Daily Times

The devil approaches the candidate and tempts him saying, “I can grant you victory in Punjab. I can give you Sindh including Karachi and all the rest…but in return you must sell me your soul. You must betray all decent principles. You must pander, trivialise and deceive. You must gain victory by exploiting bigotry, fear, envy and greed. And you must conduct a campaign based on lies, sham, hype and distortion.”

“So”, the candidate replied, “What’s the catch?”

Roger Simon’s quote appropriately rephrased with due credit.

Cracking morning Pakistan!

Having pondered titling the article “Breaking Dawn”, but being a bit wary of copyright issues, the title was appropriately reworded; in any case never was a great fan of that particular movie series. By the time this article is published Pakistan would have voted for its new government with all the expected fanfare and media hype. In the same breadth one prays that all went well.

Being an ardent opponent of the process referred to in common parlance as democracy, perhaps because of the assumed role of the devil’s advocate or most likely from a more ideological and logical platform, this intervening period leading up to voting day was indeed a harrowing experience. However, now that it is over, the hallmark of a judicious minority is to accept the will of the majority in form and spirit. It was quite appropriate to criticise and belittle in the interim, albeit with a positive intent to unmask alternates and invoke debate, but continuing to assail once the deed is done will be synonymous with being a pain in a particular part of the anatomy which for obvious reasons cannot be published.

On a lighter note, opposition aside, it would have been unwise to miss an opportunity to sate the speculator within. Surprisingly, dens and bookies have not graduated to offering odds for electoral results. Frankly, political pundits pulverising the populace’s grey matter with endless gibberish and conflicted forecasts should have been forced to monetarily support their utterances. Nonetheless, this cracking morning will either be followed by scrumptious dinners all week, or an unnerving negative cash flow. In the case of the former, there is a view that the author should replace all analysts on talk shows!

Perhaps complete independence and definitely a lot of commons sense is needed for any analysis, and there can be none more independent than the advocate who ab initio disagrees with the underlying philosophy in entirety, and well common sense, let’s not brag about it!

Notwithstanding all the above, the time has come for the nation to accept the inevitable and unite behind the elected leadership. Sore losers are a natural phenomenon, and intense cribbing over the results is a foregone conclusion. There will be claims and counterclaims over transparency, nepotism and every other thing under the sun. Thing is, electoral candidature by default requires a high level of egoistic tendencies such that losing is not a palatable option.

“It is not enough to have every intelligent person in the country voting for me — I need a majority”, Adlai Stevenson said.

For the sake of Pakistan, let’s hope that the losers, this time around, can keep a lid on the incessant bickering, or better, maybe the courts can categorise loser’s remorse as contempt under suo motu proceedings. Whatever the methodology, the nation cannot continue to be mired with politicking after the election. Standing at the precipice of an economic disaster, the new government will need to quickly get its act together, rather than being dragged into a protracted inconsequential debate over the electoral process, which some already believe can never be above board.

Unfortunately, even as the above paragraph was being articulated, certain constituencies, according to the idiot box, are already controversial with cross allegations flying around. As they would have said in the Star Wars movie serial, may the force be with Pakistan.

The nation also does not need to live through another bout of the winner’s curse, in case the majority party was not part of the previous governments. The elusion to one party getting a clear mandate, whichever that maybe, is reflective of an innate desire rather than a prediction; a coalition is always inefficient. Nonetheless, if the state of affairs surprises the new government than it lagged on its preparation and is, therefore, incompetent to hold office. Blaming the previous government for all that besets the country, past, present and future, for the next five years is not what the populace is expecting after an orderly transition to another elected government in decades. In essence, the problems are out there in the open, solutions are what are expected of the leadership.

If there is one advice for the winners, be magnanimous. Vindictive actions are not in the best interest of the nation. There were a lot of allegations flying around during the campaign, which were quite distressing at times, but these now need to be discounted completely as part of the game. The nation seriously needs to unite, and politicians have to take the lead, and maybe at some point, the electronic media might just acknowledge unity as the prime directive, rather than spotlighting dissent tirelessly.

The optimum strategy would be for the newly voted in government to keep open lines of communication and proactively seek consultation on key challenges. Egos need to be controlled; while it is expected that anyone committed to forming the next government, should have done their homework, a closed mind has fatal consequences. An optimum strategy is to engage the best minds in the country to brainstorm on key challenges including but not limited to, power shortage, employment, inflation, revamping of state owned enterprises, adverse trade balance, the debt trap and especially big dams and Thar coal.

Above all the nepotistic culture to support and promote party stalwarts need to be archived forever. Let merit be the only criteria; for how long will the musical chairs of appointing political workers in public enterprises continue? “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” (World Citizen Badge). Let’s hope not this time!

For the voters, it does not matter who you voted for; those poised to take control over the corridors of power is now every Pakistani’s government. Sulking won’t help; participate in nation building initiatives and oppose all political agendas. Gloating won’t help either; expectations of special favours because of one vote which can never make a difference are at best delusionary.

All in all, let’s pick up the pace as the nation continues on the path to glory. Pakistan Zindabad!

The only constraint for continuing with this euphoric positivity is the space limitation’s enforced by the editor, but as already espoused, if the nation has to join the ranks of developed nations, nothing can be grey!

Cheers!

The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. He can be reached at syed.bakhtiyarkazmi@gmail.com and on twitter @leaccountant