AUG 14 and the speeches, conciliatory and denunciatory, are over. Since the chaotic political situation in the country so warrants, it would help briefly to take stock: not just of our hard-earned freedom but what, over the years, we have done with it.

In his broadcast to the nation, the prime minister spoke of the pressing need for economic freedom. And of course that is essential to our self-esteem and survival.

But, beyond issues of bread and butter, there are also other important aspects to freedom that ought to be taken into account if we are to demystify the chaos around us.

There is, as we know, a fine line between freedom and anarchy. The purely theoretical anarchism of Noam Chomsky aside, it must be remembered — especially in our own context where such considerations are kept at a safe distance — that, to be realisable, freedom has to contend with constraint.

We have been subscribing to a pretend democracy.

That is especially true of political freedom. It is not boundless but has to do —necessarily — with a precise awareness of limitation or limit. It is only then that it can properly be understood to be a right.

It seems fair to say that we stand where we do today because of a political culture that has historically allowed for the pursuit of power in the country as a sort of totem. That is attributable, in part, to the national temperament but also to our living — albeit in the 21st century — almost in a state of nature where power maketh man.

The PTI syndrome is precisely a symptom of our brutalisation and of street power run amok. A politics of power, on the rampage with no holds barred, where we boast a parliamentary democracy, must surely be replaced over time by a politics that is more mature, responsible and order-based.

Many in civil society appear to be delirious over the prospect of radical change in the country but are obviously not alive to the dangers inherent in it. What few realise is that change of the kind envisaged by the political party in question — rooted in hate and based on populist mantras — can only be a recipe for disaster.

It ought to be understood that what we are witnessing today is not just a breakdown in politics but a breakdown in political language owing to a fundamental disjunction between two divergent impulses to, or types of, power — absolutism and democracy — currently locked in mortal combat.

Going deeper into the matter, we see that what we have been subscribing to historically has merely been a sort of pretend democracy when we have, for decades, in fact, been oscillating between absolutism and democracy.

The fault is our own. The issue lies in our perennial dilemma in this regard together with our inability to resolve it. It also stems from our unwillingness to rethink power in the light of historical experience and to come to grips with the precise problem of power in our own context.

What PTI supporters fail to realise is that the need of the hour is not a visionary or a hero or, for that matter, a saviour but precisely the sort of watered-down leadership and collective down-to-earth politics currently in place.

It is regrettable that the PTI chairman has failed to come to terms with the facts on the ground and history. Whatever he may contend, his ouster from the post of prime minister was perfectly constitutional.

The all-too-specific details of the so-called foreign funding case, as well as the case of the hapless Shahbaz Gill and the social media scandal, should also have brought home to the PTI chairman that somewhere there had been a miscarriage of intent and that the time had come to reconsider his options.

The faintly primal love of his supporters in the masses should not overly disturb those in government. It is essentially insubstantial and will hopefully dwindle when economic conditions improve over the course of time.

Whatever steps the government might have envisaged for the immediate future, however, it is crucial, if its respective components — especially the PML-N and PPP — are to make good in the long term, for them to be more explicitly known to stand for social and economic change and an end to the status quo.

That, at any rate — some sense of a meaningful ideological direction — is what the thinking people of the country are looking for and what the common man will certainly demand if not given.

Whatever happens in the courts, the PTI is a reality that must be contended with. The party’s chairman has been spelling out some unpalatable home truths about social and economic deprivation that the government would do well to heed. It is imperative for it to bear in mind that he is — for the moment at any rate — the vox populi that is determined to be heard.

The writer is the founder chairman of Dialogue: Pakistan, a local think tank.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2022