Islamabad has become a thirty-three ring circus and everyone wants to know who the ringmasters are. Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri are, at best, the sad clowns who give a few pleasure but scare away most onlookers with their talk of Decent Just Butts and neutral umpires raising fingers.
Most have a fair idea of who the men behind the curtain are but none dare speak their name. They are to be tiptoed around, spoken of in hushed tones and for every word of criticism there must be epic poems of praise. We talk of ‘scripts’ and ‘plans’ but pretend as if we do not know who the scriptwriters and planners are.
Javed Hashmi has more courage than most but even he has chosen his words carefully, each accusation followed by disavowals and backtracking. Yes, they might act improperly, he says, but we all love them so much. It does not take much to become a hero at a time when everyone is so busy debasing themselves and so this politician, flawed like any other, has become a surrogate for the kind of leader we want. His speech to the joint session of parliament was better than most – perhaps even great – but we should never forget that he went to the brink with Imran Khan.
Pointing out Hashmi’s courage and resilience during the Musharraf era is fine and proper so long as we also remember that he was one of those named and never cleared in the Mehran Bank scandal. None of this is to put down Hashmi, who is a politician not a saint. Let’s put down a country instead which is yet to learn the lesson that there is no messiah and that institutions count for more than individuals.
It is the cult of the individual that leads to the rise and arrogance of the Imrans and Qadris of the world. We so desperately want a saviour that we are willing to forgive anything – the execution of a prime minister, the deposing of an elected government –- so long as they promise us the world. A few slogans and a few eloquent words is all it takes. There are few cults as outsized as the myth of Imran Khan. Here is the man who, as he continually reminds us, won us the World Cup and built a cancer hospital from scratch.
Pick me, says Imran, and all your worries will melt away. But, as Tina Turner so wisely observed, we don’t need another hero. We need unglamorous men and women toiling away to develop and maintain the building blocks of democracy. We need electoral reforms, local government elections and strong political parties with deep roots in all the country’s constituencies. We need years of fruitless work so that one day democracy will blossom. We need anyone but Imran Khan.
The protests in Islamabad are telling us that potato chips are vegetables and banoffee pies are fruits. ‘Just get us into power and you’ll see’ seems to the mantra heard from the containers in the capital. We have heard this song before, although the sopranos usually preferred khaki to shalwar kameez. Khaki may not be too far away but the softer shalwar kameez is the palatable public front.
But times have changed, no matter how slowly and unglamorously. This time most politicians aren’t lining up to sell out democracy and buy in to an individual’s promises. They are standing up, however tentatively, at the seat of our democracy. There are no heroes among them; they are mere reflections of a changed time.
You will always have the malign opportunists – let’s call them Sheikh Rasheeds as shorthand – who have been unable to adapt and still see only one route to personal power and gratification. The Sheikh Rasheeds, previously a majority of our political class, have now shrunk drastically. Former Sheikh Rasheeds now realise that the old way of doing things has changed and politicians have slightly more space to operate.
In the pre-electronic media age, action could be taken swiftly and decisively. The situation was taken care of even before anyone knew a situation was brewing. Now a rumour is immediately broadcast as gospel truth, dissected by a roving band of merry marauding analysts and its carcass picked over by retired bureaucrats and soldiers. The same process is repeated as the rumour is debunked, with this new information immediately broadcast as gospel truth, dissected etc. It’s hard to do things secretly when the new power is being interviewed for 10 minutes by Hamid Mir.
Of course, the structure is still weak and the façade could come crashing down. The only solace we can take is that more than two weeks in not much has changed. Nawaz has been weakened but his personal power should not matter much to us so long as he continues and perhaps even leverages his new martyr status. There are no heroes on the horizon and for that we should be thankful.
The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. Email: nadir.hassan@gmail.com
Nadir Hassan, "We need anyone but Imran Khan," The News. 2014-09-04.Keywords: Political science , Political parties , Political issues , Political leaders , Electronic media , Election commission-Pakistan , National issues , Bureaucracy , Politicians , Politics , PM Nawaz Sharif , Imran Khan , Sheikh Rasheed , Hamid Mir , Dr. Tahirul Qadri , Javed Hashmi , Gen Musharraf , Pakistan