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January 19, 2008
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Saturday
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Muharram 09, 1429
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Now showing: Alice in Wonderland, the local version
Now showing: Alice in Wonderland, the local version
ISLAMABAD is slightly behind as compared to Rawalpindi, where the election scene is again picking up steam with the sheer number of posters, hoardings and banners, not to say wall paintings and chalking, appearing to drown the city and its hapless citizens.
For the bewildered citizenry, it is enough to induce the early stages of schizophrenia. Bewildered because you could excuse them for assuming that a semblance of sanity would follow the passing away of this country’s biggest modern day political icon.
Sure, life goes on but need it be like a silly tale out of Alice in Wonderland? Did not the sage say that excess of everything is bad?
An election contest in this country, is mostly like a mad race — unless the constituency boasts a surefire winner — with those in the fray sometimes reminiscent of characters from that Lewis Carroll piece of nonsense literature.
There is, of course, much at stake for the winner, which explains the sometimes absurd lengths to which the candidates and their henchmen go to ensure they get past the post. Maybe, the axiom pertaining to everything being fair in love and war could be extended to the election arena as well!
Last Sunday, the dashing land cruiser of Nayyar Bukhari, Pakistan People’s Party candidate from an Islamabad constituency (NA-49) was fired upon by assailants in a sports car — some sport that — but fortunately for him, he wasn’t on a ride the assailants had come in anticipation of. His driver, the lone presence in the vehicle, escaped the bullet, which penetrated one window and exited through the other.
And pray where did this happen?
Not in some backyard of beyond but near the famed Fatima Jinnah Park in the capital’s F-9 sector. Earlier, Bokhari and another candidate from his party in NA-48, Dr Israr Shah, had both received death threats with the caller demanding Rs2.5 million as ransom topped by a withdrawal from the race (as if a forced pullout itself was not enough of a steal).
For a change, the police was able to arrest a few people including an independent candidate on charges of threatening the People’s Party candidates.
Serious as the episode was, few can deny the hilarity on reflection (the ransom part, in particular, sounded like the extra topping you might seek at any of the multinational food chains). May be, the amateur little dons were obsessed with pulling off a khalaas stunt Company style (remember the Ram Gopal Verma underworld flick?).
But surely our twin city cousins can’t be too pleased with the fare dished out in their backyard. There, Ejazul Haq is being treated like hot property — both by the usual suspects and those supposed to check the usual suspects.
A report in Dawn Metro pages of its Islamabad edition last week revealed how the access road to Westridge is closed for the security of the former minister, whose residence is adjacent to the Chairing Cross.
All this is happening while the traffic is choked around the Cross but you can bet Mr Haq does not see this as an albatross around his neck — or else he would have taken the trouble to free the perturbed citizens of this ridiculous yoke of over-the- top protection.
Rather, as is their wont, it is the common people, who have been forced to bear the cross. One can only sympathise with them for, there is no alternative access to Westridge.
Worse still, as the evening shadows lengthen, more pickets come out to fortify the residence of the ex-minister — much to the dismay of the residents of the locality, who literally, feel cagey about the regular road show.
Can anyone in his or her right mind ever imagine this happening in a remotely decent democracy, not to speak of what reacting potential voters would do in a fair exercise?
Ah! may be I’ve answered my own question: it is not a bout of cynicism but a fact as clear as the day that our vote is not the sacred trust it is trotted out to be whenever we’re handed crumbs of an election participation.
Coming back to the “drowning” spectre, it is amazing that the local Mad Hatters don’t realize how too much of everything can be a put-off.
One could cite the very pertinent example of how both the state and private electronic media run amok at any event of great public interest: for instance, the Twenty20 World Cup final, where the deluge of commercials almost infringed on the territory of an average over. The sixth would not be a standard delivery of the over but one that is bowled by a biscuit or a shampoo brand et al.
The viewer at that point in time may be straining to blow the head off the sponsor and if the match is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, the temptation never to eat that biscuit or shampoo the leftover hair (after some has been torn out in frustration) would be great.
The election advertising swamp is no different for any potential literate voter.
The argument that “literate” voters (let’s define them as people, who are reasonably educated and understand the difference in their choice of the ballot) have grown cynical over time and are no longer cast in that mould begs the question — for whom, then, is the poll advertising meant? Certainly, not the regular (usually biradri) voters, who know no two ways about, which side of the toast to butter.
It is great to have poll festivity but surely, there are more civilized and smart ways to indulge it.
The writer is News Editor at Dawn News. He may be contacted at kaamyabi@gmail.com
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