Daily Times

May 11, 2013. The E-Day. The day of
jagged egos, of transient earnestness, of swaggering electables, of hollow entreaties, of electing. The day people of Pakistan, gingerly — in its warped history that reads like Dante meets Cervantes, mixed with Shakespeare, high-fived by Euripides, prefaced by a wise-cracking Rushdie, shaking head with a grim Camus — vote in an election in a set-up whooping as the first hallelujah in how-a-democracy-should-be. One five-year tenure of a civilian government ended noisily, messily, but when it should have. And the election is when it should be.

Who cares about the report-card marked in indelible red, the mess-what-you-can ministerial performances, reminding one of Orwell’s pack of beasts taking over the good old farm in that famous book, boasting of a string of scandals that made Lockheed bribery look like child’s play, Balladur jurisprudence a page from Grisham’s last bestseller, and Berlusconi’s antics the neighborhood pastor’s Sunday charity-drive.

Who cares if ‘Pack-istan’ is an embarrassing headline, delineated by the what-the-heck activities of a few who besmirch the name of a nation that has trouble outlining its identity 65 years after its painful British-carved partition with the mother country, India. And whoa, who cares beyond apathetic rolling-of-eyes at Pakistan’s ranking as the seventh most dangerous country (gosh) globally, 33rd on the index of the most corrupt nations, with a staggering — okay, my math sucks, but these are 12 zeroes here — national debt amounting to more than Rs 5,595,000,000,000: this is trillions, a word most people relate merely to Wall Street yearly reports. Who cares if there is 12-20 hours of urban and rural load-shedding, shrouding the already dull structured landscape in inkiness that plays ‘gotcha’, tick tock-ing to a degeneration of bodies, minds, souls, what to say of economics. Who cares if our middle-schoolers Ali Murtaza and Mehzar Zehra are shot at point blank range because their families pay homage to the family of the Prophet (PBUH); our teenaged Malala Yousafzai instead of mock-competing with friends in school become an activist for education, a basic right in social and even religious context; and our children (too many to name) are blown to pieces because their facial features speak of a sensibility different than ours.

Let’s just utter a prayer or ten, and all smug, all ostrich-y, all petulant pre-teen, let’s just be happy that no dictator, no judge and no president impeded our way to only-God-knows-what, and yayyy, the first government in the history of a country called Pakistan will have its first timely election. Yes, other countries are going to Mars, building bigger spaceships, curing AIDS, producing billionaires, trailblazing with scientific, medical and IT breakthroughs, felicitating their Nobel Laureates, and celebrating their sports medals, mostly gold…but, dude! We have our first democratic election. Enough said, now we get to vote, choose new leaders, fashion a new, not laundered or dry-cleaned, but a new Pakistan, and the future will be a tolerant, prosperous; modern; shinning; (no load-shedding); safe (no drones, no Taliban, no Shia-Hazara-Christian-Ahmedi-Hindu killers); and bffs (that’s best friends forever for the uninitiated) with all its neighbours (the stay-the heck-away-from-me Afghanistan, the what-now-Pakistan India, the bored-with-our-ineptness China, and the friend-or-foe Iran). Like seriously.

So go out, and vote on May 11, one person one vote (not counting the bogus votes, and those with MPD who go in again and again to vote for the same person). Think of what you are doing before you stamp the box against a name; don’t think it is like buying a paan from a Main Market khokha, or riding a bus-from-hell on the GT Road, or buying an inordinately-priced Sana-Safinaz bridal-jora, or sliding in your first class Emirates seat, bored, on one of your weekly trips to Dubai. All things that you do, unblinking, without incorporating any thought process in your action. When you stamp an arrow, a bat, a lantern, a kite, or a lion (seems incongruous in this list of inanimate things, odd of the ECP!), what you say is this is the person, this is the party I choose as my representative in the future government (or opposition if your heroes do not make it to the best side of the aisle). This is the person I endorse to devise a plan for the betterment of my life, my locality, my area. This is the person who will listen to my pleas of pain when my young daughter is raped brutally by the big zamindar; my requests for assistance when the area ASP brutalises my son on a trumped up charge; and my entreaties for rehabilitation when the flood submerges my-about-to-be-cut-crop, and the mud-roof of one of the two rooms in my house caves in on my elderly mother. This is the person who will attend my teenaged brother’s funeral, congratulate my position-holder niece, and attend my firstborn’s wedding. This is the person who will ensure that the government funds are used to turn the skeleton of a shoddy building into a quality structure where my children may not get the fancy education of his Aitchison College and Grammar School-attending sweetie-pies but will have access to a system that focuses on the modern system of imparting knowledge. This is the person who will treat mine, and the illnesses of my loved ones as a personal responsibility, guaranteeing there is a hospital within my motorbike, rickety-bus ride, where my life is not cheaper than the cloth used for stitching coats for the inefficient government medical staff. So think. Carefully. Before you vote. You think K, S or Z is your person. If yes, then vote. You must. As a citizen of Pakistan. Vote.

Pakistan is many things, but not a failed state. It is many broken dreams, but not a lost cause. It is full of disastrous outcomes of many a reckless governmental decision, but it is not stage-four of metastatic cancer, gnawing on one cell after the other. It is a series of un-kept promises, but there is still a silver lining every 1000th tear that is wiped. It is tainted black with the blood of many innocents but it is also the innumerable who extend a dupatta, a shoulder, some heartfelt words to those who wail for their murdered loved ones. It kills many of those who pray to God differently, but then it is that great-aunt who embrace all narratives, be they Arabic, Jesus-prescribed, or born in India centuries ago. It is apathy that is more obvious than the Everest on a rare sunny day, but it is also empathy that unites all when the earthquake (2005) shakes many parts of it off its stupor. It is a brainless robot from a 1950s movie, but then it is also many who intellectually outwit many at Oxford, LSE, Harvard and MIT. It is a cacophony of militant clergy who incite hatred and violence towards those whose sensibilities do not match ours, but it is also the Data Sahib, Mai Maharban, Gurdwara Panja Sahib and Bibi Pak Daman, where all pray regardless of what language their holy books are. It is a bunch of generals and military analysts who create assets that unleash mayhem, and depths that become cul-de-sacs, but it is also the Major Aziz Bhattis, Rashed Minhas, Havaldar Lalak Jan, and many faceless, nameless heroes who protect us while we daydream into nothing. It is Dr Qadeer Khan who nuke-sells it to whoever pays the highest price, but it is also Dr Abdus Salam who finds the particle of God. It is the TTP that kills irrespective of age and gender, unleashing barbarity, but it is also the country-wide sirens of Edhi who collect its dead and give them burials.

Now you decide. Which Pakistan means more to you? Which Pakistan do you want: one striding proudly into the next era, going in sync with the rest of the world, or that which is a blast or a suicide bomber away from becoming a ruin of a nation that has all the promise, all the glory to become what it should be? You decide. For you. For your parents. For your children. For your compatriots. Go and vote. Only you have the power to make it the Pakistan it was meant to be many wars, many bombs, many graves ago. Vote. On May 11, 2013.

The writer is an Assistant Editor at Daily Times. She tweets at @MehrTarar and can be reached at mehrt2000@gmail.com