A Reply

The course of the battle, so to speak, will only work if there is a real realization in Pakistani middle classes that there is a need for change and that before it is too late, a course correction is sorely needed.

In a way, your comments are more instructive than the debate, because they do offer a tangible positive prove of how change can be implmented in Pakistan. The idea of change itself is only a small part of the problem in Pakistan. The bigger problem is that there is no clear idea as to how this change will be achieved? The more, ingrained, and more entrenched problem in Pakistan is not the lack of leadership, but the complete ignorance as to what is the idea of a leadership; a process of what is a leadership and by which a leadership is understood and what is the purpose of a leadership?

Leadership, and to be a leader, does not mean to simply lead the people. The role of a leader within the idea of a leadership is more complex than just being at the head of a movement or sitting on top of a pryamid of a hierarchy. The real challenge of the leadeship is not to lead the people, the organization or any such entity, which a person commands in any particular direction, but to personally believe in the course of action itself and to make others believe in it too, to the the point that they start to identify with those aims as their own and start to believe in those ideas as their very own.

Pakistan has no geninue leadership in general let alone in times of crisis and Pakistan will never have a leadership worthy of the moment. The leadership of Pakistan does not believe in Pakistan and it still thinks that Pakistan will not last as a country; it does not believe in the idea of Pakistan. It is this reason and the lack of faith in the durability of Pakistan, which prompts the people in power to financially milk Pakistan and horde their investments outside of Pakistan. If the leadership of Pakistan, of all shades and hues, really believed in the longevity of Pakistan as a nation, they would not be having foreign bank accounts or be in the procession of dual nationalities.

The idea of Pakistan, to a Pakistani leadership, can be judged in the opportunity that it presents and that opportunity is to secure their future and the future of their children while they have the means; the right to power and influence within Pakistan.

It is for this reason that you have corruption, embezzlement, nepotism, disregard for laws, an economic Hobbesian state of nature, and a general prevailing sense of despondency and dispair about the future. It is this reason; the state of Pakistani mind, which dreads the future because it does not believe in the idea of future as one promising hope, that it reverts to the past and rejoices in the safe comfort of the past. The people, who govern and rule Pakistan do not believe in the future of Pakistan and that is why, they see their turns in power as to make the most while the situation is favorable to them and save for a rainy day, when all this “make hay while the sun shines” times will end.

Therefore, the question of a leader or even a leadership navigating Pakistan out of trouble does not even arise, because there is no credible subsitute to the lack of leadership in Pakistan. There is no significant difference between Nawaz Sharif or Asif Ali Zardari or Altaf Hussein or a secular or a religious or a military or an economic leadership in Pakistan as they do not believe in Pakistan and only see Pakistan as a golden chance to a better life for themselves and their progeny.

Hence, and to the point of the your post, who will lead this charge against the enemy and who will stand out from the crowd? A leader, in order to lead the people towards a cause that promises change, has to personally believe in the cause itself.

The idea of opposition for the sake of opposition is not really an opposition as much as it is an admission of not having any viable alternatives to offer as a subsitute to what is being opposed. The above statement, once understood in the context of the Pakistani political system, becomes an insightful explanation to the logic behind the mantra of “a friendly opposition” which is the political expression in vogue in Pakistan and therefore, there is no difference between a government in power and an opposition in Pakistan, because they have no political differences and only see politics as a game to be played; waiting for their turn to make the most while they have a chance and it is because of this reason, that Pakistani politics has been characterized more by policies of an ad-hoc nature (short term) than by any policies of long term planning.

It is this reason, which encouages secular parties to make alliances with the religious parties and for the religious parties to have no qualms of being part of secular politics, because what brings these two different strands of ideology together is the common interest based on the idea of opportunism.

There is no need to debate the issue that Pakistan needs to change and that religion has rotted body politic of Pakistan, but there is a very urgent need to debate the question as to from where will a leadership come to tackle these problems, which believes in the idea of Pakistan itself?

The failure to answer this question or to provide an answer to this quandry will open the situation to a more complex, consequential and a more dangerous element of uncertainity. Most Pakistanis do not even comprehend the seriousness of this situation; of a lack of credible leadership in Pakistan and what it foretells for the future of Pakistan.

It is for this reason, that there will no meaningful change in Pakistan after the murder of Salman Taseer because whereas the moderate elements of the Pakistani society may desire change, they have no clue as to how to articulate the process of that change and like chickens, with their heads cut off, they run in circles wishing for a change and why they will always welcome the man on the horseback that comes promising change.

There will be a new dawn for Pakistan, but for now we must suffer the long night of darkness and it will be only through a most vile, inhumane act of cruelty that we will come to end of our national schadenfreude. Pakistan is presently fighting a religious civil war and it will suffer and it will continue to suffer till the common person in Pakistan makes a wilful decision to change his/her mind and realizes the cause of their common suffering and makes amends to the ideas of the past, which have reaped such a bounty of misery.

The end will come not from alienation of an idea about religion and politics, but from a sense of alienaton based the idea of the role of an individual within a religion. Change, from the old paradigms to a newer one, cannot happen even if there is a leadership to make that change possible, because change can only happen if the old system is weak and is incapable to resist the changes being forced upon it and until the ways of the old in Pakistan and the thinking associated with them are not weakened, change will be remain a chimera in Pakistan.

In end, this question is for the Pakistanis to decide as to what they really want and what are they prepared to sacrifice for the sake of change.

Look at the comments on PTH itself by the so-called liberal, moderate, well educated Pakistanis saying “Pakistan ka Khuda hi Hafiz”! I hope you see the irony! One has to believe in the idea of change and for people in Pakistan to give up on the idea of Pakistan, what is there left to change when you do not believe in Pakistan itself?!?!?

There are a couple of lines from the Broadway play, Les Miserables, which I think are very apt to the times in Pakistan and to the Pakistanis as a question?

Is there a new world you long to see? Will you stand up on the barricades with me and fight for that world; for your right to live in that world?

As said before; every Pakistani has to make a personal choice on which side of the barricades they wish to stand and what do they wish to fight for; a new world and the dawn of a new brighter day or a night of an endless darkness?

They say that when a person comes to the edge of an abyss and looks down, the abyss looks back at him/her and that is when they find their character. Pakistan is at the edge of that proverbial abyss and it is time to find our character and step into the arena and make that which we wish possible.