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ANYONE who attended the ThinkFest on Jan 11-12 in Lahore hoping to walk away with a panacea to Pakistan’s ailments, must have been disappointed. The ThinkFest was a master class in dissection of a living corpse.
The discussants — scholars, politicians, a former prime and finance minister, serving and retired government officials, artistes, cricketers, financiers — came from diverse continents and disciplines. They offered differing prescriptions on how Pakistan can be resurrected from its present state of rigor paralysis. Consensus proved elusive.
The ThinkFest began with stirring presentations — on the first day by Mira Nair (the distant doyen of India’s parallel cinema) with Mohsin Hamid, and on the second by two intellectual exiles — the scholarly Dr Ayesha Jalal with Raza Rumi.
Later the PML-N, PPP, and PTI came together briefly on the same platform. Like blind men trying to define an elephant, each gave his own description of its parts, but they agreed for once to admit that today’s elephant is an Einsteinian equation: Establishment = Submissive political parties + the Army.
The ThinkFest began with stirring presentations.
Many were keen on hearing Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a parliamentarian for over 35 years and a one-time PM. He has now founded his own party — the Awaam Pakistan (AP) — along with a fellow dis-appointee former finance minister Miftah Ismail. Both had resigned in protest against Maryam Nawaz’s out-of-turn promotion within the family run-PML-N.
Abbasi proposed that all the stakeholders in Pakistan’s survival (also his AP) should sit together and collectively develop a national strategy, instead of toying with ideas of a hybrid or national government.
Unfortunately for him, his interviewer was a commentator from ARY News whose recall of Abbasi’s flip-flop politics provided the audience with an entertaining corrective balance.
One gladiatorial session had Rashid Langrial (chairman, Federal Board of Revenue) pitted against Miftah Ismail. Statistics ricocheted around the hall. By the end, taxpayers in the audience still had no idea how much of the revenue collected had permeated down to the average citizen. Nor did the ex-finance minister succeed in hiding his disbelief in the chairman’s responses which he described in a quaint phrase rarely heard in Pakistan — ‘as putting lipstick on a pig’.
What use is a vote without power? A former secretary Election Commission analysed our flawed electoral process. He agreed that electronic voting should be introduced but gradually, starting with germ-free Islamabad. He acknowledged that the ECP should always be in a state of readiness to conduct elections at 60 days’ notice, the period stipulated in the Constitution. He deplored the intervention of the judiciary, even up to the date of voting.
Inevitably, US president-elect Donald Trump barged into the ThinkFest. The session on him was enlivened by the trenchant observations of the Lebanese war-journalist Leila Hatoum: “Trump is less a businessman than a showbusiness man”, and her dismissal of Arab rulers as “cowards and collaborators disinclined to act”.
ThinkFest’s second day opened with Dr Ayesha Jalal’s rejection of liberalism as being a Western construct, imported by imperialists who “airbrushed history”, leaving us to search for our identity and a need for faith.
A foray into creativity in cinema brought Mira Nair back onto the stage, this time in conversation with four young Pakistanis — two actresses, a director and a popular actor. Each had their own story to tell about the constricting realities of being creative in a business in which profit is all too often the senior partner.
The temperature in the audience rose at the concluding session which tore into the recent regressive 26th Amendment. A young lawyer de-scribed it as “a flaming disaster”. He explained the implications of the 26th Amendment — for example, the withdrawal of suo motu powers, the questionable method of judicial appointments, and the painful emasculation of the judiciary.
His professional senior Salman Akram Raja (now also secretary general of the PTI) dilated on this constitutional travesty. He objected to the process by which the offensive amendment had been fermented in the dead of night (Sept 21). He spoke candidly about unconscionable coercion, abductions, and harassment used by some forces to ensure the speediest promulgation of the 26th Amendment.
He complained about the destruction of societal values and the ‘so what?’ complacency of those still unscathed by the claws of tyranny. He talked about his incarceration in jail and of those sentenced by military courts. Judging from the noisy reaction of the largely young audience, he spoke also for them.
The views expressed so openly at the Lahore ThinkFest 2025 will not erupt into a revolution. At best, they may cause dyspepsia amongst those banqueting in Islamabad.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2025
