CURIOUSER and curiouser” said Alice in Wonderland. “Worser and worser” say I in Pakistan. “Badder and badder” say Arabs in the Middle East. Thank God we haven't reached ‘worsest' and ‘baddest' for we can't guess the limits of worser and badder. Words, damn words: they sublimate anger and frustration till we realize that we still remain in curiouser, worser and badder mode. Depression and frustration return when it eventually dawns on an excited people that their uprising was “much ado about nothing” because the protectors and beneficiaries of the grotesque status quo have hijacked their ‘revolution'. Look at Egypt. Nothing has changed except the optics. Mubarak is gone and replaced by Mubarak clones. What they call ‘revolution' has kept them in the lap of their military suffering from an American-Israeli overhang. Yes, there is one important thing to celebrate: after 5,000 years the Egyptians have finally found their voice and grown a spine – an important paradigm shift. Look at Pakistan: we were promised the dawning of the age of real democracy when rivers of milk and honey would start flowing once an independent judiciary was restored. Three years later we are reminded of Faiz's poem on our independence: Yeh dagh dagh ujala, yeh shub guzeeda sehar; voh intizar tha jis ka yeh voh sehar to nahin. (After a long, dark night this blood-spattered dawn; this is not the dawn that we were longing for.) Today we look hard for democracy and find only a charade. We search for those fabled rivers but our milk bottles remain empty, our honey jars barren. Caught in a vicious circle of abject poverty piled upon wretchedness while a few prosper, we wonder: “How do we square this Circle of Iniquity? Back to square one is not squaring it. It is fortifying it.” Words are a safety valve against social explosion (and implosion) that would upset the status quo. So are a parliament, no matter how dysfunctional; free media, no matter its embarrassing pandering to the lowest common denominator; a judiciary trying to punch above its weight; an executive comprising a gaggle of cats with their tails tied in mutual self-serving preservation and a president who does not symbolize the federation because he wears two hats, which erodes his neutrality. I am one of those people who have argued that the political process spawned by this system, however bad, should continue until it comes to its natural conclusion. It seems a forlorn hope but one day it might sort itself out and start working for us. It is not that I am an admirer of the Westminster parliamentary system – in fact I have waged a veritable Jihad of the pen against it for 20 years. It is not that I don't know of a system that might work better for us, one in which the legislature and the executive are totally separate and independent of each other. IN such a system the executive would not be born from parliament's womb. When it is, as in our system, a feudal-dominated parliament captures the levers of executive authority and is thus unable to provide the necessary checks and balances against potential executive excesses. When the executive exceeds its authority, parliament, instead of checking it and bringing balance back to the three branches of government, either goes along with it or remains silent. People are gradually beginning to understand this. Ayaz Amir, one of our better columnists, wrote the other day: “Even if, when elections are attempted [note the doubt in ‘attempted'], the same lot we see today are recycled, to increase the sum of our misery and despair, it will still have been worth it because stagnant waters become clearer and lose some of their slime with a bit of movement.” Throw a stone into a pond covered with algae. The slime will dissipate in a circle, but for a time. Soon, it returns to suffocate the pond again. I CAN understand his frustration. Perhaps Amir sees the system dying but wants it to continue for lack of any other. And even if there were, how does one make the switch with consensus? I too want this system to continue, but for a different reason: frustration. The alternative, military rule, however well meaning, doesn't change anything and often makes it worse because the military too is part of the system. It intervenes to save the status quo, not change it. In the end we are back to where we started, sometimes even behind it. So let the system continue till we evolve to a place where we can forge a native system that works, if ever. “If ever? You're getting negative again, Humayun Gauhar.” Look, unlike nations and countries, states are modern manmade entities that come and go. Ponder the land we are sitting on. The Himalayas have seen many states come and die? They haven't shed a tear. As Altaf Gauhar once famously wrote: ‘Mountains don't cry'. Only perfidious humans do. Political waters don't get stagnant in the sense that they stand still. The forces of history keep them moving. The question is: “In which direction are our waters moving – forward, backward or in a downward vortex?” I fear ours is the last. Continuity of something bad means perpetuation of the vicious Circle of Iniquity. Enough of philosophizing and cogitating. Politics abhors a vacuum. If politicians cannot fill it, the most organized and powerful force does. It has happened throughout human history except in a few states for at least 200 years. Our rulers fail to see the constitutional contradiction in a head of state also being the head of a political party. They fail to see that the three branches of government, instead of working in tandem, are in conflict, not least because none quite understands its functions and limits. We are in the throes of a death dance, like a scorpion with sunstroke that eventually stings itself to death. Some have likened us to a snake eating its own tail. Words again, only damn words. The reality is that in this deadly charade the situation goes from bad to badder and the misery of millions of people goes from worse to worser. This cannot persist, no matter what we wordsmiths and wiseacres say. “The time for action has come” sticks in the throat like a lump of hypocrisy. Action is always there. The point is: if the people who are suffering don't act, someone else will. The Himalayas won't cry. They will nod wisely for they've seen it all before. – The writer is an OP
