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FOUR episodes, four very different reactions. The boys got whacked over land grabs and generals’ privileges, and immediately pushed back.
The state stands accused of a fresh spate of disappearances, and its proxies have opened a new, disturbing line of attack.
The highest court in the land has been dragged into controversy and politicisation, and has pleaded for restraint.
The pols embarrassed themselves in parliament, shone a poor light on the democratic project — and have shrugged it all off.
The difference between the shameless, helpless, determined and righteous, in reverse order? More like a map of the power structure, jealous protection of privilege and a disturbing revelation of priorities.
Start with the boys. With the Raheel leaks, it is obvious what’s going on: scores are being settled.
Bullied and battered for much of his three years, the civilians watched glumly and enviously as Raheel marched to glory.
The court clearly wants the circus outside to end. But it’s trapped in a situation partly of its own making.
Unable to lash out while he was in power and too afraid to do anything on his way out, the civilians have done what the weak and resentful do: chuck a few stones from a safe distance:
It has helped that Raheel seemed not a little greedy and that his successors are thinking about building their own legacies. Towering shadows aren’t particularly liked by those next in line.
But then came this land business and the reaction was swift. Where Raheel was left to twist in the wind over the Saudi sinecure, the lurid tales of land grabs were quickly stamped out.
You can guess why — the job was about an individual, land about the institution.
Let the extravagant allotment of land to generals become a scandal with legs and future beneficiaries could be hurt.
So the outrage complex — also contrived and nakedly political — has been quickly shut down. And how.
Next, the state. The disappearances themselves were not unusual — the net has been widening for a while and unreported, hushed-up incidents tend to lead to more.
(The disappeared who return become the silenced.)
Nor was the reason for at least one of the recently disappeared a surprise: dabbling in Baloch causes gets you bundled off eventually.
But the others were a mystery that has given way to an alarming possibility: a new cross section of state repression.
To the extent that the rest of the recently disappeared were unbridled in their ideological and political attacks against the military, the disappearances made a kind of sense:
Perhaps the degree of repression was being stepped up, but it wasn’t exactly of a new category altogether.
The orchestrated attacks on the motives of the recently disappeared though changed all of that. In attacking the disappeared as anti-religion, a signal has been sent that ideological and religious frontiers of the state will be patrolled once again by the state itself.
Where militant and mullah have patrolled religious boundaries in recent times, is the state now getting back in that game too? It is a frightening thought.
On to the highest court of land. The longer the Panama hearings continue, the more the court’s appeals for calm are piling up.
Seemingly every week a fresh direction is issued — and it’s not clear if it’s an order, a plaintive appeal or the vain hope of the emasculated.
The court clearly wants the circus outside to end. But it’s trapped in a situation partly of its own making.
The last two CJPs waded into matters of politics with no clear plan or exit strategy. Each seemed to have legacy on his mind, but only added to the muddle.
Mulk cleared the cloud over the legitimacy of the 2013 elections, but he missed the point. The PTI’s goal was to knock out the PML-N government; the claims of rigging were only the means.
So the court gained nothing lasting from that intervention, especially once Mulk declined to make electoral reforms the commission’s legacy.
Jamali was even more muddled and had no plan beyond basking in the glory of defusing a political crisis by pre-empting the PTI Islamabad lockdown.
Inheriting that legacy, the current court has tried to play it fair and down the middle — but the genie has already escaped.
The PTI’s slashing politics and the N-League’s PTI obsession can only be reined in by a court willing to bring the hammer down, but the current lot are too scrupulously judicial to overreach.
The circus will go on.
Finally, the civilians. The pandemonium in the assembly will quickly be forgotten. But it was yet another glimpse into the N-League’s unwillingness to become a truly responsible custodian of the democratic project.
Forget the PTI. They are the insurgents and the parliamentary record of the party is thin. None, other than Imran, were around for the ’90s.
Much shouldn’t be expected from them.
But the N-League is different. Or rather it remains the same.
Every time the party finds itself in the ascendant politically, it kicks the democratic process down the ladder of legitimacy a rung or two.
A second Qatari letter, a new military leadership with zero thoughts of a takeover on its mind, an electoral map opening up for 2018 and beyond — and immediately the N-League turns to misbehaving.
The PML-N has figured out that democratic continuity is key, but the party refuses to move beyond a barebones version of continuity.
They’ll keep being shabby.
And so democracy here will remain a little shabby too.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @cyalm
Published in Dawn January 29th, 2017
