the nation's teeming millions of hungry mouths and unemployed hands that their miseries would end with the sacked judges' restoration, they have made for a very severe and dangerous public backlash. And this may happen sooner than later, as these partisans have raised expectations, and hyperbolically, where these exist not. The judges, after all, are just administrators of justice and law. Creation of jobs or opportunities, catering to the people's basic needs and wants, and alleviating poverty and uplifting the people's economic lot is not their job but of the state's executive branch. Yet the desperate poor citizenry has been led up the garden path by these partisans to expect this from the judiciary, which obviously cannot deliver on this. A public backlash is thus inevitable any time soon, thanks to these partisans' wilful deceit. Even now, these characters can pull back, if they have any love lost for this unlucky nation which to its great woe has had the misfortune of having them as its leaders. They can condescend to bury the hatchet, sink their egos, abandon stridency, embrace conciliation and give way to mutual accommodation to settle their feuds. In that alone lays the nation's ultimate good, their own no lesser. Some of them are talking of a revolution. How earnestly one wishes for it, but for a real one, a people's, not elite's! If it comes, it will rid the nation of the whole pack of these aristocrats pretending to be the masses' representatives, which they are not, along with their cheerleaders, and usher in the masses' true leaders from amongst themselves.
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Dated: Saturday,March 21, 2009, Rabi-ul-Awwal 23, 1430 A.H.