So, what exactly didn’t you get?
By Kamran Shafi

But first a short anecdote: a friend and his wife got back to the country after a holiday abroad a day after the election results had become known. Their daughter-in-law, twenty-ish was livid: “Aunty, we all voted, and yet Imran lost!” Her mother-in-law called the gardener, Latif, and asked who he had voted for: “Bibi, asaan tay Sher aan payiae.”
“See, child,” she said to the young lady, “everybody did not vote for Imran Khan.” “But, aunty, how is it that when everyone I know voted for him, he still did not win?” Since there is no answer to this kind of argument, that is where the matter ended.
Which now brings me to the most ludicrous, indeed absurd piece that Nafisa Rizvi wrote on this page on May 23: “Sorry kids, we got it wrong”. Might one ask the question that is the title of this piece: “What exactly didn’t you get?”
One has to quote from that piece of writing to be reminded of the extent of the arrogance and self-righteousness, and yes, absurdity that oozes out of every sentence: “As the excitement of the elections rose to a feverish pitch, I had my teenage kids convinced that Pakistanis were at their smartest when they went polling. In 1988, voters routed out (sic) the clerics and opted for secular governance. They saw through the farcical referendums … but today, sorrowfully, I had to tell my kids that in the first election they witnessed, we got it wrong. The people of Pakistan shouted for change but voted against it rather than for it.
“If there was any doubt before, there exists none now that we are a regressive nation; voting for traditionalism, feudalism, politics of dirty money and the familiarity of corruption … perhaps, our angst and suffering have not climaxed yet; if the pain had been abysmal enough … such is the case of the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) who have been severely burned by a most exacting war. If the entire nation had suffered the way the people of K-P have, the results would have gone another route. There would have been a coterie of fresh new faces sitting in the rows of parliament and the old, jaded, have-beens would be skulking in the opposition. It will now be to the contrary because as much as we would like to convince ourselves that the opposition counts for something, it doesn’t. It’s just about as annoying as a toothless gnat.
“It is true that the political vocabulary has been forever changed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. The idea of corner meetings, use of social media and even heavy television advertising took the campaign off the streets … but most importantly, the issue of moral rectitude began to emerge as a pivotal axis of the dialogue, an ignominy that had not concerned us previously because we had never, in our history, fallen to such depths of depravity.”
I ask you!
The people of Pakistan who were sagacious and “smart” when they rejected the dictators Ziaul Haq and the Commando suddenly became regressive when they did not vote in enough numbers for Imran Khan’s party? They voted for “traditionalism, feudalism, politics of dirty money”, eh? Well, let us be very, very provocative and straight-off speak of Jamshed Dasti, yes the same Dasti with the fake degree who was shown the door by the Supreme Court but won his seat again in the by-election held two months later.
Jamshed Dasti is a poor man; he is no feudal; he has no dirty money; but yes, he did commit a crime by forging his BA degree to contest the 2002 elections. But, is there no one in the PTI who is accused of any wrongdoing, including forging degrees? Remember too, that this time around, Dasti won not one but two NA seats beating two big feudals: Hina Rabbani Khar’s father on NA-178 and Nawabzada Mansoor on NA-177.
Instead of introducing rancour into the election debate, particularly because this was her kids’ first election experience, perhaps Nafisa Rizvi should have advised them to try and get their leaders to emulate Jamshed Dasti, where service to his electorate is concerned. Go on, “kids” read all about this man here, and understand that the people of Pakistan are not as “regressive” as you are being led to believe.
Rizvi says if the people of the rest of the country had “suffered the way the people of K-P have, the results would have gone another route. There would have been a coterie of fresh new faces sitting in the rows of parliament and the old, jaded, have-beens would be skulking in the opposition.” What a wish to wish upon the rest of this poor country, eh, as if they haven’t had their fair share of terror? As to a “coterie of new faces”, how many “new faces” does she see in those elected on PTI tickets? Aren’t they to a man, and a woman, veterans of many a National and Provincial Assembly and political party, many of them lotas and lotees several times over? Some even lotas-in-chief?
What indeed did the “kids” and their Mummies get wrong, please? Did they really think that there would just be one election symbol on the ballot papers: that of the cricket bat with which Imran was going to phainta lagao Nawaz Sharif?
What the kids and their Mummyies (and Daddies) must understand immediately, if not sooner, is that there are many people who live in Pakistan: people named Latif too, and that to succeed in politics, you must persevere in opposition. This is a great chance for those fired up by Imran Khan to take a deeper interest in everyday politics and be a check on the excesses of the incoming governments.
Let us be positive; not sulk because “we got it wrong” Oh and by the way, whilst wildly expensive advertising was introduced for the first time in this election, corner meetings are as old as politics.
And, er, as to never having fallen to such “depths of depravity” does Ms Rizvi not recall East Pakistan?

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31st, 2013.