Reflections on ‘resignation’

Younis Khan, the captain of the Pakistan cricket team, has resigned, in disgust, we are told. The resignation came after Younis was summoned by a Parliamentary sports committee inquiring into charges of match-fixing in the recently concluded Champions Trophy in South Africa. The Pakistani captain is reported to have told the committee that he was upset over the charges. ‘I cannot take this,’ he had told them. In other words, he basically told the committee ‘you can take my captaincy and stuff it wherever you wish’.

The Chairman of the sports committee, Jamshed Dasti, is reported to have earlier alleged that Younis’ team had deliberately lost the last two games of the tournament, including the semifinal against New Zealand. The committee subsequently cleared the team of any wrongdoing, but this was hardly consolation to Younis, apparently.

Cricket politics in Pakistan is frequently visited by controversy. There’s been too much of match-fixing, indiscipline, temper tantrums, drugs and a lot of taking-off-in-a-huff to make Younis’ resignation unexpected. And yet, I feel for this man.

Younis Khan has been chided for making tongue-in-cheek comments off the field. In post-match interviews after heavy defeats he has never been down in the mouth but actually laughing. For all this, the man is pretty serious about what happens on the field and in things directly related to the game.

I remember reading an interview where he said he didn’t like young and talented players being compared with all-time greats of the game. His point was that it takes several years of consistently high quality performances for a player to establish himself as an unforgettable. He warned that early comparisons can cause irreparable damage to an impressionable young player’s approach to the game. In short, he was not just another man pushed into the skipper’s role on account of longevity or performance; he fitted the role and was a good and capable leader. His resignation therefore is a serious matter that ought to worry all cricket-loving Pakistanis.

This is not about Younis Khan, though. It is about ‘resignation’ as a tool, a political instrument, and more than this, a last-resort measure to protect self-respect, integrity and dignity. There are many reasons why people resign from posts. Sometimes they are asked to resign because they’ve become an embarrassment, one way or another. That is, they’ve done wrong and can no longer be part of the organization. They are asked to resign as opposed to being sacked because the powers believe that an abrupt termination might leave a bad after-taste.

Then there are people who resign upon feeling remorse for being involved in wrongdoing. They feel they do not deserve the position any longer. They are obviously not the best people around but at least they are not beyond redemption. Then there are the Younis Khan types; those who resign in disgust, who ‘cannot take it’. That’s a superior type, I believe.

There will be of course the argument that injustice will always be there and you’ve got to stay on and fight. Some would argue, not without reason, that the malicious and crooked could at times make unfounded allegations anticipating that the charged would, on account of righteous indignation, resign and thereby clear the ground for unchecked wrongdoing. Still, resignation remains a way of protesting, a way of saying ‘no’, of objecting to way things are done. Such techniques can work if the ‘resignee’ is clearly above board, has eschewed cheap popularity at all times and has done justice to his/her job description at all times.

I believe that Sri Lanka is unfortunately suffering from an un-resigning political culture. People don’t know when to go. They are too greedy for the perks to say ‘I cannot take this any more’. They will suffer all manner of indignities because it’s a price worth paying for the benefits they expect to obtain.

People are not asked to resign on being found guilty of wrongdoing because the transgression compromises the wrongdoer into sanctioning other wrongdoing. And even if the error was innocent, the guilt party will not feel honour bound to resign because he/she thinks, ‘no one saw, no one knows after all’. There aren’t many M. D. Bandas around who, even though they can get away because there’s no proof, still decides to own up and leave. We remember M.D. Banda because he resigned his Parliamentary seat even though he didn’t have to. We don’t remember the vast majority of his contemporaries and that says something, doesn’t it?

We have politicians and officials who have been found guilty of wrongdoing, incompetence and having brought disrepute to the position they hold and the institution(s) they are associated with. They carry on regardless. They can not only ‘take it’, they will make sure we have to ‘take it’ too. There is very little ‘party-above-self’ or ‘country-above-self’. The operating principle seems to be ‘hang everything else as long as I am secure’. I am not naming names, but examples are certainly not hard to come by.

I believe that a political culture that encourages people to stick on beyond ‘expiry date’ ultimately makes for gruesome axing. Those who do not let go are in the end dragged and tossed out like so much trash. Again, one doesn’t have to name names. It has happened to the highest in the land.

Younis Khan deserves a salute. Sometimes to ‘stay’, one has to ‘go’. Sometimes, ‘staying’ essentially means submitting to redundancy, accepting a castration of sorts. Such ‘staying’ would be like ‘going’.

There is a bottom line in this. Why should anyone stay on in a place/position in situations where those who set and are supposed to champion mandate themselves compromise mandate, position and institution? That makes for ‘disgust’ and ‘cannot take any more’. I can understand non-resignation in situations where ‘leaving’ would literally put someone on the street. Not otherwise. It’s these ‘otherwise’ cases that trouble me. I am worried that integrity has suffered a hard-to-recovery-from wound in our society.

The Younis Khan type resignation on the other hand nourishes those outside the circle of ‘relevance’. It spills out of institution, personality and event and strengthens the righteous. Heals wounds. Empowers.