Manufacturing Martial Law?

We Pakistanis have a finely developed sense of conspiracy, so when we see the army’s usual supporters out in force, we naturally suspect that the army is behind this and is itching to take over

by Omar Ali

Pakistan is in the grip of one of its periodic eruptions of speculation about impending martial law. At least, it looks like that on TV. For weeks, the largest news channel in the country has been shamelessly promoting the army’s role in flood relief as if the army is an opposition party, bravely stepping in to do work that the “corrupt politicians” who rule the country do not want to —or  cannot —do. The fact that the army is an instrument of the state and that its efforts are part and parcel of the sitting government’s response to the emergency has not registered with the anchors at [ ] news.

It has not stopped there: various failed politicians who are unable to survive on their own, but always find a happy home under martial law, are crawling out of the woodwork to lament the terrible situation and endlessly repeat the phrase “after all, things cannot go on like this, something must be done”. But what is this “something”? Do they want the sitting government to resign? Do they want the opposition to bring in a vote of no-confidence? Do they perhaps want the president to dissolve the assemblies? No, none of these legal or quasi-legal alternatives will do in this hour of national emergency. What has set their tongues wagging is the possibility that “patriotic generals” may be forced to step in and save the country. And as if on cue, the MQM’s Altaf Hussain has stepped forward with the suggestion that a “patriotic general” may indeed be better than “feudal politicians”. Naturally all this has raised the hopes of some sections of the Punjabi middle class, who are eternally unhappy with the “illiterate masses” and “corrupt politicians” and apparently go to bed dreaming of Bonaparte riding in on his white horse to “create more provinces and increase national unity and sense of purpose”.

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