How real is your politik?

Realpolitik is diplomacy based on ‘practical rather than ideological considerations’. In essence, it is the politics of power rather than principle. And according to many political pundits and media luminaries, people like you and me don’t understand it. So we should mutely accept the PPP’s push for Zardari as president and save our already overtaxed brains for the tasks that really matter, like driving on the right side of the road and learning to tie our shoelaces.

The thing is, realpolitik really isn’t that hard to understand. Decisions made on the basis of self interest rather than morals and principles. God knows we’ve lived with those long enough. We’ve lived with them, sometimes even made them ourselves, when we have believed them to be beneficial to us as well as the powers that be, for example bribing a lineman to fix a phone or rolling over for Musharraf post 9/11. So today we the people are not criticising Zardari’s nomination because we’re idealistic twits with our noses in Jinnah’s address to the first constituent assembly of Pakistan – ok some of us are but they write for that other paper- but because we the people know we will glean no personal benefits from the presidential bid of a man whose only redeeming qualities are that his wife died and he once saved a horse from a bog.

From a BBC news item in January 2008 about Asif Ali Zardari, illustrating his ‘personal bravery’…�A close friend recounts an incident in the 1980s when he was still a polo-playing and horse-riding bachelor: "We were on a cross-country ride in Karachi when one of our company, the daughter of a German diplomat, fell into a bog with her horse. There were 40 of us. We all stood around stunned except for this one man, Asif Ali Zardari, who jumped in and pulled out the girl and then the horse as well. During all this time, he could have drowned at any time himself."

Now don’t get me wrong, if I was a horse carrying a German diplomat’s daughter on a cross country ride across Karachi with 40 of my closest friends and I fell into a bog, there is no question that I would back Zardari’s noble quest to pull me out. I would divert all the air in my inordinately large equine lungs to neighing ‘Zardari’s my man!’ The thing is, I’m not a horse. And if you’re reading this, chances are neither are you.

And as a human citizen of a proud sovereign country currently embroiled in serious economic, political and ideological crises that cannot be resolved without selfless, visionary leadership, I think Zardari for President is the worst idea since poodle clipping as an Olympic sport (seriously, Paris, 1900, 128 ‘athletes’ competed to see who could clip the most poodle’s fur in a two hour period).

My reasons for this are simple: He has no political legitimacy; a representative democracy means power is conferred through election not (un)natural selection. He has a dodgy track record; his stints as minister for the environment and investments under previous PPP governments were marred by allegations of corruption that still refuse to go away. He lacks consistency and hence credibility: The judiciary is not a real issue…Sure we’ll restore the judiciary…We’ll restore it right now…We’ll restore it later…Judy Who?


And the most important reason to dig in our heels and refuse to drink even if the PPP and the MQM and the ANP and the JUI and the Americans insist of dragging us to water and trying to make us drink, like a recalcitrant herd of Argentinean polo ponies, is a stellar illustration of that very practical, amoral, unprincipled view of the world and how it works that so many commentators seem to feel we lack, self interest.

It is not in our interest to endorse the politics of cronyism and nepotism. It is not in our interest to condone the politics of ethnicity and surnames. If we are serious about wanting change, it is not in our interest to accept, again, a flawed system that offers little hope of redemption and nothing more tangible than the reality of its own perpetuation. And that is what we will get under the governance of parties, whether liberal, secular or religious, who can unite only under the banner of ‘two legs good, four wheels better, Prado best!’

So will the PPP kindly take a break from sneakily nudging us down the same old road trodden by all glorious leaders to date- we recognize it even if its cunningly feng shuied, with smoke, mirrors and an artfully arranged potted plant or two (no disrespect to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani intended)- and tell us its cunning plan already? Is it using the notion of Zardari in the presidency as leverage in its negotiations over the issue of the judiciary? Is it creating this new drama to continue to deflect attention away from the crippling economic crisis? Is Zardari just a red herring its spin doctors are using to leech away our outrage on the assumption that when it pushes its real candidate we will just be so glad it isn’t him we’ll celebrate anyway?

We know the Pakistan People’s Party thinks democracy is the best revenge. But we didn’t kill Benazir, and we have already paid enough for her death. Honoring the memory of the departed is all well and good, but surely one of the enduring lessons of realpolitik is the supremacy of respect for the living.