An Open Letter to Civil Society

Dear Members of Civil Society,
Writing this letter to you kind of puts me in a moral dilemma. I, with all honesty and sincerity, think that terms like Civil Society are discriminatory and are a miniature of the concept of Brahmanization in which educated elite classes (Lawyers, Journalists, Students etc) try to set the agenda for the rest of the nation and want the nation to abide by it. It is not the setting of agenda that bothers me. These are the hijacking tendencies of Civil Society that are troubling me. It is this sense of superiority in which one takes the whole moral authority to define what is right or what is wrong for Pakistan is what I have problem with. So just when I am someone who refuses to accept that there is any role of "Civil Society" in any democracy, my dilemma is that gravity of the issues facing us makes me right to you all who bracket yourselves as "Civil Society".
Secondly, let me confess that I actually have high regard for quite a few individuals who have been part of this "Civil Society" for their contribution in one field or the other. But this is precisely my problem with the notion of "Civil Society". It hinges on the fact that some people because of their experience, pedigree or education are more qualified to set the agenda for the rest and their belief in democracy requires that people should make choices from a set of options provided to them from the organs of "Civil Society". More importantly, the record of "Civil Society" in identifying the problems and putting workable solutions is miserable to say the least. Needless to say, with exception of a handful, majority of you were opposed to taking part in elections which are now hailed by you as a vote for your cause.
I am in US for last few months and living here makes one realize how easy it is to confuse being literate with being knowledgeable and this my friends is the biggest issue you need to look into. The illusion that I know because I have read or have watched it on TV is the biggest threat that liberal democracy faces around the world globally. It is very easy to fall in the trap of I know it all by reading an article, watching a TV report or even worse reading a book. So, my friends, I just want to caution you in this regard. Fortunately or unfortunately, all the access to information is no substitute to folk wisdom, living in ground realities or something simply called commonsense.
What also bothers me is the role that press reporters have taken. Instead of being mere reporters of the news events, they have assumed the role of opinion makers. We, as a society, need to define whether the media (both print and electronic) be curtailed to a source of information only or should it be given the role of opinion formation on issues on which we as a nation are still divided. I see this as a tool for exploitation and believe that going too far on this path will restrict choices and will take all objectivity out of democratic decision making. We, by the grace of God, have been successful in protecting our democratic will intact, despite all odds, because majority of us either did not listen to media or has decided not to be influenced by it.
That brings me to the couple of issues that are hottest with you, i.e. judiciary and end to Musharraf rule. Following are my positions on both the issues and I would want the collective will of people of Pakistan manifested through democratic process set the agenda in this regard.
I am proud to be part of the movement for restoration of chief justice. I was present both times he visited Lahore during his illegal and unlawful suspension. And to me even now, I want Iftikhar Chaudhary the person back as CJP. But few things bother me about the demand for restoration of pre-November 3 judiciary and the extreme positions that few people have taken in this regard. First, among deposed judges are judges with strong political and ideological affiliations and the judges who have served on NAB courts in the "fullest sense of duty". I can never support the judges writing dissenting notes on cases like Saima Waheed. For me what is more important is to have a judiciary which does not take decisions on personal or ideological biases than restoring X,Y,Z or even Mr. Chaudhary. It is more important to have a fair system of appointment of judges than focus on individuals. Secondly, I will prefer being cautious going too far with the notion of judicial independence. No sane person can disagree that courts should be free and independent. But keeping in view the centrality of bench in the nexus of establishment in the past, I will be a little reluctant to give it sweeping powers or trust. Keep in mind, we let the power and trust of Army build farther and farther in the name of "Strong Defense" and look at the monster we have at our hands today. My fear is, with the notion of "Independent Judiciary", the potential of it being the check on will of people cannot be ruled out. It might just be a little realignment in the ranks of the establishment. Forth, right now when the political classes of Pakistan are in intense bargain with establishment for restoration of constitution and parliament, a call for protests against them will weaken them in this bargain. Any sane head will agree that supremacy of constitution and parliament remain paramount than being stuck in the past. Fifth, I am appalled when people try to bully political parties for restoration of judges, just when except PML-N, all other parties winning either never had a clear position on judiciary or opposed restoration outright. So, in all honesty, even if all who voted N voted for judiciary, minority voted for restoration of judiciary. It appalls me even more when people whose boycott call has fallen flat on its face (with the second largest turn out), try to become champions of public opinion.
And that brings me to the second issue - the issue of Musharraf. For me, no individual mattered in politics more than Benazir Bhutto. She remained the only political figure who inspired me. I strongly believe that Musharraf is responsible for Benazir's killing at least for the sheer negligence that he showed and may be a lot more. For this, I detest him even more than I even did. So for me, ideally he should go. But if ever I have a choice of retaining Musharraf while weakening establishment, I am ready to swallow this pill. He has become a lame duck anyways. Let us keep working for throwing him out but not at the cost of strengthening the establishment.
Let us not be bracketed as something elitist as civil society. Let us all rely on the collective wisdom of the people of Pakistan and bow to it. And please please please, let us not bully others when we do not have the mandate for it. Collective wisdom of a nation is like hedging in the financial markets, and no individual stock or fund, no matter how sophisticated, can outperform the collective returns of the market over a longer period of time.
May Allah bless us in every possible way.

Sincerely,

Atta Ali Malik
aalimalik@gmail.com

These 11 days....

A clarification: Following hypothesis is for establishing a truth and it in no way compares personalities (and I have to give this explanation because 60s style Ikhwan inspired rightists treat any such logical reasoning as blasphmy. Also, comparing personalities is not my purpose here so I am making clarification to avoid digression, otherwise I would not shy away from it.).

When I learnt how to interpret poetry, and it was the idealist teenage, I always wondered how Katl-e-Hussain asl main marg-e-yazid hai (Hussain's killing, in reality, is death of Yazid) could be true? I mean ultimately Hussain died and Yazid and his system triumphed at least for his life time. An idealist that I was back then, I grabbed the concept as is and moved on without thinking about it much on the course. Then in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto I found the true meaning of this verse. For in a time when we, the society, start thinking that principles do not matter and there is always room for complacency and compromise in our lives, the God's world order produces one willing to sacrifice his life for some cause (and without killing others) to jolt us and make us realize that life has a purpose broader to it than mere eat, sleep and drink. So just when in her life, Benazir Bhutto manifested pragmatism, tolerance, accommodation and forgiveness, in her death she has demonstrated that certain principle must be fought for uncompromisingly, even risking one's life.

People ask me left, right and center, as they ask everyone, a number of questions these days. First and foremost is future of Bhutto heritage. Then there are questions regarding how will elections shape up? Will they be rigged? What is future of Pakistan? Just when I am as naive about the issues as anyone will be, below is my take on all these questions.

First and foremost, Bhutto heritage. First, I do not think PPP was ZAB's heritage. ZAB was founder and undisputed leader of PPP but in no way made PPP his belonging. PPP was a romance of ZAB and People of Pakistan. The fact that he was its leader was more of a privilege given to him by the people of Pakistan and he himself was mindful of it. It was a trust people of Pakistan deposited in him and then in Benazir Bhutto. And both of them fully realized and acknowledged where their leadership stemmed from. Not to criticize anyone, but I will like you to draw your attention to the way Benazir Bhutto or ZAB spoke of PPP government achievements and the way Nawaz Sharif or Pervez Musharraf speak of their achievements. In case of Bhuttos, it will always be people of Pakistan did this, peoples' government did this, we did this or people can do this (the word I only emerged while responding to personal criticism). On the contrary, in case of Nawaz or Musharraf or Zia, it is always Nawaz Sharif did it, yeh main naeen kiya hai (I did it), By the grace of Allah, "I" will bring Islam to this country. You cannot intentionally force yourself to negate "I" with such consistency as the two Bhuttos did and this is a lesson for the new leaders of the movement.

And just to understand what Benazir Bhutto's politics stood for, I will only cite privatization process. It started in 1988 with first Benazir government and is here for last 20 years. But there are two stark differences between Benazir's privatization and others privatizations in 20 years. First, in case of Benazir Bhutto governments privatization was mostly done through stock exchange and even in rare cases of open bidding, Cabinet Finance Committee was quick to intervene to block the deals that smelled inappropriate. And secondly, not a single worker was forcefully removed from any privatized business under Benazir government. Pro-people or pro-poor whichever way you put it was one of the essences of her politics and has been the essence of struggle of us the people.

So Peoples Party is not ZAB's heritage whose inheritors need to be decided. That leaves us with the genuine question of why then has its leadership always been in family. My family for decades has been buying pickles from a merchant in Akbari Mandi. When the original owner died they would still go to his son, instead of a competitive neighbors shop, to buy pickles because he and his family were a known quantity and they will be easier to trust unless and until there is some major breech of trust. This is human nature and this explains the phenomena of political dynasties across the globe. This precisely why Fatima Jinnah, having a complete politically inactive life in 60s, emerged as the consensus leader of the nation. In case of Benazir Bhutto, she succeeded in proving her worth the trust deposited in her and proved herself a leader even a notch above her father. For Bilawal, with all my well wishes for his success, jury is still out. If the trust will be honored, he will command the leadership and if it gets broken someone will emerge as the leader of the movement to carry the romance of Bhutto father, Bhutto daughter and people of Pakistan forward. I wish Bilawal triumphs; for his failure will delay our march to destiny.

Another question worth discussing is why PPP did not hold any elections for leadership. To me, this is a little unfair to ask. For in a country where establishment has always focussed on uniting Mulsim Leagues to MMAs but breaking PPP into NPPs and Patriots and heaven knows, circumstance do not permit resorting to such exercise for a party that has always been struggling. Also, this unlike the dictatorship at national level, does have implicit faith in leadership when they go out and vote for the party in general elections. I wish we see the day when PPP holds elections for leadership like Democratic Party or Labour Party does but for now bigger things are at stake.

For arguments sake, let me assume for a moment that PPP leadership has been part of Bhutto inheritance. I have been brought up in a land-owning family. With what I have learnt about customs and inheritance in our society, the battle of Bhutto heritage, if there was any, got decided on return of Murtaza Bhutto and in our patriarchal society, Bhutto daughter proved that she is the one who commands peoples' affiliation. Secondly, I am not doubting anyone's intentions here, but again based on our land-owning customs and the way things work in our society, if we go by the hypothesis of inheritance, knowing the animosity between the two, anyone who stands with Mumtaz Bhutto is standing on the wrong side of the fence. Leadership of Peoples movement in Pakistan is for brave to take. Being the son of Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal has been trusted with the job, but it is open for anyone and everyone to come and convince people of his worthiness and integrity. And last, but certainly not the least, leadership of PPP is for PPP to decide and outsiders must keep their mouths shut.

How will elections shape up? Well, in my opinion, with all the pre-poll rigging that has happened, even with a slightly fair election day, PPP will emerge a giant. The reason is not the sympathy vote but that in her death Benazir has proven to the PPP supporters, who got disappointed in PPP amid all the media campaigns and corruption charges, her commitment and innocence and so the party sympathizers who got dissociated with the political process will be back to polling booths, taking the number game back to 1977.

But elections will not be fair on polling day and every effort will be made to curtail PPP and specially to make sure it does not win Punjab. However, in my humble opinion, elections are more likely to be rigged in favor of PML-N than PML-Q. From perspective of winners and losers, this election is not about who will win elections but is about who will lead establishment from here on. Of Q and N, whoever emerges ahead, will be the new leader. Even if Q has slightly more seats than N but its leadership loses, it will be a win for N and the ranks and files of Q will flock to umbrella of N. In my opinion, backed by many independent polls that I have come across (conducted but not published), at this point with fair polling, Q is expected to emerge ahead of N with appox. 20+ seats. But since establishment has started considering the czar and his apparatus a liability, promoting N becomes their only choice. So, to me, their best bet will be to make N emerge as strong second to PPP and establish it as the anti-PPP party for years to come. Plus they will try to make sure that it holds balance of power in Punjab to stop PPP from forming a government there. Also, if they get their way with rigging elections for N, elections will look credible to the public as well as observers. There, however, remain certain pitfalls for this plan. One is high turnout which can derail any rigging plans. Second is the influence that Chaudharies have created. Third will be Musharraf's battle for his own survival which will come as a big hurdle in the way of rigging elections in favor of N.

Testing times make it all the more important for us to realize the identification of what we are fighting. It's not about Musharraf the person. It's about the nexus that has made this country hostage for 60 years. Agreed Musharraf is a cancer at many levels but establishment is an even bigger monster. And any solution that falls short of neutering both of them will be our loss. Outcome cannot alone be judged on who stays or who goes, or cosmetic changes, but whether the pro-poor, liberal, democratic and modern agenda prevails or not.

As long as She was there, we could afford to be carefree. Now when She is no more with us, our test begins. Next eleven days will determine our future course and fate. For our dream, come and on the drum beats chant the slogans of democracy, liberation, modernity, peace and prosperity - the romance we shared with Benazir Bhutto. Go out and vote and outstrip any rigging plans with your head count. Tell the usurpers, we are not ready to give up our dream, our romance. Jiye Benazir, Pakistan Zindabad, and above all Jiye Awam.