State of Denial and Delusion

The state of unreality
By Chris Cork: The News,

There are moments when those who are themselves making history look history itself in the face; usually at a time when recent history — as in the history of the previous few seconds or minutes — has turned around and looked straight back at them, giving the great and powerful a fast-forward flash of their own destinies.

One such moment was apparent on the face of President Nicolai Caeusescu of Romania, a mad Communist despot who thought that he was waving to a crowd of adoring citizens — when in fact they were baying for his blood. His face, caught by a camera in a grainy image, froze in a moment of realisation. He gave a dismissive sideways-chopping wave and turned off the balcony into the room behind him. He was dead within a day.

Another more recent moment came to us courtesy of the Iraqi information minister who, both loyal (out of fear) and deluded stood in front of a television screen that clearly showed American forces and armour in Baghdad — and then denied to the press and television crews standing in front of him that American forces and armour were in Baghdad. He eventually turned around, looked at the images that had made him both a fool and a liar, and left. It was his last press briefing.

Saturday, May 12, 2007, evening, Islamabad. President Pervez Musharraf, the man who has led Pakistan since he took power in 1999, had his very own encounter with reality — and the world could see his future written across his face as he spoke from behind a bullet-proof glass and metal screen. There was, he said, no need to declare an emergency and matters were under control. They may well have been under control within a ten-foot radius of where he stood but clearly were not elsewhere. Only hours before, as many as 34 men had died in the mayhem in Karachi and more than a hundred were injured. Problem? What problem? Nothing to see here. Move along please. The president, his entourage and seemingly just about everybody else in the business of governance had entered the waiting room of their demise — The State of Unreality.

The key to the door of the Sate of Unreality is called Denial. Not just any old denial but denial with a capital 'D'. Denial so big that anything can be denied, refuted, turned aside, and transformed from one Truth to another. Denial, the Orwellian key to the State of Unreality, is only achieved after careful study of all the available evidence, the acquisition of a number of mouthpieces through which Denial may be delivered and an intricately staged production complete with lights, flags, speeches and a selection of rhetoric notable only for flying in the face of the blindingly obvious.

Take, for instance, this presidential utterance: '…the people, this crowd of tens of thousands is with me, then where does the need for an emergency come? People are with me there is no emergency.' On the one hand he spoke a self-evident truth. There were indeed tens of thousands that he was addressing; undeniably and they were there for all to see. Yet on the other hand, ask the question — 'How and why did they get there?' Did they, in their thousands, spontaneously wake up that morning in their beds in Sindh and Punjab and NWFP and say to their loved ones — 'I feel I must go to Islamabad today to demonstrate my support for the president. I must find a bus or car, make myself a flag to wave and be on my way as soon as you dear wife/sister have cooked my breakfast.' Well some might have but most didn't. They were bussed in on requisitioned vehicles, given the flags and banners and Bingo! — Rent-a-crowd was suddenly born. The people were certainly with him. How much choice they had in keeping his company that day is quite another matter.

…'there is no emergency.' Look a little more closely at those four words. So it is not any sort of emergency when — despite reportedly assembling 15,000 troops/police/paramilitaries to keep the peace in the event of what a blind microcephalic could see was likely to be the biggest punch-up and blood-fest for donkey's years — there was uncontrolled carnage in Karachi. Those assembled forces intervened nowhere, this correspondent can find no report of them having sustained any injuries or arrested anybody for murder or rioting; and meanwhile there are sundry corpses cluttering up the streets. None of who seem to have died as a result of being struck down by the beauty of the city.

Then there was the curious incident of a private television station filming itself while it was raked with gunfire for several hours — in an attempt to stop it filming itself being raked with gunfire for several hours. Gold stars for brave broadcasters, black marks for the forces of law and order. Did they make any attempt to stop any of this? No. Do the police and Rangers and soldiers watch television? Yes. Do you think they might have seen what was happening at the offices of the private TV station? Yes. Is it the duty of the state to protect the citizenry? Yes. Any reports of the issuing of an order to the police/paramilitaries/soldiers to go and do just that? Apparently not. And if nobody issued an order to intervene it means that either somebody did not order him or her to, or they did and it was decided to ignore the order. No emergency there, obviously. No breakdown of command structures. No complicity with whoever was doing the raking-with-gunfire thing. Everything fine. Move along please, nothing to see here.

The State of Unreality has been admitted by the prime minister as well. He has not been issued with the 'Denial' key, but the 'Delusion' key instead. The prime minister, a man with a political constituency akin to a colony of frogs, was able to tell us that the party he represents would revolutionise the lives of the common person and take the country forward on to the path of progress and prosperity; carrying on its mission to improve and develop the nation. Delusional ideas such as this are treatable these days, and psychiatrists have developed a number of helpful interventions for people thus afflicted.

Any government with a grip on reality as tenuous as that of the incumbent regime has to be counting its tenure in days and weeks rather than months and years. The mayhem of last weekend is an unintended consequence of rendering the Chief Justice non-functional on March 9. Other unintended consequences may now follow as events have a life and momentum of their own. There will be more death; more burnings, more destruction and the State of Unreality will stagger onwards ever more grievously wounded. Finally, spare a thought for a casualty of the government side — the minister for tourism. As these words are written she remains in post but her job has now become an irrelevance. Pity the poor woman, it's not her fault and she did her best. Visit Pakistan? In 2007? Only if you want to see what it's like when the lunatics take over the asylum.

The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email: manticore73@gmail.com