FOR all that changes in the country, the khaki-coloured reality TV show that is power politics is on a perpetual loop. Individual characters can and do evolve, but the storyline inevitably comes back to the self-proclaimed uniformed guardians of the state.

What many commentators called an ‘unprecedented’ press conference by the heads of the ISI and ISPR confirmed that the military establishment is desperate to restore its public image in the face of Imran Khan’s populist barrage. But let us be reminded that the establishment’s having to undertake a strategic retreat after a political engineering experiment has gone wrong is not unprecedented.

Most recently this happened in 2008 when Gen Musharraf’s nine-year dictatorship reached its ignominious end. Jog the memory and one will recall that not insignificant numbers of otherwise historically pro-establishment segments of society were on the streets chanting slogans against the establishment’s excesses. Then army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani ordered military personnel to return to the barracks by eschewing all civilian engagement.

The more general pattern goes something like this: the establishment is seen to cultivate a distrust of politics and politicians amongst a significant majority of the population. It depicts a particular political option as more palatable than the rest, and then that actor’s rise to elected office is engineered. And then, almost inevitably, the marriage of convenience starts to sour and the ‘good guy’ metamorphoses into yet another ‘bad guy’.

Almost inevitably, the marriage of convenience starts to sour.

Has Imran Khan finally bitten off more than he can chew? Will there be another change of heart amongst the top brass before or during the ‘long march’ after a backdoor meeting? Such rhetorical questions never have a definitive answer. Indeed, it is the reduction of political life to palace intrigues that the persistent rinse-and-repeat cycle has achieved.

Lest we have forgotten, far less forceful political personalities than Imran Khan have run afoul of their benefactors. Mohammad Khan Junejo, for instance, was perceived to be Gen Ziaul Haq’s handmaiden, but he developed too much of a spine for the good general’s liking, and was packed off accordingly. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his daughter Benazir and Nawaz Sharif are much more prominent names that both played ball with generals and wore the ‘anti-establishment’ mantle.

The question, as ever, is how to transcend the perpetual loop. I want to call attention to two interrelated aspects of the current conjuncture that both reflect historical continuity and the emergent structural conditions within which meaningful anti-establishment politics will have to take root.

First, the mass media reinforces palace intrigues more and more with each passing day. As is now common knowledge, Imran Khan’s rise was greatly enabled by both TV and social media platforms. The deposed prime minister has certainly been able to rally his support base through the mass media in the six months since the vote of no-confidence, to the chagrin of his previous benefactors. But all sides in this apparently no-holds-barred conflict rely on sensationalism; there is no deep interrogation of class and state power.

Meanwhile, the highly nebulous series of events that culminated in the murder of prime time anchor Arshad Sharif in Kenya have led to questions about the cynical manner in which individual voices can be silenced in the course of high-stakes games.

All of us are increasingly hostage to the tyranny of the news cycle. In the midst of ‘unprecedented’ struggles within the highest echelons of power, who even cares about the tens of millions who are still stranded after this summer’s floods? And what about the real victims of militarisation like missing persons and working mas­ses being dispossessed of their homes, liveliho­ods and historical cultures?

Second, the mass of (predominantly young) people that have flocked to Imran Khan’s narrative are likely to continue being moved by empty signifiers like rule of law, foreign conspiracy and anti-corruption. These are, in fact, the same rhetorical devices that have been deployed by the establishment from the early 1950s when the seeds were sown for the Ayub Khan dictatorship. This rhetoric dies hard, as does the idealised ‘middle-class’ subject that embodies it — in fact both harken to colonial-era political logics.

If we are ever to break out of our perpetual, militarised loop, we must transcend such insular political idioms and the ideological fiction of a ‘clean middle class’. The real problems facing hundreds of millions of working people have to do with unbridled capital accumulation and the racialised, gendered operation of power in the nooks and crannies of society on a daily basis. In this sordid story, both ‘selectors’ and ‘selected’ have nowhere to hide.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2022