The Pakistan Domino
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 7 Feb 2011
Dr. Paul D Scott and Sarwar Bari – TRANSCEND Media Service
The name of Mohammad Bouazizi should be on everyone’s lips. On 17 December last year, this 26-year-old street vendor from Sidi Bouzid doused himself with gasoline and made himself a funeral pyre. He did this after a female police officer first slapped him and then spat on him. His “crime” was selling fruit and vegetables without a permit. Humiliation piled on humiliation forced Bouazuzi to engage in both an act of defiance as well as a last gesture of freedom. This suicide was a profoundly and purely political act. It was not a religious act. It was a desperate act by a man brought past the brink of desperation.
This desperate final act of this young Tunisian also reminds us of the Czech student Jan Palach as well as Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc both of who immolated themselves as a final act of protest. The image of Thich Quang Duc sitting serenely as flames consume him is one of the most moving pictures in all of world history. This article does not seek to applaud suicide but rather to spotlight how these acts of death helped to reveal a host of failed policies. People are not unaware of corruption and bad governance. In their frustration some people sometimes act violently. The police and the military easily crush this dissent. The problems are never addressed instead the victim becomes the problem. But in the case of Bouazizi his death did something remarkable. It awakened people.
It is not too difficult to link the suicide deaths of the three martyr suicides mentioned above. The political regimes, historical circumstances, economic conditions and points of protest are all different but the root causes of resistance are very similar. The time lag between the deaths and the impact on course of events are temporally different in the cases of Tunisia and Vietnam the effect was immediate. In Tunisia the government was almost immediately toppled. In Vietnam the death of Thich Quang Duc resulted in the assassination of President Diem, an assassination that the CIA was certainly complicit in. The killing of the Vietnam President helped spawn a wider and tragic war.
The brutal crushing of the so-called Prague Spring by a Soviet led invasion resulted not in any immediate political collapse but rather a sense of profound disillusionment with not only the methods of the Soviet system but more importantly with its moral underpinnings. A thread of trust had been irrevocably broken. The events of Prague Spring and the deal of Jan Palach left an indelible imprint on the people. This has become a living memory. Prague Spring was followed by many other movements which also took the name a season that emerges from the bitter cold. Even the young Gorbachev acknowledged the importance of these events on the shaping of his thought and future policies.
What has happened in Tunisia was not predicted. In part this unpredictability to foresee political change is the fault of not only our own prejudices but also the entry point of analysts themselves. Tunisia, an Islamic state, was therefore immediately factored out of any possibility of experiencing a democratic revolution. Islam and democracy were supposed to be like the mixing of oil and water. But this is stupid in the extreme, any cook can tell you how to mix oil and water just adds a little egg yolk. Analysts were trapped in narrow academic arguments about defining democracy and also in minutely measuring the the “space” provided by Islam. Islamic democracy, democracy in Islam, Islam and democracy, it is all misses the point. It is always a question of governance. No one likes being both dictated to and denied political voice or economic freedoms. Many people over-promise what democracy can deliver – it will not make you rich or make you happy – it will however provide you with voice and the chance for open political competition. A democratic revolt took place in an Islamic state. This should fact should be reverberating throughout one-party states. It should also be resonating in Washington, D.C.
Also, analysts looked at the state, the party, bureaucracy, the army and security forces, and the fact that the Tunisian government was also part of the war against terror. Yet all these factors were irrelevant, as true power rested in will of the people. Decades of silence and repression did not mean that people did not talk. In states like Tunisia the only real sport is that of politics and people talked incessantly about the issues that concerned them. Gossip plays a crucial role here because even if the media controls information there are always leaks. Average people sitting over their coffee would talk and become indignant over the unfairness being meted out to them on a daily basis. The abused street vendor harassed and humiliated had thousands of kinsmen who cut across class and tribal lines. Tunisia’s revolt therefore was not limited to students and the left-wing or labor but encompassed the whole society. Since the protest was so widespread it was impossible to stop. This was a classic cascade movement. In the end, the Western powers who had supported and enabled bad governance and endemic corruption were left wondering what had happened. Once again, they were left with egg on their face.
Distance and differences aside, stark similarities exits between Tunisia and Pakistan – complete elite capture, nepotism, corruption that always results into all kinds of inequalities and injustice. People can’t tolerate this for long. In Pakistan, anger amongst the public has already reached the boiling point. The rising number of protests, ever increasing incidences of violence and suicides tell a lot. Second, the ruling coalitions in the center and provinces show no signs of feeling the rising heat. Third, the western allies continue supporting the corrupt military-civilian elite- a perfect case of ‘boiling frog syndrome’. Symptoms of the syndrome are in abundance. Lets look at some. For our Prime Minister inaugurating multi-billion Rupee luxury lodges for parliamentarian was business as usual whilst 4.1 million flood-affected families are without any shelter six months after the floods. It is shameless that the government is delaying to spend Rupee 6.6 billion and US$119 million (Rupee 10.23 billion) of the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund and the USA donation for flood affected respectively. What is stopping the coalition government from spending this amount? Nothing but self-centered elite interest. Moreover, Pakistan economy is facing an emergency like situation and food inflation is as high as 27%. This is affecting everyone profoundly but more deeply to flood affected.
What has happened in Tunisia has spread to Morocco, the Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia. Though many revolutions had small and spontaneous beginning, early signs of alarm were always there. In all cases the ruling elites felt they were insulated from the flames. Here in Pakistan the elites are out of touch. It is as if the plight of millions in the countryside is happening in a faraway distant land. One only has to listen to know that something is in the making, the air has changed.
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Sarwar Bari is the founder and head of Pattan, the most respected NGO in Pakistan.
Paul Scott is a steering committee member of ARDA (The Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia) and a frequent visitor to Pakistan. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 7 Feb 2011.
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