Martial strife?

Wow. The current government seems to be getting its collective ass kicked if the news reports are accurate. And yet, someone tells me that El Presidente is totally chilled out.

Obviously, the Camouflaged Wonder has completely lost his mind. It’s either that, or the man is so solidly backed up by the military and assorted toadies that the very idea that he could be resisted is no longer a realistic event for him.

Even though I’m pretty jaded when it comes to the cesspool that is the Pakistani political scene, I wanted to slap the shit out of every elected official who came on TV celebrating the fact that Pakistan had–for the first time in basically forever–allowed one “democratically” appointed “Parliament” to “complete” its “tenure”. Not-so-hidden-between-the-lines is the “Oh thank goodness, we basically got the chance to sit on our asses for another five years and not really accomplish a damn’ thing. Where’s my martini?” gasp of relief.

Shutting down TV stations is perhaps not the best way to start this. Stifling the media, imposing states of emergency, possibly colluding with multiple people to assassinate political leaders…really, none of this is particularly encouraging. Least encouraging of all though is the wonderful line overheard at the election booths today, from a gentleman being harassed by some poor woman whose voter registration couldn’t be confirmed, despite all the documentation being present: “Oh, just give her anyone’s ballot, just get her out of here.”

Yeah. We’ve got this whole “free and fair elections” thing down pat, we really do.

See, I didn’t vote today. I’m not terribly ashamed of that fact, although I realise that in theory perhaps I should be. Part of that is my somewhat irrational rage at the fact that the government just HAD to set the elections to be held on the same day as my birthday, but part of that is also the fact that I just really don’t care enough. I’m probably missing the enormous subtleties of the socio-political landscape here by miles, but as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think that Pakistan needs or deserves democracy, at least not the way it currently stands. Get rid of the feudal landlords and their voter blocs, spread some quality education, start gradually reducing the amount of money spent on the defence budget, begin integrating the military back into civil society, and then…maybe…we can think about the whole “one man, one vote” thing.

Dave over at Artsaypunk and I were at a mutual friend’s for dinner last night, along with some other people, and the conversation inevitably turned to politics. He pointed out, accurately that if he as a Canadian could get into the polling stations and lodge a vote, we’d know for sure if the elections were rigged or not. While I haven’t spoken to him since and am unsure about whether he actually tried it out, the real meat of this came when those of us present and capable of voting were talking about what we were going to do. And I’ve got to say, there was a lot of apathy, and the real issue that kept being raised by every successive entrant to the dinner was “Well, when ALL the candidates are complete bastards, what’re you going to do?”

We tried the “lesser of two evils” routine. That didn’t really work, since no one actually KNOWS anything about the candidates, despite their having completely taken over the city with hideously ugly banners and posters on any and every available surface. We tried the “which political party will take care of us?” approach, and while there was some half-hearted murmuring about the MQM, no one could really identify a single thing that any of the parties have ever done to really try and turn Karachi into a fully functional city. We tried Tarot cards, tossing coins, dice, tossing and I’m fairly sure that when a large group of people all vanished into the garden at the same time, entrails were involved, but I don’t think anyone really came away thinking that their votes would make a difference. I know I didn’t.

I know some people trashed their ballots, or scratched out candidate names, or voted for everyone available. But watching the Election Commissioner hem and haw about how lower-than-expected voter turnout doesn’t make the elections any less legitimate, I wondered if a minimal voter turnout would have actually made a difference. In law, silence does not equal consent, but in this case I can’t help but feel that a refusal by the entire populace (I know, I know, it’s never going to happen) to turn out for the farce that is “democracy” in Pakistan might make more of an impact than if they all wound up voting.

I want a ballot choice that reads “I hate all of these corrupt politicos equally”, I really do. That’s the only thing that’ll get me out on the streets; not the incredibly loud and annoying PPP “rallies” that deliberately blocked off traffic for hours on end with morons singing badly composed paeans of praise; not a slew of pictures of an MQM candidate with a “come hither” arched eyebrow; not double and triple-chinned independent candidates or mustached hopefuls with nervous grins. If I thought, with even a slight grain of belief, that my vote would make a difference, I’d head out and vote.

But I don’t believe it would, or that it will. Not the way things are. KO has a good piece with more factual statements about the elections than just my gut feeling–you can find it here.

Fleeing

Well apparently anywhere I go, political drama is sure to follow. I’m currently sitting in Lahore, on a work-trip, sated with sushi and in impending pain from having gone at the treadmill a little too enthusiastically right after getting off the plane, and so far there have been about a dozen phone calls from people asking me if everything is OK.

Apparently Benazir Bhutto’s in town or something silly like that.

And just as apparently, under the new(est) state of emergency in Pakistan, I can’t actually write anything about politics or involving a name that rhymes with “Push-her-off” without risking jail-time. And while I do enjoy telling my frantic friends in the US and the EC that we Pakistanis are, in fact, throwing “state-of-emergency” and “martial-law”-themed parties, I’d probably not enjoy sending anyone an SMS saying that I’m being carted off to jail. I’m just odd like that. I assume that someone out there probably gives a shit about all of this, but it’s funny how apparent the dichotomy inherent in most Pakistanis is so gloriously expressed at times like this. To wit, I think most people are genuinely horrified at what’s happening, and feel that it is intrinsically, innately, horribly WRONG.

But as my friend Kyla put it over dinner, “It’s not that they’re even depoliticised, that would imply there was some sort of political sensibility that has been removed. It’s like there’s negative awareness–they’re completely clueless.” And in turn, most of them…well, of us, don’t even know where we’d begin to express our rage. Because we have lives to lead, paycheques to earn, food to put on tables, families to take care of, and we can’t really afford to be put into jail by some asshole cop with more vigour than common sense, and have to wait around for bail, etc.

And really, it hasn’t impacted our lives in a tangible way. When it does, that’s when shit will start flying, I suspect. Right now, everyone’s relatively interested in keeping things copacetic; it’s practically a genetic trait, that desire to just hope everything will blow over, and to hush up whatever one can in order to speed up that process. There are some people I know who have kicked things into gear insofar as they can (leading to some amusing confusion when taking part in hastily-assembled/dispersed “flash protests” was described to me as “flashing”), but most are content to bitch and moan to each other without actually DOING anything about the situation that they so deplore.

It’s like living in the 1980s all over again! Only with fewer shoulder-pads, and slightly less dramatic hair.

Blase

I’ll get around to putting something up here in a few days.