Tragedy in Sahiwal

There is something seriously, seriously wrong with this system we have in Pakistan

That’s not really a secret. Never was. But every once in a while something so shocking – so disgusting – and so utterly sickening happens that it surprises even the most insensitive among us.

Something like what happened in Sahiwal.

Something like the police murdering a family in front of their little children – in front of their eyes

Something like the police pumping bullets from their submachine gun into a 13 year old girl – a 13 year old girl who must be in Class 8.

Something like the police stopping the car in broad daylight;

On a main highway;

In front of traffic;

Murdering four people at point blank range;

Whisking the three little kids away after the kids have witnessed dozens of bullets being pumped into their father, mother and sister

How mentally deranged do you have to be to commit such an act?

How morally dead do you have to be to murder an unarmed and innocent family in front of their three little children?

Oh, and there’s more…

There’s the cover-up of this massacre

Official cover up

By the bosses of those who executed the innocent family

These bosses issued a press release immediately after the massacre and claimed CTD had targeted terrorists

CTD - as in Counter Terrorism Department. Yes the same department that is supposed to cleanse Pakistan of terrorists…

Not cleanse Pakistan of its own innocent citizens..

And so the chain of official lies started.. and went on and on and on – till the Law Minister of Punjab, no less, parroted the same line..

This was official Pakistan going into official default – traditional – official - default mode

In this mode officials lie as a default position – they lie because they know they can…

They lie because they know they will get away with it…

They lie because they have seen and heard their bosses lie – and be rewarded for it..

Except this time there was video

And this time there was a little, traumatised child who had seen what these officials wanted to hide.

The little child said what he had seen… and the lies began to unravel.

Those who pumped bullets into an innocent family are being punished …

But those who allowed them to kill so brazenly – those who perhaps gave them permission to murder so heartlessly – those who tried to cover up this crime –

They are only getting a slap on the wrist

They are only getting transfer orders

Nothing will happen to them because they work for a system that hates to be held accountable

A system that hunkers down to protect its people, their lies and their murders

There is something seriously, seriously wrong with this system—

And the murder of an innocent family is not enough of a shock to set the wrongs of this system right.

The wait for next elections may be worth it

If you are desperate to have early elections in Pakistan, don't hold your breath. Hint: the reason is not political.

There are those like Mian Nawaz Sharif who are demanding snap polls. There are others like Imran Khan who say each passing day with this government in control is a disaster. And of course, President Zardari wants to stick it out till the last so he and his boys have got the final details of the electoral battle plan stitched up like a Hugo Boss suit.

Then there's the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). And it may have the final say.

Here's why: The deadline for the publication of the final electoral rolls is March 24, 2012. This essentially means if you want to have a shot at having the freest and fairest elections possible in Pakistan, you have got to wait till this date. It just so happens that the crucial Senate elections, which will give the PPP a majority, are also scheduled for the same month. Game, set, match, Zardari?

 Possibly. But this political game of checkers should not diminish the significance of a quiet but extremely crucial exercise underway in a building situated on Islamabad's famous Constitution Avenue. No, I'm not referring to the Presidency, or the Parliament, or in fact the Supreme Court. It's the Election Commission, and it may hold the key for a successful election which has eluded Pakistan since 1970.

Organising an election for a population of 180 million is not exactly child's play. Add to that the addiction of the politicians and the military to steal cheeky singles (and doubles) on the electoral crease, and you have a mission impossible on your hands. To make this a bit more possible, a grand exercise was launched by the Election Commission to set new rules of the game. The result of marathon consultative sessions with major political parties was a document titled "Five-Year Strategic Plan 2010-2014". But here's the bitter reality: Such reports published on glossy papers rarely translate into actions. It doesn’t help that the Election Commission suffers from a credibility-deficit because of having been used as a political handmaiden by all governments.

Could it then be that it is actually working towards holding free and fair elections, shorn of political gerrymandering? Is goldilocks finally going to sit in the chair that's just right while the big brown political bears hunt in the woods?

The answer may surprise you. Let's start with some bad news. Of the 81 million people on the electoral rolls in the 2008 elections, 37 million turned out to be "unverifiable". Here's the sordid breakdown: Invalid CNIC 2,140,015; Duplicate CNIC entries 2,491,090; Duplicate MNIC entries (old ID cards) 6,496,301; MNIC does not exist in NADRA database 11,056,775. If you had a dollar for each suspect electoral roll entry in the last election, you too could have been the proud owner of a chateau in France.

Translation: the electoral system stinks.

Well now the Election Commission is trying to conjure up a big air freshner. Step one: ECP handed over the electoral rolls from the last election to NADRA for verification. Step two: NADRA confirmed 37 million names could not be verified. Step three: NADRA deleted all these 37 million names. Step four: NADRA then added 36 million new names from its own fresh data to the electoral rolls. These 36 million were those people who had got their CNICs made after the last elections. Result: the updated electoral roll list is back to around 80 million names.

Enter a new player – the Census boys. It just so happens that the census is underway this year. The last one was held way back in 1998. The ECP played smart and hitched the census bandwagon like a happy camper. Starting tomorrow 211,000 people will fan across the country to go door-to-door for one phase of the census exercise. ECP has given these people forms through which they will re-verify the electoral rolls. By September 30, 2011 this exercise should be complete. Voila! Pakistan may have a list of all eligible voters.

And these voters will have a privilege no Pakistani voter has ever had before – they will be able to vote anywhere in Pakistan, not just in their home constituency. Here's how this new system will work: If the permanent address on my CNIC is, for example, in Islamabad, but my temporary address is in say Karachi, but I'm actually now living in Mardan, no worries. I will have a choice. I can either vote in Islamabad, or Karachi or Mardan. Say I choose Mardan. This would mean that even though I've always voted in an Islamabad constituency, this time I get to choose a Hoti from Mardan in that constituency.

As if SIM portability was not enough, now we can enjoy voter portability. For free.

Those of you who are in the habit of casting votes in three different places, under different names, you may now have a new challenge on your hands. Breaking the system is what Pakistanis do best, and we may yet do it, but it helps to make it a bit more difficult to do. So you are a party loyalist and you love your candidate so much that you want to vote again and again and again. Come next election, however, when you go to the polling station, you might be surprised to see your photo staring back at you from the electoral roll list with the presiding officer. Okay so you have a twin, and the two of you have fooled your teachers all through school, so a presiding officer would hardly be a challenge. Except your teacher never had magnetic ink. This presiding officer will stick your thumb in this ink and then get a fingerprint next to your name on the list. Now you are in the data base, and can be tracked through computer if you've just voted in Murree and a few hours later are dutifully standing in line to cast your vote in Islamabad too.

Will all these cool electoral gizmos work? Hard to say. What is clear though is that a serious attempt is being made to have a solid election. The four provincial election commissioners have been appointed by a parliamentary consensus as per the requirements of the 18^th Amendment. Even the opposition is calling this a great step forward. The incumbent Chief Election Commissioner retires in March next year, and his successor will also be appointed through a consensus mechanism. This perhaps is one more reason why the Opposition might want to wait for elections till after a new guy comes in. If the final electoral rolls also get a thumbs up from the major political stakeholders, we may just have what it takes to conduct a free and fair election – or something near to that.

But all said and done, the government and the military always cast a dark shadow over the Election Commission. The biggest challenge for both of them would be to keep their hands off the electoral process, resist the urge to pressure the ECP or conduct pre-poll rigging, and wait for the voters to deliver their judgement on voting day. If this is achieved, we may have a truly successful election. Then the losers can huff and puff all they want, they won't be able to blow this electoral house away.

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Narrative of the gun

Nero would have been proud.

As Karachi burns, politicians continue to play the harp. The grotesque dance of death over the remains of Karachi's dead seems the final insult to their memory. They died for nothing more than the political brinkmanship of those they voted into power.

I'm not sure which is worse: the sheer hypocrisy of the ruling troika in Sindh, or their audacious attempt to insult the collective intelligence of Pakistanis. How else would you describe the inane political activity in the name of restoring peace to Karachi.

Peace? You’ve got to be kidding. There's a veritable urban war raging in the metropolis for no other reason than gaining control of the city – or at least a sizeable share of it. This much is well known, but what is astounding is how in this day and age of instant communication, the three stakeholders – PPP, MQM and ANP – can continue to play charades and think they can get away with it. Three years and a thousand deaths later, everybody still pretends not to know who the so-called target killers are. This has to be the worst kept secret in the world.

Here's why: Karachi's population is nearing 20 million. The city has 20 National Assembly seats. It remains the engine of Pakistan's economic growth. It is the only really true and authentic urban metropolis of Pakistan, a potpourri of more than 60 ethnic groups. American scholar Stephen Cohen has compared Karachi to New York, only if Karachi learns to live at peace with itself. Since the 1980's MQM has dominated Karachi's politics due to the sheer number of Urdu-speaking residents of this city. With Karachi under its firm control, MQM has negotiated political power in the Centre, and done so successfully under all regimes.

But not anymore.

The growing influx of Pushtuns in Karachi has changed the demographics of the metropolis. First came the weight of numbers, then the weight of arms, and now the demand for corresponding political power. They too want their share in the political spoils of the city.

And so does Asif Ali Zardari. All three parties now have their eyes on the prize and their finger on the trigger. Karachi is up for grabs. The loser gets to be – dead.

But here dead men do tell tales. These tales paint a picture eerily resembling Beirut, or Mogadishu. Such tales have a faint echo of cities falling apart; of urban warfare decimating the shaky foundations of ethnic balance and mating the flame with the powder keg. Karachi is now weaving together such a tale, because the city fathers have chosen deliberately to speak through the barrel of the gun.

This narrative of the gun resounds louder than the meaningless verbiage sprouting out of official mouths. Every clown-about-town is peddling solutions which have no bearing to reality as defined in Karachi's descent into mayhem. Empower the police, send in the Rangers or the Frontier Constabulary, call a meeting in Governor's House, call in the army, deweaponise the city, blah, blah and more blah.

None of these is the solution. It never was. But no one speaks of the solution. No one dare say in public what all admit in private. No one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room. But here it is – tusks and all – staring us in the face: Karachi is being firebombed by the same people who are entrusted with protecting it. So who's going to protect it from the protectors?

This is where the tale begins to get hazy. The PPP, MQM and ANP are slugging it out. MQM sees this battle in existential terms. They say they will never allow themselves to be pushed into the Arabian Sea. ANP claims – and perhaps accurately so – that Karachi now is the largest Pushtun city in the world, eclipsing Peshawar and Kabul in terms of the numbers of Pushtuns residing there. And PPP wants in on the Karachi turf, with all the booty that it offers. All three have votes; all three have guns – big, loud guns – and all three are playing for keeps.

Solutions, anyone? Send in the army? Uncheck. Carve up the city? Uncheck. Call an All Parties Conference? Uncheck. Let the voter decide? Maybe. Come elections, there will be a loss of power for some, and gain for others. But it is the road leading to elections which is the real issue. There's the much-delayed Census which is now under way, and which will produce a preliminary report by January 2012. The data will determine the new demographics of Karachi, and probably unleash a new firestorm. Once the Census data is in, the Election Commission will kickstart the delimitation of constituencies. In Karachi, the shifting of a single union council from one constituency to the next can result in a massive change of electoral dynamics in that constituency. If such an exercise is politically motivated, all hell can break loose.

These are all political problems. The army or the police, or FC or Rangers cannot solve them. The solution is there for all to see. The three stakeholders hold the key, and the latest report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says exactly this. The firemen and firestarters are essentially one and the same.

Nero would have been proud.    

THE CURSE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

What's the conspiracy theory to explain the spread of conspiracy theories in Pakistan? This here is a self-laid trap if ever there was one. I'm not sure about the answer, but what I do know is that with each passing day, more and more Pakistanis are falling prey to the Curse of Conspiracy Theories. The affliction cuts across class, gender and educational stratas, and is successfully helping us build and strengthen the huge dome called Denial. No argument, no information, no proof is strong enough to crack this dome, inside which we all sit comfortably, happy in the knowledge that Pakistan is the centre of the world. And the world is out to get us.