Sorry kids, we got it wrong

As the excitement of the elections rose to a feverish pitch, I had my teenage kids convinced that Pakistanis were at their smartest when they went polling. In 1988, voters routed out the clerics and opted for secular governance. They saw through the farcical referendums held by both military dictators Ziaul Haq and General (retd) Pervez Musharraf to validate each one’s agenda. But today, sorrowfully, I had to tell my kids that in the first election they witnessed, we got it wrong. The people of Pakistan shouted for change but voted against it rather than for it.

If there was any doubt before, there exists none now that we are a regressive nation; voting for traditionalism, feudalism, politics of dirty money and the familiarity of corruption — turning our backs on the prospect of a better, brighter future. Perhaps, our angst and suffering have not climaxed yet; if the pain had been abysmal enough, we would more likely have gained true insight and acute awareness and voted differently. Such is the case of the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) who have been severely burned by a most exacting war. If the entire nation had suffered the way the people of K-P have, the results would have gone another route. There would have been a coterie of fresh new faces sitting in the rows of parliament and the old, jaded, have-beens would be skulking in the opposition. It will now be to the contrary because as much as we would like to convince ourselves that the opposition counts for something, it doesn’t. It’s just about as annoying as a toothless gnat.

It is true that the political vocabulary has been forever changed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. The idea of corner meetings, use of social media and even heavy television advertising took the campaign off the streets and into people’s houses, making it more personal and more identifiable in some ways. There was less talk of ambiguous ideologies and more discourse over specific solutions to larger issues. But most importantly, the issue of moral rectitude began to emerge as a pivotal axis of the dialogue, an ignominy that had not concerned us previously because we had never, in our history, fallen to such depths of depravity.

But the conciliatory roster of achievements in this election is not enough for all of us who needed a salve for our wounds. Somewhat soothing was the routing of entrenched politicians who have ruled the roost in their constituencies. Yet, we will be subjected to the pain of having to watch the antics of some politicians whom we had hoped never to see again. This is the debris we had hoped to sweep out of our lives but which we are forced to suffer for the next five years.

The unanswered questions and flood of rhetoric that we may want to voice right now will have to wait and perhaps, in time, the creases will be ironed out. But for people living in Karachi, the ordeal is unlikely to ease up. Not a whit has changed nor will it in the foreseeable future.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2013.