June 20, 2004

‘Everybody in PPP has been approached with offers. The ISI’s shopping list contains the names of all the 342 MNAs. I am one of them, but I can’t tell you what is the reward flashed before my eyes,’ says Aitzaz Ahsan

WHERE are those seductive arguments smacking of vainglory? Where is the ilan that launched a thousand speeches inside the Parliament and outside the jalsa gah over dog-gone decades, throwing up frenzied masses vying unconditional love for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)? Carrying serendipity and a mojo few men possess, young Aitzaz Ahsan became a devoted provocateur and accidental humanitarian for Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his daughter, Benazir.

Forty years past, the Chaudhry from Gujrat — unlike the geckos of Gujrat — is still wedded to the PPP; he still carries the Cambridge peppiness; he still has the gift of the gab.

What then is his persona missing?

Waning is the passion, browned off is the boundless energy, jaded is the will to jostle when challenged. Since Benazir’s exit, he’s been frozen out.

I call him a “grass widower” waiting for Bhutto. Aitzaz gives a wry smile, letting go of the comment, as he looks outside at the passing New Jersey landscape on a wet Sunday afternoon.

I try again: So will you wait indefinitely? Say, till eternity?

“Look. Benazir Bhutto will come to Pakistan one day.”

When?

“I can’t say.”

Is there life beyond Benazir?

“We’re lost!” cuts in the man behind the wheel, quite out of the blue.

Are you putting words in Aitzaz’s mouth? My question was for him, not you, I admonish my husband driving us to Edison, where an Urdu conference is in progress.

“Actually, we are genuinely lost in the conundrum — both on the road and in Pakistan, to answer your question,” Aitzaz lightens up.

“The political structure is totally subservient to the will of the Army Chief. The PML (Q) office bearers are directly nominated by Musharraf. The Military-Mullah Alliance has cheated Amin Fahim’s right to lead the Opposition, despite having the backing of 81 members of the National Assembly as opposed to 64 members of MMA.”

Pouring scorn over Musharraf’s “doublespeak”, he says that to the Americans, he presents himself as a bulwark against the “fundamentalists” while to MMA, he cons them into “believing that if he’s ousted, the Americans will do in the mullahs.” So who are Gen Musharraf’s (ill) advisors?

“His Corps Commanders.”

And “shining Shaukat Aziz is all that Musharraf wants America to see and not what is below him — the galloping poverty; unemployment; collapse of civil society; Karachi’s descent into chaos; minuscule foreign investment and stunted economic growth ... we are courting disaster by coddling the fundamentalists.”

The self-fulfilling prophecy made by Aitzaz may have already set in motion the forces that have resulted in the latest murderous attack on Karachi’s Corps Commander, Gen Ahsan Salim Hayat, Musharraf’s close advisor!

The former Financial Times babe, Christina Lamb’s narrative (Waiting for Allah) outlining the high jinks of BB’s bibulous federal ministers — with Aitzaz in the gig — makes a travesty of the male libido of our politicians and army men.

Can it be that the accounts are wildly exaggerated? Can it be that the lovely Ms Lamb was merely settling a personal score against the interior minister (Aitzaz) who declined to extend her stay? No one can second-guess, but what we know about Aitzaz is that the man has paid a price for his loyalty by locking horns with army dictators and lathi-charged more times than we care to count!

Even Nawaz Sharif’s goons took a crack at him, breaking open his head, lacerating his face and limbs right outside the Parliament House when Sharif was the PM!

Today, marginalized by the “Military-Mullah Alliance” in spite of being the largest political party in the country with the largest number of votes polled in last elections, the PPP-P is in bed with its adversary, the PML (N). “While we agree with them on most issues, we are sharply divided over the Wana operation because we will not support foreign terrorists to destabilize Pakistan. We want to de-link ourselves with the fundamentalists (MMA) who have historically supported terrorist groups.”

What does he think of the lotas?

“It’s zero plus zero for these turncoats who are puppets on a string being manipulated by Musharraf. I have always maintained that it is far more dignified for us to sit in the Opposition, rather be called lotas by our voters. Also, had Amin Fahim accepted the prime ministership, Musharraf would have by now kicked out our government!”

Benazir Bhutto has a “brilliant record of re-absorbing mavericks in her party” says Aitzaz, but he thinks that the PPP has seen the last of the lotas. Faisal Saleh Hayat, Aftab Sherpao and Rao Sikander are “unlikely to return to BB”. While only 21 out of 81 turned lotas in the PPP camp, “PML (N) leadership left enmasse.” Has the army ever tried buying Aitzaz? And at what price?

“Everybody in PPP has been approached with offers. The ISI’s (intelligence agency) shopping list contains the names of all the 342 MNAs it wants to buy off! I, too, am one of them, but I can’t tell you what is the reward flashed before my eyes.”

Perhaps the prime ministership?

Aitzaz declines to answer my question.

Falling in love at first sight, 27 years later, Bushra is still hooked on the Barrister from Gray’s Inn. Aitzaz and his ‘better half’ are visiting their old school friends in New Jersey — the couple who played cupid and got the two Lahoris lined up for marriage.

“I am very lucky to have bagged the best bachelor,” says Bushra, who reminds me how her beau in shining armour pierced the thick walls erected by “judges indulging in nepotism”, shamelessly advancing their relatives careers by blocking Aitzaz’s foray into law. “I can’t name those judges,” when I ask her their identity.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, with a glad eye for brilliance, immediately hand-picked the flinty eyed ‘Mard-i-Momin’, making the twenty-something his minister. I remember how each morning a black Mercedes-Benz sporting a Pakistani flag and a gunman in tow would deliver “Mrs Minister” at Kinnaird College, while jaws-dropped as we gawked at her handsome escort sitting beside her. We became voyeurs of the perks of power invested by ZAB on the young of that scintillating era.

Today, the Ahsan’s three children — all Ivy Leaguers — do their parents real proud. Speaking on their behalf, Bushra insists that they must “return to their homeland to serve their people.” Pakistan is in the “grip of military-clergy maelstrom.”

Is having a woman to serve any different than a man? Surely, Aitzaz must by now understand a woman’s chemistry better?

There’s nothing extraordinarily different in having a woman boss as compared to a male, Bushra brushes aside my question: “We look at Benazir as a person, gender is irrelevant.”

But she did allow her husband to interfere in her work and even cause her downfall?

“Benazir was a victim of army manipulation during her rule. Having said that, she could have operated differently and tried forging alliances with her enemies instead of alienating them to a point of no return. She could have met Nawaz Sharif halfway to fight the common enemy —the Establishment. But she didn’t.”

And being Zardari-centric?

“One cannot absolve her of allowing her husband to interfere, if at all he did.”

Bushra, who calls Aitzaz a “White Panda” (extinct species) claims that her husband “never put personal interest before the national; never put personal wealth before the collective good of the nation. He always stood back, reviewed the situation and never shied away from telling Benazir if a wrong was being committed.”

Indeed, Aitzaz has served loyally a woman for decades, even fought her and Asif Zardari’s legal battles gratis and won many in the courts of law over the years.

Attacking the judiciary as “feckless”, the wife of the longest-serving PPP zealot (call him a jiyala) accuses the “judges for validating military governments.”

Disheartened by the death of democracy and the political zanies roaming the wasteland, the unbearable lightness of being alone is wearing her down: “At this time of my life, I am terribly saddened to see our democratic institutions singed. My dream has collapsed. In the 27 years of my teaching career (she has taught English at the University of Lahore College), I never once lost focus on my students. But I am sorry to say now I am calling it a day. A heft of my girl students have their moral compasses facing the wrong direction, brain-washed by the clergy and blinded by the orthodox media — they seem to have regressed into mediaeval Islam, instead of adopting its progressive and forward-looking teachings.”

How is society at large dealing with a changed Pakistan?

“Shunning the outside world and its grimness, everyone is shamelessly self-absorbed, greedy for the latest gizmos to convert their well-guarded homes into a piece of America,” Bushra describes the well-heeled, whose only aim in life is to “earn money, so that they can eat and later burn it off in their trendy gyms.”

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