Islamabad’s carriage ride

I have lived long enough, and travelled enough, to know that a buggy ride is royal. This week, a buggy ride was held in Islamabad and that ride has become a centre of all drawing room discussions.

Let me start with what I have seen with my own eyes, many times over, on the streets of London. I walk those streets often, and I see mounted police there almost every week. Big handsome horses, officers sitting tall in the saddle, moving through crowds at football matches, at protests, at royal parades. But here is the thing I want you to notice. Those horses are working. The officer on that horse is doing a job. He is controlling a crowd, keeping an eye on trouble, making sure that thousands of people move safely through narrow streets. Nobody in London looks at a mounted police officer and thinks of him as a king. They think of him as a policeman who happens to have four legs helping him do his job better than two legs could.

Then there is the other side of the horse story in London, the royal family. Once or twice a year, you will see the King or a prince ride out in a grand carriage, gold trim, footmen in uniform, the whole show. And it is exactly that, a show. It is theatre, built on centuries of tradition, and everybody watching knows exactly what it is. Royalty is a different breed. Nobody expects the King to explain why he has running water or why the country’s roads have potholes. He was born into that role, and the carriage is part of a costume that comes with the job. People do not confuse that costume with the daily business of government.

Now bring me back home, to Islamabad, on our own Independence Day. I watched the video like everybody else did. The chairman of the Capital Development Authority and the inspector general riding in a horse drawn carriage, arriving grandly at the ceremony. And I felt they were not kings. This was not centuries of tradition. This was a serving civil servant and a serving police officer, the very same officers who are supposed to answer to the public every single day, arriving like they were opening a coronation.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi explains the story behind that ride. He said what happened was not appropriate, but insisted it was not the fault of the IG or the chief commissioner. He says that he and the chief guest were delayed because of the president’s meeting with the prime minister, and that the crowd had been waiting since five in the evening. Around six, when it was clear they would be late, he says he told the officers to start the programme so the public would not have to wait any longer. The buggy, he said, had been arranged for the chief guest, and the officers were only supposed to ride with him, but due to unavoidable circumstances they ended up using it alone. He added that both officers had initially resisted starting the program without him, and that he personally instructed them to proceed, for the convenience of the public.

I keep thinking about that journalist who asked a simple, honest question. Have you ever seen the police commissioner of London ride around in a royal buggy? The answer, of course, is no. Because he knows his job is to serve, not to be served. That is the whole difference in one sentence.

A horse carriage is a fine thing, in the right hands, for the right reason. In London, it either works, or it performs. In Islamabad this week, it did neither. It simply left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth.