The Daily DAWN Karachi

June 01, 2007 Friday Jamadi-ul-Awwal 15, 1428

Aik dhakka aur, one push more

By Ayaz Amir

THE army is worried that it is being maligned in the current agitation. It should be
worried. Slogans raised against it have never been heard in Punjab, the army’s
heartland, before. Gen Musharraf addressed the officers of the Jhelum garrison
on Wednesday. From the newspaper pictures available, the assembled officers,
especially the senior-most in the front row, looked pretty glum. What was on their
minds?

But who is bringing the army into disrepute? Lawyers, columnists, street riff-raff
or the army itself? When the army involves itself in politics, when its chief wants
to stick to power regardless of the consequences, when he patronises an
organisation such as the MQM, the army, willy-nilly, comes into the firing line of
public opinion.

Lawyers are not bringing a bad name to the army. The army high command is.
What does the nation want? What is the cry coming from the depths of its soul?
The supremacy of the law and the Constitution. The army will earn respect to the
extent it remains faithful to its charter of defending the nation’s frontiers. It will
lose it when it loses its way.

For 60 years the nation has fed and sustained the army not to fight New Zealand,
Uzbekistan or the Republic of South Africa but to stand up to Indian hegemony.
This army-led government has grovelled before India. What is then left of its
raison d’etre?

But the central issue in this agitation is somewhat different: nothing less than the
country’s future. As Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim has pithily put it before the Supreme
Court, “Time has come to say goodbye to the gun, and if not, then say goodbye
to the Constitution.” The gun or the Constitution, once and for all let this be
decided. What is Pakistan to be –– a banana republic or a self-respecting
democracy? Who is to exercise sovereignty in it –– Parliament or Triple One
Brigade?
Two dates will stand out in our history: March 9 when Chief Justice Iftikhar
Mohammad Chaudhry stood up to military diktat, thereby setting in motion the
chain of events which constitute the present movement; May 12 when the
emperor appeared without his clothes, the spiritual kinship between him and the
MQM revealed to the naked eye.

But even dark clouds have silver linings and the silver lining in the present
situation is that Karachi’s dominant party took a step too far on May 12, over-
reaching itself and thus inviting a bitter backlash and now retribution.

On the morning of May 12 I was at the Tibet Centre where the MQM was holding
its so-called rally, standing next to Nasreen Jalil, Karachi’s deputy mayor, and
Babar Khan Ghouri, MQM federal minister. Having witnessed how the MQM had
barricaded the entire city---no one needing binoculars to see what was going
on---I told them that they were not realising the consequences of what they were
was up to (and this was before word had come that people were being killed).
Nasreen represents the more moderate, presentable face of the MQM. I told her
that when evening came, as it surely would, the responsibility of the day’s events
would rest on the MQM’s shoulders.

Know what Ghouri said? That Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had not
come to the Quaid’s mazar to offer fateha before, implying that his wanting to
come on may 12 was a sign of impending mischief. As if a visa from the MQM
was required to enter the city and visit the Quaid’s mazar.

Gen Musharraf has plugged the same line: as Karachi’s dominant party, how
could the MQM allow the Chief Justice and his supporters to take out a
procession in Karachi because that would have given a wrong impression of the
MQM’s popularity? Amazing, and then the army is worried that its image is being
maligned.

During the last seven and a half years, now close to eight, only on two occasions
has the nation come alive. At the time of the massive earthquake which struck
Azad Kashmir and northern Hazara Division in October 2005 when people from
across Pakistan held out a hand of assistance to their brothers and sisters in
distress. And now during this movement which again proves that this nation is
alive.

This movement is like no other in our history. The anti-Ayub agitation of 1968-69
and the anti-Bhutto agitation of 1977 were both vague about their aims and thus
easily hijacked by military adventurism. This movement has clear aims:
constitutional supremacy and an end to military hegemony.

The political landscape already stands altered, the judiciary more emboldened
and the regime put on the defensive. But one ingredient is still missing: a clear,
unambiguous stand on the part of the opposition parties. The people of Pakistan
know what they want. Lawyers know what they want. But the political parties are
either playing games with themselves or living in a world of their own.

At what stage are the Swiss corruption cases against Benazir Bhutto and her
husband? I for one don’t know. But because of them or some other reason she is
dallying with Musharraf. At least that is the impression her statements and
interviews give. Maybe she is just trying to extract concessions and won’t do a
deal. But her ambiguity is confusing her supporters who are left in two minds
about what to do.

She says her party will not vote for Musharraf. This is not good enough. If
Musharraf insists on the charade of getting ‘elected’ by these assemblies, will the
PPP legislators resign? We are hearing nothing clear-cut on this score.

Also a picture of confusion is the MMA. Qazi Hussain Ahmed professes a hard
line but the Jamaat-i-Islami has yet to throw itself fully into this movement. As for
Maulana Fazlur Rahman, he remains the undisputed champion of double-talk,
saying one thing, doing another, his ambivalence fuelling suspicion that he
remains a secret weapon of Gen Musharraf’s. He too is yet to say that the MMA
will resign from the assemblies in case Musharraf seeks a rubber stamp from
them.

Insofar as this is a time of standing up and being counted, ambiguity is akin to

sabotage and betrayal. When events move fast, they wait for no one and spare
no one. Look at Musharraf whose many slips during this season of discontent
have branded him an MQM supporter. He can wash himself in holy water but this
label won’t easily wash. As the charge of betrayal wouldn’t easily wash in the
case of Benazir Bhutto and Maulana Fazlur Rahman if they waste any more time
clarifying their real position.

Nawaz Sharif says, nothing doing with Musharraf. But what good is this clarity if
he remains holed up in London, playing Khomeini-in-waiting on some of the
plushest sofas money can buy? Why isn’t he coming back? Is a forced return to
Saudi Arabia the spectre haunting him? Whatever the case, his absence from the
scene prevents the PML-N from being fully galvanised. The iron is hot but will
bend only before those who strike it.

Imran’s is a lone voice in the wilderness, still a shepherd without much of a flock.
But he should be grateful to the MQM for giving him the kind of publicity that
money can’t buy. The ban on his entering Sindh has done him good as has the
MQM’s poster and placard campaign (since hastily called off) calling him names
and lambasting him for ‘promiscuity’. Since when did a charge of promiscuity hurt
a man? Whom the gods would destroy they first make ridiculous. The MQM has
been painting itself in the colours of ridicule.

Anyway, the political parties are lagging behind the rest of the nation. The leading
light of this struggle is My Lord the Chief Justice, no doubt about it. With him
stand, in the van of this movement, the nation’s lawyers, united and determined
like never before, sustaining the struggle for democracy and lifting the nation’s
spirits. In the process a new iconography is being born –– the nation’s new
heroes the likes of Ali Ahmed Kurd (more power to his fiery oratory), Munir A.
Malik, Aitzaz Ahsan et al, and justices of the different high courts who have lit the
way for the rest of the judiciary to follow.

The media has produced its own heroes –– reporters and anchorpersons, who
have brought not only the drama and excitement of this struggle into living rooms
across the country, but also its meaning and significance. This is the first tele-
movement in the country’s history, its impact such that entertainment
programmes have had to yield place to judicial and political news. When the CJ
goes to address a bar association, the nation, glued to its TV sets, travels with
him.

But the political parties, victims of confusion or expediency, lag behind. They still
have a role to play but only if they can bring themselves to adopting a clear,
unambiguous stand regarding Musharraf’s ‘reelection’. And to be of any use, they
must do this now, in the next 20-30 days, rather than wait for Sep/Oct when it
might already be too late.

Are the assorted maulanas whom it has been our misfortune to endure, and
those who lay claim to the mantle of the East, capable of this? We shall see