If a functional democracy that produces popular and electorally legitimate government is too much for Pakistan’s uber-smart expat and urban elite, then they had better close their eyes. They ain’t seen nothing yet. When the PPP is done with the national exchequer things will seem a lot more like 1996 than they have since 1996. That’s got nothing to do with corruption, and everything to do with a political system that is dependent on patronage and rewards its agents through a complex but indisputable spoils system. The trouble is that the naïve coffee-table class that reads and writes in the English language press is so uncontrollably narcissistic that it fails to recognise the inherent legitimacy of a spoils system in a country where there are over 40 million people below the official poverty line, and another 80 million that probably cannot afford to eat most of the food advertised in this newspaper. 

Desktop activism, and “auntie” politics has not achieved anything of note in Pakistan’s young history, yet having a desktop and being an “auntie” seem to have become qualifications to determine the fate of Pakistan’s 172 million people. This is sheer arrogance of a magnitude for which there are no words. Moreover, this is a kind of arrogance for which there is little evidence of justification. It is inexplicable why freshly minted Harvard and Cambridge graduates think they are smarter than illiterate, fifth-grade dropouts from villages across Sindh and southern Punjab. After all, it is the villagers that rule Pakistan, their representatives and leaders in the highest offices in the land. What have the expats, aunties and urbanites got? Not much, except a few YouTube clips of a washed up politician reading poetry. 

There can be no questioning the courage of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry. He is, and will be remembered as, among the most fearless public officials Pakistan has produced. His courage empowered and enabled not only sixty other judges to do what was right, but forced other institutions to think about their role in Pakistan’s steady slide. The military, the bureaucracy and the political elite, all have tried in varying degrees to either discredit the lawyers’ movement, or to co-opt it. This, more than anything else, should be the lens through which Pakistan’s lawyers should view their historical success. They have moved mountains on the back of the courage of one judge, and the efforts of thousands of lawyers.

No matter how genuinely spectacular this spasm of integrity was, and it was truly spectacular, the lawyers’ movement was never going to transform Pakistani politics. This is not because the judges weren’t doing the right thing. They were. This is not because the lawyers weren’t sincere. They really were. This is not because the PPP has a lot to lose by reinstating Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. It does. Read more »

The following words are written on the tomb of an Angelican Bishop (AD 1100) in the crypts of Westminster Abbey:

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits,
I dreamed of changing the world.
As I grew older and wiser I discovered the world would not change -
So I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country,
But it too seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years,
In one last desperate attempt,
I settled for changing only my family,
Those closest to me,
But alas, they would have none of it.

And now I realize as I lie on my deathbed,
If I had only changed myself first,
Then by example I might have changed my family,
From their inspiration and encouragement
I would then have been able to better my country,
And who knows, I might have even changed the world.