Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [132]
Gradually the great power of the Pindigheb family was frittered away. First the Langrial family was allowed to secede. Then the Khunda, Kamlial and Dandi families broke away ... During this troubled time the ruling family contained no men of power. The chiefs were lazy, licentious and incompetent and from a love of ease let great opportunities slip past. But they are still the nobility of the tehsil.15
A POLITICIAN’S LIFE
As these remarks suggest, Pakistani politicians now have to work very hard for their votes. In many ways, they have to work much harder than their Western equivalents, because ‘here, everything is politics’, as I have often been told. This does not just mean court cases, bank loans, police and civil service appointments, contracts, and so on; but also most of social life – births and funerals are very important events for political deal-making and alliance-maintenance, and, as for the arrangement of marriages, this is of course inherently political. All this is like enough to the existence of lords in the European Middle Ages – with the difference that Pakistani politicians also have to try to master much more complicated matters of administration and business; and usually try unsuccessfully. Those rare ones who have the education to do so may not have the time. The sheer amount of time required to perform the necessary functions of a Pakistani politician – including those in office – may be one factor behind the poor quality of Pakistani government.
Part of this is an even more intensive version of the obligation incumbent on many Pakistanis (and especially Pathans) to attend all the births, marriages and funerals even of distant relatives – all of which have a ‘political’ aspect within the family, and therefore potentially at least in wider politics as well. As numerous friends have complained, this is crushingly exhausting and time-consuming even for people with no political ambitions; but a failure to turn up to the marriages or funerals even of very distant cousins will be taken as an insult which will severely affect future relations.
Then there is the time consumed by the workings of the patronage system. Iqbal Akhund, a bureaucratic observer of the creation of the PPP-led government in 1988, remarked that:
Ministers were besieged in their homes from morning till night by petitioners, job-hunters, favour-seekers and all and sundry. It was the same inside the National Assembly, where every minister’s seat was a little beehive with members and backbenchers hovering around and going back and forth with little chits of paper. How the ministers got any work done is a mystery, but in any case policy took a back seat to attending to the importunities of relatives, friends and constituents.16
Twenty years later, in the summer of 2009, a businessman from Multan described to me a recent dinner given by the Multan Chamber of Commerce in honour of the Foreign Minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is a member of a leading pir family from Multan:
As soon as the speeches were over and people went to the buffet, Shah Mehmood was besieged by people wanting things:
‘Oh, Qureishi Sahib, my nephew has been arrested on a false murder charge, you are such a great man, it will take one phone call from you only.’
‘Oh, Minister Sahib, you remember that business about a loan, still they are making trouble.’
‘Oh, Makhdoom Sahib, you promised to help my brother with promotion in his department, but he has been passed over. The minister, he is your good friend. Please call him, my family will be so grateful.’
And you know, if these