Who should I vote for?

It appears that for individuals like me, decision to vote is a lot easier than decision of knowing who to vote for.

Inspired by a discussion with a group of young journalism students, my article unpacks the voting decision of a young, educated Pakistani in a hypothetical conversation with himself:

I’m a young, educated Pakistani preparing to vote for the first time in my life. Who should I vote for?

I genuinely want to do my part to make this country a better place, which is why I want to make an educated, well thought out decision about who I should vote for. The problem is that I’m really confused about my choices and not clear about how I should go around making the right decision on election day.

I inevitably begin evaluating my options with the one person everybody in my social circle is talking about: Imran Khan. I don’t trust politics in Pakistan but I must admit that there was something about Imran Khan’s tsunami that sparked my initial interest in these elections. It’s difficult to describe the feeling but for a fleeting moment, Imran made me believe in Pakistan again.

Unfortunately, as time passed, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s ‘new ball’ shine dimmed as it began to receive criticism from many quarters simultaneously. Deep down inside, I still want to vote for Imran because we’ve already tried every other leader. However, I want to at least evaluate the rest of my options, just to be sure.

The problem is that most political parties aren’t actively courting my vote. To put it politely, they think my vote can’t help them win the upcoming elections. Unfortunately, I’m part of a voting bloc that wants to be courted, but can’t always find the right prospective suitor. My situation is analogous to the father of a young Pakistani woman growing past her ‘sell by date’ for rishtas. I have the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that I have to live life according to the whims of a society I don’t agree with and cannot change overnight.

Studying this landscape, some of my friends keep insisting that my vote won’t make a difference. To be completely honest, I think they might be right but I can still rationalise my decision to vote: even if my vote doesn’t make a difference, I’ll still feel better about myself after voting, compared with my ‘burger’ friends, who think they can change the country by updating their Facebook statuses. If nothing else, at least I can tell my children that I tried.

It appears that for individuals like me, the decision to vote is a lot easier than the decision of knowing who to vote for. To help make a voting decision, let me identify the issues that really matter. My top three national priorities are as follows: security, security and security! That’s what we really need in Pakistan. I love my country and genuinely feel grateful for the opportunities I’ve been blessed with. All I really want now is for Pakistan to become safe and I won’t mind all the other problems in the country.

I understand that security in Pakistan is a complex issue. But it is the defining issue of the upcoming elections. If the security situation in Pakistan continues to slide in the next three to five years, then I’ll have to consider moving out of the country permanently — something I don’t want to do but may have to do to give my children a better future.

After security, my second priority is the economy. A close third is the elimination of power outages. I don’t expect a new Pakistani leader to have a magic wand that can make all our problems go way but I would appreciate if he focused on these three priorities in that order. I wish that Pakistani journalists and the media could tell me which political party is most well-suited to deliver on these three priorities but they’re too busy covering the impact of ignoring these priorities (bombs, targeted killings, inflation, unemployment) instead of sparking conversations on how we can focus on these priorities to turn around our fortunes as a nation.

I’m a young, educated Pakistani preparing to vote for the first time in my life. Someone please tell me, who should I vote for?

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2013.