The political high drama that began with Dr Tahirul Qadri’s mammoth public meeting on December 25, 2012, came to an end on January 17, 2013. There were a lot of speculation as to who was behind this Canadian citizen, who landed with a big political bang on Pakistani soil. A massive media campaign to “save the state, not politics” was launched that attracted a huge crowd at Dr Sahib’s Lahore rally.
The fact that he branded the political leadership, and the functionaries of the government, as dishonest plunderers and Yazids in his oratory pulled in huge crowds. The hapless people of Pakistan, who have been lied to, cheated and exploited were duped once again.
The rumour mills in Pakistan churned up speculations, as to who was behind his sudden sojourn to Pakistan. A naturalised Canadian of Pakistani origin, with the gift of master-oratory, had a hidden foreign agenda that aimed to serve alien powers in their quest for post-Afghanistan regional management.
The essence of the Islamabad Long March Declaration, however, has clearly indicated who was behind Dr Qadri’s descent on Pakistan. Indirectly his march has long-term diplomatic and regional benefits for the main characters operating in the region; the direct and immediate beneficiaries are the PPP and its allies in the government.
President Asif Zardari has emerged as the clear winner. He is a master political strategist and tactician; there is none in Pakistan who can match him in political manoeuvrings. The Islamabad Declaration has given him and his political allies a clear upper hand to choose and install a caretaker PM after the dissolution of the assemblies.
The second point in the declaration spells out that the government and Dr Qadri’s almost defunct Pakistan Awami Tehrik will propose two names of “honest and impartial” persons “in complete consensus” for the post of the caretaker PM. This clause debars other stakeholders in the process that is spelled out in the constitution for the selection and appointment of the caretaker setup. With the hold that President Zardari has on the government, it is an open secret that the man coming in to fill this temporary slot will come with his blessing and will do his bidding.
The negotiating team and signatories of the declaration lay down a clear future line. The opposition has been left out on apolitical limb; the Sharif Brothers, PTI, JI and Maulana Fazlur Rehman have been effectively neutralised and their claims of being the stakeholders in a caretaker setup have been marginalised effectively. Clause 2 of the declaration effectively bypasses the caretaker procedures laid down in the constitution. There is a strong chance that this declaration will be ratified in Parliament session called on January 25, 2013. This will amend the constitutional provisions without any debate and discussion.
The political clout of the opposition will get further reduced by altering the composition of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), as envisaged in Clause 3 of the declaration. The present CEC is a consensus appointee that has the backing of the opposition. Dr Qadri had raised strong objections to the effectiveness and authority of the present ECP. The proposed composition of the committee that is required under this clause to conduct discussions on the subject on January 27, 2013, at Minhaj-ul-Quran Secretariat (MQS) includes those who are mostly PPP sympathisers. There is a strong chance that this meeting will propose an ECP that would be favourable to the PPP and its allies.
Clause 4 that asks for the implementation of Constitutional Articles 62, 63 and 218(3), provisions of People’s Representation Act and the Supreme Court judgment “in toto and true letter and spirit”, gives the interim setup enough latitude to delay the elections to an indefinite time. One has to wait and see the outcome of meetings at the MQS.
President Zardari has achieved, so it seems, all the objectives that the political pundits have feared for quite some time. With the poor five-year governance and hardships handed out to the hapless masses of Pakistan, the PPP and its allies in governance had dismal chances of success in the coming elections. The breathing space Clause 4 gives will help the ruling coalition engineer the elections so as to get winners. President Zardari has played a master political stroke.
The return of the present ruling alliance in Pakistan also suits the designs of international players.
One must give credit to President Zardari; he has the knack to pick the right man to deliver what he wants. He picked up Dr Qadri, who had gone in obscurity for quite some time.  He emerged as a politico-legal personality with Sufi inclinations with claims of his birth that was prophesised by the Holy Prophet (Pbuh). He became the Friday prayer leader at the Model Town Mosque run by the Sharif Brothers. He is a superb orator, who claimed that the Prophet (Pbuh) visited him and ordered him to establish the Minhaj-ul-Quran institution.
Using the social and political support of the Sharif Brothers, he built his empire and emerged as cult leader of his own kind that has the ability to pull large crowds. His rise is checkered in nature and he believes in the maxim that the end justifies the means. There was no better choice to do what Mr Zardari wanted accomplished. His character can be gauged from the fact that he sat down with “the looters and plunderers and Yazids” and signed an agreement.
In this game of snakes and ladders, the real losers are the people of Pakistan. They live under the illusion that the master crafters spin around them. They get coned by illusionary political slogans and cannot see through the smokescreen and illusions build around them by people who come on stage promising to change their plight.
The masses are so ignorant that they do not see the truth despite its obviousness. Dr Qadri demonstrated this apathy of the masses glaringly. He claimed to take the bullets on his chest. “Don’t shoot at my followers, shoot at my chest,” he declared and people cheered, yet he did not come out of his bulletproof luxury cabin; he lived and spoke from his warm shelter when people shivered in  cold and rain.
We deserve our plight; the people of Pakistan get ready for another five-year period of loadshedding, price hikes and miseries. Their plight does not and will not affect the luxuries of those whom they follow so blindly.

The writer is a retired brigadier. Email: arjerral639@hotmail.com