What was it all
for Mr Khan? KHURRAM HUSAIN
TODAY Imran Khan
owes the country an answer to this simple question: what exactly was all that
sound and fury last August all about? If the matter had been little more than
angry speeches and walkouts from parliament we could have shrugged it off. If it
was loud press conferences and hostile talk show appearances, we could have
accepted it.
But no. In the name
of their grievances, they laid siege to the capital city for months and caused
a totally unnecessary delay in the visit by China’s president, who wanted to
announce $46bn worth of investment projects for the country.
They called for a
tax revolt, arguing from their container-tops that there is no obligation to
pay taxes to a government that the PTI has deemed illegitimate. They called on
people to not pay their electricity bills, threatened to cut power supply from
Tarbela dam (as if that was within their power to start off with), and urged
resort to illegal hundi channels for all cross-border foreign exchange
transactions, in order to squeeze the country’s foreign exchange reserves and
thereby push it towards default.
Refusal to pay taxes and bills and
common resort to informal channels for foreign exchange transactions are grave
ills that threaten the state’s viability in the long run.
They briefly shut down the two
largest cities in the country, Karachi and Lahore, causing billions of rupees
in loss to traders, and interrupting the movement of vital fuel supplies. Investment
decisions were postponed, board meetings of important foreign investors were
disrupted, and one CEO of a large multinational even took the highly unusual
step of going public with his concerns (CEOs are usually a very cautious lot in
terms of what they say in public).
Don’t damage
Pakistan’s democracy story he warned, it’s the best thing happening in the
country currently. “Some of my Pakistani friends do not appreciate the enormity
of this transition and what it means,” he said, referring to the first historic
democratic transfer of power in the country’s history.
“[W]e need
stability in the system, people to follow the rules laid down to obtain their
demands, not a revolution or any other yearning for ‘discipline’ that comes
from outside the system created by the Constitution.
“What I see
happening in Pakistan today worries me because if people on the streets can
start calling the shots, then it would negate the positive story of Pakistan to
possible investors” from all around the world.
It’s hard to underline
how unusual it is for a CEO, particularly of a multinational company, to write
words like this in a public forum, but that was the level of the anxiety that
the dharnas created in the minds of investors.
People from the
investor community told me back then that they had communicated to their
headquarters abroad that the threat to Pakistan’s democracy has receded, and
the reply they received was, “Sure, for now, but what about next year, and the
year after that?”
The dharnas didn’t
do much material damage to the economy, but the harm done to Pakistan’s only
bright spot, its narrative, its democracy, was incalculable. With the judicial
commission’s report, and the refusal of the armed forces to get involved,
things are once again on the mend, testament to strong healing powers of our
democratic institutions. Once more the skies have cleared and the next summit
to be scaled — the general election of 2018 — is in view. But Mr Khan and his
cohorts must answer a straightforward question. What was it all for? For what
did they hurl such truckloads of dirt onto the country’s institutions and its
historic journey towards the consolidation of democracy?
Refusal to pay
taxes and bills and common resort to informal channels for foreign exchange
transactions are grave ills that threaten the state’s viability in the long
run. For what did he endow these practices with legitimacy, aggravating and
magnifying the narrative of those who employ these means to derive for
themselves ill-gotten gains?
Even today, the
government is struggling with informal-sector players who are up in arms
against a simple measure in the budget that penalises bank transactions by
those who have not filed a tax return. Listen to the way those protesting this
measure justify their actions, and you will hear echoes of the dharna speeches.
That is the nature
of the harm that the dharnas did. Even as the real problems in the country
reared their heads, the party which had championed itself as the party of
change, of good governance, has been found missing in action, busy battling the
ghosts that have haunted it ever since the tsunami it thought it was entitled
to in 2013 never materialised. I refer to the massacre at the Army Public
School, from which the PTI publically washed its hands with the argument that
providing security at the school was not its job. I refer also to the floods
that have devastated Chitral, the coverage of which has had to compete with the
judicial commission report for space on the broadsheet and on the airwaves.
Pakistan must shed
its infatuation with the saviour, with strongman rule, as the answer to its
ills. No individual, no matter how charismatic, can set the ship of state back
on an even keel. That job can only be done by a system of rule. And there is no
system of rule better than democracy for a multilingual, multiethnic country
teeming with diversities and cleavages of so many varieties. Let’s stop
vilifying the only system of rule we have. Let’s work together to mend it. The
PTI can start by doing its duties in KP province, and then turn to the
electorate in 2018 with a story to tell.
The writer is a
member of staff.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn,
July 30th, 2015
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