The Train March

What could be better than a [train] march in the month of March to celebrate the coming of the spring season in an all-seasons country like Pakistan, though one could be forgiven mistaking the march as politics oriented? Lest one lets his biases overcome his conscience, it was an ostentatious effort to rejuvenate its dying spirit on the part of PPP and its heir apparent and to somehow divert the focus away from ongoing inquiries of massive corruption and money laundering which can severely implicate the father & son duo.

As the storms of accountability are gathering around and with no trick up their sleeves to evade what may await them in the offing, its pertinent to keep the vigil and stand guard.

Name a metropolitan city - no matter how far off - where the Zardari clan is not in possession of the swankiest real estate and one is left short of cities. The wealth which actually is the hard-earned money of the taxpayers’ of one of the most impoverished countries on this earth, had been stolen and stashed abroad in offshore holdings under previous terms of Benazir Bhutto when her maverick better half earned notoriety of Mr. 10% to satiate his never-ending lust for power and property.

But Zardari is not the one to be taken by surprise, he must have seen it coming and had himself prepared for it, the master trickster he is. With the most expensive lawyers to represent and world’s a-class financial advisors to channelize money across the globe through complex network of off-shore companies and using innumerable fake accounts to park funds whose existence in no way can be justified, can get you temporary relief and a certain level of deniability but due diligence on the part of investigative authorities – which is being carried out in earnest – can untangle all the links between the owner and his holdings. Zardari knows it very well and like every demagogue is prepared to fight to the death not for any divine cause but to save his ill-gotten money.

Long marches in Pakistan’s political history have been born out of necessity when survival is often at stake and only on a few occasions the leaders marching on the capital rose above self-centric goals ie: the long march for the restoration of judiciary & PTI’s long march against vote theft.

What was starkly missing from PPP’s train march was the absence of rallying point or what can be termed as war-cry in the political fray vital to charge to opponents and to ensure maximum participation of its own workers. In absence of genuine grievances, no floodgates opened and no masses poured in to threaten the government at the center. Being true to PPP’s thuggish spirit, even leaders of the march failed to pay their workers what they were promised and only a meagre amount was distributed among the participants who later appeared on mainstream media in protest against their party leadership, thus the purported train march which started with a bang ended with a whimper.

By: Muhammad Tayab Gondal