Events of the past few days have magnified the frustration and resigned discontent that grips Pakistan. People worry the fragile and unsafe superstructure of the state is falling apart. As law and order worsens, the dwindling spirit of national solidarity is undermining the country’s unity.
The elections were supposed to strengthen democracy in Pakistan. In a sense they did, but in another sense they were a hammer blow to national unity. The Sindhi voted for the Sindh party; the Punjabi for a Punjab party and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for a putative Pakhtun leading the PTI. (Balochistan, effectively, did not vote). Province not merit, provenance not manifesto were the electorate’s criteria. So, to reiterate, while the elections showed democracy in full bloom, Pakistan’s unity – already fraying – witnessed another significant tear.
And was democracy really strengthened by the elections? One experienced election observer (who asks not to be named) did some leg work and according to his calculations as much as Rs6.7 billion was spent by political parties at the hustings, some of it in buying votes, polling officials and returning officers. In the circumstances it’s difficult to accept that democracy was strengthened. And the end result? For the first time since independence Pakistan does not have a national party.
Although it reflected the dislike and distrust of the PPP-led central government – people were fed up of paying taxes to those who squandered them – that was not the whole reason. A deeper malaise has been our failure to heal the genetic defect we inherited at birth – the Punjabi-Bengali divide and after 1971, the ‘Punjab versus the rest’ phenomenon. But that’s another story.
The elections came on the heels of the passage of the fateful 18th Amendment. Much has been said about how the amendment, by devolving authority, has finally put good governance within our reach. To my mind more important was the statement it made viz: ‘If we have to have rascals as leaders (giving us bad governance) we may as well have our own rascals’, which is roughly the same message we can take away from the election results.
While accompanying Benazir Bhutto back from her bruising encounter with the military brass (1995) – the very the meeting in which she dismantled Musharraf’s argument in favour of a Kargil- like adventure – I recall saying that given the morbid interest the army took in politics perhaps we should register the army as a political party and allow it to take part in elections, much like the Indonesian military did under Suharto. “That way you would be able to grapple with them publicly and the people could decide who they preferred”, I said.
“But in Indonesia they always win”, BB replied. “Only because the elections are rigged”, I responded. “Who will ensure they are not here?”, she asked.
I was stumped.
Of course, it was a pie-in-the-sky proposal. I mention it here because even 16 years ago we knew that unless the question of who ruled Pakistan was settled elections would really solve nothing. Infuriatingly, that remains the issue we confront today – although everyone is shying away from saying so except perhaps the maverick Achakzai who counts for little.
An even bigger issue is the role of religion in the country, something even Achakzai fights shy of broaching. The fact is that religion no longer unites Pakistan – it divides. In fact we stand rent apart. Tens of thousands have been killed in the name of religion.
Nevertheless, our pleas for re-examining the role of religion in the country to prevent future catastrophes hardly ever gets a hearing. Mostly because there are many, too many, who are filially anxious to blame external causes for our catastrophes while closing their eyes to foreign-imported extremism.
We let those with a particular mindset displace our clergy, set up and fund sectarian organisations and madressahs over which the government had no say – let alone control. We let these people select and induct our youth, ostensibly to feed and teach them the eternal values of Islam but, in fact, to prepare and launch them for causes and purposes that were inimical to our national interests and the good name of Islam.
We stood by and watched them pretend they were the ‘infantry of Islam’. We stood on the sidelines as they took advantage of our corrupt proclivities, but really the poverty and ignorance which flourishes here, to buy, beguile and dominate our folk and exploit their talents, religious feelings and love of Islam for their own ends. Some not only watched but joined them.
And guess what? The message still hasn’t sunk in.
Although the internal threat we have been fighting is far more deadly and dangerous than the external threat – even Kayani thinks so – we are regularly reassured about how well-prepared we are to address the external threats while not a squeak is heard on how the internal enemy, and more lethal threat, is to be worsted.
What’s happening? Surely the army knows that its job is to defend the internal frontiers of the country as much as its external borders. Is the army not the final bulwark against disorder and anarchy? Or is it that having reached an impasse, a confrontation between irreconcilables – a modern progressive state, on the one hand, and traditionalist forces of order who are still struggling to come to terms with democracy, on the other – the army and the government are clueless about what to do.
Had we not had Kayani’s assurance that the army has no desire to interfere in politics, I would have thought the stage was set for a coup. But luckily that’s not going to happen. A coup would be a sort of a historical cul-de-sac, an example of crackpot political or military eccentrics taking a wrong turning.
As the heads of all political parties were gathering in the Bhutto home in Islamabad in November 2007, for one last attempt at deciding their respective stance with regard to the February 2008 elections, I wondered why BB was so keen they participate in the elections under the Musharraf presidency because without their participation she would have gained a thumping majority in the polls. Was it because of the deal she had struck with the Americans? I asked myself. And then it dawned on me.
She viewed them as prospective allies, not adversaries – possibly in a government of national unity. I recalled she had hinted as much in Karachi when discussing how she would tackle the challenge of terrorism. “We have to unite”, she had said. She knew she couldn’t do it alone. Nor can this government.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Email: charles123it@hotmail.com

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