Pakistan: Cunning charade

THE FRONTIER POST

This charade must come to an end. For long, it has been played rather cunningly. The politicos across the spectrum contend that the agencies interfere in politics. And their tirade is endorsed variously by segments of the chattering classes and the commentariat. And as the upcoming general election is coming closer, this cacophony is getting louder with the day. But since the insinuation comes straight from the horses’ mouths, there must be a lot of grain of truth to it. But are the politicos as innocent as they pretend to be? Are they not an equal complicit in the political games that the agencies play? Had not some political grandees fallen to the ISI’s bait to become part of its political engineering works, would have been an IJI conglomeration there? It would have been not, irrefutably. Had not a Muslim League faction, Jamaat-e-Islami and late Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan’s political formation teamed up to make up a civilian cabinet of Gen. Ziaul Haq, would that military ruler have been able to give a political face to his most brutal and repressive dictatorship in the country’s history? Certainly, not. And had not some politicos been willing to become part of a political caboodle going under the banner of Pakistan Muslim League (Q), wouldn’t military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf been left bereft of a king’s party to give spurious political props to his autocracy? He would have been. There indeed is a very dexterous skullduggery to this whole prattle of the agencies’ interference in politics. It skips over the role of the politicos in this venture. Surely, they are no toddlers that a nanny can lead with a finger in hand to wherever she wants. Nor are they sitting ducks, upon whom the agencies pounce and poach the way they want. They are grown up people, masters of their wills, and their own decision makers. If the agencies succeed in recruiting from amongst the politicos for their political projects, that clearly means that the political class has shoals of willing recruits in its folds. It has in its ranks people with the avarice for savouring the plums of office and the bounties of power. And they are the ones ready to sell their souls to satiate their lust. What else could it that in the daytime they assail the establishment for political interference and in the dead darkness of night schmooze with the men in uniform? And hasn’t the nation been a witness to the spectacle that when an elected government was shown the door unconstitutionally, its political foes celebrated its ouster? Weren’t sweets distributed on the streets by the adversaries every time a civilian government was sacked in the infamous decade of 1990s? And wasn’t the ouster of a government of heavy mandate in a putsch greeted with fireworks by the rival politicos, both mainstream and regional? The unspoken truth of this interference drama is indeed bitterer, more contemptible — and more condemnable. Yet even the chattering classes and the commentariat give a clean chit to the politicos in this theatre, and play along uncritically with the political class which itself gives this chit to it. The plain truth is that the politicians are as much culpable as are the agencies. Wasn’t it a politician who had ordered the opening of the much-derided political cell in the ISI? And don’t the political governments still use the agencies and various official arms for political objectives and to political ends? Yes, the interference of the establishment and the agencies should end in politics, which is none of their business. But how can it happen if the other party, the politicos, are not censured and condemned for their own willing role in this malaise? Of course, there is a snag here. The world over, agencies are not unknown for dirty tricks. But their role in politics in the established democracies is extinct, simply because the political forces there have their roots in the masses, who are the real determiners of their rise and fall. Here, in our elitist political culture, the political parties are not known for their roots in the masses but by their dynasties, patriarchies and pedigrees. With very shallow links with the mass of the people, their governments are very vulnerable to the vagaries of the hidden hands. They are very brittle and fragile, incapable of withstanding the furies of inimical forces. The inherent strength they can acquire only by becoming democratic internally with deep links amongst the masses. But that is a long haul. Until then, the abominable role of politicians themselves in the agencies’ political games must be talked about loudly and exposed fully to put paid to the establishment’s interference in political matters. Otherwise, the theatre would keep on.