Always different from what it looks

We can all shout ourselves hoarse over what did and did not go well with the February 8 election. Those who think Pakistan’s electoral history begins with the PTI’s birth are clearly having a field day – almost choking over the sheer quantity of goodies out there, some lapped up in a tweet, some savoured in a podcast and some belched up in a YouTube video. No risk of a surfeit for our new-born political gluttons, no chance of the party meeting its dawn.

For others though, who have now seen our troubled country’s electoral politics repeating itself for the ninth time in a row, the goodies on offer may be a little less palatable. It really is a chore to draw fresh outrage from what went on at the counting stage, given what happened in 1990, 2002 or 2018. Nor is one overly repulsed at Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s opportunism – a subject of many memes from his former allies and current adversaries. Not after watching PTI team up with Pervez Elahi or Sheikh Rashid as Imran Khan’s federal minister.

It is equally difficult to share PTI’s current optimism that the election tribunals or courts of law will alter the results substantially enough to enable this refreshingly young but woefully misdirected party to form a government in Islamabad. Former PTI leader Faisal Vawda may come across as being deeply hurtful when he says that the Form-45s being floated around, uploaded and tweeted by PTI’s losers are perhaps best used to wrap a barbequed cob of corn in but are unlikely to overturn the Election Commission’s verdict, but in saying so, he makes a point that goes far beyond Form-45. Listening to him, it is difficult to stop oneself from thinking if the same cannot be said of the Election Act 2017, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Pakistan Penal Code and indeed, the Constitution itself.

That, in a nutshell, is our politics. Had it been any different, even after everything that happened in the run up to February 8, Mian Nawaz Sharif should have been the first one to congratulate PTI and publicly declare that it has the right to take the first shot at forming the next government. Even if Mian sahib was too stunned at his party’s sub-par performance to show such magnanimity, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who rested his entire campaign on burying the politics of the past, should have immediately acknowledged that an electoral victory is not just about seats won or lost. It is about the will of the people which, at the end of the day, is the raison d’etre of democratic politics.

But that has not happened, and all that we are left with is the intellectual bankruptcy of severely compromised and myopic analysts reminding us that PTI did not contest as a party and cannot therefore be considered the winner of the February 8 battle. For its sheer cringe-worthiness, this line of argument even puts Faisal Vawda’s take on Form-45 to shame.

So instead of wasting our precious energies on the post-mortem of a victim who was clearly shot in the forehead from point blank range, why not flip the coin and look at the other side. One may be surprised to see it glowing, but it would be equally myopic not to acknowledge the good that has come out of this election. To start with, never before have our political engineers been put to shame as publicly as now. Smug in their ability to steal an election, and having effortlessly done so eight times in a row, their right do so has never faced a challenge of the sort that is currently resonating from the craggy peaks of the Karakorams to the pristine waters of Gawadar. Never before have we heard a public voice cry out in unison that enough is enough.

This is just the kind of fertile ground our politicians require to sow the seeds of electoral reforms in. Any election in itself is never the end: it is always a beginning. That is what the democratic process is all about and what differentiates it from the concept of a revolution that millions across the country may earnestly desire but none are willing to pay for by becoming better citizens. No one likes to be reminded that we get the leaders that we deserve – a message that the February 8 polls seem to be screaming out at all and sundry.

Another equally heartening positive from February 8 is the prospect of Pakistan’s largest province moving into the stewardship of a woman. And it isn’t just about gender. Much maligned by Punjab’s testosterone-driven politics, even her harshest critics will find it hard to credibly deny her courage and steely resolve. If she can match these with a sane head, a big heart and a genuine desire to heal, the eventual outcome can be far better than anything that any previous election has given us.