Is the country ready for more of the same?

None of the politicians who are elected will be able to eliminate entrenched customs that militate against progress.

I haven’t met anybody in Karachi who is enthusiastic or excited about the next general election, even if he thought Imran Khan had a chance of becoming prime minister. This is probably because there will be the same old tired faces, tried and tested, conservative and unyielding, the same extravagant manifestos and promises which nobody has any intention of keeping. And the same unmistakable whiff of cultural manipulation. The truth of the matter is that the country is in such a mess I honestly can’t see any way out of the quagmire. None of the politicians who are elected will be able to eliminate some of the entrenched customs that militate against progress. Who is going to stop the genocide of women, the beatings, rapes and gang rapes, and the handing over of teenage girls to settle tribal disputes? How can they when they belong to the same cultural environment and are tarred with the same brush even though the courts have declared that some of the punitive rituals and practices are totally unconstitutional and militate against human rights?

Just look at some of the issues. Terrorists strike when and where they choose and there is nothing we can do about it. The Pakistan Army has made it clear that it is not going to get involved and has left the job of tackling the militants to the traumatised and ill-equipped Rangers and the police. Male attitudes towards women have not changed since the country’s most retrogressive and obscurantist dictator Ziaul Haq planted the seeds of a theocracy and fully endorsed the spirit of the Objectives Resolution which was the very antithesis of what the founder of the nation believed in. Edicts of the superior courts are openly flaunted and there is no authority to implement them. Christians are repeatedly being hauled up on fake blasphemy charges. Strikes and protests take place at the slightest provocation involving losses of billions of rupees to the country. Traffic jams in major cities have become totally unmanageable and successive governments have failed to implement a mass transit system in the larger cities.

In some parts of the country, girls are being assassinated for trying to impart education, while in other areas they are being killed for attempting to ensure that children remain free of polio. Health workers have demanded police protection, but what can the cops do when a large contingent of their force is engaged in protecting the freeloaders of the assemblies? The Rule of Law hasn’t been implemented for over 30 years. In effect, we are heading towards a state of complete anarchy. The sad thing is that while we are all electrified by the awfulness of it all, pausing occasionally to fling abuses at the government and the Americans, nobody seems to give a damn. The rules of tragedy, as the bard would have put it, are immutable.

The election commissioner can play a major role by enlightening the electorate on the merits and demerits of the freeloaders who are offering themselves for re-election. He could suggest that each candidate sends in a hundred-word self-assessment in a local newspaper about his achievements during the last five years, so that the voters can decide whether the contender has actually done some good or just taken the people for a ride. That ought to do the trick. I am not sure if the EC can swing it. Even if he can’t, the rest of the media could take up the idea and push it. Who knows what will happen. Anyway, it’s worth giving it a try.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2012.