Getting close to Musharraf, Kanishk Tharoor

KVB Tharoor — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:01:03 +0000

Speakers rightly fear misleading introductions, and so too should films. As an audience of scruffy aesthetes sucked on their complimentary ActionAid rock candy, a staffer of the Birds Eye View Film Festival rose to introduce Sabiha Sumar's "Dinner with the President". This was, she promised, a timely and relevant film, delving into Pakistan's abiding political crisis as the country remains in the glow of the global spotlight. But for any observer of Pakistan, the subsequent film was less timely than it was out of touch. Such is the speed of events in Pakistan that a documentary released in late 2007 can already feel sepia-toned and out-dated by early 2008.

The film follows the rule of President Pervez Musharraf from its beginning in 1999, when the general toppled the corrupt Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup. Sumar's meetings with Musharraf - the first at a dinner with him and his doddering but jovial mother - provide the centre-points around which unfolds a broader exploration of Pakistan's democratic deficit.

To many Pakistanis, Musharraf was from the start a reluctant and sympathetic hero, preserving the country's slow and arduous path to real democracy by brushing away its fraudulent manifestations. This is a species of pliant cynicism which Sumar shares, and it leaves her meetings with the president toothless.

We are driven across the breadth of Pakistan, from tribal jirgas to the beach parties of the urban elite to the dust of a dirt-poor Sindhi village. A bewildering array of sharp and earthy perspectives flies up before the viewer: a labourer doesn't believe any leader will ensure him employment; a female shopkeeper in Karachi suggests that Benazir Bhutto encouraged women to cover themselves; a women's rights protester denounces the collusion of the mullahs and the army; Islamist leaders try to get Sumar to understand the "privilege" of staying at home; men drinking tea in Peshawar, whom Sumar was attacking for not letting their women outside, turn to her and say, "We look at you and wish we could be like you".

None of this challenging liveliness comes across in Sumar's encounters with the president himself. Instead, her conversations with him are just occasions to hear the Musharraf line, with meagre attempts at serious intervention and critique. Musharraf appears almost too human. Sumar, on the other hand, comes across as vacuous, or worse, borderline sycophantic.

This post is part of our coverage of the Bird's Eye View film festival, London 6-14 March 2008.

Also in openDemocracy on Bird's Eye View: Kasia Boddy, "Clowning glories: Hollywood's screwball women"

Pakistan's "liberal" and educated elite have long been accused of cozying up to the litany military dictators that have ruled the country. Sumar does little to dispel the impression that she too thinks the path to true democracy is paved by a strongman. In the drawing rooms of Karachi, the upper class swoon, claiming that "the only intellectualised vision of Pakistan is that of this military man". Beachside revellers expound their faith in the army in familiar English. As a bulwark against the mullahs and the venal feudalists, Musharraf is alternately "cool" and "the man". When towards the film's end, Musharraf declares a state of emergency that culminates in his shedding of the uniform for a purely civilian role, Sumar purrs that perhaps martial law is the way forward to a democratic Pakistan.

In contrast to this seeming consensus, the world outside the dens of Pakistan's urban elite is incoherent and insensible. Wizened peasants admit to not knowing who's in charge of the country. Bearded tribal leaders of a Pashtun jirga bicker vaguely in heavily-accented Urdu about the will of the people, and then agree that only force counts. A careless supporter of Benazir Bhutto (whose face he sports on a bandana) suggests that Musharraf is the best ruler Pakistan has had, before he is hounded out by other Bhutto supporters, yelling at him for betraying "his people". Sumar shakes her head. This is the "feudal mindset" at work, she says. How can "the privacy of individual rights" be inculcated amidst such ignorance? Faced by Islamists and rapacious landlords, the Musharraf way - slow but steady - seems the best option.

One feels a little sorry for Sumar that she chose to end her film in late 2007, missing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the momentous elections of February 2008, which saw both the Islamists and Musharraf's party heavily defeated. Musharraf, of course, did ensure free and fair polls, but the scale of his electoral loss may lead to him stepping down as president altogether, an event only on the far fringes of the possible in 2007.

Sumar should not be faulted for failing to predict Musharraf's demise; he has towered over Pakistani politics for nearly a decade and his tenure has not been without its positives. Yet despite her best intentions, Sumar's film succeeds only in belittling the Pakistani electorate. That messy, inchoate world of the masses managed to deliver a startlingly clear message, a stern rebuke to the mullahs, as well as to the president who thought democracy was an end rather than the means. In trying to paint a picture of contemporary Pakistan, Sumar finds in Musharraf a good shepherd. She should have paid more attention to the flock.

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Getting close to Musharraf, Kanishk Tharoor