A video of an incident inside a Pakistani commercial airliner just in the past week has brought out the first ray of hope for progressive change across the South Asian country. While large parts of Pakistan clearly remain tied to regressive trends, the incident in question was nothing short of extraordinary and for all the right reasons.
Rahman Malek, a former interior minister, found himself at the wrong end of the stick when faced with an angry crowd of passengers aboard a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) commercial airliner, flying from the southern port city of Karachi to the capital Islamabad.
The passengers, irked by Malek’s delayed arrival on board the aircraft, which subsequently delayed the departure, decided to take the law in their own hands.
Their decision to block Malek from boarding the aircraft eventually forced him to turn back after being heckled and booed. In the process, a member of parliament from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), was also forced to abandon the flight. The episode provided a powerful example of Pakistanis finally fighting back against the exploitation they have endlessly suffered at the hands of the country’s ruling class.
Ironically, the incident in question has coincided with ongoing protests in Islamabad led by Imran Khan, the cricket star-turned-politician, and moderate Islamic scholar Tahir-ul-Qadri. Both men have promised to lay the course for a new Pakistan that will be more favourable to the interests of the mainstream than at present.
For Imran and Qadri, leading the country towards progressive change may well be the only way to successfully surge ahead with their own political agendas. Yet, agenda or not, a new era of changing relationships between the rulers and the ruled may well have arrived in Pakistan.
The episode aboard the PIA aircraft indeed points towards two equally vital trends. On the one hand, it is clear that some Pakistanis are feeling confident enough to take on visibly powerful political players who were once considered above board.
Footage of the incident which subsequently went viral on the internet clearly shows the speed with which this sorry event received widespread publicity. Indeed, the manner in which the video caught attention points towards changes that have helped to significantly lift the level of openness across Pakistan.
Sorry state of affairs
On the other hand, the episode also points towards the sorry state of life across Pakistan on a daily basis. The country’s elite, notably political elite, appear to consider it their right to exploit public services to their personal advantage. In the case of the PIA, delaying flights to accommodate influential individuals who turn up late has indeed become a virtually common occurrence. Other public services, such as networks for providing electricity to individual consumers across the energy-starved nation, have been repeatedly manipulated in favour of the rich and the well endowed. Ultimately, an already remote hope of reforming Pakistan has clearly been squandered.
Ironically, events of the past week have taken place during the tenure of Sharif, once considered a bold and reformist leader. In over a year since Sharif was elected as prime minister for an unprecedented third time, his administration appears to have consistently failed in tackling the worst energy crisis in Pakistan’s history.
At the same time however, the prime minister has keenly pursued new infrastructure projects such an ambitious plan for building new roads. Clearly, there is no money in the kitty for the kind of largesse that Sharif is seeking to pursue.
On a crucially important related front, the ruling structure is yet to present a credible plan to tackle widespread tax evasion across Pakistan, making it one of the world’s poorest performers in this area. Indeed, as long as Pakistanis, notably the affluent ones, refuse to begin paying their dues, Sharif or any other leader in his position will keep Pakistan on a slippery slope. Going forward, the risk is simply that of the Islamic world’s only country with nuclear weapons falling increasingly in economic distress and its associated disorder.
This is precisely the nature of the challenge that must force Pakistan’s ruling and opposition politicians to jointly sign up to an agenda for reforms and progressive change. In sharp contrast, failure to do so will simply force Pakistan deeper in a vicious circle. Faced with such a set of powerful odds, it’s vital that Pakistan’s politicians see a wider significance to the event involving Malek. It was neither an act of uncontrolled rowdyism by individuals nor a sinister conspiracy to put politicians in disrepute. On the contrary, events on board the PIA flight involving Malek must point towards a wider and deeper malaise across Pakistan.
Well-ingrained VIP culture
A footnote to this conclusion must indeed also point towards the increasing insignificance of Pakistan’s parliamentary frameworks in relation to the lives of the country’s mainstream. The past year has clearly demonstrated the failure of newly elected politicians to begin taking up vital public causes. Instead, an already well ingrained VIP culture has taken deeper root across the country, as political representatives failed to turn the corner in finally pushing a robust agenda for change.
In this background, its hardly surprising that Imran and Qadri have together sustained an anti-government public protest for more than five weeks, just across the road from the parliament in Islamabad. Perhaps the voices of dissent in Pakistan are beginning to make deeper inroads, well beyond what is ever appreciated by key members of the country’s ruling structure.
Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
