Nikka’s Pakistan

In many ways, Nikka is the face of Pakistan. Unfortunately it is the cheating, devious, lying image that continually fails to grow out of this negative stature. It’s an image that never wins big with a game, set, match sequence. Instead, Nikka, much like Pakistan, is content to win a game or two. He not only trumpets these crumbs as victory pie, he is convinced they are the successful result of adopting the devious and underhanded techniques. Thus not only are these techniques justified, they have become part of his nature. In short, the techniques are seen as necessary to win as well as to hide his utter incompetence.

I know it is unfair to claim that the primary national traits are manifested in Nikka. After all, Nikka and I grew up in the same neighborhood and he did become the captain of the soccer team. Though we never became good friends (I don’t consider him a friend in all honesty – in fact, I’d rather avoid his company altogether), we did share certain events that will always remind us that we had some common bonds. For example winning a soccer match, or the group of us helping him in his election campaign, or the time we got held up fishing at the river Ravi last summer by gun-men from the Gogi-gang who wanted money in return for letting us go. Nikka got badly beaten up after he tried to ‘bargain’ out of the gun-point hold-up by referencing the local Nazim whom he knew rather well. Unbeknownst to Nikka, the local Nazim’s henchmen had the month before killed 9 men of the Gogi-gang. Gogi went berserk and it’s a miracle Nikka survived. Fortunately all Gogi did was man-handle Nikka and rob him of his mobile phone.

Nazims, elections and elected officials. Yes, that is the reason I decided to write about Nikka. He is a labor councilor from the south western part of Lahore. He has been through the election process, seen how it works and how alliances are made (though these alliances can be counter-productive if mentioned in the presence of the Gogi-gang).

On August 18th, the first phase of the first round of elections was complete and the credibility of the process is as tainted as it was in 2001. Many are speculating that the real ‘rigging’ will occur in the second round with the elections for the district Nazims.

This reminded me of Nikka’s tale on what happened to him in the second round back in 2001.

Nikka had failed to show up for a very important soccer match. The team was concerned about his disappearance (though we won). Many speculated that since he’d become a politician, he’d changed etc. Little did we know that Nikka, like a few hundred other labor councilors had been kidnapped by a local Brigadier General in Lahore. Ok, kidnapped is a harsh word. But he had been ‘taken in’ along with the others and was told he would not be released until he voted for the government-backed Mian Amer Mahmood as the District Nazim of Lahore. However, this account should not make one angry as rigging is a habit of the establishment. What was amusing was that they’d considered Nikka important enough to kidnap. Nikka himself told this tale with an element of pride.

So when one questions the credibility of the devolution plan of the current regime, the answer is pretty obvious. ‘Fudging’ the numbers – even if it means ‘taking in’ candidates – are imperative if the regime is to push through a half-baked agenda. If the government wanted to have a transparent process, any number of sensible steps could easily have been taken:

1) Appoint an Election Commissioner for life (or for a one ten/fifteen-year fixed term)
2) Make the judiciary and the process of judge-selection completely independent
3) Have the elections will be held on a party-basis

Point number 1 would have been enough to establish the credibility of the elections. Instead, all of the points were intentionally ignored by the military government. Naturally so as the above would have crippled the establishment’s ability to rig the process and prevented the Q-League from sweeping the polls as they are likely to do in both rounds of elections.

However, Nikka is rather satisfied. He had his day in the sun. Much like Pakistan’s rulers, he had no visionary aspirations. The first task he did after getting elected was use his portion of the funds to construct a road through his section of the alley though larger roads of his constituency are perhaps the worst in Lahore. The other good thing was to get the soccer team a professional set of uniforms. Of course he managed to siphon off a decent share for himself out of these achievements.

Like an aspiring politician, he tested his muscle by breaking a law – he hosted a gathering in the middle of the road. The result was he got beaten up by the police constables and thrown in jail. He tried playing the religion card by allocating funds for hosting religious gatherings (inviting renowned naat singers etc.). In return he received curses by the residents for misappropriating large amounts and did not receive any more support from the locals for organizing future gatherings. Each effort resulted in failure.

Other than these incidents, he didn’t manage to do much. Unless of course you will believe his claim that he had Gogi arrested, beaten up at the Police station and retrieved his stolen mobile phone from him. But this is an unsubstantiated claim as not only have I not seen Gogi with the brutal bruises as claimed, I haven’t seen Nikka carrying his mobile phone.

Nikka will not be running again. He has ‘willfully withdrawn’ his candidacy in the face of bigger entities wanting to put their man in these positions. Nikka knew he had to leave the arena. His legitimacy lay not in the people he represented, but towards individuals wielding power and for whom he made way for. What may be of concern is Gogi sensing an opportunity for revenge.

Nikka, like Pakistan, bent to whims and faulty aspirations. Much like Pakistan, Nikka too is opportunistic – an opportunistic loser. Much as Pakistan, Nikka functions like a quack administering diagnosis based on trial-and-error despite knowing that far more effective (albeit tedious) methodical avenues exist.

Nikka won’t be running again as he’s not big enough – rather not good enough to take on challenges. Nikka, like Pakistan is not meant for greatness.