Punch & Judy show (Over the top)
Masood Hasan

They came, they saw, they defecated and they left. The country’s greatest long march ground to a sell out with the same rogue’s gallery grinning like Cheshire cats as they affixed their signatures (thumbs?) to the ‘Qadri Doctrine of Change’, a doctrine which safely will make no change. There was more grease in the final photo op where our last white hope shook paws with the seasoned rogues and it was all over. The roaring lion whimpered a while and we hear that return flights to beloved Canada are in the works a few days from now.
During its more feisty moments, there were random examples thrown in comparing the ramshackle amble to Islamabad with the Chinese Long March and thereby by implication linking the Maulana to Mao Zedong.
Comparisons are odious and this one more odious than any. While willing to give the extra yard to the messiah from Canada, please forgive me while I pop a couple of painkillers. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai walked through the harshest 12,500 km terrain without food or sustenance and they walked for 370 days. Deaths were commonplace. Not here though. So please a 250 km jaunt aboard a luxury SUV with central air conditioning is not a long march.
Let’s get that out of the way. As a friend said, this whole circus was neither a quail nor a partridge as the popular local saying goes. It was a ‘Punch & Judy’ show put together by the guardians, silent and vocal of this land, who pulled more wool over the eyes of the gullible folk and who realising that the grand design was not going to happen, settled for the second best – the grand compromise.
Reams of editorials have rolled out of the press, the pundits of television have held forth, calling people of all shades but ensuring that no one comes near the mike which remains firmly in their grasp. A nation gasping for breath is fed more hot air and the farce runs on. Because the plight of this God forsaken country is so severe, it does not take much to stoke a fire.
The anger, the frustration, the poverty and the hardship of daily life has created a powder keg. Were a lemur to arrive and light a match, the country would go up in smoke. The last five years have quite easily been the worst in our history and our history is anything but happy. When the PPP declared that ‘democracy is the best revenge,’ little did we understand what they meant. They have had their revenge and then went on to pocket the last coin rolling on the floor. Like a gigantic vacuum cleaner, the rulers have sucked everything in sight.
Dr Qadri said the present system (system? Surely we jest) has failed on all counts and widened the chasm to unprecedented widths. What we do know is that corruption which has replaced Islam as the official religion has completely destroyed the country. Between 2008 and 2011, corruption of about Rs8,500 billion took place. Or in five years, this sum would now be about Rs11,000 billion, an amount 60 percent higher than the civil and military aid the US gives us. Every deal involving the government and often the private sector is mired in the worst kind of financial misdoing. Stories of scams abound. Nobody even reads them any more. National debt has tripled within the last five years and yet none of this evokes any fear of God in our leaders.
It is not that people are showing up in thousands to rallies addressed by the good Khan and now the ‘White Messiah’ from Canada because they believe these people can change things but because any one would be better than the lot that has made money its central credo and robbed its own people of the last penny. Hatred is so intense that the people will follow a potato to Islamabad knowing fully well that he would be more reliable than those who have stabbed us repeatedly and yet remain untouched.
Look at ex PM Gilani – the scandals that covered him end to end. The crass shopping expeditions to Harrods by people who can’t even spell the word. And what has happened? Nothing. This is the system. Everyone who robs knows that no one will dare catch them. After all, this is a free country!
Most of Dr Qadri’s demands which kept changing by the day are simply impractical to get implemented. Like George Orwell’s animals in ‘Animal Farm,’ he has had to amend his mission, thus ‘no animals shall sleep on sheets,’ got changed to, ‘no animals shall sleep on sheets but they can sleep between them’ He wants the SC decision of June 2012 implemented now. Well it is not likely given our speed and efficiency. If that does not happen, we are once more lumped with 350 legislators who have had no qualms about forging their BA degrees without shame or remorse. And so on.
Dr Qadri’s demands continued to change. Those he was calling the vilest names a couple of days back, were finally the ones he embraced publicly as long lost brothers. They posed for pictures and seemed happy to be together. It is of course another matter that embracing the current lot is akin to embracing a well-oiled python. In all this the president stayed put in Karachi anchored to Bilawal House while his capital was under siege. What a man! He, who stays away, fights another day.
Now that things are groaning back into the same old pattern, there are questions. How can a country, which still has to master the art of queuing, organise and conduct a march aimed to demolish Islamabad and bring the government to its knees? The good Dr Qadri had been off the scene for years seeking political asylum in Canada and getting it too. Then one day he is seen jetting into Pakistan. A man with a modest following suddenly has the wherewithal, to command an ocean of ‘followers’, trucks parked like flower pots in a nursery and all the logistics that leaders dream about.
He paralyses Lahore, holds a public meeting the likes of which the country has not seen, reducing Imran Khan’s show into a street corner get-together and then issues statements that border and often cross into treason. But hey presto nothing happens and soon he is back on the road now leading millions to topple the evil government of thieves. How did he manage it? Who funded this expensive enterprise, the legality of which was always questionable?
Does Dr Qadri’s explosive foray mean that anyone can challenge the structure as long as ‘hidden hands’ are helping? His visit has raised many questions but there’s no chance of this government doing something in the larger good of its people. Dr Qadri will soon be on his way – there are reports that the Canadians are ready to ask him a few questions and one unconfirmed report says that he was on the dole, but we will soon know if that’s right or wrong as the national scriptwriters get to work.
Meanwhile, where else in the civilised world would an institution refuse to carry out the Supreme Court’s orders? Raja Rental remains free as a bird. Should the Supreme Court resort to a long march? It’s a possibility.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist.
Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com