Zardari khappay

I am going to attempt doing something that many folks from the class that I belong to (urban middle-class), can’t imagine doing. I am going to praise President Zardari.

 Forget about praise, my class contemporaries don’t even bother to give him a fair critique. This is all the more baffling because in spite of the fact that these men and women are always ready to offer an objective critique of the Taliban and assorted extremists, they just cramp up when it comes to a man who may be controversial, but does not go around murdering innocent people in mosques and bazaars.
 Maybe he should start doing that – along with, of course, mixing his Edward Said and Chomsky with Mawddudi and Syed Qutb. This is bound to bag him a sympathetic trial from our oh-so-occidental, urban talking heads.
 The president I am sure is least bothered by what this section of the middle-classes have to say about him. Because how much do they mean to the on-the-ground dynamics of the kind of populist democracy that takes place in this country?
 Secondly, how many of these thousands are actually potential voters? Very few. In fact most of them find the whole idea of taking part in an election rather off-putting. The elections are never fair, y’know. 
 Nevertheless, some ‘adults’ among them have found a platform in the electronic and print media where they peddle fancy theories as startling facts and package the act of inhabited hatred towards the president as something to do with their concern for Pakistan’s moral wellbeing and sovereignty.
 The funny thing is, even though many of them have often been caught out churning out barefaced fibs and delusions, they soldier on. Losing face is never an impediment.
 But then Zardari also soldiers on. Some of his most vocal opponents too have begun to grudgingly admire his survival instincts; instincts that are a sublime mixture of astute Machiavellianism, hawkeyed pragmatism and some simple street-smartness.
 Yes, but what about things like vision?
 Well, in Pakistan (so far), any government that comes in through a democratic process has to be at its Machiavellian best to ward off the usual diatribes and manoeuvres that it has to face from what we call the ‘establishment’, and from political instruments that may not have any electoral attraction but do tend to generate enough nuisance value through the media.
 Sure this PPP-led coalition government is certainly not the most visionary thing to happen to Pakistan. But what gets lost in all the knee-jerk whining one gets to hear in urban middle-class drawing rooms and TV studious is the fact that Zardari and co. have actually managed to turn politics in this country on its head – for good.
 The concept of reconciliatory politics indicated as a thought by late Benazir Bhutto some five years ago and then first exemplified through the historic meetings between Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, is today a living, working reality.
 So what if PML-N is no more a part of it, and there is growing tension between PPP, ANP and MQM? This does not reflect a failure of the said thought and action.
 In fact it has set a positive precedent for the coming governments in a country where the whole concept of single party majority rule is now an almost implausible outcome.
 Coalition governments are the future and this government, like it or not, is setting the pattern where coalitions would be formed by mainstream parties and not by any benevolent military dictator cherry-picking his way into the parliament with the help of electoral rejects, sell-outs and assorted disgruntles.
 Unfortunately, since we are a nation that is always late to count our blessings, the media failed to grasp this aspect of new democratic politics in the country by still ‘analyzing’ it through the tainted glasses prepared by the ‘establishment’ and its political, economic and religious lackeys in the 1990s.
 They fail to notice that it is due to this reconciliatory politics that the PPP’s infamous Bhutto ego of going it alone was actually put aside – an event that has done wonders to make parties like the MQM and ANP retain their membership in the PPP-led coalition for far much longer than was expected.
 It is also this brand of politics that has made PML-N’s leadership to refuse spoiling its hands with another round of musical chairs so lovingly orchestrated by the figurative establishment and so obsessively enjoyed and contemplated by a section of the media.
 Of course PML-N would like to see the demise of Zardari’s rule, but it won’t be playing ball with any cherry-pickers, especially those still under the delusion and impression that the world awaits another (self-claimed) messiah in Pakistan. It doesn’t. The messiah cannot escape the election process anymore. He will have to dirty his hands with ballot ink like everybody else.
 The PPP, like any other party, is not beyond criticism. But the way some sections of the media have gone about attacking its every move, this is not criticism, its sheer harassment.
 The PPP-led government wasn’t handed a land blooming with a hundred flowers. Any government would have struggled in the current scenario. The current version of the party, in spite of being at the helm of a country boiling with an unprecedented number of problems, is still in a good position to formulate a lot of policies that, say, the PPP government under BB couldn’t.
 For this it must continue to engage with parties like the ANP, MQM and PML-N. In fact, it already is.
 The current PPP-led government still has a lot of potential, even if there are now more chances of early general elections.
 So, more than just concentrating on survival, this government has to come out with some bold decisions, especially in the context of what this country has been facing in the name of economics, religion, crime and governance. And though I am not an economist, I believe this government has handled the situation the best way one could in this environment. I mean how differently would any other party have acted when in 2008 the country’s economy went kaput?
 It’s very easy to chant slogans about self-reliance, but even an economic novice like me realizes that a bankrupt and defaulting Pakistan would be ten times more dangerous, chaotic and bloody than it already is.
 It is political parties like PPP, PML-N, MQM and ANP that hold the key to a better, more stable and tolerant Pakistan. Not the military, mullah and the right-wing media that the middle-classes keep calling and falling for