A voice in the wilderness: Waiting for Godot

"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars. To earn you freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me when we came." These are the introductory lines of Thomas Edward Lawrence's book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom which was published in 1926. The author, better known as 'Lawrence of Arabia', sparked the rebellion of Hussein bin-Ali, the emir of Mecca, against the Ottoman Empire.
Though Arabia was liberated, Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation did not materialise because of rivalry among the tribal groups, which, he believed was being stoked by Britain. He returned to England bitterly disappointed, and, during an audience with King George V politely refused to accept state honours and medals.
The treachery of his country to the cause of justice did not extinguish his passion for liberty which he sought to inscribe "across the sky in stars." He lobbied forcefully for the independence of Arab countries at the post-World War I Paris peace conference in 1919 and shocked the dignitaries by appearing in the flowing robes of a nomad from the deserts of Hejaz. The lesson of history is that no mass movement can succeed without the selfless and uncompromising commitment of a central figure.
Eighty years after Lawrence's sudden death, a delusional politician of Pakistan and a fake revolutionary cleric from Canada also swore that they would draw "tides of men" and march on Islamabad to 'liberate' the nation from the dreadful stranglehold of 'the corrupt and incompetent government.' The tidal wave of support they envisaged turned out to be a mere trickle, but, nevertheless the two have succeeded in occupying the federal capital for the last month along with a few thousand people, and, wrought havoc. That is the only outcome of their fading movement.
The chaos in Islamabad's Red Zone unleashed by the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) leader, Imran Khan and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief, Tahirul Qadri has cost the country dearly. On September 05 the attorney general presented a comprehensive report to Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk which showed that the PTI and PAT sit-ins had resulted in a Rs547 billion loss to the national exchequer, traders had suffered a setback of Rs10 billion, foreign exchange reserves had plummeted to $13.521 billion, Rs130 million had till then been spent on security alone, 717 people had been injured and three were killed, and 17 vehicles, including those of the police, had been damaged.
The government is in the habit of generating its own crisis of credibility and one only hopes that the figures submitted to the Supreme Court on the damage to the economy are accurate. Federal ministers have claimed on television that the loss was around Rs450 billion, but on August 25 Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan issued a statement saying that it was Rs800 billion. Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal went even further when, during a press briefing on September 9, he announced that the economy had suffered a loss of more than Rs1 trillion because of the disturbances.
This prompted an analyst to comment in one of the major newspapers: "I wonder if the people bandying about these figures realise that the latter are larger than our GDP (gross domestic product). Consider the Rs1.0 trillion figure as an example. The total output of the entire economy, is just about Rs70 billion per day. Now if we take the Rs1.0 trillion figure, and assume it (the loss) was incurred over a period of two weeks, that gives us Rs70 billion per day."
There is need for the government to restrain its ministers from making absurdly unrealistic pronouncements. It is still too early to accurately quantify the damage that Imran and Qadri have done to the economy. All that can be said as of now is that the losses have been colossal. The turmoil will eventually subside but a precedent has been set and it could recur. The remedy lies in the enforcement of our laws. The two so-called leaders must be hauled over the coals and punished. Only then will justice be served.
Neither of them has shown even the faintest sign of remorse for the harm they have caused to the country. On Wednesday (September 10), Imran Khan announced festivities on September 13 to celebrate the completion of one month since the launch of his ill-fated march on the federal capital. Anyone with even an iota of decency would not even think of rejoicing at a time when the country has been devastated by floods.
More than 300 people have lost their lives and an estimated 1.1 million have been rendered homeless. Their modest dwellings and whatever few possessions they had acquired through years of sweat and toil have been swept away by the merciless waters. But the gruelling tragedy has had no impact on the PTI leader and the Canadian cleric. They have still not abandoned their protests. The insatiable lust for power has snuffed out pity and compassion from their hearts. Never before in the short but crisis-saturated history of Pakistan, has any politician displayed such utter callousness.
Over the past four weeks Qadri and Imran Khan have been inflicting tedious sermons from the top of their respective containers on the entire nation. Both have been tirelessly projecting themselves as fearless fighters for the cause of democracy, rule of law, clean government and the supremacy of the constitution. Their hypocrisy was never in doubt but it was laid hideously bare when they rushed to Rawalpindi on being summoned by the GHQ for separate meetings with the chief of army staff.
The two had misread the tealeaves in their expectation that the army would intervene to overthrow the elected government. The 'third umpire', that Imran Khan keeps referring to, did not 'raise his finger' to send Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif back to the pavilion. This was never on the cards despite the former PTI president Javed Hashmi's stunning revelations which have prompted reams of speculative media comments.
The much touted 'minus one formula' was always a non-starter because the prime minister can only be removed through a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly as stipulated in articles 91 (5) and 95 of the constitution. Nawaz Sharif has a comfortable majority in parliament and this is further consolidated because of the anti-defection clause (Article 63-A). His removal through a no-confidence vote is, therefore, just not possible unless there is a massive rebellion against him among PML-N parliamentarians. But such an eventuality is more in the realm of political fiction.
The prime minister can however voluntarily resign under Article 91 (6) but there is absolutely no reason for him to do so. Not only does his PML-N command a convincing majority in the National Assembly but all other parties represented in parliament have extended unqualified support to him in the ongoing crisis. Imran Khan's is the only feeble voice among the mainstream politicians (Qadri, as a Canadian national, is a political nonentity) calling for Nawaz Sharif's resignation. In a sense he has strayed into a wilderness of his own making.
The PTI chief and indeed all other politicians would benefit by heeding what Sir Morrice James (1916-1989), a former British high commissioner to Pakistan, had to say about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: "But there was - how shall I put it? - a rank odour of hellfire about him. It was a case of corruptio optimi pessima - a flawed angel. I believe that at heart he lacked a sense of dignity and value of other people; his own self was what counted. I sensed in him a ruthlessness and capacity for ill-doing which went far beyond what is natural...
"I judged that one day Bhutto would destroy himself - when, I could not tell. In 1965, I so reported in one of my dispatches from Pakistan as British High Commissioner. I wrote by way of clinching the point that 'Bhutto was born to be hanged.' I did not intend this comment as a precise prophecy of what was going to happen to him, but fourteen years later that was what it turned out to be."
The writer is the publisher of
 Islamabad-based Criterion Quarterly. iftimurshed@gmail.com