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There are no shortcuts to wellness. Neither to Shifa.
The events of the last week have shown yet again that Imran Khan remains more relevant to the system than the government may acknowledge, and less relevant than PTI imagines. The distance between jail ward and hospital ward is – no surprise – tortuously long and tantalisingly short.
And so begins another episode of the never-ending soap opera whose tiresome characters struggle to deal with the twists and turns of the script they have no control over. There’s more in store this coming week as the Supreme Court takes up the government’s petition to decide if Khan is trucked to Shifa or PIMS or stays put in Adiala. Never has so much hype – and breathless coverage – followed events that mean so little. Yes, you heard that right – so little.
The Supreme Court’s order, the government’s quasi-panicked reaction, the flowering of a thousand deliciously palatable conspiracy theories, and the PTI’s barely restrained exuberance – all these produced a combustible politico-chemical reaction that appeared to have redrawn the contours of Pakistan’s hard realities. Whereas, in fact, it did not. There’s only so much ferocity a storm can generate inside a teacup.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying Khan’s health and the purported legal relief is, in of itself, unimportant. It is not. For him, and his family, and his millions of supporters, it is priority number one. As it should be. His shifting to a hospital, as and when it happens, will also trigger fresh personal and political dynamics. His interactions with family, friends and party leaders will bring greater clarity in PTI’s confused policy. It may even soften the ground for meaningful conversations between PTI and the government. At the very minimum, this will provide all sides an opportunity to re-engage in a more amicable way. All this is, as I said, not un-important.
But in the larger scheme of things, as they stand today, it fairly is. For once in recent years, the conversation in powerful quarters is focused less on Khan and more on Pakistan’s external and internal strategic challenges and opportunities. At best, Khan is a means to these ends. This distinction is crucial in order to understand the logic driving the system.
In its most simplified form, the external mapping includes the following: (i) how to establish a sustainable foothold in the geo-politics of West Asia and the Middle East (ii) how to institutionalise, operationalise, and if needed, expand the trilateral defence pact (iii) how to leverage the above two points for greater economic integration and deeper financial and investment linkages (iv) how to keep mediation alive between the US and Iran, and finally (v) how to become a key player in the new and emerging security architecture of the region.
There’s of course the nuisance on our eastern and western borders that also requires to be sorted out.
The internal mapping looks something like this: (a) how to ensure continuity of reform agenda through continuity of the system (b) how to restructure the governance architecture as part of the reform agenda (c) how to stagger the reform agenda over the next few years with clearly delineated timelines (d) how to manage the domestic political arrangement so that there are no unexpected convulsions (e) how to soften the political fault lines so all major political stakeholders can be brought on board the reform agenda, and finally (f) how to get all this done without any major changes in the present governing set-up.
These external and internal challenges add up to a total of eleven. For context, the hype surrounding the winding road to Shifa is merely one out of these eleven (Internal point ‘e’).
What further reinforces this context is the changing nature of what constitutes an agenda for a public discourse and how substantive that is in the real scheme of things. Let me simplify.
In a hybrid system, the space for public discourse shrinks. This shrinkage is quantitative (how much can be discussed) as well as qualitative (what can be discussed). It is the latter that really transforms the nature of the discourse. In the present context, this means public hype surrounds matters that are of lesser consequence. The real consequential stuff flows as an undercurrent beneath the media conversation. It is this agenda that really forms the backbone of how the eleven points I have mentioned above are being addressed by the system.
Consider the following: Cabinet approved changes in law that have given fresh powers to the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and also institutionalised the role of the commander of the National Strategic Command. These changes connect to the aforementioned agenda. No hype here. Important and strategically significant defence-related appointments are also expected in a few weeks (or months). These will strengthen and consolidate the system further in line with the expansive agenda. No hype here. Similarly, the redesign of the governance structure is under serious consideration and much may already have been worked out. There is a public component reflected in the breathless debate over the pros and cons of more administrative units. But the non-public discourse is where the nuts and bolts of these re-design are being worked out. No hype here.
The conclusion is fairly obvious: hype does not equal importance. In every system there is more than meets the eye, but in the present times this more is much more than the usual more. Fail to factor this in at your own peril.
Next week will therefore be consequential as far as hype is concerned. There will be petitions, counter petitions and review petitions; there will be court remarks, lawyers’ arguments and judicial pronouncements; there will be back and forth from Adiala to Shifa to PIMS to somewhere else – or not; there will be excited pressers, emotional statements and breathless coverage; and there will be an anticipation that something big – consequential big – is about to happen.
In reality though, the winding road to Shifa is more likely to lead to a destination and less to an outcome. The real outcome-oriented work on the expansive and expanding agenda remains outside the boundaries of hype. The trees may be tall, but the size of the forest is what really matters.
