My New Year’s resolution was to keep a diary. Four months into the new year, I’m already regretting I didn’t get around to filling it up.
Not with my own thoughts — self-reflection is a pursuit I leave to the brave — but with the thoughts of others. Or more precisely, their predictions. In the business of politics here, everyone has predictions. Often certain facts are assumed before the predictions kick in.
I’ll explain. Everyone knows that Zardari will be forced out of the presidency. Never mind how they know this, they just really, really do. So the focus switches to the ‘when’. First it was last summer, a full nine months after he became president. Presumably that was the time required for the pregnancy of expectation to end in a successful delivery.
But summer came and went, so D-day switched to September. I guess it was reasonable to assume that a year was about the maximum those who hated Zardari and had it in their power to oust him would tolerate the man in the presidency.
So last autumn it was all, he’s done for, nobody can save him now, etc. But saved he was, by the gods who don’t like to be second-guessed perhaps, and he lived on until the end of ’09.
That’s when the frenzy really began and I promised myself I would keep a diary. One of those simple, pocket-sized ones with space to scribble notes. Date: March 15, 2010. Prediction: Zardari forced to resign. Prediction made on: Jan 12, 2010. Predictor: Mr X and Ms Y. Schadenfreude was not the motive. Or OK, maybe it was. I thought at the end of the year, I’d have a column that would write itself.
(Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, wrote last December, on the occasion of his 25th anniversary as an opinion writer, that “being a columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac — as soon as you’re done, you’ve got to do it again”. Upon reading this, a fellow tribe member in faraway Pakistan nodded, cautiously, in agreement.)
But now that I’ve arrived in fun, fun, fun Islamabad that twinge of regret has grown into full-blown sorrow. Oh, the things I could have filled my diary with. Befittingly for a town in which most may never have heard of the Tao Te Ching (“Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.”), Islamabad is a place that runs on rumour and innuendo and the like.
And certainty. Rock-solid certainty that can turn to silly putty on the most casual of second glances. I learned my first Islamabad lesson a couple of weeks ago. It was a Thursday, the day I write this column, and the constitutional amendment package was a done deal. A done deal.
Everyone was telling me that, people at the office, people on the phone, people in Islamabad. Great, I thought. The column writes itself then. So I typed out ‘An (almost) ode to democracy’ in double-quick time, thinking I’d make it to parliament later that evening to witness history in the making.
Here’s a snippet from that ill-fated piece:
“Aren’t Zardari and Sharif supposed to be the worst of the worst? Wasn’t it impossible to get a two-thirds majority in a parliament where no single party has anything approaching even a simple majority?
And yet here we are, on the threshold of establishing for the first time in decades a constitution that has the broad-based support of a genuinely elected parliament. If this isn’t an argument for democracy, I don’t know what is.”
Mian sahib, though, had other ideas. The first sign of trouble came around noon, but I had a deadline to meet, so I kept typing away. By the time the infamous 6pm press conference began, I had already sent the column to Karachi (the time stamp on the email reads: 17:52).
And then, pandemonium. Frantic calls, newsroom in shock, people too busy to talk to a lowly opinion writer, others averting their gaze as I put on my best you-Judas stare and tried to make them feel bad. Eventually, though, things started to fall in place. But it was a very different place to the one that my outsider eyes could see.
Ha, didn’t we tell you that Nawaz is working for the CJ? Actually, no, you told me that the CJ was working for Nawaz. Same difference, I guess.
Ha, didn’t we tell you that Kayani didn’t want this amendment? Actually, no, you told me that the army wanted the amendment because it was uncomfortable with Zardari selecting the next army chief.
Ha, didn’t we tell you that the establishment hates the PPP and Nawaz and Kayani will do anything to prevent the Sindhis from getting credit for anything? Hmm … I wasn’t aware that Nawaz and Kayani were on the same page. What do you know, you’re from Karachi.
Right. Couldn’t it be that Mian sahib is not against the constitutional amendment and is just trying to buy time to quell the last-minute insurrection among his party members from the NWFP? Y’know, exactly the explanation the PML-N is quietly putting out?
Never. That would be simple. And nothing is simple in Islamabad. There are wheels within wheels. You’ll learn.
And so I have.
The best I can tell, Islamabad is the same place as it seems from afar. Lots of power centres, lots of people angling for power and thoroughly unpredictable outcomes. Well, maybe not thoroughly: some things are structural, others guided by the hand of history.
The analogy is (grossly) imperfect, but it’s a bit like tossing a coin. Keep tossing a coin, and the percentage of times it will turn up heads is half (technically, it will ‘approach’ half).
But each time you toss a coin, while you know it will land either heads or tails, you will never know with anything more than 50 per cent certainty which side it will land on.
Zardari, in or out; Kayani, coup or not; April, the cruellest month or not — let me know. I’ll pencil you in in the diary I’m going out to buy tonight.
Mohammed Abbasi 