All’s Well, Dearie

MAY 2002 - An anti-climax of sorts hangs like the summer haze over everything. The much-touted referendum is over. We can put up one more milestone in our long journey to nowhere. The results are already in and no one has had a stroke looking at them or fallen flat in disbelief. The EC has hardly been able to control itself and gushed forth with the ‘98% of voters supported Musharraf,’ while independent observers and bodies like the HRCP have reported that voluntary participation was no more than 3% to 5% in Karachi and Lahore. The CEC has termed such observations as ridiculous and sponsored by the opposition parties, which let us all remember, are anti-Pakistan – that is so because they are anti-government. The rest of the lopsided equation you can work out yourself. However, without really meaning to, Mr. Nisar Memon of the (dis) information club, has summed it all up when he lost his customary cool and lashed out at the press corps – in Pakistan read as corpse, and said what might well be prophetic words, ‘What the hell is going on?’. Thank you minister. We were beginning to wonder as well.

In offices, drawing rooms, tea kiosks, cafes, weddings and all the rest of that long listless array of social functions where Pakistanis converge and hold forth – no one really has a conversation in Pakistan, the overall mood is one of trepidation and confusion. As always with our public life, the conversations are all about endless combinations and permutations. Conjectures and possibilities fly around like bats from a cave and assessments and conclusions collide with one another and leave everyone bewildered. For almost all of 30th April and May Day, it was the turnout that had everyone in a spin, even those who had no intention of voting. Of course, in a sense, what did it really matter if the turnout was 20%, 50% or 75%? The same way it did not matter what percentage was going to vote for the President. Whichever way you were going to view it, the result was going to be favourable and in the end, it became highly favourable. If a woman was able to vote 60 times and if business cards were enough to cast a vote, what of it? If silence hung over bustling and noisy cities like Lahore although there was no public holiday, what did it really matter at the end of the day? Mr. Memon came up with another brilliant suggestion when he explained the alleged ‘thin’ attendance at polling stations because their number had been doubled (for the convenience of the voters of course). With such logic smacking you right between the eyes, what could one say? The minister is not without a highly charged imagination, but then again, he is only doing his job, isn’t he? It is of course another matter that the argument could have been bounced back at him with the proposition that if doubled polling stations could halve turnout, wouldn’t the convenience of having no ID still make voting possible, in turn double if not triple numbers? But these are idle pursuits and prove nothing.

That highly invisible, yet very powerful group of people dreamed up the referendum, everyone calls the ‘advisers’. As common opinion now has it, they are responsible for putting the President’s credibility at stake and lowering his esteem in the eyes of the people here at home and all those who have resolutely supported the President since three flights went askew last September. The same advisers are at the root of all the wrong decisions the President is taking which leaves all of us guessing if that cunning and clever Mian Nawaz Sharif or the queen of tainted hearts, Benazir Bhutto, plants the advisers? Who can tell although if Mian was the man, he is not the turnip I thought he always was. As for BB having time to go deep into any issue other than immediate monetary returns or long term monetary returns (she is partial to both), there can only be further doubt. Personally, this advisers thing is a bit farfetched. For one thing the advisers cannot be human having been around longer than the National Anthem. When we were kids, we were told that the reason Ayub Khan had fallen was because he was surrounded by advisers who were misguiding him. The good General Zia ul Haq was tripped up by the same cunning advisers and before him and in between, both Bhutto and Yahya fell like ducks wearing cement shoes when advised by their cunning advisers. Mian and BB fell like nine pins – in Mian’s case the pins would have to be doubled obviously, because the advisers had a cunning plan and it toppled their majesties, just as Mian Sahib was sitting down to savour a bowl of nihari and BB was checking out her humble ‘savings’ accounts in small banks overseas. Now, after a brief sojourn where he was doing the right thing, the President has fallen to the advisers and gone and ordered a silly referendum, which may be legal here – only the law is illegal, but which is as clear as the sewer that flows through Lahore’s Samnabad and flavours the air with its delicious aromas. Obviously, the advisers are aliens who keep landing in our part of the world and announce, ‘take me to your leader,’ whereupon we are back in the deep pile of - whatever it is called; the name, like so much else, escapes me. Perhaps one day, the advisers will unveil themselves an we can all elect them or if that is not very fashionable, select them for eternal rule.

That leaves us with the rather peculiar question whether the Constitution is intact, whether the Referendum is legal and whether Tariq Aziz is in the Supreme Court once again, having conquered it earlier. Firstly, there is nothing to worry about the health of the Constitution. It is true that it suffered a stroke on sighting His Eminence Sharifuddin Pirzada but luckily survived thanks to some timely artificial respiration provided by the CMH. When last heard from, the Constitution was convalescing in a home for the elderly and the infirm and will be dis-charged soon – not to be confused with being charged with anything. It is then expected to take a long and well-deserved rest in a remote and highly classified sanitarium and may be there for a while. Here we can take a short break as the nation heaves a sigh of relief. As for those losers who have been moaning and groaning since results of the latest heavy mandate hit the people, the Governor of the Punjab has just the right attitude. He has advised the losers to read the writing on the wall. This is good advice but there are a few problems with it. Firstly, asking anyone to read anything these days in Pakistan, is asking for a lot. No one really wants to read and those that do, cannot read. It is even harder when the Governor has not identified which wall he wants the losers to read. There are any number of walls as we all know and some of the things written on them are not quite the kind that make for good reading. Almost all promise miraculous cures for sexual deficiencies and the rest ask you not to make water, so the nation would welcome new directions from the Governor to settle this matter of the mysterious wall. Personally, I am certain that it would simply read, ‘shame, shame’ which as we all know from the results of the recent one day festival match played between the Punjab Police and the two teams of journalists, is the Governor’s favourite rallying cry.

That more or less settles everything. We have nothing to worry about for the next five years and the President has enough hats in his wardrobe to take care of every possibility. My only concern, sometimes, is that hopefully he has a smart aide to tell him which hat he should be wearing. A mix up there could cause quite a commotion, but really one should have no fears on that account either. The Pakistan Army can just about do most things. A friend recently said that a retired Lt.Gen. was heading the Punjab University. Would there be a time when a retired Vice-Chancellor would be heading a Corps? Obviously not.