Bashir Hussain Azad
CHITRAL: Hundreds of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers took to the streets in Chitral to protest the arrest of MPA Fateh-ul-Mulk Ali Nasir, demanding his immediate and unconditional release.
The protest rally was led by Senator Falak Naz, party secretary Syed Fareed Jan, Naveed Ahmed Baig, Shahid Ahmed, Haroon Khan, Hayat-ur-Rehman, Shafiq-ur-Rehman, Muhammad Qasim, Nabig Sharakhat, Nazir Ahmed and Shahzeb Alam, among other local party leaders.
The protesters chanted slogans against the government and marched towards the Chitral Press Club, where PTI leaders addressed a press conference and strongly condemned the arrest.
The party leaders described the arrest of Mr Nasir, whom they said was elected by more than 30,000 people, as an example of what they termed political repression and authoritarianism. They said such actions would not be accepted.
Addressing the gathering, PTI leaders said arrests and retaliatory measures could not weaken the resolve of party workers. They announced that PTI workers would travel to Islamabad on September 27 as part of the party’s planned march and called for the release of PTI founder Imran Khan.
The speakers also criticised the government over the deteriorating law-and-order and political situation in the country. They alleged that even the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister had been made to disappear, claiming that such actions represented an unprecedented level of repression.
Falak Naz said Imran Khan remained a source of hope for Pakistan’s underprivileged population and described him as a major leader of the Muslim world. She said attempts to remove him from the political scene would not succeed.
PTI leaders reiterated their demand for the immediate and unconditional release of MPA Nasir, warning that the arrest would not deter party workers from continuing their political activities.
In what can only be described as a masterclass in strategic outsourcing, the extended family of jailed Mehtar Fatehul Mulk Ali Nasir has pioneered a bold new approach to political crisis management: someone else can handle it.
The grandson of the last ruling Mehtar of Chitral, Shuja ul Mulk, currently finds himself behind bars. This would, in most families with functioning bloodlines and a shred of self respect, trigger some kind of visible, sustained, name attached mobilisation from the people who spend the rest of the calendar year reminding everyone — at weddings, at funerals, at press conferences, at absolutely any opportunity — that they too are Mulks, heirs, descendants, keepers of the flame.
Instead, Chitral has been offered something far more entertaining: Falak Naz at the microphone, doing the actual work, while Sikanderul Mulk, Masoodul Mulk, Sirajul Mulk, Amanul Mulk, Idrees Hayat, and the rest of the extended dynasty practise what can only be called competitive spectating. Front row seats. Zero lines. A masterpiece of ceremonial absence.
One imagines the late Shuja ul Mulk, watching this unfold from wherever deposed monarchs watch things, mildly confused. He built a legacy. He did not build a service for viewing it. And yet here we are — the family name is doing all the heavy lifting while the family itself appears to have outsourced the actual rescue to an outsider with, we are told, admirably broken Urdu and considerably less patience for standing around than everyone born a Mulk.
The excuse on offer — “it’s a party matter” — deserves to be retired immediately and buried next to the graves from the colonial era that Siraj ul Mulk has been so diligently excavating. Because that is, remarkably, real: while the Mehtar sits in a cell, there is apparently bandwidth being spent hunting down the tombstones of British soldiers dead for decades. Decorated. Deceased. Buried since roughly Partition. Meanwhile the actual living Mehtar remains undug, so to speak, from prison. Priorities, gentlemen. One of these projects has a pulse.
And then there’s Farid Jan — PTI Lower Chitral’s secretary general, nephew of the venerable Professor Taufeeq Jan, a man whose job title alone should command a room. At the press conference, however, Farid did not so much command the room as await instruction from it, glancing toward Falak Naz like a pupil checking whether he’s allowed to leave his seat. A secretary general reduced to a spectator with a dirty press club chair. Professor Jan deserves better. Frankly, so does the concept of a “secretary general.”
This is, in the end, the real spectacle: not that the Mehtar is jailed, but that an entire constellation of heirs who declared themselves as such has managed to turn his imprisonment into group theatre, complete with an outside lead actor, a supporting cast of silent nobility, and a subplot about British graves nobody asked for. Chitral didn’t lose a ruler’s freedom this week. It lost the last argument for hereditary relevance.
And if Sikanderul Mulk is wondering why voters might hesitate before voting for him if he gets a PTI ticket in the next elections or in by-elections, he need only look in a mirror. A man who cannot be bothered to publicly stand for his own cousin has given peo0le of Chitral a fairly reliable preview of how hard he will stand for anyone else.