Not another Revolution Please! – Editorial

Once again the com­mand to reboot the sys­tem for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary change is being pushed for – led again by a charis­mat­ic Khan and a sanc­ti­mo­nious Alla­ma. Buoyed by a wide array of sea­son­al hawks and naïve fol­low­ers, they are promis­ing to ‘lib­er­ate’ us on the eve of Pakistan’s 67th Inde­pen­dence Day. It mat­ters lit­tle how many of us take them seri­ous­ly, their poten­tial to jam the wheel of our dai­ly life as well as that of nation­al gov­er­nance can­not be doubt­ed hence call­ing for our clear rejoin­der.

The promise of rev­o­lu­tion is not new for the poor, suf­fer­ing folks of Pak­istan. Leav­ing aside the left wing’s agen­da – as it has always been mar­gin­al – the first ‘suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion’ was brought about by the Gen­er­al Ayub. This prece­dent, cul­mi­nat­ing in the suc­cess­ful res­cue of West Pak­istan in 1971, has been loom­ing on the frag­ile shoul­ders of our nation since then. A num­ber of attempts at rev­o­lu­tion have been made since then, suc­ceed­ing only in achiev­ing the most reac­tionary ele­ment of any rev­o­lu­tion, i.e. chang­ing the sit­ting gov­ern­ment, not even the sys­tem. Bring­ing about anoth­er sys­tem is too far­fetched to require a men­tion. And there is not a trace of rea­son to believe that it is going to be any dif­fer­ent this time. The only vari­a­tion from the past, how­ev­er, is the change in attire; the uni­formed mes­si­ahs have been ruled out, to be replaced only by their civil­ian com­rades.

The two main actors of this ‘change’ the­atre, Imran Khan and Alla­ma Tahir-ul-Qadri, are not new to Pak­istani audi­ence. Both of them have a track record of sup­port­ing mil­i­tary dic­ta­tors and coopt­ing with the exist­ing sys­tem in the not-too-dis­tant past. Khan’s par­ty is already rul­ing in KPK and a num­ber of his own par­ty mem­bers sub­scribe to the sane option of restrict­ing them­selves to work for what is already their polit­i­cal oblig­a­tion in the con­flict rid­den province. Qadri on the oth­er hand, who refrained from elec­toral pol­i­tics, is osten­si­bly look­ing for­ward to amass polit­i­cal pow­ers as a late run­ner. What both of them are rely­ing on is the naivety of a pop­u­lace who believes that the only prob­lem with this coun­try is that of high­er lead­er­ship. Their con­cep­tion of rev­o­lu­tion visu­al­izes only in chang­ing the faces of civil­ian gov­ern­ment. To what extent they will devi­ate from the non-demo­c­ra­t­ic, sub­ver­sive pol­i­tics of oppor­tunism is all too explic­it in both of their polit­i­cal careers.

After decades of one step for­ward, two steps back, Pak­istani pol­i­tics final­ly appeared to enter a stage where the progress was usu­al­ly indorsed in the sen­tence that the pol­i­tics of 90s will not be repeat­ed. In sim­ple terms it means that the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion, backed by unseen hand, will not under­mine the con­ti­nu­ity of a demo­c­ra­t­ic set­up. But what is being her­ald­ed now in the name of rev­o­lu­tion is quite the oppo­site. Are these not attempts to push Pak­istan back to the 90s? If so, then any effec­tive blow may push us decades behind, if not worse.

Both Khan and Qadri might have gen­uine griev­ances, but noth­ing out of that, added more impor­tant­ly with their obscu­ran­tist vision of a dif­fer­ent Pak­istan, jus­ti­fy a call for rev­o­lu­tion. Add to it the frag­ile con­text of a strug­gling polit­i­cal sys­tem and the ongo­ing mil­i­tary offen­sive against Pakistan’s biggest secu­ri­ty threat of Tal­iban, such notions of change would seem noth­ing short of open­ing a Pan­do­ra box of prob­lems for Pak­istan.