Are all politicians good-for-nothing windbags? Or is it something that cannot be said about all of them?
THEY are honourable people, you know. And to boot, blue-blooded. But leaning against the political railings of a life lived in privilege, high office and rah-rah, they won’t let go and sag away into the sunset of oblivion.
Staunchly ambitious, devoted provocateurs and tested opportunists, they constantly shift loyalties. Now they have offered themselves to the highest bidder — Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, the party that will provide them with an ‘in’, since they themselves are out, having lost in the last elections.
With tongues that latch easily to politics of power, this notable bunch has borne a compost of rehashed, recycled political slogans and cliches, to catch our notice as champions of hoi polloi and democracy one more time.
But something’s got to give. The malcontent among us are trying to reason: Is it that these has-beens are getting restless waiting to walk inside the corridors of power yet once more?
Is it that lesser beings — most of them political urchins — are ruling the roost, while these good homo sapiens are out in the cold, frozen and forgotten?
Or is it really that their hearts are in the right place and they still have fire in their bellies to seize power from the present set of corrupt and unconscionable lot and give to the poor their rights that Pakistan has denied them since its birth?
Erring on the other side of grandiosity, one can wager without having to eat crow later, that the couple — Chandi and Fakhr, Iloo Soomro, Ifti Gilani and Jamali and Jogezai are folks one would have a problem finding faults with.
They are decent and not disingenuously corrupt. They are well grounded in politics and not rabblerousers. They are veterans of power and not cheap upstarts. And nouveau riche they certainly are not.
Still, they don’t possess the political oomph that stands icons apart from the herd. Nor are they exemplars of political science and how it should be practised.
Are these fair-weather warriors then staging a mere skirmish, exploiting the jingoistic climate prevailing against Musharraf, wanting to cash in with their demagoguery?
You be the judge. It’s healthy for a pluralistic society to have as many voices of protest as possible.
General Pervez Musharraf’s style of governance is showing cracks. He pledged partiality and transparency, making Himalayan promises to purge the corrupt and the liars from politics. Yes, he threw them into jail. Yes, he reincarnated the same rotten lot with a new makeover and put them back in seats of power. Yes, he pulled a fast one on his people.
But wait. The world, I mean America, has finally woken up to this chicanery, thanks in part to President Bush’s inaugural address.
Pakistan is now routinely bashed in the media as an undemocratic, despotic and autocratic state. The mullahs, the militants, the madressahs, the Islamic radicals — labels Americans loved — have been pushed to the backburner meanwhile.
But will Chandi, the Syeda from Jhang, as the convener of the Independent Democratic Group — whatever that means — seize the moment and stir up things so bad that Musharraf is bungeed into the corner and forced to announce elections this year? She thinks, she can, according to various news reports.
But can she, along with the aging lot she represents, be the catalyst of change, we’re all waiting for?
Look no further. History is the real search engine for such an answer. It is neither synthetic nor spurious. Deeds once recorded can never be erased.
If I were an historian, I would have a field day on the Biography channel, tracking the trajectory of life, travelled by these politicos, who have, since decades gone, flitted in and out of our lives and refuse to disappear from our radar screens.
I have aged watching many a misdirected government, many a sleaze bag and many an inane statement, expansive enough to bury not Pakistan but planet earth with political trivia that stinks as more gets heaped each passing day.
But back to Chandi, the battleax who defied Gen Zia by spurning his gift of a white chaddar he presented to her with a sneaky hint that the woman wear it inside the parliament house when sitting with male members of the Shura who felt violated seated beside a woman who would not cover her head.
It was the spring of 1985. I had called her from Karachi to fix an interview (she attended the phone herself), for she was the only woman who had won a seat on a general ticket and was the loudest, smartest and most effective critic of the military dictator. Chandi was making waves as never before.
A taxicab dropped me in front of the Imam residence in Islamabad. Fakhr, her husband, was the acting president, being the speaker of the house, as Zia was away on one of his foreign jinks.
A sentry stood guard outside the house of the ‘president’ and when I rang the bell, a peon of sorts, let me into the living room. It was tastefully done — all that artisan stuff she patronized at Lok Virsa, but nothing to go gaga over.
The following two hours in the company of Chandi flew fast. She unloaded much material, making for an excellent copy with great quotes — fresh and original. I came away starry-eyed. The woman certainly knew her mind and she was not afraid speaking it out. How thrilling could life get?
When next I interviewed her she was as our ambassador-designate to America. She had matured but barely toned down. Once again, she was refreshingly candid about her appointment and its opposition. Her salvos this time were reserved for the Foreign Office. Again I walked away with delectable quotes about the bad boys at the Foreign Office.
Few know that Ambassador Abida Hussain worked creatively to avert Pakistan being declared a terrorist state by America when it found the ISI general doing underhand stuff he was not supposed to be doing. She saved the day.
Always a straight shooter, she has my vote of confidence. As does the venerable Illahi Bakhsh Soomro — a gem of a man.
As for Abida Hussain’s other half — the agelast Fakhr — well, he’s come a long way from a cricket commentator to National Assembly speaker and minister. In between, the man spent several months and a heft of the taxpayer’s money, studying the civil service structure of far-flung continents like Australia, but never came up with any ingenious reforms for our CSP cadre (whom he openly despised) as commissioned by the then chief executive, Nawaz Sharif.
Whenever we quizzed the silent speaker-turned- minister- cum- CSP reformer, his droopy eyes would go a notch or two down and his one-liners would always be the same: he’s still researching.
As for Iftikhar Gilani — once the smooth-tongued, kohl-eyed legal eagle of Benazir Bhutto — we have a problem keeping pace with his political affiliations. There have been many. And he, like Abida and Fakhr Imam, has presided over the makings and breakings of several political equations that a recall of each can be an excruciating exercise in nothingness.
I call our politicians the phantoms of the opera. Like the disfigured musical genius, hidden away in the Paris Opera House, our leaders come and go in the parliament house, wearing black masks to hide their black deeds.
The phantom was brilliant, our politicians are just windbags.
Are all politicians good-for-nothing windbags? Or is it something that cannot be said about all of them?
