Everybody’ll want the establishment back

If you’ve followed Pakistani politics for two-and-a-half decades, especially as a journalist, you’ll understand that the present impasse, particularly in Punjab, is less about legality or constitutionality of discretionary powers of governors or chief ministers and more about the same old bunch of politicians suddenly deprived of the directions that always came from the so-called establishment. And now, left to figure things out on their own, they are falling all over themselves, and over each other, in the same old game of one-upmanship where the only new rule is that the old rules don’t apply anymore.

That, more than deciphering the true spirit of the constitution 49 years after its promulgation, is why the judiciary suddenly finds itself in the unenviable position of settling their petty disputes every other day; making a joke of parliamentary proceedings and further diluting what is left of its own sanctity. Back in what are now the old days, the courts didn’t have to bother with things like interpreting Article 63-A of the Constitution and then looking silly by coming up with a split 3-2 decision about one line of one article of the sacred code.

Surely, it’s a little odd that three of the senior most judges of the Supreme Court called horse trading and floor crossing – the life and blood of Pakistani politics since forever – a “cancer afflicting the body politic” and others thought the entire exercise was “not our mandate” at all.

It was simpler for everybody to just get the usual phone call and act accordingly and continue with the game of musical chairs that left some parties cheering and others waiting for next time. The latest and last beneficiary of this arrangement was PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) some years ago when the senate chairman not-so-mysteriously survived a no-confidence vote even though the opposition of the time “had the numbers” to get the job done.

At that time they had no qualms about attributing their backdoor schemes to “some opposition members voting according to their conscience”. It was only when the shoe was on the other foot, and the pendulum was swinging the other way with other parties receiving those phone calls from unknown numbers, that Imran Khan went to town over the practice of buying and selling loyalties.

I remember attending a Pakistan Today editorial meeting just before PTI won the 2018 election when the late great editor Arif Nizami explained to Professor Azizud Din Ahmed, head of his editorial board, that all the military had to do to cut Imran Khan down to size one day was to get all the people rushing to join his party from across the political spectrum to simply go back to where they came from. And that is pretty much what happened. Only the military, if you believe it, didn’t exactly tell them to go away, it simply stopped telling them to stay put.

There’s no doubt that the establishment’s total takeover of the country’s politics did more harm than good. There can also be no denying that unscrupulous politicians swarming to the highest bidder to tilt the scales is a despicable practice that only serves to enrich and empower their own kind and invariably leaves the common man out in the cold.

Yet it’s also painfully true that our political elite is simply incapable of taking two straight steps without the crutches it grew up on. And the best our democratic representatives can do, without exception, is grope in the dark and the only headlines they make are about ego-driven diatribes against each other as their schoolboy politics plays out more in the courts than in parliament.

PTI, after coming full circle with its U-turns and taking the establishment to the cleaners, sometimes for its alleged neutrality and sometimes for the lack of it, is already frustrated enough to want it to resume its puppeteering; but only to the party’s advantage. Others want the military to take their side by not taking PTI’s side as they try to delay the election for as long as possible.

But there’s also the people to think about. No doubt a big majority of them resented the military’s overbearing role in politics that always revolved around feudal lords and industrial barons, not the people. Yet they’ve also seen their lives become much more miserable in the few months that the military has not interfered, which brings us back to the current stalemate, and the showdown in Punjab gives the best example once again.

From the people’s point of view, the decision to dissolve provincial assemblies, the uncertainty surrounding the vote of confidence and the fate of the chief minister, and even PTI’s recent attempt to derail the IMF (International Monetary Fund) program, simply amount to political parties doing whatever is needed to get the upper hand even at the cost of political and economic stability. Sure, the GHQ has no business pulling all the strings and things were bad when it was squarely in charge, but they are clearly much worse now that it isn’t.

And since it’s going to be a long time before we get responsible, mature politicians, if ever at all, it shouldn’t be too long before everybody, politicians and the people, long for the military to resume its interference in Pakistani politics. Ours is a sad bitter version of the one-step-forward-two-steps-back story.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022