The Chaudhrys of Gujrat can be the gift that keeps on giving, or taking. Their mere presence in a dispensation can lay bare many realities in the scheme of things. Their transformation, for instance, from being the People’s Party’s bête noire Qaatil League, to the same party’s coalition partners, with the then former and future Punjab CM Pervez Elahi becoming Deputy Prime Minister, brought into focus the vagaries of Pakistani power politics yet again.
They’re at it again, even if in the relatively uncharted territory of there being a split, of sorts, in the family. Family scion Moonis Elahi’s disclosure in a recent interview that former army chief General Bajwa had, contrary to expectations, told them side with the PTI in the battle for Punjab, rather than going with the PDM. It has been many days since that interview came out and a rebuttal is conspicuous by its absence.
The former chief and his entourage had been talking a great game about how the army had, since a year, made a conscious decision to stay away from politics; the kerfuffle in Punjab, on the other hand, is mere months ago. The timeline gives it all. The General, it appears, was playing a game of Tetris: the PDM fits into the federal government, the PTI in Punjab’s.
Instead of asking for an explanation of the General’s extracurricular political activities before the decision was taken, we are left asking for an explanation of his exploits after it was supposedly taken. But we won’t get an explanation for it. Institutions that pivot away from their away from their waywardness – and we still don’t have any solid evidence for their having done so – don’t miraculously fall back into line immediately. But here, it would appear there is no intention for this in the first place.
The new army chief faces an uphill task if he wants to wrest his institution away from the sins that it admits to having been party to. The same afternoon that he received that Sword of Honour thirty-six years ago, he also swore an oath, with the rest of his coursemates, to never involve himself in political activities. The problem is that it is the same oath that all of his predecessors also took. We wish him well, so for him to take stock of the institutional experiences of the recent and not-so-recent past.
