A bewildered nation

Mir Adnan Aziz
The Frontier Post
February 2,2009

Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm - Publilius Syrus.

Conventional wisdom dictates that people understand the limits of their ability. When someone takes up a job, it is understood that demands and expectations of the same have been reviewed. The foregone conclusion therefore is, that the person will deliver.

When we transitioned from an 'autocracy' to a 'democracy', the country was beleaguered with an extremely volatile FATA and Balochistan with the rest of the country increasingly in the cross hairs. To add to their woes people had, among many others, the judicial, inflation and the energy crisis.

President Zardari felt that he was qualified for the job. After the Liaqat Bagh tragedy he presented himself as a 'saviour of Pakistan'. This has ironically, over time, been a favourite cliché of most of our clueless rulers. A mandate was beseeched to lead us to greener pastures. Ignominious as the NRO and the road to 'return' was, the people were so fed up with the shenanigans of Musharraf and Co. that PPPP got the same.

By voting in the party, people thought that it was led by a person whom incarceration, exile and a great personal tragedy had made into a born again one. In Mr. Zardari and his pre-poll verbose the nation saw someone who would deliver and take them out of their misery.

The devastating part now is that we see somebody in the driving seat with eyes perpetually peeled to the rear-view mirror, seemingly oblivious to the rutted road ahead. Almost a year down the line, a sense of dejavu sees the 'saviour' wanting and lacking in many more ways than one. A sense of foreboding and gloom prevails as the nation ponders where it went wrong.

The extremely complex affairs that besot us were plainly evident when electoral promises were made. The beleaguered were promised and made to believe what statesman and author Benjamin Disraeli once said: "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" It is hard to believe now that President Zardari did not gauge the gravity of these issues or know the limits of his ability before vying for his 'exalted' status.

What we now hear is the incessant hyperbole of having just taken over the reins of governance and the 'inherited' ruin of a state. The President (and his party) does not seem to realize that to 'save Pakistan' it was his duty to create, if nothing else, an enabling political and economic environment.

For a majority who view the present set-up (rightly so) as an extension of the now lecturing Mr. Musharraf's rule; there is an uncanny resemblance to the same. Was it not in these recent years that offices of TV channels were attacked by mobs and police alike with journalists being brutalized? Was it not the former President who termed the deposed judges as nothing but anarchists? Were we not doves with olive branches aplenty for India, compromising spinelessly on Kashmir, yet brutal macho bravado for our very own? The similarities are eerily familiar.

We see 'inherited' crises festering into mortal wounds. The US sees it as a 'given' right to bomb us whenever they want while India, with a diminutive Parnab Mukherjee spewing threats, is at its saber-rattling best. There is a total erosion of the state's writ in Swat, what to say of the tribal areas with the much touted parliamentary FATA resolution consigned to the bottomless bin. The terrified ANP is bunkered away, their recipe of all that plagues the province being the renaming of NWFP.

For want of constructive things, a Governor (one of the four 'inherited' yet still functional ones) is seen to be destabilizing the Punjab government. The feeling of chaos is compounded with reports of all not being well between the two pillars of our 'democracy'. One also sees a dichotomy in the mind-boggling ease that enables the reinstatement of seven thousand political appointees but not a handful of judges who were removed unconstitutionally. Come spring and one can already hear the clarion call to 'Beware the Ides of March'.

Seemingly, President Zardari does not understand the premise on which he and his party were voted in. What we have instead is that perpetual paranoia, which ultimately stalks all our 'saviours', creeping in yet again. The latest fit, brought in by this phantasmal demon, has seen the journalists being reportedly branded as 'terrorists'. The President is seen to be increasingly prone to serious faux pas, be it FATA, (glaringly in) the post Mumbai fiascos or political matters within. He has taken to making splashes only to be mortified by the resulting ripples.

It is an unfortunate nation indeed whose leader, expected to provide a positive direction, is seemingly prone to back pedalling on grave issues, blaming all but himself. This feeling gains more strength when authoritarian Presidential powers are touted as a right instead of relinquishing the same. How can one person with the same be Dracula while another a Mandela? Is it then not but natural for the people to start asking questions and seeking answers?

We go alms seeking to run the state yet cannot do away with Davos like junkets. With our own house on fire, the serenity of Switzerland's ski resort is seemingly too alluring for the would-be fire fighters. Over the years, we have descended to this morass because of our collective wrongs. This was a visionless direction thrust by most of our rulers and our own culpability in the same. If blames must be assigned, our own share cannot be wished away.

It is time the politically 'omnipotent' President, with an increasingly eroding credibility, stop looking to cast blame and start putting action plans in place to correct the mess he 'inherited'. Credibility in ethical leadership derives from the conviction that the leader knows what he or she is doing and has the best interests of the people at heart. Throughout history, nations have had their share of 'competent buck passing saviours.' All they do is paralyze rather than energize the people.

President Zardari should prove himself a visionary who seeks solutions tailored to the needs of his own people rather than those of far off lands. History proves that there are no friends in global politics as are fruitless the wages of war; prudence beckons us too. The visage ahead is far challenging and demands focused un-divided attention. If the President does not owe this to himself, he surely does to a bewildered nation.

(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)