Elections 2013
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
(This article was written before the May 11 elections)
“Politicians and roosters crow about what they intend to do. The roosters deliver what is promised”. - Dr Laurence J. Peter, an American author.
“Hun Dasso ” (tell me now) was the natural response of my washman, Feroz Din, in 2004 when ex-senator Asif Ali Zardari re-arrived in Pakistan. In an earlier discussion with Feroz Din, I had assertively declared that Mr Zardari was dead meat, and that his re-emergence in Pakistani politics was a fool’s dream.
Feroz Din’s “Hun Dasso” was not just a remark. It was as if he had stripped me naked in front of all, exposing my ignorance about Pakistani politics in just one, little phrase. During the remainder period of my stay in Pakistan, I avoided discussing politics with him. As a clever professor, I thought it wise to discover a weak side of him where I could touch him most. A verbal sympathy to his ability to survive in the wake of social and economic problems was where he appeared most vulnerable. I am sure, if I had been in Pakistan now in 2013, Feroz Din would have definitely said. “Hor Chuppo” (have it more now).
Was it George Burns, the famous American comedian who once said, “Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxis and cutting hair.” Perhaps he was not very wrong. Politics is a game of surprises, and in Pakistan it is a combination of surprises and unpredictability because no politician or poet in Pakistan “lies because nobody ever affirms.” Every solution and every problem they discuss remains in a fluid state.
How does politics work in Pakistan can best be learned, not in schools or colleges - the politics learned there is too bookish and too disconnected from real life - it is best learned in the local barber’s shop. Whatever little knowledge I claim to possess about real Pakistani politics, let me admit it, a good portion of it owes it genesis to my two barbers, Saina (Hussain) and Azam Nai.
In the fifties, our choice to having a monthly haircut was restricted by a parental decree. We could either go to Saina, a Second World War veteran or to Azam Nai. Both were not just two barbers; they were two different schools of thought in politics, two attitudes. By the late sixties and early seventies, going for a haircut to either of them, openly determined one’s political trend, or even the political party one belonged to.
Saina (Hussain) was somewhat conservative by nature. He lived too much in the past, and was averse to new trends. He had a shop that, no doubt, had quite a few mirrors, but the Islamic posters and newspaper cuttings on the walls outnumbered the mirrors. I, however, never liked going to him for a different reason. Saina had a tendency to report every little movement of mine to my father (who was also one of his solid patrons), with an additional grain of salt, predicting even the trends I was likely to follow in my adult life.
For example, even an innocent desire that my neck hair be cut like that of Dilip Kumar’s, got reported as if it were an act of blasphemy. Besides, Saina would also bore endlessly, by bragging about how he cut the hair of the “goras” - the white-soldiers - bragging beyond belief as if it were the good luck of those white soldiers that they got a chance to have a haircut from him. The worst part was that he would invariably stop half-way while cutting my hair, holding an open razor in one hand and my ear directly under it in another, and then wait for an appreciative response from those who, somehow, were always there, browsing through the pages of the Urdu newspaper that they got for free to read.
Azam Nai was different. He was less abrasive than Saina and was more committed to his profession than many. His only weakness was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. There was hardly an inch of space left on the walls of his little shop that did not bear the life-size picture of Bhutto. People followed Bhutto; Azam Nai just worshipped him. I fully exploited this weakness of his. On entering his shop, I always obliged him with a positive remark about Bhutto, extolling some of the merits of his hero, and got the best haircut from him.
Sometime in 1973 or 1974, I remember hurting Azam Nai badly. I was upset over the action which the governor of Punjab, Mr Mustafa Khar, had taken against the students. Mr Mukhtar Qureshi, the Principal of Faisalabad Government College, himself showed to me the blood marks on the walls of the classrooms when I went to see him. As a punishment, the government had also transferred Mr Mukhtar Qureshi to Bhakkar College because he had attempted to protect the students.
I still remember his words. “Mr. Chaudhry, this transfer order is my death warrant. I know as a heart-patient I shall not survive this transfer. But I am proud that I defended the students.” Soon afterwards, he died as he had predicted.
On one haircut session, I criticized Bhutto and his policies, by citing the arrogance of his governor, and the way the students had been roughed up so mercilessly in Lahore and Faisalabad. Azam Nai was a very meek, humble and poor man. On hearing even this little criticism about his hero, he stopped half way cutting my hair, and with all the rudeness he could muster, he demanded that I better leave his shop. I then discovered that finding any fault with Bhutto’s style of politics was not a simple lapse; it was an unpardonable sin. Bhutto was Azam Nai’s hope. Little did Azam and his types know that their leader all his life had not even bought a pair of socks himself. Bhutto was conscious of his popularity, but was a slave to his own class. Azam Nai died as a destitute and helpless man with stars in his eyes that Bhutto as a savior would one day change the plight of the weak and helpless people like him. What happened to this great dynasty between 1974 and 2013 is a tale with a clear moral lesson.
That is how politics works in Pakistan, total blind worship. People vote to personalities, not to their performance or policies. There is no rationale why people in Pakistan stay so much sold out to personalities even when these leaders long cease to sharing anything with them. As is said by Sheikh Rashid about these leaders, “The lifestyle and their manners; not even their hospitals, schools or cemeteries are the same as that of the people”. Yet they always remain electable, a new term coined in Pakistan. His prediction about these leaders is, “My black tongue is constrained to utter this foreboding that it is not within the capacity and competence of these leaders to solve the economic problems confronting Pakistan.”
The election campaigns in all the countries where democracy works are reflective of the inner trends of the leaders. As had been well articulated by US News in its January, 2008 edition, “Campaigns do more than just send a chief executive (a PM in our case)…They also illuminate social trends and define issues, explain where America (Pakistan) has come from and where it is headed, and generate more than their share of triumph and tragedy, even a fair bit of comedy in between”. It is during the election period, and during those certain political moments that certain campaign slogans, certain gaffes, certain missteps, certain gestures, and certain miscalculations just prove too consequential and they end up reshaping the result of the elections, and of the history.
Unfortunately, no such thing appears to be happening in Pakistan. Except for Imran Khan, all the rest are the same. What can a simple voter deduce from their comical political slogans, other than just laugh and vote for them as usual. Some of the samples of slogans uttered by very experienced political leaders are reproduced here as a model:
“Noon (PML (N)’s confrontation is not with a “Balla-bat”, it is with “the riches of Qaroon”, contends Shahbaz Sharif. “Balla and Teer (bat and arrow, symbols of PTI and PPP) are in connivance with each other. On May 11, they shall be buried.”
“If you are a lion (symbol of PML (N), then act like a lion.”, thunders Imran Khan. This Oxford-educated cricketer has also adopted the same cheap narrative which the chronic leaders have. “With the presence and connivance of Maulna Fazlalur Rahman and President Zardari, Jews need not indulge in any more intrigues against us,” says Imran Khan, completing forgetting that his ex-wife was a Jew, and that dragging in this Jewish element in politics is a cheap shot. “I am a captain. I have waited for the May 11 match for seventeen years. Earlier I used to hit sixes with a bat, now I will use it for thrashing my opponents.” “I will turn the PM House and the Governor House into public libraries.” “I will end corruption in 90 days… I will withdraw armed forces from Waziristan… I will order the shooting down of drones ...”. Do these slogans in any way hint how all this would be accomplished, and how they relate to the pressing problems that confront the people of Pakistan?
The silliest slogan came from Hanif Abbasi, a national assembly candidate from Rawalpindi. “Bachoo, (children of Imran Khan), just wait for a few days. Your uncle, (himself), will tie down the hands and feet of your Aboo (Imran Khan), and will send him by the first flight to London.” Mian Nawaz Sharif intones. “Did I ever cheat you? Did I ever lie?” “I will run a bullet-train from Karachi to Multan. You will be able to reach Multan in four hours”. The last time he was forced to leave the government in October 1999, the foreign exchange reserves of the country stood at, according to one version, 800 million, and according to Sartaj Aziz his minister, at 400 million. Currently, Pakistan has incurred a reduction of $8 billion in its foreign reserves, and is left with $3 billion, not enough to survive for even two months. A debt of about 13,000 billion rupees has been added along with 30 million people to the poverty line, according to Mr Shahid Siddiqui, an economist.
In Pakistan the story of elections is different. Voters are zealot devotees. Willingly, and smilingly they elect the same people who had been responsible for their miseries, and who had driven the country to the verge of disaster.
Will the people of Pakistan act differently in the May 11, 2013 elections? There are signs that they will. The Judiciary, the Media and the sufferings of people and to some extent the Imran Khan factor, all will act positively. The Economist of April 27, 2013 has already called the Elections of May 11 as, “Pakistan’s hopeful general election”, and has predicted that after 14 years in exile and opposition, Nawaz Sharif is expected to win a third spell as PM.
A 10% percentage point rise in the turnout of voters from 44% in 2008 to about 54% in 2013 is expected. Of the 86189,802 registered voters, a solid 34.6% consist of young people between the age of 18-30. This group was missing in the 2008 elections. This trump card will determine the fate of the current elections.
The Economist of April 27, calls the five-year rule of PPP government as ‘dismal”. It survived because of Mr. Sharif’s “friendly opposition”; it failed to enact economic reforms; it displeased the urban voters due to power shortage; it did little to control inflation and violence; its figurehead President Zardari remained widely despised and remembered as “corrupt, isolated and ineffective”. His party - PPP - is virtually leaderless: its chairman, a “24- year-old son, is said to be too fearful of assassination to meet any voters”. However, according to the Economist, “PPP will not be wiped out”. It may get 60 seats, out of 272, and most from the Sindh province where its rural voters are loyal.
Mr Nawaz Sharif, according to the Economist’s unexpected prediction, “will be back, perhaps supported by a Karachi based party, the MQM”. He may win 80-85 seats; Imran Khan at his best may get 40-45 seats, and at his worst, 25-30 seats; MQM is likely to pocket 15-17 seats; and JUI and PML (Q), 5-7 seats each. Two lady astrologers on TV the other day were heard foreboding that two days prior to elections are very formidable. If any government survives the first two months after the elections, then things may turn rosy and good for Pakistan. They predicted just 25 seats to PTI, and about 100 seats to PML (N).
The most astounding prediction came from Mr Khushnood Ali Khan, a journalist. “Who knows, the next alliance may be between PML (N) and the PPP.” Instead of accusing the Talibaan that are openly threatening the election process and are targeting the PPP, ANP and MQM, this trio of whiners has invented another factor: to put the blame on those who are not being targeted, and are campaigning. Mr Khushood Ali Khan in his titled view on Pakistan Television did the ultimate when he said, “Who knows the results of this election may be challenged on the international forum because the three provinces of the country are deliberately kept out”.
What message do these leaders and these so-called opinion-makers convey to the Talbaan? They all have to be on the same page with regard to the national security and solidarity of the country if terrorism is to be brought under control. Sufferings bring wisdom, ripeness and readiness. It is hoped that the four biggest changes that are lined up in Pakistan, (New PM in May; New President in September; New army chief in November; New Chief Justice in December), and the new elections in India and Afghanistan in 2014 , bring new vision to the elected leaders.
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