There were not supposed to be any similarities between Imran Khan’s anti-drone march in North Waziristan Agency, and Nafisa Shah’s rally at Sadoro Janwari, but it cannot be escaped that both were essentially pre-election events, and showed every sign of being intended to influence the coming election. Even if the current Assemblies go to their full term, as the government constantly claims they will, the general election must be held by May 19, 2013. That means there are at the most seven months left to elections, which is why there is so much jockeying for position among politicians. Both incidents also seem to illustrate the limits within which politicians must operate.
Apart from their both being pre-election events, Nafisa Shah’s rally taking place in her constituency, and Imran’s march passing through his (admittedly the only logical route for Waziristan), the other similarities include both being about wider issues than mere elections. Imran Khan was marching to end drone attacks. Nafisa Shah was rallying to support the recently passed Sindh local councils law. The immediate difference visible is also noticeable. While drone attacks are an international issue, local bodies are provincial. Yet both have national implications, drone attacks for foreign policy; Sindh’s local councils for national integration.
Another difference visible is the presence of foreigners at one, their absence at the other. It is not just that drones as an issue involves the USA, but also because Imran Khan apparently needs validation from abroad, even though the great mass of Pakistanis do not need Americans to tell them that their drones are killing them.
It is also worth noting that while much is being made of Imran’s march remaining peaceful, Nafisa Shah’s rally became famous mainly because of the violence at it. This does not bode well for the election. It is an assumption underlying an election, not an achievement, that an election be peaceful.
Democracy is supposed to be about peaceful transitions of power. The alternative, violence, means civil war. That often enough meant neighbours trying to grab territory would wait for a king to die, and to use the ensuing disturbances to try it on.
The Sadoro Janwari killings could be used to illustrate a number of points, not the least how candidates may not be able to avoid supporters with old enmities. Indeed, candidates are only going to be able to avoid new enmities, and if themselves embroiled in an old enmity will have found that it is an entanglement that may go with the territory, but which may mean fear of premature and violent death, such a death itself, constant embroilment in court cases and spending on them.
Enmities give birth to enmities, and nothing shows this better than elections. Some candidates feel forced to enter politics because of those enmities, because even being a beaten candidate is better in the local police station, than being a mere local landowner, and to have won and be part of the ruling majority means having hit the jackpot, and means not only immunity from arrest, but also the ability to have opponents locked up.
This whole complex of factors links the Sadoro Janwari killings to the Tehrik-i-Insaaf. The killings illustrate precisely the way Pakistanis show they are not fit for democracy. Elections are not supposed to generate violence, and thus if violence occurs, it is the fault of the people, rather than of the system they are operating in. The Tehrik-i-Insaaf explanation of the issue appears dominated by the Orientalist discourse, by its contrast between the rational Westerner who must show the feckless native the error of his ways and the benefits of the Western civilisation he brings.
In the 19th century, it was the printing press and railways; in the 21st, it is democracy, with the catch that ‘we’ (natives) lack the ‘democratic temperament’ and cannot be trusted to vote for Imran Khan. Our people, our dead, must have validation from Westerners, not just American demonstrators, but also university studies. This seems an attempt to perpetuate the dichotomy, which is also racial, not just religious or geographical, which ensures that we ‘natives’ are perpetual pupils of the West and Westerners, a position that encompasses democracy, something we cannot have, because we do not have the ‘temperament’.
No one is paying attention to the fact that this ‘temperament’ was supposed to lack in large swathes of Europe, and all this ‘temperament’ consists of is the phlegmaticness associated with the British. This is, probably, what Ayub Khan meant when he said that “democracy does not suit the genius of the Pakistani people.” It should not be forgotten that if Imran went to Oxford, Ayub went to Sandhurst, and where Imran had excelled at the quintessentially English sport, Ayub had been immersed in its way of war.
However, speculations about what will suit the ‘genius of the Pakistani people’ will occupy neither the caretaker government that will take office for the election, nor the Election Commission of Pakistan that will conduct the actual election. Both will have to deal with the situation as it is, consisting of first-past-the-post constituency elections, in which most of the major-party candidates have got local enmities. It should not be forgotten that if a candidate dies, the poll is countermanded. However, apart from that, it should be remembered that a lot of old enmities do not involve candidates, but those involved actively take part in elections.
The recent attack on Malala Yousafzai also represents the kind of ‘native’ tendency to violence that is so condemnable once the Orientalist paradigm is accepted of an ‘Exotic East’ full of natives willing to kill at the slightest religious provocation. The march against drones also served to show that Assembly politics may not achieve much, for the attacks were not ended because of it.
In the same way, the Sadoro Janwari rally was not really relevant to the local bodies law. However, both were, perhaps, as far as a politician can go, while remaining within the electoral paradigm.
It can be argued that while drone attacks are resented by a core PTI constituency, local bodies are not a primary PPP concern, but the fact of the matter remains that both march and rally were within the framework of what politicians, elected or not, do.
In the case of both, the primary arena is an Assembly, and it is there that the main decision is supposed to be made. For both, the elections may not be relevant, for the elections under the local bodies law will create a dynamic of their own, while drone attacks will stop when the USA is made to, which will be because it will have lost control over the Pakistan government.
This means that the next election will not just be about being peaceful, though that will be an important element. They will also be about being relevant. And that is a task which neither the caretaker government, nor the ECP can handle, but which will depend on how the government resulting from these elections perform.
The writer is a veteran journalist and founding member as well as Executive Editor of TheNation. Email: maniazi@nation.com.pk