After 43 years of obsequious bowing and scraping in Washington, Karakulli cap in hand, our establishment has suddenly woken up to ‘demand’ an end to American ‘interference in the internal affairs’ of Pakistan. If this sudden perception of our ‘sovereign’ rights were to presage a nationalist-democratic revival in the country, we would, of course, welcome it with open arms. But our establishment’s plummeting credibility all round makes its long lost anti-American sensibility most suspect.
We are told that Benazir Bhutto’s government, like that of Muhammad Khan Junejo, was corrupt and inept. We agree. But then so are Mr Jatoi’s caretakers, including the brothers, Sharif & Co. Further, Zia ul Haq and his cronies weren’t exactly paragons of virtue and legitimacy either. So what are we to make of the motivations behind the establishment’s selective accountability?
We are told that the judiciary is held in great esteem by the executive. But then Justice Qazi Jamil of the Peshawar High Court is booted out three days after he expressed a disagreement with the executive’s point of view.
We are told that Benazir Bhutto is neither patriotic nor a good Muslim because she did little for the cause of Kashmir or the Shariat Bill. But then, can anyone honestly believe that Zia ul Haq and his successors succeeded in ushering us into an Islamic Kingdom or in liberating Kashmir?
We are told that Ch Aitzaz Ahsan sold state secrets to India. But no one cares to focus on the dalliance of Mr Mustafa Khar and Mr Jam Sadiq with the Indians. We are told that Mr G M Syed has been a ‘traitor’ all his life. Yet his patriotism is now flaunted by the caretaker Governor and Chief Minister of Sindh.
We are told that India continues to provoke ethnic violence in Sindh. But what we are to make of Indian allegations of the Pakistani hand in East Punjab and Kashmir?
We are told that there is an insidious conspiracy by Al-Zulfiqar to disrupt the electoral process. But no one bothers to explain what the PPP hopes to gain by these tactics when it looks set to romp home in free and fair elections.
We are told by the President and the COAS that elections will be held, ‘come what may.’ But what does Prime Minister Jatoi means when he says he ‘hopes’ they will be held, and then qualifies his ‘hope’ by adding that he has no control over ‘external factors’?
We are told by Mr Jatoi that the American ambassador isn’t interfering in our internal affairs. But his Interior Minister says he most certainly is.
We are told by the President that there will be no war between India and Pakistan. Then he holds out a ‘timely’ warning to neighbouring India to desist from heating up the borders.
For simpletons like us, there is only one bare explanation for all these meanderings: Benazir Bhutto must be marginalised, ‘come what may’. And what may come, if necessary, could be a disqualification before or after the elections, rigging or postponing them or even imposing martial law. In its desperation to control the surging wave of sympathy for her, the establishment has trampled on everything and everyone, left no distinction unimpaired between friend and foe.
However we look at it, Benazir Bhutto’s economic programmes and political outlook are remarkable only for their similarity to those of all her opponents. But there remains one crucial qualification. While she has been and remains totally dependent for her political sustenance on the support of the people and their votes, the establishment has long demonstrated its contempt for electoral systems, representative government and democratic institutions.
All of which leaves us wondering what the real issues are: Benazir Bhutto Vs The Rest or The Establishment Vs The Rest?
We may be headed for a grave national tragedy if the reality of this extraordinary breakdown of the ‘social contract’ between the rulers and the ruled continues to be mistaken for the illusion of praetorian permanence and infallibility. Which, we rather suspect, is what this apposite post-cold war American ‘interference’ in Pakistan is all about.