American historian Henry Adams stated in his autobiography, “Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force... The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men.” The stand-off in Islamabad, though appears to be a contest of push and pull between Mian Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, in actual, is a clash between two diametrically opposite forces, battling to shape our nation’s future.
Many declare Imran Khan an “agent of chaos”, blaming him for creating an “unnecessary crisis.” In essence, men and events are just a reflection of the fault lines, created by seismic activity of the social, political and economic landscape. The broader forces shape the circumstances, which men exploit to their advantage. Today, Imran Khan is the face of discontent, felt across the nation, stemming from an unjust order, ensnaring our exploitative political and economic structures.
Alexander Hamilton rightly said, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Our politico-economic system is a tyranny of a group, which evade taxes, mock rules, twist laws, rig elections and abuse power. The status quo is increasingly becoming abhorrent to the fledgling urban middle class, which desires a more just order. This indignation is responsible for the current turmoil, casting Imran Khan at the forefront, because his message is more akin to the sentiments of the discontented.
Like the devil who can recite scripture for his purpose, the critics of Imran Khan are crying wolf, hiding behind the veneer of democracy and constitution. The real democracy consists of accountability, rule of law, transparency, devolution and free and fair elections. How many of these constituents are present in our democratic order?
For most of our political parties, democracy is good, as long as, it supports the status quo. They call an order democratic if the “elected leadership” can run the affairs of their parties from abroad. It is a democracy, where scion inherits not only property but also a political party and a state. It is a democracy, where politics is the golden key that opens all the doors and where political parties run extortion rackets. It is a democracy, where law enforcement agencies can kill or abduct anyone, and get away with it, and it’s a democracy, where after fourteen months, election commission is still struggling to complete the vote recount. By taking to the streets, protesters have not threatened democracy, because it doesn’t exist in Pakistan at the moment.
Another myth, created by the status quo’s proponents, is that protesters are trying to derail government’s economic agenda. The economic edifice that the PMLN is trying to erect is like building a castle on sand. We can never achieve sustainable economic growth by inflating financial statements with heavy borrowing and puffing up the foreign reserves by selling out our foreign policy. Such measures might momentarily shift the equilibrium, but soon the economy will revert to its dismal state.
It is surprising, many of us consider a government elected through rigged elections as constitutional, whereas protesting against such a regime has been painted as unconstitutional. From Khyber to Karachi, people grumble about lawlessness, inflation, load shedding, poor state of social services and corruption. Now, when leadership of PTI and PAT have taken to streets, voicing more or less same grievances, we are vilifying them.
We may not like the tongue lashing from the occupants of D-chowk, we may not appreciate their demands and certainly we may not agree with their methods, but no one can deny their assertion that our elected leadership has consistently failed to deliver.
Desperate diseases require desperate measures. Instead of complaining in our living rooms and offices, we should at least register protest against the exploitative status quo. When system becomes unjust, it is a duty of every citizen to challenge it, a thought aptly captured by American founding father Thomas Jefferson, and tweeted by Imran Khan: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
The writer is a freelance columnist and has worked as a broadcast journalist.
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@adnanfsher