Liberals, Hardliners and Imran Khan

Illiberal liberals

The Pakistan report card Saturday, March 21, 2009 Fasi Zaka Imran Khan's recent address at the Rawalpindi District Bar Association demonstrates how far he has come as an orator. Had he chosen to participate in these elections, which were not rigged as he had feared, he would have served as a buffer between the PML-N and the PPP by preventing the escalation in verbal diatribes by becoming the channel to air the PML-N's grievances indirectly. In his speech on that day in Rawalpindi he kept using the word liberals disparagingly. He did so because he believed the liberals were the PPP who did not believe in the rule of law whereas those branded as hardliners, such as himself and the PML-N, did believe in it. So the liberals were actually quite illiberal, and the hardliners truly liberal? It's an interesting question. But to answer it, one really needs to know what a liberal is, and who in Pakistan's context can legitimately call themselves one. At the most basic level liberalism can refer to a broad class of ideologies, but the most common strands between them is respect for rule of law, constitutionalism, free speech and private property. By this definition we know most political parties in the country, including the religious ones, qualify to be liberals in one sense: they love private property, especially their own. But that was just a snide aside, back to the business of discovering liberal parties in Pakistan. First, the PPP. Since it came to power after utilising the NRO, it's definitely not constitution-loving, nor for the rule of law post the Farah Dogar episode and applying governor's rule in Punjab. Free speech is under threat; just ask Nawaz Sharif, whose diatribes may be classified as sedition sometime soon. There is freedom of assembly, as long as it is not for the long march, or to restore the deposed chief justice. On paper at least, the PPP of today (as opposed to the socialist one of the 70s), may describe itself as a social liberal party because of its emphasis on the poor and redistributing wealth, though frankly in the past the only redistribution discerned stopped at 10 percent. Then the PML-N. It is quite conservative on several moral issues but quite liberal in the classic economic sense, which makes it conservative liberal. They love rule of law, especially if it includes the law of an Amir-ul-Momineen. But since that's not happening, they are sticking to the deposed chief justice. In current times, they fit the rule-of-law bill well when it comes to rhetoric, even though their past on freedom of speech has been questionable. Their silence on the militancy and the Taliban is deafening, and, frankly, contradictory, since they want the chief justice to apply the national law while agreeing to contravention of the law though a parallel system in Swat. And finally Imran Khan himself. In his heyday, he was considered a liberal in Pakistan, but that had nothing to do with his politics, economics or social justice programmes, but more to do with a colloquial understanding of the word liberal as applied to one's personal life. While ostensibly he stands for the rule of law, he decries those who oppose the Rwat deal. But doesn't that reward those who contravened the law to get a new one? This begs the larger question: with all this talk of liberalism and the rule of law, is the issue only the restoration of the chief justice and not respect for the law itself? Is the movement hinged on the restoration of one man, or is hinged on a principle? Imran's love of jirgas doesn't bode well for constitutionalism. He was right to raise the issue of the paradox of those who are labelled as classic liberals (the PPP) opposing the rule of law and constitutionalism, but wrong in presuming that his own stance offered some kind of intellectual resolution under a conservative framework. Liberalism in the classic sense is not some superior ideology, in fact if its economic doctrines in the classical sense were applied mercilessly, it can create a woefully unequal society that rewards existing power elites. But if we nit picked the parts we liked, especially the rule of law that we desperately need, with or without the deposed Chief Justice, we would be getting our house back in order. As it is we far from having truly liberal parties, and further still from having coherent political stances that behove some kind of intellectual coherence, beyond the simply opportunistic. That, by the way, is also illiberal. (The News) The writer is a Rhodes scholar and former academic. Email: fasizaka@yahoo .com