The Mirage of Power

"Yes, this book is also written about that period but is nonfiction and is incredibly important. Dr Mubashir Hasan is a political treasure. He is a founding member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which is a party that has morphed and mutated tremendously since the 1960s and currently rules Pakistan today in a completely bastardised form. He is a former finance minister, and what I think is so important about The Mirage of Power is that it is about the attempt of a popular government to change the system and their failure to do so and their struggles against the bureaucracy and the military machine of this country. You have got this wonderful insight into the forces that we still deal with today, like the IMF. The popular government at the time told the IMF that they were not going to pay their debt off on their conditions because they were unfair. Instead they were going to restructure their debt payment in a way that benefited Pakistan. The IMF had no choice but to accept that because they were dealing with a popularly elected government. And when we look at the IMF today and their role in Indonesia or Argentina, and the economic stranglehold they have on the third world, I think this book is an eye-opener into the debt myths of the IMF. Well, he was killed three years before I was born. And the problem of being the granddaughter of such an enormous, almost mythological figure in Pakistan is that nobody wants to tell you anything about him that doesn’t paint him or themselves in a nice light! So, The Mirage of Power was the only chance I had of looking objectively at his policies and at the failures of a government that was incredibly progressive and imaginative in what they wanted for the Pakistani people. It is a legacy that continues until this day. But of course he made mistakes and there were errors along the way. But we have a tendency to lionise our politicians here. In the sense that I am writing about people who I knew and loved it is impossible for me to divorce myself from that. There is no such thing as objectivity, is there? But I was critical of certain things that had to be spoken about when it comes to my father and grandfather. As a daughter I can’t be critical because he was a wonderful father. But in the choices that he made with his life it is not only necessary that I am able to look at them with a critical eye but, in terms of this country and my life and my family’s life, it is urgent that I do so. Because if we don’t talk about the mistakes that people have made we are just going to repeat them. With Zulfikar, who was an extraordinary force of life, so much so he still drives Pakistani politics today, there is nothing disloyal about being critical because it was his mistakes that led to not only his downfall but the change in the Pakistani system. He had an ability to be different in certain periods from other leaders. He sent the army to put down an insurgency in Balochistan and great abuses were committed by that army. So that was an extraordinary failure on his part. And the same is true for my father, when I talk about the choices that he made to confront a military regime by force: it was a decision that changed his life for ever. Those are not choices that I would make but, living as I do in Pakistan with this stranglehold in politics, it becomes very important to say these are the mistakes made by these men, because if not it means we believe that there is a curse on the family and somehow we are destined for tragedy. I simply don’t believe that. People make mistakes."