No, it doesn’t work

After that rollercoaster ride during this week, with three days of climactic proceedings in the Supreme Court, we should now find time to collect our thoughts and deliver our own verdict on an extension for Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and all the other issues that are plugged into this sticky situation.

So, how does one sum it up? The Supreme Court took up a petition against Gen Bajwa’s extension. The issue came on the heels of a surge of political activities in recent weeks. Though the petition itself appeared to have come out of nowhere. The court, on Thursday, left the matter to parliament and the federal government “to clearly specify the terms and conditions of service of the COAS through an act of parliament and to clarify the scope of Article 243 of the constitution under which the government appointed Gen Bajwa”.

But this means that the debate, underlined with uncertainty and political wrangling, will continue for at least six months, the period for which the Supreme Court has given Gen Bajwa an extension. Hence, the conclusions we draw for ourselves are bound to be interim. In the midst of all this serialised spectacle of power plays, some assumptions are very obvious if you allow yourself to be rational and objective. The most glaring component of the present imbroglio is the abject failure of the existing ruling arrangement. It just does not work. And this week’s proceedings in the Supreme Court have provided fresh evidence of the national drift under the captaincy of Imran Khan.

There is no need to look across the entire spectrum of this government’s performance to interpret its inadequacies in different sectors. It should not be possible to ignore the unbearable pain that the poor and the under-privileged have to be bear because of rising inflation and unemployment.

But if there are some justifications for these supposedly temporary economic difficulties, there is absolutely no excuse for deviating from the path of democracy and progressive social development. Friday’s rallies of students in major cities demanding the right to unionise and to freedom of expression certified the fact that even ordinary benefits of a democratic dispensation have been denied to the people and they have to struggle for their rights in a very oppressive environment.

I find this Student Solidarity March relevant to this government’s resolve on matters such as the extension. We are constantly reminded that the government and the establishment are on the same page. However, do things like media and academic freedom have any space on this page? It seems unbelievable that during the rule of a party that pretends to be the voice of the youth of this country, students who fight for their rights would be harassed and rusticated from their universities. It is a very depressing situation and it raises serious questions about the nature of this government and of the understanding it has reached within the power structure. When some moves are made in the name of national security, there is still no scope for a serious debate on what national security actually means and entails.

This week, two of Imran Khan’s most consistently held political principles have bitten the dust. He was against any extensions, and he strongly advocated for the trial of retired Gen Pervez Musharraf for high treason. Yes, this was his stance before he assumed power as prime minister. Taking U-turns for the sake of political expediency is something else. Changing a course of action under the pressure of historical circumstances would be defensible at another level. But to give up a stance that was a matter of faith in your political philosophy is pretty extreme.

Consider the irony of this government filing a petition in the Islamabad High Court to seek a deferment of the verdict in the case against Gen Musharraf when Imran Khan, only a week earlier, had asked the superior judiciary to restore public trust by ending the impression about favouring the powerful against the poor. At that time, he was annoyed by Nawaz Sharif’s departure for London for treatment. Incidentally, Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa had his own response to this taunt. This state of affairs, without a doubt, is very grim. It is not just the failure of the Imran Khan experiment that has to be dealt with. The very survival of democracy is becoming an issue. There have been whispers about the options that may be under discussion, including in the political arena. We have to see if the opposition parties, with the fresh clout they have gained because of the Supreme Court decision, have a workable game plan. Some would be reminded of earlier suggestions made for a dialogue between institutions to set a pattern for civil-military relations.

Meanwhile, we have to contend with the existing environment of uncertainty, insecurity and fear. There were numerous hints about the quality of this government’s governance and flaws in the summaries presented by the legal experts during the Supreme Court hearing. Very significant was the chief justice’s revelation that there was propaganda against the bench and the three judges were called CIA agents and accused of serving India’s interests.

Many liberal and progressive commentators have faced this kind of vilification in social media. The attorney general was right in explaining that social media was not in anyone’s control. But Imran Khan himself and the PTI’s digital warriors in general have adopted the same tone against their critics.

Putting a spin on the Supreme Court verdict, Imran Khan tweeted about the disappointment of those who expected the country to be destabilised by a clash of institutions and referred to “external enemies and mafias within”. There is no U-turn in his pathological obsession about the “mafias within” – meaning his political opposition.

-The writer is a senior journalist.