The saviour, the murderer & the system
The writer is a political analyst. Email: imran.jan@gmail.com. Twitter @Imran_Jan
I am a 90s kid. I grew up watching Indian movies. Amitabh was the biggest movie star I knew and liked. When he fought with his hands and fists against Amresh Puri and brought down the powerful and rich villain single handedly, it always brought tears of joy in my eyes. Seeing the righteous win the battle against the immoral was a beautiful experience. Humanity's natural reaction to morality is to welcome it. While we humans might be wired that way, the world, however, is a blackhole of morality where morals come to bury.
The proof of this horrendous notion is undeniably present all around us. The most popular man of Pakistan is languishing in a death cell. He didn't come to politics to become famous or rich. He already had those things. He came to change the system. Most importantly, he came to be the saviour of this sorry nation. He raised voice globally for the children of a lesser god.
He is running in an election to become the chancellor of Oxford University. There is a strong chance that he might win. And that right there would not be a victory for him but rather a slap in the face of a system that rewards kinship and destroys merit. Here is another proof of this rotten and ugly system where people like Maryam Nawaz and Co thrive: President Biden was able to orchestrate the removal of this man from an elected office using just perhaps a few hand gestures. The same President Biden in his own country cannot even run for the same office that he currently occupies, let alone winning it. In his own country, he cannot win against his country's most popular politician right now. The system in his country had to prevent him from even running despite being the incumbent candidate. But in Pakistan, his incompetence didn't matter. Maybe Biden should borrow from Obama and say, "Yes we can (in Pakistan)."
President Biden is a man who is responsible for the killing of thousands of Palestinian people including many thousands of children. In a world where global institutions weren't dominated and controlled by the United States, Biden would be in an orange jumpsuit for his war crimes. That war criminal, child killing, immoral and incompetent man is winning against a man who is the opposite of all of Biden's personality traits.
This Pakistani man is a saviour. He is giving the sacrifice of being in prison instead of running away to foreign lands for the sake of the people of his nation. This man refused to allow the superpower America to launch a war against Afghanistan using his soil. He told the Americans that he would rather be a partner in working for peace instead of for war. Biden, on the other hand, buckles under the pressure of the Israeli lobbies in America and allows his nation and his people's tax money to be used in waging a brutal war against helpless and innocent people. The Pakistani man speaks for the poor and stands up to power and the American man speaks for the aggressor and provides weapons for the slaughter of the poor. And yet, it is this American man who wins against this Pakistani man. The American man will retire to live a peaceful life and perhaps even write a book full of lies, which will become a bestseller. The Pakistani man might just become another Morsi. Why is it always like this? Why did it have to be this way?
Sometimes, I do wonder why we all enjoyed seeing Amitabh beat the crap out of Amresh Puri because our dominant trait seems to be rewarding the crooks, the villains, the criminals and punishing the patriots, the well-wishers and the upright ones. Maybe that is what they mean when they say that children are like angels. They are free of sins. Because once we become human beings, we become ruthless.