Please vote

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Please vote
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash

By this time next week, Pakistan will, God willing, have had its general elections and the political machinations to form the next federal and provincial governments would have begun (or even ended). In some ways, this general election resembles the first general election of the country in 1970. Then, too, there was a sense of change, both in East and West Pakistan, and the hope that the tide will turn for the better. However, the end was disillusionment, in both wings. While East Pakistan seceded after a bloody civil war and the founder of Bangladesh was killed by an army general within a few years, the remaining “Pakistan” also soon succumbed to another military dictatorship, following the chequered government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto marred by ill-conceived nationalisations and the Baloch revolt, among other things. Soon, Pakistan also emerged as the mujahideen headquarters of the world, where drugs were omnipresent (and rather cheap), the economy was on the decline and the social fabric was tearing apart. So much for the hope of 1970!
The above is not to bring gloom to the people of Pakistan but to warn them that their vote is a serious issue. Whoever they vote in, or help form the government by not voting, will be able to shape the destiny of the country (though obviously not as dramatically as some have been promising!). There is simply no escape from the responsibility of voting! Therefore, in a way, voting on May 11 is a sacred trust, which must not be breached. Hence, it is the responsibility of every voter to seriously think about who to vote for and not just abide by rhetoric and empty promises. Over the past few weeks, I, together with a number of colleagues, have been holding sessions at the College focusing on the analysis of party manifestos — the only clear commitments made by the parties — and it was interesting to note that a large number of students had decided their vote without even knowing that their chosen party had even declared a manifesto! Granted, most parties do not care much about this piece of paper, but they will certainly care if we, the voters, begin to take notice of this document, which at least shows the thinking of the party. An informed voter — no matter for which party — is a good voter.

We are living in very turbulent and confusing times where the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan are on a rampage against a democratic Pakistan, where the economy is fast sinking, where the person making the most sense recently is the army chief, and where the common man, increasingly, has no clue about what is happening. In this scenario, after a while, I think, people like me have little to say or to add. Therefore, I shall leave you today with an excerpt from a poem written by the first non-European and the first South Asian Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Today, we celebrate the centenary of the Nobel Prize being conferred on Tagore, a great poet, writer, dramatist, painter — indeed, a polymath — whose renderings we shamelessly banned in East Pakistan. Tagore wrote this for his homeland, India, in about 1900, and I hope and pray the same for Pakistan today:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high/ Where knowledge is free/ Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls/ Where words come out from the depth of truth/ Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection/ Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit/ Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action — into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Amen!

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7th, 2013.