Out of leaden sleep, Out of slumber deep. Arise! –Iqbal

Our elections are no different than our cricket matches. ‘The boys played well’ but the match was fixed. While PML-N takes the trophy home, MQM becomes the party of the series by Mr. Abdul Waseem and Mr. Nabil Gabol getting approximately 370 votes/minute and 314 votes/minute respectively, PTI was that new team which walked onto the playing arena and everyone booed because nobody ever thought PTI would last a single inning but they just did not last but emerged as the second largest party of Pakistan. Khan Sahab is no doubt our Man of the Match.

While Pakistan’s youth is demoralized and depressed over the rigged elections, they fail to realize what just happened to them. We have finally woken up from our deep slumber. We shrugged off our indifference. This is Imran Khan’s biggest achievement that he actually preached what he firmly believed in – Iqbal’s philosophy. He made us remember what Iqbal had said about us:

 “Tu shaheen hai, parwaz hai kaam tera‘ 

You are a shaheen, your work is to fly.

Also,

 ‘Naheen tera nashayman Qasr-e-Sultani ke gumbad par

Tu shaheen hai, basayra kar paharon ki chattanoon main‘

Your abode is not on the dome of the palace of kings

You are a shaheen, live on the mountain-cliffs

Imran Khan made us realize our potential and urged us to use it to its fullest. His tsunami made this stagnant nation strive. For once, our lives completely revolved around the fate of our country and we could and would not think or talk about anything else.

Harper Lee’s character, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird says:

 “Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand (In our case, the na-malum afraad). It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” 

I feel this quote perfectly fits our situation. The fact that PML-N won should not be surprising. It was very much predictable. PML-N spent money like water and it seeped through many organisations and officials who scripted these elections. There was no possible way that PTI could have had clean swept the elections. Those who believed that it would were being blindly optimistic. Yes, Imran Khan claimed to sweep the elections but it was not the politician inside him talking, it was that sportsman and captain who told his team that they will take the cup home in the 1992 World cup when everyone thought that Pakistan does not stand a single chance. He did not make claims as a politician; he gave pep-talks as a sportsman. While it raised our hopes, but somewhere along the line it gave us too many hopes to handle. We actually started to visualise a ‘Naya Pakistan’, without  realising that it took years and many sacrifices to build Pakistan in the first place so a ‘Naya Pakistan’ cannot be created overnight and after just one successful election campaign.

As the saying goes that every thousand mile journey begins with a single step, we should be proud and grateful that we finally took the first step and laid the first brick.

We need to understand that Pakistan is still a malnourished child because soon after its creation, it was denied the right to grow and prosper. Feudalism, corruption, nepotism, hunger for power and various other factors act as shackles to deter Pakistan from flourishing. These factors cannot be eliminated overnight.

There is a reason why the literacy rate in Pakistan is so low. The people high above do not want the average Pakistani villager to be educated. The day he gets educated, he will stop to bow down in front of ‘Baba Saien’ and vote for the candidate his village’s Wadera orders him to vote for. That day the young men belonging to various militant wings will sit down and contemplate over what they really get out of the dirty work they do for those above them, e.g., sending text messages to shopkeepers to close down their shops, assassinating people, rigging the elections, etc. The na-malum afrad will question the malum authorities that how are their lives getting any better by doing all this while their bosses lead comfortable lives in countries abroad. That day the average Pakistani will stop to fall for loans and laptops and will realise that first of all he/she deserves basic human rights and amenities.

The only way to fight them is education, awareness and constant struggle. Also, most importantly, during these elections, I feel the leaders did a lot of damage to nationalism. The election results are a proof of that. It’s about time we get out of these racial and ethnic biases. Stop blaming the Punjabis for voting for PML-N. It is not their fault. They voted for the development in their province, however I fail to grasp how they could ignore the Badami Bagh and LDA building incidents, but we cannot blame them if they failed to realise how important their vote is for Pakistan on the whole because we ourselves sowed the seeds of racial and ethnic enmities.

 Tabdeeli agayi hai, but it needs time to completely manifest. I do not need to remind anyone how amazing all Pakistanis proved to be on election day when they went out to vote despite the na-malum forces making that difficult. This is change. When 60% of the population voted because for once they had a party and not a mafia or a family trust to vote for. When people who did not want to vote for anyone but at least went out and used their vote and left it blank so that it does not get used. When we had independent candidates like Mr. Jibran Nasir who educated us and gave us food for thought instead of begging for votes.

So let’s keep calm and try to renovate the purana Pakistan. And remember:

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

About the author

Amnah Mohasin is a student of Law.

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