Daily Times

Call me whatever, a total sell out, unpatriotic, a novice, inexperienced or out of touch with reality for being thousands of miles away from home. I very humbly accept all of that. I honestly take pride in objective criticism and even the name calling that I often endure on social media. As of last week, this scribe, along with very senior analysts on the ground, was adamant that we were getting extremely close to another potential derailment of this poor, feeble and paralysed democracy. Those who have followed my write ups know my clear stance on this issue. As stinking and ineffective as this phenomenon may be, it is the only way forward. I may sound like a broken record but these “thieves, dacoits and thugs” as one of our very seasoned sheikhs of Rawalpindi calls them, are a reflection of who we are. No one should have any misconception about the nature of the people. These people occupying the assemblies represent who we are. Imperfect, a bit jaded and commonly described as “corrupt and inept”, but this is a representative sample of the land.

I state with utter shame that two jokers, Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri, have grossly maligned our country in front of the entire world. The international media has been having a field day ever since this manufactured revolution hit the airwaves. The people have been fooled and, barring the hardcore ostriches also known as die hard followers of the duo, the rest of the people have sensed that this was quite a game. Luckily, the people most of these revolutionaries discredit as illiterate and uneducated have access to the same electronic devices that we have. They cannot be fooled, at least in this day and age.

The sad fact about this God-forsaken country is that most people are so brainwashed almost every night against the idea of democracy that a particular segment is quite disgusted and prefers that some messiah descend from heaven to rid them of their miseries. The reality of the matter is that one of the biggest detriments to this fragile and imperfect system are the so-called senior political analysts, propagandists, so-called defence analysts and former servicemen who hog nightly airtime on the tube. These are the people who misguide and create a scenario of such doom and gloom that the common person in front of the screen has their lingo echoing in their heads all day. In reality, the whole show that was staged in Islamabad has exposed not only the two main pawns but also the hands behind them. Without repeating, from what has been stated on the electronic and social media (while these lines are being written), one sincerely hopes that we are nearing the end of this game. The real climax of this long drawn episode was presented by the president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Javed Hashmi. His blunt revelations made me grin. At least it solidified my position from the get go that this was a very scripted and synchronised exercise.

The hands behind this rather poor script, whoever they are or were, perhaps miscalculated the common sense of the common people like me and those on the streets of our motherland. We the people are much smarter than some folks who trot around the globe and scheme these rather amateurish conspiracies. Common folk may not be well trained, may have poor vision, may lack clear judgment, but these people are not idiots. Please do not underestimate their collective intelligence.

Our very dear analysts insist that, with the recent revelations, these revolutionaries are cornered and deserve a “safe exit”. Ordinarily, I would agree with them but after the breach of parliament and the state’s television station, I have this unpopular opinion that both of these conspirators deserve no such leeway. This is no longer hearsay, as the vice president of the PTI, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, categorically stated on the floor of the assembly and levelled charges for the mayhem on Tahirul Qadri’s party. There was a gem of an admission by Mr Qureshi on the floor of the assembly that the rhetoric in their sit-ins was merely for the consumption of their followers. That particular clip of his admission needs to be replayed for the sake of our passionate yet blinded youth, so they can decipher that these comical characters are nothing but minions of their blind desires. All someone needs to do is view the incriminating information on video for the last three weeks or so. One can clearly decipher that it was against the state of Pakistan. Look at these videos and decide whether a particular article in our constitution is applicable to both of these loud-mouthed leaders or not.

The invisible umpire may have taken a back seat for now but the game is not over. The game will go on till we the people raise the infamous finger for the malicious people who want this fragile process of democracy to be derailed. These are the people who pretend to be the mouthpieces of the umpire. One has to wonder why the nightly ringmasters need such mouthpieces to begin with. The traditional umpire has a department with four distinct letters of the English alphabet. The last two letters of that acronym, both P and R stand for Public Relations. Rather than taking the ambiguous and unclear opinion of these so-called experts, one just needs to dial to hear from the umpire directly.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com.
He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar