IF it comes down to individuals here are the choices: revolutionary leaders who incite violence, provoke disciples to attack symbols of the state’s civilian authority, scramble to seek the army chief’s patronage in the thick of night, beaming; a prime minister who seeks his army chief’s protection but lacks the courage to acknowledge it and whose inability to govern and lead stands exposed by protesters holding Islamabad hostage; and the reluctant arbiter, the guardian angel, saviour-in-chief and responsible statesman, our army chief.

Who wins and who loses? Infighting politicos stand discredited and the khakis empowered. Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri joined hands to suck all legitimacy out of vital civilian institutions: the executive, judiciary, parliament and Election Commission. These institutions can proffer no solutions to Pakistan’s problems, we are told. The solution? Throw out the PM, then let these institutions initiate reform and begin to perform under able khaki oversight.

Why is democracy on the ventilator yet again? Because the second choice of every politico eager to grab power is still the army, the first being obvious.

Within PML-N’s question as to why revolutionaries have suddenly shown up in Islamabad and demanded the PM’s head is the insinuation that strings are being pulled from behind. If the khakis orchestrated the marches to teach Nawaz Sharif a lesson for trying Musharraf and relishing disparagement of the ISI’s good name by traitor Geo, they could want one of three things: rendering Sharif impotent, then letting him subsist at their mercy; installing a friendly set-up amenable to khaki control; or bringing things to a boil and intervening directly.

Who wins, who loses? Infighting politicos stand discredited and the khakis empowered.

If the khakis were prompting the ‘revolution’, would you seek their chief’s help to dissipate it? You could, only if you believed that the ultimate aim of the prompting is to bleed you to impairment but not death, and had made your peace with remaining PM in a debilitated state under khaki protection. Or because you have learnt nothing from history, your own spat with Musharraf or the exhibition of khaki power these past few months, and still believe that you can rely on the military to subdue political opponents.

During the 1990s, PML-N relied on the khakis to fix everything from reviving Wapda and cleaning up canals to establishing military courts. It seemed at it again when it reached out to the army chief to pull Khan’s and Qadri’s ears. If the khakis were the scriptwriters of the current mayhem, would a sane government seek their help and in the process alienate parliament whose support was keeping the government afloat?

Then there is Khan holding forth on his container narrating how he pleaded with the army chief that Sharif, who accepted money from the ISI to win an election back in the early 1990s, was completely untrustworthy. The irony of an ex-army chief having reportedly put together the IJI and the Supreme Court having indicted him and an ex-ISI chief in the Asghar Khan case for their role in distributing money to get IJI elected seemed completely lost on Khan.

If Khan is the revolutionary who will destroy the status quo and instil change, what in his model of pure democracy is the conceived role of the army chief? Should he have rushed to place his demands before our chief security officer if he believes that khakis have no business intervening in politics? Or has he also made his peace with the fact that khaki patronage is the real game-changer without which his revolution would have remained suspended on a container.

How different will the political culture of a revolutionised Pakistan be? Sharif introduced the 14th Amendment under which a party member who disagreed with the party head would stand disqualified. Khan, proud of PTI’s internal party democracy, has threatened to chuck out parliamentarians who disagree with the mighty Khan and are loath to resign. Nawaz Sharif allegedly buys anyone who stands in his way. Khan paints as black and impugns the integrity and reputation of anyone who disagrees with him.

Khan’s prime contribution so far was that he brought an apolitical middle class out of their smug cocoons into mainstream politics and bred hope for change. Now he’s throwing it all away. Over the last month, he has led the core of his loyalists into a frenzied intolerant zone where all civilian state institutions stand delegitimized, where there is no room for disagreement, no patience for due process, no need to back allegations with proof and no value attached to the dignity and reputation of others.

Khan’s recent politics has polarised this despondent nation along partisan lines to breaking point. So effective is the revolutionary hypnosis that even PTI leaders as gifted as Asad Umar have suggested that with testimonies as weighty as those of Afzal Khan presented during media trial, what is left to prove. While reasons for removing the evil Nawaz are on repeat every evening, not a word is uttered about how Pakistan is to be reconstructed post-revolution.

The revolutionaries did not have the numbers to overwhelm Islamabad. The dharna couldn’t continue forever. Relying on the government to make mistakes under pressure, the breakthrough came when Sharif handed the reins to the army chief. The revolutionaries then created a spectacle, with full knowledge that use of force will deliver what their obdurate demands failed to: public sympathy. Mobs can certainly overthrow governments. But they can’t instal desirable ones. It will be a miracle if Sharif survives. But even bigger miracle will be if the no-holds-barred Imran Khan is allowed to rule by the khakis.

This is what return of praetorianism looks like. Gen Raheel Sharif is in charge now. With the khakis having emerged yet again as arbiters of last resort and the ultimate saviours, the subservience of the de jure system to the de facto system is complete. As Khan and Qadri fell over one another excited at being granted an audience with the chief, someone perceptively quipped on Twitter, “funny, how closely this ‘Naya Pakistan’ resembles purana Pakistan”.

The writer is a lawyer.

sattar@post.harvard.edu

Twitter: @babar_sattar

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2014