Good to see a very balanced article written by Ayaz Amir. He is an elected legislature of PML N from Northern Punjab.
Ayaz talks about the people getting fed up from the present political leadership of the country from both the parties. H praises Imran to start this ray of hope for the people.. and predicts Lahore gathering as a start of something big.. Compliments to Ayaz for standing above the party line..
I wonder how this article will be taken by his party bosses..
I am feeling small and humbled and almost kicking myself for being such a fool. Imran the man, always larger than life, no one could ignore. But Khan the politician, the would-be national saviour, I found hard to take seriously.
He said the right things but he just wasn’t clicking. The strings which set hearts on fire weren’t being touched. Or so at least it seemed to a jaded observer of the pantomime passing for Pakistani politics. Khan was promising a miracle when the age of miracles was long over.
And then October 30th happened and the very skyline changed. Was I imagining things or had the stars taken on an added lustre? The crowds pouring into the Minar-e-Pakistan grounds – about which it was said the Tehreek would never be able to fill – were possessed by a fervour, a sense of hope, I have not seen these past 30 years.
I questioned a good many of them, men and women, young and old, and they said that they were just tired of the old faces and fed up with the old politics. It was change they wanted, a reversal of the established order of things, and it was their belief, their burning faith, that this only the Khan could deliver. If the jalsa and its carnival atmosphere had a central message it was this. Back in 1967-68 many pundits were slow to read what the coming of Bhutto meant. The same mistake could be made again.
Bhutto arrived on the Pakistani scene like a thunderclap, the PPP founded in1967 and sweeping the polls in West Pakistan three years later, and coming to power after the army’s defeat in the East. But although he achieved much dark clouds lined the horizon and in the shadows a witches’ brew was being prepared. So much so that in five years’ time the stage was set for the long night of Zia’s counter-revolution. Much as the wages of Bhuttoism may be glorified, the Pakistan of today is not Bhutto’s but Zia’s, evil having a longer shelf-life than anything opposed to it.
The Sharifs from day one were lucky, favourites of the establishment, propped up by circumstances as a counterweight to Bhutto’s legacy, and thus arriving at the gates of power early and without too many hassles or heartbreaks. Even Musharraf’s coup in 1999 proved a blessing in disguise as it erased the memory of their many failures and gave them a new lease of life as democracy’s champions.
Khan’s journey has been altogether different. He has been wandering in the wilderness these past 15 years. How heartbreaking must it have been? A lesser man, I think most men, even those of tough fibre, would have quit long ago, seeking a home in the mountains or by the sea. What kept him going? He made mistakes, even grievous ones like rallying to Musharraf’s banner but was man enough to beg public forgiveness and admit that he had been wrong.
The primary virtues are character and tenacity. Other things, including brilliance, follow. A nation whose work ethic has yet to be fully developed has been given a lesson in tenacity. And who knows, for this very reason Khan’s influence may prove more enduring than the flash-in-the-pan effect of Bhutto’s ascendancy.
No other comparison will do. The two leading parties have bulk and the dead hand of tradition on their side. And this is their principal strength which the Tehreek will have to figure out how to neutralise. But they have little else going for them. Bereft of ideas they always were. Now they seem drained of relevance and purpose.
In the heady days of Bhutto’s rise and fall who would have imagined that the day would come when the PPP would be the party of the established order, the mainstay of the status quo. But under Zardari, and in no small measure due to his stewardship, this is the distinction it has attained.
Bizarre as it may sound, the Nawaz League was positioning itself as the challenger of the status quo, St George to Zardari’s dragon, in headier moments even the word revolution playing on its lips. But on the way something happened to spoil this charming narrative. After the 2008 elections the party should have made up its mind which side to be on, but it sought to have the best of both worlds, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, breathing fire and holy defiance against the PPP at the centre, even as it found itself unable to resist the allure of power in Punjab. There being no such thing as a free lunch, it is now paying the price of this self-inflicted schizophrenia.
Even this would not have mattered but for the spectre at the PML-N’s feast, the nightmare how haunting its waking and sleeping hours: Imran’s emergence from behind the trees not so much as a third force but the principal alternative to the existing order, as represented conjointly by the PPP and the PML-N. Punjab’s massive discontent is finding its focus and expression by gravitating towards him.
Against the backdrop of this change, “Go Zardari go” is a slogan which has lost its relevance.** The crowds at the Minar-e-Pakistan seemed to be making no distinction between Zardari and the leadership of the League. Their anger was directed at both equally, or perhaps a bit more at the League because from Zardari from day one they had expected nothing at all. But to catch all this, to catch all the nuances, one had to be there.**
Talk of a rainbow coalition. To Imran’s standard are flocking the young and rebellious at heart, students and workers, the educated from both ends of the spectrum – English-medium schools and Urdu-medium schools – working women and smart girls from rich neighbourhoods, and even religious types, there being a fair sprinkling of beards that evening in front of Minar-e-Pakistan.
Political sages, who often get such things wrong, need not worry too much about would-be electables. They are pragmatic souls, instinctively averse to backing lost causes or betting on losing horses. For 15 years they did not consider Imran a serious option. Overnight, as if in a flash, he has begun to figure in their calculations. Now their very pragmatism, sharpened by Imran’s show of power, would be promoting a different line of thought.
So the major parties better beware. Dangerous winds have started blowing across the Punjab landscape (Imran having his work cut out in the other provinces). These winds can be felt most strongly in the triangle which for over two decades has been the N-League’s heartland: Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Lahore. But it is only a matter of time before they turn north, to the Pothohar Plateau and the districts straddling the mighty Indus.
We must not forget the bleakness of the distance traversed. For a decade and a half Imran was out of sync with the times, bawling out a different tune while Pakistani politics was stretched along a different path. Now the constellations have shifted. What was once the call of the wild is now the call of the times, no cry louder or more insistent in Pakistan today than the call for change. The only man fitting the bill as instrument of change is Imran Khan, all the other knights of the political arena exhausted figures, symbols of the discredited past and therefore part of the problem the nation is confronted with.
But nothing happens before its time. It required the events of 1917 for the Bolshevik Revolution to occur, the Ottoman Empire’s defeat and humiliation in 1918-19 for Mustafa Kemal to be summoned to greatness, for Britain to face mortal danger after the German victory over France in 1940 for Churchill to be called to lead the nation. The moment has to be there; it cannot be manufactured. Lahore indicated that Imran’s moment has come.
Can recourse to Habib Jalib stem the incoming tide? For plutocrats to sing his verses is a bit like the Rockefellers belting out the Internationale, or the Bourbons getting emotional over the sounds of the Marseillaise. But the irony probably is lost on them.
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