Mir Adnan Aziz is a freelance contributor.
A System Run by Opportunists
About two centuries ago, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, penned his acclaimed Alice in Wonderland which has since never been out of print. The tale starts with a dream in which Alice falls down a rabbit hole. She ends up in Wonderland, a place where nothing makes sense and expressed words have the opposite meaning. It is a bizarre world where the odd is reality and words are meant to deceive without any consequences. This riveting tale could well be the essence of our ruling dispensations.
Our governance cycles have remained bizarre and replete with self-centered deeds. The deceptive jugglery of words has a cabal claiming their Midas touch as the means to their brimming coffers. They occupy the corridors of power with unchallenged impunity.
This dichotomy has seen dictatorships and democracies alike, clinically dispossessing the masses of their future and dignity. We are hostages to a system that serves the insatiable needs of a handful. In doing so, the future of the nation is ransomed. Roman philosopher Epicurus summed up this paradigm aptly saying: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
Totally devoid of empathy, these rulers remain callously indifferent to the plight of their people. This mindset has prevailed as public offices morphed into hubs of cronyism and venality. The Sharif/Zardari years had an unchallenged run abetted by the (musical chair) Charter of Democracy, the 18th Amendment to the constitution, and an NFC Award that had the provinces getting more than their due share of funds. It should have been a boon for the masses; it proved to be the bane of democracy itself.
In between, we had General Musharraf, a magistratus extraordinarius (extraordinary magistrate)—the title of the Roman Empire’s sole decision-maker. This individual made Pakistan a frontline state in America’s war yet again. In doing so, he opened the gates of hell to what would become a devastated Pakistan.
Not content with this, Musharraf’s NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance), brokered by the USA’s Mark Boucher and Britain’s Mark Lyall Grant, legitimized crime and corruption by ushering in alleged criminals back to power. The subservient script remained unchanged, Mark Lyall being a descendant of James Lyall who colonized Lyallpur (Faisalabad) planning it on the pattern of the Union Jack. For once, General Mattis was spot on in asserting in his autobiography Call Sign Chaos that, “Pakistan was a country born with no affection for itself”.
Pakistan’s New Government & Washington’s Whims
It took a person like former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to subvert this humiliating and excruciating status quo chokehold. We saw the machinations that followed Imran Khan to the prime minister’s office. His Nostradamic prophecy that everybody across the divide would gang up against him proved starkly true. Aided and abetted by the ever-ready cabal here, it culminated in the Washington-sponsored no-confidence motion against the devoutly Pakistan-centric Imran Khan.
It was then zealously described by ALL complicit quarters as a dime-a-dozen intervention rather than the blatant money and power-induced subversive regime change that it was. These attempts at obfuscating Washington’s brazen putsch are anti-Pakistan, amoral, and can lead to dangerous consequences.
The governing cabal acceptable to Washington, as proven yet again, is one that spinelessly follows the Shakespearean dictum of thy wish is my command. The efforts of former Prime Minister Imran Khan to bring this Pakistani lot to book in open and shut corruption cases proved to be fruitless and a manipulated battle of attrition.
This mastery at machinations saw a convicted Nawaz Sharif flying off to his palatial Avenfield abode to mastermind conspiracies at leisure. The result saw a chameleon coalition of all hues – Pakistan’s new government – brokering their way back to power again. Could any paradigm be so humiliating, so immoral and so grotesque?
What can be a greater indictment of this cabal’s mindset than the post-Madinah incident cases registered against Imran Khan and others and atrociously giving it a blasphemy twist? Unleashed as a state-sponsored hydra, this bigotry is lethal for the very fabric of our society. This is being done against a person who has proved to be a torchbearer, advocate, and defender against blasphemy and Islamophobia – a fact acknowledged by Muslims across the world.
It was only the consistent advocacy of the Pakistani prime minister – Imran Khan – that was the catalyst eliciting anti-Islamophobia statements from President Putin and Prime Minister Trudeau. It was also the only factor that led to the UN declaring an annual anti-Islamophobia day.
Despite this and many other people-centric laudable initiatives and achievements, the recent events that brought in Pakistan’s new government proved that instead of exorcising our politics without fear or favor, our status quo system remains mired in the rabbit hole of Washington’s subservience and proven fallacies.
One can easily connect the dots and timelines. The Donald Lu threat was followed by the US Ambassador and a kaptaan chappal-clad US Consul General William Makaneole holding frenzied meetings with our ever-shifty political drifters. One can well imagine the obeisance guarantees and ironclad assurances of compliance that enabled this mug-shot montage – Pakistan’s new government – to assume power again.
England was eliminated from the 1986 Football World Cup by a handball that was Maradona’s foul goal. He dubbed it the hand of God. Likewise, Washington’s conspiracies against Imran Khan, aided and abetted by many here – including Pakistan’s new government – are being touted as a much-needed virtuous deed rather than the infamy that it was.
The Pakistani Prime Minister Against the Odds
Imran Khan violated the dichotomous inverted world of our status quo cabal and refused to kowtow to Washington diktats, unlike any other Pakistani prime minister. He also dared the unthinkable by bluntly refusing to fight or abet Washington’s wars that the latter is prone to losing humiliatingly on its own. The cardinal sin was the naming and shaming of ALL the characters of this dubious, shady, and murky world – a sacrilege indeed!
The defining achievement of Imran Khan has been to educate the masses about the humiliating pitfalls of Washington’s servility and the insatiable lust of our tried and tested cabal that enables it. This has led to the vehement and overwhelming rejection of the re-imposition of this mug-shot montage.
The nation has had its fill of this monarchical lot that has lorded over us for decades. We have had equally enough of Washington’s excruciating yoke of bondage that has always remained around the necks of each one of us. Pakistanis remain ever-united with Imran Khan to neutralize the fouls and unravel the tangles that Washington and our very own have, yet again, thrust upon us. It shall be a great service that this reality is accepted by all state quarters to enable the ever-awaited due dignity and sovereignty of what we otherwise call our motherland.
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