The Land of the Soiled Nappies

Allama Iqbal said: “When Faith is divorced from politics only tyranny remains”. To prevent divorce politicians and rulers of all stripes need regular changing like soiled nappies need to be changed regularly and timely before the stink spreads and overpowers all.

Our mistake is that we replace our soiled cloth nappies with old unwashed soiled cloth crap-crusted nappies repeatedly and then foolishly wonder why the stink recedes not. Heartrendingly, pathetically, we have landed ourselves with dirty old nappies: the Bhutto-Zardari Combine and Nawaz Sharif Incorporated with lesser nappies, their recurrent fellow travellers ready for political partnerships at a price of course: ANP and JUI, schizophrenic now victim now victimizer MQM, religious political parties led by blackmailing mullahs of easy principles also rived with dynasticism except the Jamaat-e-Islami, all unwashed, soiled, caked with shit. When the stink becomes unbearably high we hanker after the army that inevitably brings back soiled old nappies. It doesn’t take long for the army to get soiled too as it too tries becoming a political nappy itself and/or creates new political nappies as toadies that soon become perennial soiled nappies also and turn on their creator. The Land of the Soiled Nappies, what?

The soiled nappy analogy is correct because if not changed regularly rulers tend towards alienation, ossification and reinforce historical mistakes. Periodic fresh blood given naturally by the popular provides new energy to an anemic body politic and makes its cheeks ruddy. But sadly the ‘new’ blood that we get are the soiled progeny of soiled nappies that we are forced to wear. Thus our nappy rash and bum rot increase by the day yet like hapless fools we wonder why. The nation develops hemorrhoids, grows piles and starts bleeding from its nether regions. The need is to close down or balance and modernize the factories that produce soiled nappies: our Constitution and the political and economic systems it begets and start making modern, throwaway, absorbent nappies to cure our hemorrhoids, bum rot, piles, nappy rash and stop our bleeding.

Look at what we’ve just done. The products of the rigged May 2013 elections in our provincial assemblies acting as an Electoral College selected –not elected – half the senators of the Senate. There was horse-trading galore – sorry, donkey trading with apologies to donkeys –votes dearer than a 2,000 square yard plot in F-7 Islamabad –best calling it ‘Dirty Nappy Trading’. These old soiled trespassers in our parliament who rejoice in the title of ‘Senator’ will without doubt‘recover’ the money they have spent on bribing electors who in truth are gamekeepers-turned-poachers. To be ‘fair’ the ‘poor’ provincial assembly members must also recover the money they spent on their ‘elections’, and so the game goes on, robbers robbing robbers who together rob the public and the rot increases. I say: “When the principles of Faith are divorced from politics only political dictatorship remains”.

Now these jokers have agreed to nominate one Reza Rabbani who could never win a direct election but always gets in through the backdoor – he of the demented 18th Amendment infamy – to become Chairman of the Senate. If that’s not touching rock bottom, what is? Truth to tell, we have gone subterranean after making a hole in the bottom of the barrel and into the grave, the best place for people of no morality. This Rabbani fellow was known as a “goof” in the law chambers he once infested. Apparently, a goof in chambers is a genius in Senate. Chairman Goof recently voted for military courts first and then tearfully proclaimed in choked voice that he had voted against his conscience at the dictates of his party. One’s heart bleeds for the poor fellow, having to assassinate his conscience for his party. He changed the Truth: “None is Greater than God” to “Asif Zardari’s orders supersede God’s orders”. Chairman Goof’s name will stand proudly with the names of great political philosophers and scientists.

This is “The New World According to Raza‘Garp’ Rabbani”. If he had been man not mouse as Aitizaz Ahsan taunted Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, he would have resigned instead of voting against his conscience. Since he has none, Chairman Goof is a prime candidate for Jihad-e-Akbar, ‘Struggle with the Conscience and Baser Self’, which is the greatest Jihad of all. At least he had it in him to admit it, so there is hope for him yet. But how can a man of conscience be member of a fascist party led by looters, plunders and disintegrators and still parade his love for democracy? Nothing new: the Nazis also did it, so why can’t our many goofs and stinking nappies?

After his selection Chairman Goof proclaimed grandly that democracy had been strengthened. Really? Tell me another. Sailors wept. With no opposing candidate democracy has been strengthened, what? Or like his late leader he is “the great leader, the supreme leader, the undisputed leader”? Strengthening democracy my foot, it was the exposure of the Zardari-Sharif power sharing plunder and booty nexus – now you rule, now I will; now you plunder; now we loot; now you see me now you don’t – while each pretends to be a loyal opposition in turn. Loyal opposition they truly are, but to themselves and one another, not to king (the people) and country. Yet another nexus of theirs is gradually coming to the fore: pretending to go along with the army to fight terrorism while ganging up to make the army fail and disenchant the people with it as an institution of last resort. That will destroy the nation, as Salahuddin Ayyubi warned. Strengthening democracy my foot, democracy has been made a joke. They don’t even understand what democracy is and implies. Do they know what democracy means inan Islamic republic and what the requirements for leadership (amr and hukm)are in Islam as given by God in the Quran and through His Messenger (pbuh)? I would be surprised. Forget it: we will talk about it another day.

It could have been even worse, they say. No? Could it? Nooooo… Really? Come off it. We have made traitors into heroes and heroes into villains, many into heads of state and government. What’s the big deal about the Chairman of the useless Senate? Let the poor goof have his day and goof about in an irrelevant institution getting more irrelevant.

Why zero-in on one poor goof only? A lady relative of a retired odious Supreme Court judge was made a ruling party candidate for the Senate towards the fag end of the dash for glory. I don’t know whether she got in or not, so irrelevant have our soiled nappies made the exercise now. It couldn’t be, surely, that this great judge had pleased Nawaz Sharif during his judgeship and it was time for compensation? Or is there another nexus, between Nawaz Sharif the judiciary? You can’t be serious, Humayun Gauhar. Who do you think you are? Don’t get carried away and contemn the court. Never ask such a question. The judiciary is sacrosanct, don’t you know? This odious judge might well be your next Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board to finish what is left of our cricket. Imran Khan cried hoarse (as usual) against donkey trading, but bootlessly. It was a festival of buying and selling votes. Now we really have a Senate of Baboons selected by four provincial Parliaments of Monkeys. Haven’t you noticed the decline in the monkey population in Islamabad recently? I can’t even find Maverick. Guess where they have gone?

What a sight it was to see political parties changing colour so fast –chameleons embarrassed, rats agog. Enemies ganged up like gangsters always do to down another mob of gangsters. All gangsters ganged up against the army to ‘innocently’ make it fail. That’s political suicide is committed.

A famous lady of the night said to her lawyer in Punjabi: “Assi asli, nasli kanjar aan; hun har banda kanjar bun gaya ai. Assi kithay jaiyay?” – “We are genuine, pedigreed prostitutes. Today everyone has become a whore. Wheredo we go?”

Hussain Haroon is our former representative to the UN and grandson of one of Pakistan’s founders Sir Abdoola Haroon who may be looking down on our pathetic condition and wondering – “What have we wrought?” Haroon says in his forthcoming article ‘Locke’s Treatise on Dissolution of Government’ that will appear in the next issue of my quarterly magazine Blue Chip in April (www.bluechipmag.com): “For Locke an oft forgotten truth is that the only legal position of the socio political contract is in it genesis, the undisputable will created by the supremacy of the people/society. Any dissolution of the will of the people and hence society is de facto dissolution of the government, no matter what the antecedents.” What John Locke said 400 years ago is worth reminding for it is the basis of modern democratic political systems. Locke contends, says Haroon, that civilized society conceives “being in a state of peace” further conceiving “Tis in their Legislative that the members of a country are united, and combined together into one CHOHERNT living body.” Any arbitrary powers, says Haroon, which modify or change “electors or ways of elections are altered without the consent and contrary to the interest of the people, then the legislative is altered” and puts an end to government. Continues Hussain Haroon: “Delivery of the power of the people in any way by the legislative to a foreign government is also akin to foreign intervention/conquest and dissolution of government from within.”

Thunders Locke: “There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved and that is when he who has the supreme Executive power [in Pakistan’s case the prime minister who is chief executive] neglects and abandons the charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all the Anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government. For laws not being made for themselves, but to be by their executions the Bonds of society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function, when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases. And the people become a confused multitude, without order and connection. Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men’s rights, nor any remaining power within the community, to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there was no laws, and a government without laws, is, I suppose a mystery in politics, inconceivable to humane capacity, and inconsistent with humane society.”

While in Pakistan’s constitution the de jure “Supreme Executive” is the prime minister, the de facto it is the army chief to varying degrees depending on the extent of Executive, Legislative and Judicial failure, the three branches of government. At the very least the army chief shares that supreme executive power in reality, not least because the Supreme Executive goes running to him for help or to hand over his responsibilities he finds difficult to him. When civilization’s norms evaporate and ideology fails, sword and scales carve out a new legitimacy with its sharp blade, as it has always done in most of history bar about two centuries in a minority of western countries. So the Supreme Executive’s responsibility devolves on the army’s chief too whether he or we like it or not for, like every soldier, he is sworn to save the State even at the cost of his life. Sad, but it signifies the stark failure of the constitution, the law and government and most importantly of the will of the people/society because of the follies and foibles of soiled nappies.

So there you have it, my dear compatriots: our government stands dissolved according to John Locke’s treatise. Don’t say we don’t give two hoots for Locke because our cloned system is based on Locke’s ‘Two Treatises of Government’. The answer is to forge a functioning government that truly reflects and represents the will of the people and of society before our state gets dissolved too.