The funny side of a legacy of kitsch

As the nation gears up to vote, it’s worth remembering the legacy of this half-decade of democracy. Born of the mistakes and excesses of a dictator who wore out his welcome, birthed with the tragic loss of a feisty matriarch of the only truly people’s party and endured during the alarming loss of state writ to religious nihilists, in retrospect it is hard to know what this government stood for.

Sure, there was the 18th Amendment, the National Finance Commission Award and a few token half measures. But what it truly did well, ironically, is reducing the language of sacrifice to elaborate kitsch.

When the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) started out this term in 2008 it had a mandate from the public but despite that remit it operated with a trust deficit — or more tellingly, Asif Ali Zardari did. To obviate his own lack of currency, he quickly mastered the trait of rhetoric culled from the archives of the PPP playbook which had a trove of tragedy in the service of democracy, including that of his own with the loss of Benazir Bhutto.

The party, long a source of adding to the national lexicon of political phrases and terms (such as ‘long marches’, ‘roti’, ‘kapra’ and ‘makaan’) coined a new phrase, marshalled out as its operating philosophy, “Democracy is the best revenge.”

A good start – as far as defining what PPP 2.0 stood for – but the promise was soon to be sunk by the government’s unmoored performance in governance. Democracy became directionless accommodation, and cripplingly so. With an absence of tangibles in the service of the electorate, the past was bandied as citizens looked to the government to deliver in the present tense.

Having been told that the PPP’s promises were not inviolable, it moved self-preservation above delivery, permanently. After losing an ineffectual prime minister to the overreach of the courts, it chose one of the few men with less credibility to replace him. Gaffe prone ministers can be a national treasure, like Lalu Prasad or Boris Johnson, but to have one in charge of our collective safety is egregious at best.

Listening to the PPP, especially in the past two years, it’s obvious that what it can be remembered for is cheapening its formidable legacy. Their ministers operated in a surreal world of verbal impunity, using mighty language and the history of sacrifice to be devalued into a baroque camp.

Roti, kapra aur makaan was once the powerful elixir against whatever opiate the masses were taken in by. Today “sasta tandoor” and “sasti roti”, however awkwardly named, have more pulling power. The ‘long march’ has been appropriated by the Sharifs, the very party it was originated against. (Even Canadians own it with greater legitimacy.) So much so, that a word for a force of nature that only brings devastation in its midst, the ‘tsunami’, sounds like a word of hope — even after our successive floods.

Ever vigilant to an opportunity for grandstanding, in the final days of this government Rehman Malik announced that the government, with his able stewardship, had defeated the terrorists and restored law and order. Had he been truthful and instead said awe and disorder, one would have believed he was actually eating a banana.

Revenge they took without doubt. But what remains to be seen is if there will be Schadenfreude on election day. If not, a Darwin Award is in order.