The Terror After…

Each time a new government takes over the reins of Pakistan, heads roll (literally). Scores die (millions too), some suddenly, some after a long incarceration. Some gain favour, others are hung out to dry, until such time that the music starts again. Some events are explicit coups, others are more drawn out: when Musharraf threw over the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999, it was apparently a bloodless coup. Not so, many others.

Each time, including the first military takeover in 1958, there was one casualty no one ever mentioned. That casualty was the Truth.

Political parties come into power only if they win approval from the powers that be. During the former’s short stints, tensions would often prevail. Not anymore. The incumbent government is happy to be a mere appendage of the powers that be. Little do they realise: they have dug a grave for democracy and piled tonnes of debris on it.

This time, in April 2022, the coup was ‘arranged’ by none other than the very people that had been accused of ‘selecting’ the PTI into power. The 13 party coalition government was thus formed. A witch hunt of PTI leaders began, which some say was paying back the party’s Chairman in his own coin. More than 140 cases, including on sedition, terrorism and corruption against him were registered in the few months that followed.

Then came May 9, 2023, when Khan was arrested from the premises of the Supreme Court and kept in prison for two days until bailed out. What happened during that period on the streets of Lahore and other cities has changed the nature of Pakistani politics forever. Protestors turned violent: ‘all authorities’ claimed that the attacks on military residences, installations and monuments had been pre-planned and masterminded by Khan himself. Even as exactly what happened was being replayed on television screens, government members waxed eloquent at the assembly floor reviling Khan and his party.

Once again, the biggest casualty was one of Truth.

Those of us unfortunate enough to have survived several such high dramas, both in the whole and truncated Pakistan, have watched narratives develop, page by page, as if written by the unseen but deeply felt hand. Or, should I say, boots. Earlier, without electronic and social media, the narrative could be spun out only through radio, newspapers and magazines. Since the enlightened 80s onwards, those who control what the public can consume as news have been scribbling frantically, the same, old rhetoric, in different guise. From Zia to Musharraf, to Beg to Kiyani and thence to the current Big Boss, we have hypocritical assurances of neutrality; from Bhutto to Benazir, to Sharif and to the Sharifs again, we have one long sorry tale of ‘democratically elected’ leaders. Khan was the odd ball. He didn’t quite follow the script; made sudden, unexpected moves and was unpredictable. To his detractors, his hallmark was populism; to his followers and supporters, he was the hope of the future. For those who held the puppet strings, he was an enigma. Now, according to one journalist who attended a meet with military officials, he is Enemy No.1, of the establishment and its more than willing ‘democratic’ partner, the PDM.

Not a single day passes when those at the helm and their spokespersons do not castigate the ‘perpetrators’ of the May 9 attacks. Each is trying to outdo the other in attempting to demonstrate their loyalty to the hallowed ones. Press statements, heavily laced with emotional adjectives are issued regularly. Op-eds, letters to the editor, speeches revile the seditious nature of the events and whip up patriotic feelings by declaring May 9 as 9/11 or 7/6 of Pakistan; a ‘dark chapter’; the ‘Black Day’. They decry instigators, planners, doers, supporters who must all be caught and made an example of, i.e. through trial in military courts. The accused stand guilty, by virtue of the assumed strength of the narrative of the powerful.