A FORMER prime minister, a former finance minister and a former senator walked into a crowded hall to reimagine, rather than simply imagine à la John Lennon. It is perhaps a comment about the state of Pakistan, where, despite the multitude of crises, it is the unemployed and the sidelined who are doing the reimagining.

Those in power and the popular are too busy appointing cabinet members (pro bono) and focal persons (to fill jails, as if overcrowding has ever bothered those in charge).

But it has to be said that it is rare for politicians who are not in government (Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is the exception here, for like Ajay Devgan’s balancing act between two bikes, he straddles two worlds, of the government and the unemployed) to have generated so much interest.

The three ‘mavericks’, as Dawn has christened them, are now gossiped about in hushed tones just as much as the royal, feuding brothers, Harry and Wills.

But more so than the question about what they are up to, is the question about their possible ‘backers’ or patrons. ‘Reimagine kay peechay kya hai?’ goes the popular question. Is their midwife the same one who has always birthed our politics?

In some ways, it is a question which in the immediate context appears a bit illogical. Why would ‘they’ support a trio of which one is said to have lost his Senate seat at their request (or is it behest)? Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar had his differences with his leadership but he may have survived in the Senate had he not begun to tweet about the treatment being meted out to those accused of sedition and who may have been behind it.

And then there is Miftah Ismail, who was said to be close to ‘them’ but then ‘they’ were fine with his summary replacement; ‘they’ didn’t think he could save the economy but now he will be part of the Marvel team to save the Pakistan universe?

The focus on invisible hands destroys our ability to understand events for what they are.

But then I digress. The gossip around politicians-turned-think-tankers highlights our habit as a people to assume that the establishment is behind every major political development in Pakistan.

As pointed out by a friend, who usually is the lightbulb behind the intelligent things I say, our history is so replete with orchestrated events that we are incapable of viewing any development as being free of the heavy, invisible — or is it just visible? — hand. And with good reason.

From the rise of the PML-N to that of Imran Khan, to meddling with elections to choosing finance ministers, the hand is nearly everywhere. It didn’t just begin in 2018; for those of us who are old enough, remember 1990 also!

This is not a phenomenon limited to recent times or to Punjab. For the longest, many of the traditional KP politicians were certain the PTM was a creation of you know who.

This is when the movement was holding huge gatherings in different places and its support seemed to have erupted out of the blue. Perhaps it is easier to blame someone than accept one’s own irrelevance or failure.

But this focus on invisible hands also destroys our ability to understand events for what they are and analyse what is about to happen.

Take the PTI. In the focus on the assistance the party got, many were unable to see the genuine popularity of the party, however little or extensive it was in 2018. And then last year, it took more than the rallies and by-election results for people to come to terms with it. The surprise was all the bigger because so many signs of the changes taking place had been missed.

For instance, after the July 2022 results, a politician from Punjab pointed out that the PTI, while it had been losing by-elections in the province, had been improving its tally.

He referred to the Daska election in particular — where the PTI candidate who had scored around 60,000 votes in 2018, had managed over 90,000 in 2021. This was not lost on the politicians on the ground but for those of us watching from afar, the larger game of machinations made us oblivious to the people on the ground.

We have been held hostage for so long, we are incapable of recognising or attributing agency to individuals or the people. And this is why 2022 took us by surprise and so many of us were unable to realise how well the PTI would do in July.

Anyway, coming back to the ‘mavericks’, there is so far much circumstantial evidence to suggest they are bumbling in the dark without much of a guiding hand. For our heavy hands are too used to their well-worn scripts.

In these crumpled, coffee-stained outlines, hope rests either with the new and untested, as with Nawaz Sharif in the 1990s and Imran Khan in 2018, or with the tried and tested, such as the MQM in its nth avatar or Shehbaz Sharif in 2022. And let’s not forget these scripts also have preferences for locations.

Yash Chopra may have a preference for Switzerland, and those with budgetary limitations chose scenic spots within India, but for us, it has to be the Punjab heartland. Lahore — or Islamabad — or another big city, easily reached by TV cameras so that the press conference where they come all guns blazing can be beamed into every household. Remember Mustafa Kamal and his return from obscurity to launch PSP?

Holding a think-tank type of event and that too in Balochistan, with two individuals from Punjab and another from Karachi, is the kind of idealistic codswallop only sidelined politicians can come up with.

For our best potboiler scripts never begin in Quetta. It’s not the meet-cute Pakistani people are used to. One should wait for the press conference in Islamabad before looking out for the heavy hands. In the meantime, it would perhaps be better to ask why politicians who could have easily sided with a ruling coalition are taking the road less travelled. What does this say about the parties in power?

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2023