Meet
the stars of Pakistan’s sitcom - A chief justice, Imran Khan and, of course, the
army, HUSAIN HAQQANI
Pakistan
has serious problems, and is seen as a problem by many in the world. Its
affairs should not resemble a television situational comedy.
If they did not
affect the life of 200 million Pakistanis, and the stability of a region that
is home to more than a billion and a half people, current developments in
Pakistan would evoke laughter like a television sitcom. As Charlie Chaplin
supposedly remarked, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in
long-shot.”
This tragic
situational comedy is rich in its cast of characters. Each major character
claims that he is helping make things better for others, but most of his
actions only invite ridicule from those who are watching the show from a
distance.
There is the chief
justice, who struts around checking the status of general hygiene in mental
hospitals while presiding over one of the largest backlog of undecided cases.
Few people take him seriously, but he insists on his significance and
frequently asserts it.
Then, there is the
spokesman for the world’s sixth largest army, who sees nothing wrong in
announcing at a press conference that his institution monitors its citizens’
comments on social media to track down ‘enemies of the state’. Why should a
nuclear-armed country even worry about what a few people say on social media
unless they are tied to terrorist groups?
Even in case of
social media use by terrorists, most governments conduct quiet surveillance.
They do not announce that they are on to the traitors, and will make sure they
pay for their treason. If anything, the ‘we monitor everyone and punish those
we suspect of being against us’ declaration only proves that Pakistan is not a
functioning democracy, and operates under the shadow of the men in uniform.
Breeding confusion
The unusual
characters in the televised Pakistani drama also include a host of retired
military officers and politicians, who act as if they are the military’s inner
voice. They pronounce judgment on various Pakistanis’ patriotism, threaten
neighbouring countries with war, try to scare Pakistanis with threats of
looming disasters, and announce what is or is not acceptable to the country’s
all-powerful military in the political realm.
That the military’s
official spokesman allows so many unofficial spokesmen to also speak on behalf
of his institution creates many comical situations. Pakistan is scheduled to
have general elections on 25 July, and the military is officially
committed to a free and fair election. But some of the unofficial spokesmen for
the military are citing reasons why the elections should be postponed ‘in the
national interest’.
By not disowning
such statements and those who put them out, ‘the institution’ breeds political
confusion. One should not forget that General Zia-ul-Haq, who has the distinction
of leading the institution for the longest period of time while also ruling
Pakistan with an iron fist, once declared, “A little confusion is a good thing
for our country”.
Meet the ‘kaptaan’
One of the most
laughter-inducing characters in the Pakistan sitcom is the
cricketer-turned-politician, who has been waiting to become a prime minister
for two decades, and is confident that ‘the institution’ is about to anoint him
to run the country very soon. He flip-flops at the drop of a hat, almost never
has his act together, but is vociferously defended by a lot of people on
grounds of his supposed honesty.
He is always in a
state of outrage over something or the other. These days, he is upset that one
of his former wives has written a book that he suspects will say unpleasant
things about him. Instead of staying calm and waiting for the book to be
published first, he and his team are trying to control damage preemptively by
painting the forthcoming book as a conspiracy against Pakistan and its wanna-be
saviour.
Like people moving
in the background of many sitcoms, I found myself as an unwitting prop in
Pakistan’s latest farce. In London to attend a conference hosted by the
Foundation for Sports Integrity, I was not even thinking about Pakistan when I
ran into the cricketer-turned-politician’s former wife and her son at a
department store. We had a civil, social conversation like any two Pakistanis
running into each other should.
The former wife is
a former member of the journalist fraternity, and I am appalled by the
nastiness of attacks on her by her ex-husband’s supporters. But I am not in the
business of ghost writing, nor am I a literary agent or a publisher’s
representative and, therefore, had no advice to offer the budding author about
her book.
But that did not
prevent the comedians around the ‘kaptaan’ from dragging me into their panic
scene. Photos of that chance encounter were circulated on Pakistan’s mainstream
media with comments about how a conspiracy was being hatched between the former
wife and a known Pakistani ‘traitor’.
End the silly season
My unvarnished
views on how Pakistan needs a fundamental change have made me a symbol of
perennial threat to the country. A man who wants to discuss why Pakistan has
the highest infant mortality rate in the world, 23 million out-of-school
children, and low international rankings in virtually everything, except the
size of its military and nuclear arsenal, is definitely dangerous.
Discussion of
substantive issues detracts from Pakistan’s national narrative about external
and internal threats and victim hood. It also takes away from the all-consuming
sitcom. For my part, I have tried to assure the cricketer-turned-politician
that I have never taken him seriously enough to get involved in the publication
of his former wife’s memoirs.
The unwanted
attention from Pakistani TV viewers has done little to disrupt my life. But for
the sake of the 200 million people of Pakistan, I want the silly season of
conspiracy theories and comical television debates to end. Pakistan has
serious problems, and is seen as a problem by many in the world. Its affairs
should not resemble a television situational comedy.
Husain
Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in
Washington D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States from 2008-11.
His latest book is ‘Reimagining Pakistan’.
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