Another One Bites The Dust

Lowering the voting age to 18 for the referendum makes sense if you look at the speed with which General Musharrafs latest tactics are alienating many over 21. Most 18 year olds don’t bother following the news. They are content to follow the lead of those they feel are most qualified to lead the world, i.e. the bully’s and the beautiful. But to socially challenged people like me, barred from rolling in the alligator wrestling ring of life by the dual constraints of self respect and mid-term pregnancy, the news is all we have. And the news over the last couple of weeks has raised a few ideological obstacles to my making a beeline for the ‘yes’ line in the voting booths come referendum day (unless it be to drag away any 18 year olds I happen to know).

I was one of those M enthusiasts who liked every move of our new moderate leader. In that narrow window post- September 11, pre referendum, General Musharrafs ‘political correctness’ made it easy to ignore questions, to push them back down into the subconscious with all the other debris accumulated during a Pakistani existence. This is sometimes called a coping mechanism. Stop thinking. Life is so much easier if you don’t think. Ironically, it was the wording of the referendum question itself that raised my mental hackles and compelled the slug inside to yell ‘Oye…just a minute!’

“For consolidating the local government system; establishment of democracy; continuation of reforms; end to sectarianism and fundamentalism; and fulfilment of Quaid-i-Azam’s concept of Pakistan, would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan for five years?”

I’m not even going to go into the legality of the whole exercise. I know nothing about it. But the wording of the question…a simple ‘Would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan for five years?’ would have sufficed. Why suggest a ‘No’ meant opposition to all of the above? Why equate dissent with disloyalty? In world of real, painful dichotomy, why add a false dilemma to the mix? Hadn’t the ‘either you are with us or against us’ school of thought already caused enough suffering over the last one year? Did we really need an addition to the current line up of ‘asses’ of evil?

So began another tale of disenchantment. And, like a local hospital administrator faced with the Congo virus, I’d like to share. Introspection is more effective pre-stupidity.

The ‘power in the hands of the people’ initiative sounded sweet but its quite disturbing to see the ‘hands of the people’ behaving like especially constructed prosthetic devices with long handles for back scratching. Commandeering public transport and making attendance of rallies mandatory for the rank and file doesn’t create faith in the government, it erodes it. Nazims who have till date been pleading in vain for an infusion of funds into silly things like health, education and waste management infrastructure have suddenly found the pockets of the federal government are miraculously deep when it comes to expenditure on M’s rallies. Nazims objecting to the arbitrary movement of people and funds on a marionette string have found the pockets of the federal government to be empty, concrete lined and populated by an army of deaf mutes with doctorates in grudge bearing.

Some would say the press has never been freer but respect and disdain can be synonymous. Money has been poured into a cosmetic overhaul of state television but a tyrannosaurus rex with lipstick is still a tyrannosaurus rex. Presswalas have been castigated for their ‘myopic’ rendering of the facts; intimidation tactics have ranged from the rhetorical to the physical. Journalists and columnists have been asked to refrain from writing about things ‘of which they have no knowledge.’ Do they want to drive an entire profession out of business?

The ‘woman’ angle promoted by a smart line in reform and increase in representation seems to be just a line when faced with the fact that an administration willing to mobilize millions in expenditure and human resources for the consolidation of power at the drop of a hat has yet to do the same in a drive against honor killing or laws and mechanisms that oppress and punish women and minorities. Politicians will be arrested upon reentry but murderers, wife beaters and rapists can still walk free.

The stink of the previous government’s verbal diarrhea still covers the land and every day there is another barrage of dung patties at the (supposed) enemies of the state. And all that’s on offer is repetitive old hat set against a backdrop of all too familiar lota faces and people who have no business at political rallies. The articulate sincerity apparent from General Musharraf's earlier speeches seems more ominous now; comments like “I am aware that you have never disappointed me in the past and will not let me down in future” and “we will make up our own minds and then your views will be invited” seem more ‘general to his troops’ then ‘servant of the people’. And who is this mysterious ‘We’ anyway? Is it M and I? Him and George? Gorillas in the mist? The boys in khaki?

After months of appearing bathed in a gentle golden backlight (like a little sting ray from heaven) in the run up to the referendum the General’s chosen coterie and whole hearted embrace of political mannerisms and actions is doing a lot of damage to the store of goodwill he had accumulated amongst the ‘silent majority’. Most still believe he is a good person but wonder if he is a good judge of character (one man does not a government make). It is getting harder to identify how what he stands for is any different from the politicians he says are wholly and solely responsible for all of the Pakistani peoples suffering.

The way he divisions blame is another issue. Either he is delusional (could be caused by combination of pagri cutting of circulation to his head and hyena advisors sniffing around his heels) or he thinks the silent majority has a collective IQ of 30. If he is so concerned about the sins of ex-MNA’ and MPA’s what is he doing with various Chaudrys and Tariq Aziz? If he is so concerned with extremism why have so many activists of religious organizations been quietly released? How many army men has NAB prosecuted? Can anyone honestly discount the role of the military in bringing us to the point of intellectual and cultural retardation? What ‘checks and balances’ does the General have in mind for his king makers? Where is the military section of his ‘narration of injustice’? Can you dive into ‘root causes’ and pretend there is no elephant behind the light pole?

Will I have answers to these questions come referendum morning? Probably not. And according to yesterday’s paper, I might not need them. President Musharraf told a news conference on April 16th he had yet to decide whether to step down in case he did not get himself elected in the referendum. How reassuring it is to know the bounty of the ‘economic revival’ is being utilized for something other than the whimsical.

If your opinion has no bearing on the result, should you bother to vote at all?