There Is Violence In Abbottabad Because Punjab Is A Hot Girl

You can always trust Pakistani politicians to screw up a good thing. The historic passage of the eighteenth amendment last week was exactly that: a seminal moment in the country's political history, where our representatives in the National Assembly unanimously approved changes to the constitution that strengthened the hand of democracy and parliament. It was, almost unambiguously and without caveats, A Good Thing. It proved, or so I thought, that when push comes to shove, our leaders are capable of coming together and keeping the big picture in mind. Yes, there were some last-minute shenanigans from Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N, but all's well that ends well. Right?

Well, not exactly. Violence and riots in the Hazara division of the NWFP, er, sorry, Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa has led to eight people being killed, more than a hundred injured, and businesses and homes damaged. What the hell is going on?

Let's backtrack for a second. When Nawaz Sharif took his infamous U-turn on the Raza Rabbani Committee package, nobody knew why, exactly, he did it -- was it because of its implications for the judiciary, or because of its implications on renaming NWFP? It is now clear it was most definitely the latter. Why? Well, the renaming of the NWFP to Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa hasn't included a reference to the Hazara population, which is Hindko speaking. Evidently, Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa wasn't enough of a mouthful, and the province should've really been named Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa-Hazara.

This, in turn, matters because Hazara is one of the few districts outside Punjab that the PML-N can actually claim some support. And so when Nawaz Sharif ended up backing the name change with concessions granted his way -- it was originally just supposed to be Pakhtoonkhwa, but the Committee decided to reward Sharif's tantrums and intransigence with "Khyber" -- his rivals in Punjab, the PML-Q, could step up and attack him for it, saying he sold out the people of Hazara in return for other clauses in the 18th amendment.

So, to recap, Nawaz Sharif opposes elements to the 18th amendment for parochial interests, is satisfied with concessions on those interests, the amendment passes, at which point the PML-Q steps in and makes a big deal about all this and pushes the PML-N into a corner, which, in a strange way, justifies Nawaz Sharif throwing a hissy-fit before the passage. The PML-Q's fanning of the flames has resulted in this violence, and has serious implications for the passage of the bill through the Senate.

You see, after a unanimous passage in the National Assembly where all parties supported the amendment, the PML-Q, PML-N and assorted others are reversing their view of this in the Senate. The PML-Q's U-turn is the big one, because they have 21 seats in the 100-member Senate, which requires a 2/3rds majority to amend the constitution. The PML-N has seven. If some from the PML-N end up supporting the Q's stance -- and by all accounts, some do -- it will make getting those 67 votes extremely difficult. More importantly, the JUI-F has ten seats in the Senate, and also appears to suddenly be against the bill after being for it a week ago.

And here's the thing: this is one of those pieces of legislation that needs to be supported by everyone to be effective. The very point about the painstaking negotiations conducted by the Raza Rabbani Committee over many, many months was that it would ensure support from all the stakeholders. When you are introducing changes to the country's constitution in such a sweeping and grand manner, you want to be able to say with a straight face that it was supported across the spectrum. Conversely, if it passes with significant opposition, it becomes a political hot potato rather than an instance of true and lasting reform.

So this is where we are now: thanks to the blatant opportunism and myopic conduct of the PML-Q, not only are innocent lives being lost and private property being damaged, but the passage of truly historic legislation is no longer a sure thing. One potential solution would be to de-couple the renaming issue with the rest of the constitutional reforms, pass the latter and worry about the former some other time. But there's no telling how much that would anger the ANP.

This also goes to show how being from Punjab really screws up one's ability to deal with the rest of the country. The conventional understanding of Pakistani political history in the smaller provinces is that Punjabis are bent upon domination and don't care at all about them and are evil etc. I don't subscribe to that view, I just think the political incentives are very skewed for Punjabi politicians that it ends up looking that way to the smaller provinces.

What I mean by that is that control of Punjab is so important and such a big deal in the context of Pakistani politics, that parties in and from Punjab are willing to sacrifice goodwill and popularity in other regions for gains in Punjab to too great an extent. It's all about trade-offs.

For instance, in this case, the PML-Q and PML-N know they look bad to everyone else in the country, but they don't care, because the stakes are so high (control of Punjab). But for parties and leaders from other regions, compromise is easier because the balance between goodwill in their small constituencies and goodwill in other small constituencies is more even, and so they wouldn't want to go too far in alienating either of those. The trade-off is more even for them. However, when it comes to judging political gains in Punjab versus political gains in other regions, it's not even close: you do what you have to win in Punjab, and forget everything else.

Think of a group of four or five girls, one of which is significantly hotter than all the others. The extent to which you're willing to work hard to impress the hot girl will be very different to your level of effort to impress the others. You'll probably be more willing to compromise on your morals and values for the hot girl than you are for the others because, hell, she's hot! Well, Punjab is a very hot girl when it comes to Pakistan's political structure. Because of its population and majority in parliament, and the fact that it is historically been the heartbeat of Pakistan, power in Punjab matters a lot. And, unfortunately, that's exactly what we're seeing evidence of right now.