When Italy was finally reunited in 1861, one of its well wishers, the philosopher Massimo D’Azeglio remarked, “We have made Italy. Now we have to make Italians”. One-hundred-and-fifty years later, the making of Italians is still ‘work in progress’. Every so often a party emerges (the Northern League) that wants the north of Italy to break away and form another state (Padania) – and so the work continues. I suspect our founders must have had similar fears, and why not? Sixty-five years after independence we remain Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans and Baloch rather than Pakistanis and these elections removed any doubts on that score.
For the first time in our history we do not have a national party with a solid footing in all provinces. The only party that can halfway plausibly claim to be a national political force is the PML-N, although in reality it is exclusively a Punjab product. The handful of seats it won in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan fool no one. Similarly, it’s absurd to suggest that the PML-N has a Sindh/Karachi presence because Messrs Marwat and Aslam Baloch were elected under its logo. Their victory had nothing to do with the popularity of the party in Karachi.
Admittedly the PTI has a sizeable following in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab but that’s only because Imran Khan happens to be both a Pakhtun (Waziri) and a Punjabi (Niazi) and is claimed by both identities. His party flopped in Sindh and the Baloch segment of Balochistan thinks him irrelevant. The fact that Imran would have picked up a seat or two in the Karachi metropolis, but for the rigging that took place, is neither here nor there. It would have been a drop in the ocean.
Had a national party of real heft existed in Karachi, Altaf Hussain’s hold on the city would not have been so overwhelming, vice-like and permanent. Nor could he have been bold enough to say what he said about leading Karachi out of the federation. His remarks reflect the dwindling spirit of national solidarity among MQM supporters and the continuing erosion of national unity.
As for the Zardari-led PPP, its fall from being the premier national party to one that is near-exclusively a Sindh phenomenon is a bad omen – perhaps the worst outcome of these elections, not only from the party’s view but for the nation as a whole. By returning to power a party that has been wiped out in the rest of the country, the Sindh electorate highlighted the deep cleavages that exist in our polity and which the result in Sindh suggests are unbridgeable. What else are we to make of the fact that arguably the worst government in Pakistan’s history was wiped out in every other province but has increased its majority in Sindh?
As if to suggest that’s not true, many explanations are proffered for the PPP victory in Sindh. They range from ‘wadera-ism is rampant and the locals, ever in hock to the wadera, do what he tells them’; or ‘the Sindhi elite prefer to keep their people ignorant; that way they are obedient and easy to handle;’ or ‘there is no alternative comprising native Sindhis to challenge the PPP in rural Sindh and no Sindhi would ever think of voting for an Urdu settler party like the MQM;’ to ‘ the BISP helped the PPP and so did the doubling of the support price in wheat’ and so on and so forth.
In fact, the BISP facilities were extended to all provinces and the enhanced support prices also benefited areas of other provinces where the PPP was wiped out.
Pakistan is afflicted by an identity crisis. We never seemed to be comfortable being a one-nation state. One unit was a failure; and events have put a large question mark over the nation-state, the basic political unit of our world. When is a state a nation? Does a state have an automatic right to become a nation? If tribe is more important than nation, then why do so many national borders cross tribal divisions? If all borders are absurd why do we not acknowledge and respect their inherent absurdity and stop trying to move them? These questions are linked to identity.
However, the good news is that an identity crisis need not be fatal. It is capable of being resolved. A few more elections, a more educated electorate and we may yet get it right. The trouble is whether we will have the time considering we are insufferably slow learners.
The fact is that people are becoming disenchanted with a political system that is unable to ensure even a modest level of employment and well-being and is equally unfit to fill the gaping spiritual void caused by a rampant consumer culture and vast disparities of income. Some are turning to extremism; others are targeting ‘outsiders,’ that is, those who are not fellow Baloch, Pakhtun, Urdu, Sindhi or Punjabi speakers. Leaders seem unable to act for the common good or, indeed, any good transcending the immediate family.
But the well-knit family system that we seem so proud of, and once thought of as such a good thing, is increasingly becoming a powerful hindrance to a law-abiding, modern, unified state. Appeals to national solidarity do not work because people believe that leaders making the appeal are really concerned about their own families. Nepotism is not really considered an evil but a necessity. We tried to overcome the problem by turning the country into one giant family and naming our founder as the ‘Father of the Nation’. It hasn’t worked. Nothing will change, and the family system will continue, unless the state assumes responsibility for education, welfare, health housing, etc, which it cannot till the people pay taxes. It’s a vicious circle and a lesson our non-taxpaying leaders with fleets of cars, servants and fat bank accounts will never learn.
Imran Khan offered a way out of this deadly vortex. I’m not saying he would have succeeded; he probably would not, but there was a chance – his Taliban policy notwithstanding – given the opportunity. But our innate conservatism, petty provincialism, dislike of logic and unwillingness to respect the laws of cause and effect ensured he would not get the opportunity. Instead, hoping against hope, the electorate has reverted to the tried and failed, the old and untrustworthy – and the Sindh electorate to proven reprehensibles. Not for us the regeneration of a whole people or the formation of a modern nation. That was too much of a risk. Instead, we have been left to contemplate ourselves as we have always been.
As for what I feel at the moment, I feel a sadness that comes to souls simply from contemplating their countrymen’s fate. This sort of sadness has always prevailed among sensitive Pakistanis most of whom, to evade madness or suicide, have taken to every known means of escape. The older lot feigns gaiety, heads for talk shows, and develops a passion for the country and for fine sounding words, while the younger lot becomes policemen, clerics, terrorists or war heroes. Following the elections there is no race of man, to my mind, as desperate and desolate as the happy Pakistani today.

Email: charles123it@hotmail.com

http://e.thenews.com.pk/5-15-2013/page7.asp#;