Nobody writes to
the rebel anymore
Rashed Rahman
(With apologies
to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)
While Pakistan
and the world reel in shock, horror, condemnation and mourning for the barbaric
massacre of Muslims at Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15,
2019, the people of Pakistan could be forgiven for arguing they have far more
to mourn than the loss of 51 innocent lives of their brethren-in-faith. Happily
though, Pakistani-origin Naeem Rashid, who attempted to tackle the white
supremacist gunman and was killed along with his son, has been acknowledged by
Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and a civil award for bravery will be conferred
on him on Pakistan Day, March 23, 2019.
Islamophobia is
the reverse of the coin minted by jihadist groups operating in and away from
Muslim countries. The Muslim terrorist phenomenon owes its origins to the
Afghan wars stretching over the last four decades. However, despite initial
support to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan by the US-led west and
Pakistan, the phenomenon even to this day represents but a thin sliver of
Muslim opinion throughout the globe. That has not prevented racist, white
supremacist hate-mongers to tar all Muslims with the same ‘terrorist’ brush to
justify their attacks on Muslims in their own countries.
The Christchurch
attacks have focused minds as never before on the rampant Islamophobia to be
found in far-right, neo-fascist circles in the developed world. They have been
responsible for a series of attacks and massacres of Muslim immigrants in their
countries. Fundamentalist assertion of free speech, ignoring the sensitivities
and possible fallout, has encouraged some circles to mock Islam and its Prophet
(PBUH). The west having traversed a history of the incremental decline of
religion (Christianity) in their societies, think nothing of mocking a church
that has besmirched itself in recent years through the sexual abuse (ongoing)
scandals that have rocked it. But that is not the case with Muslim societies,
in which religious belief is still deeply held and even the ‘bad’ Muslim will
be outraged at the mocking of his faith. The cycle of hatred and violence by
Muslim fanatics and terrorists and its counter-blast from Islamophobic
hate-mongers has to be tackled before the whole world descends into atavistic
barbarism.
The foreign
ministers of the toothless Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) have been
invited to a summit in Istanbul on March 22, 2019 by present revolving chair
Turkish President Recip Erdogan to address the issue of Islamophobia. Not to
prejudge the outcome but the OIC’s ability to change the present global
landscape of hate and ‘othering’ (mutual to both sides of the hate coin, it
must be admitted) is open to question. However, anti-immigration, racist
leaders of the west like US President Donald Trump need to reverse course and
policy if rivers of blood are to be stopped before they begin to flow.
While the world
grapples with this issue, the people of Pakistan (as hinted at in the opening
sentence) have more than their fair share of woes to deal with. Saddled with a
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government led by PM Imran Khan through a controversial
election in 2018, the people of Pakistan are groaning under skyrocketing
inflation, unemployment, insecurity of life and limb, and little or no
prospects of any relief in sight. The PTI government could be forgiven for
inexperience, but incompetence stemming from little or no homework before
assuming office and contradictory policies are harder to forgive eight months
down the road. The government has been unable to shake off its aura of being
rudderless, still in opposition ‘container’ mode rather than in government, and
unable to offer much except reliance on financial bailouts from friendly
countries as a preliminary to going back to the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) for a programme centring on balance of payments and budgetary support
(both inflicted with stubborn deficits). The corruption mantra of the PTI,
stemming from its agitational opposition mode, needs to be interrogated on the
touchstone of credibility, effectiveness, and fallout.
Corruption is
endemic in our system from top to bottom. Targeting a few opposition leading
figures and bureaucrats suspected of loyalty to the previous governments of the
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) may reap
political satisfaction to the incumbents, but it falls far short of a serious,
systemic change in the loopholes that allow corruption. In the process, helped
by the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB’s) ham-handed methodology, the cry
of ‘victimisation’ from those targeted erodes the credibility of the
anti-corruption drive, whether those targeted deserve it or not. The
bureaucracy, gripped by fear of being dragged over the coals has, in time
honoured fashion, ‘shut shop’ by refusing to take decisions that could later be
used against them by NAB (as has happened to a few prominent bureaucrats).
Paralysis of government is the inevitable outcome.
The indigenous
business community is wooed on the one hand to assist the PTI government in
reviving a sinking economy, while the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR), under
pressure from the government to meet its revenue targets, is conducting raids
on businesses with dubious legal validity and in the process destroying what
remains of business confidence. Local investment therefore is harder to obtain
than seeking a needle in a haystack. The FBR ‘raiders’ are having a field day
in extorting bribes from business houses raided to exempt them from the further
unwanted attentions of the tax machinery. Now finally there is talk in
government circles of stopping this practice that is reaping negative dividends
even where enhanced revenue is concerned.
The PTI
government has yet to introduce a single piece of legislation in the last eight
months in parliament (the hurried passing of a bill to enhance Punjab Assembly
members’ salaries is perhaps the dubious and controversial exception, that has
even earned the ire of PM Imran Khan in a situation where public finances are
short and the people suffering). Given the arithmetic of the Assemblies, the
government has no hope of passing significant legislation without the
cooperation of the opposition (especially in the Senate), the very opposition
government ministers from the PM down waste not a single opportunity to
badmouth. The government wants, for example, to extend the life of the military
courts set up in 2015 after the Army Public School Peshawar massacre of
children and students by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorists, whose extended
tenure expires on March 30, 2019. But for this, a constitutional amendment is required.
Without the opposition’s help therefore, this is unlikely to pass muster.
The working class,
peasantry, youth, women (despite the admirable, broad-based Women’s March this
year) and minorities have all been left abandoned. They have little hope from either
the older parties or the governing incumbents. With the decline of the Left,
they lack a credible and effective champion to take up their cause/s. Hence the
title of this piece, which reflects the current reality that critics, dissidents
and rebels who oppose the present iniquitous, exploitative economic system and
reject the parties representing at the core the interests of various factions
of the elite are marginalised and struggling for relevance. The challenge for
them is formidable in a global climate of writing off the Left’s vision,
although green shoots of resistance are sprouting everywhere, even in the heart
of global capitalism, the US.
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