A revolution rigged

It’s over. The revolution was rigged! We know this now as the ships of revolution and freedom have reluctantly set sail for the safer, familiar waters of backdoor compromise and negotiation, under the watchful eye, if not the direct involvement, of the third umpire in khaki.

It was rigged because the kaptaan had no game plan, beyond hosting a 20-day live road show to ridicule the Sharifs through the constant drum roll of accusations about corruption and nepotism. It was rigged by Qadri because his sole objective, it is now apparent, was always only chaos and rabble rousing, his march scripted to end at some point with another armed confrontation with the state, to further cash in on the Sharifs demonstrated ineptitude in Model Town, for which he came prepared. It was rigged because despite the bombast of both the revolutionaries and the freedom fighters, their demands for the prime minister’s resignation were and are essentially unconstitutional.

The death knell of its tactical strategy was sounded on the evening of the 30th of August when Khan was co-opted diabolically by forces unknown, and his peaceful intentions then hijacked by Qadri, in the police confrontation. Its moral high ground was laid to rest on the steps of the PTV building, which both PTI and PAT protesters invaded two days later, damaging property, harassing staff and shutting down transmission temporarily. It was robbed of its legitimacy by the damning confessions of Javed Hashmi and his arrival on the floor of the National Assembly a day after being excommunicated by the kaptaan.

It is said that when Julius Caesar crossed the River Rubicon in 49 BC, an act that triggered a four-year civil war leading to the creation of the Roman Empire, he famously uttered the words “Aeleaiactaest” in Latin or that “the die is cast!” Since then the crossing of the Rubicon and Caesar’s words are a metaphorical reference used to describe any action that is deemed irreversible, a so-called point of no return.

On Saturday, the 30th of August, Imran Khan crossed his Rubicon the moment he decided to ally his cause with that of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek. What followed was an inevitability, a direct consequence of this ill-thought marriage of convenience, as it then allowed a very cunning Qadri to temporarily take over the reins of both the PTI and the PAT. In one fell swoop, Khan was reduced in stature from kaptaan to ordinary passenger on the Azaadi van, the affectionate name for the container he has occupied since the last 20 days.

The tragic confrontation between the police and the protesters was inevitable and premeditated only on the part of the PAT. Television images and eyewitness accounts from that fateful evening and the ensuing two days confirm that soon after the call to march towards the PM house was given by Khan, the management of the march was taken over by PAT protesters, who despite the repeated calls from Khan’s camp to exclude women and children from the march, did exactly the opposite, forcing women and children in front of them to act as shields. Second, it was the PAT in command of the crane that was responsible for lifting containers blocking the entrance to the cabinet division and the Pakistan Secretariat buildings and then dropping them onto the heavy iron fence on the perimeter of these buildings, an act that immediately gave the protesters the opening they needed.

More ominously, the state of preparation of PAT workers clearly demonstrates that in Qadri’s strategy the march was intended to be everything other than peaceful: nail-studded batons, slingshots, wire cutters, hammers and gas masks are all testimony to this. It is not of importance whether the first tear gas shell was fired of the riot police’s own volition or whether it was a reaction to the first baton landing on a policeman. When a protesting mob crosses the line that demarcates the acceptable area of protest from a no-go zone clashes are inevitable. Across the world whenever civilian protesters have crossed such lines, the most recent example being democratic Turkey, riot police follow a protocol and employ the tools and techniques outlined in standard operating procedures laid out for the performance of their duties. Tear gas, rubber bullets, batons, water cannons, pepper spray – all of these form part of the riot police equipment.

The extent to which these are used and how these are used, are in the end matters left entirely to human judgement responding to a volatile law and order situation. No matter the amount of training of professional police, clashes with mobs are heated, intense and always result in casualties on both ends. Does this mean we can make a virtue out of excessive use of force? Certainly not! But in Islamabad, as in Model Town, while the police must be held accountable for their actions and all incidents of excessive force, including the shameful beating of members of the press in Islamabad, must be investigated and concluded with adequate legal and penal action for its perpetrators, the mere fact that the police did clash with the protesters or did excessively use tear gas, does not lend any further credence to Messrs Khan and Qadri’s cause or vindicate their actions of the past 20 days.

If both the marches were imbued with revolutionary zeal and noble intentions, these were finally compromised owing to Khan’s hubris and Qadri’s disingenuity. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity”, as Kant said, “nothing straight was ever made!” so out of the hair-brained stratagems of the freedom fighters and the revolutionaries no ‘revolution’, no ‘freedom’ was ever ensured. For Quadri the losses are minimal as he will eventually return to his adopted homeland. For Khan and his party, it is time for a conceptual rethink of their future political strategy, as they have lost much political credibility in the shenanigans of the past three weeks.

As far as the government is concerned, inaction has been the cornerstone of its strategy in dealing with the political crisis. The Sharifs appear psychologically defeated and subdued into a state of near paralysis. Whether this is because of pressure from behind-the-scene actors, or because the obduracy of Messrs Khan and Qadri appears to be unshakeable, it has certainly damaged the public’s assessment of the Sharifs’ administrative and political prowess.

If the Sharifs do survive this, if the support they have thus far received from parliament will guide their sinking ship to shore, they have bigger problems to confront: they will have to regain the confidence of Khan and his PTI, they will have to confront and remedy the grievances arising from the 2013 elections and answer for the tragic loss of lives in Model Town; and they will henceforth have to act with humility, adroitness and inclusion in dealing with affairs of the state, and not with their customary high-handedness.

Finally, all stakeholders of the political crisis will have to perform a team huddle and work out a practical strategy of damage control to remedy the public relations embarrassment Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear state, has suffered in the eyes of the world. Most importantly, they will have to treat very seriously the recent response of extremists to the political crisis. Extremists, whose only ambition is the takeover of the country, and who stand emboldened not only by the manner in which the capital easily fell siege to a few thousand protesters, but also by the success of Isis and its campaign of naked terror only 1600 miles away from Pakistan’s capital.

The writer is a partner at an accounting firm. Email: kmushir@hotmail.com, Twitter: @kmushir