It’s politically incorrect to ask the effete elites who they will vote for. You can get a shut-up call from them. It’s worse still to ask whether he or she will get out to vote on Election Day? To second guess reasons why both the questions are irrelevant, well, those who argue the loudest within the four walls of their drawing rooms crying havoc are the unlikeliest to leave their etherised environs, stand in lines and put a stamp on the political party of their choice.

Add to this list of ‘imponderables’ are the national and international pollsters. Their surveys are anything but scrupulous. Aren’t pollsters meant to be independent? Not the big names we have in Pakistan. Their methodology is based on their ideology. Some support the religious right; others say that secular parties have a good chance of winning. Since their polls are neither scientific nor free of bias, best to ignore them. Instead do some number crunching to guesstimate which party will bag the most votes, especially in Punjab that makes up 60pc of Pakistan.

Will it be Zardari’s PPP, Nawaz’s PML or Imran’s PTI?

“I’ll vote for N-League”, says a white-haired man sitting on the bench at Islamabad’s Fatima Jinnah Park. By his looks, he appears unlettered and poor. Why? I ask him. “Because I belong to Lahore, I live near Raiwind Palace and while I know they have ‘palaces’ in ‘Englaand’ too, I will still vote for them”. What skewered logic is this? I continue. “We are hidebound by biradari. If I don’t vote for PML-N, I’d be ostracised by my family and community.”

End of conversation.

Next. Four young chirpy college students sit squeezed on a single bench nearby. They are enjoying the cool air and stunning vegetation around them [CDA has done a remarkable job maintaining this park]. I ask all four the same question that I asked the old man. “We are under-aged and can’t vote”, they say in a chorus. “But we are staunch supporters of Imran Khan. We want change. He has our families’ vote.”

Some friends who own homes on Margalla Road have a different take. The operator of a tuition centre in their area is a card-carrying member of PTI. Obviously he has bankrolled the party and is quite justified in spreading the word that should Imran win, the capitalist will be sitting in the Senate. God Forbid he becomes a senator, exclaim our friends in unison. Their ordeal began when their neighbour, a sitting chief justice of Pakistan, rented his house to a school many years back. Consequently the people around protested and even threatened to go to court. The chief justice promised them that he would promptly have his house vacated should the school become a nuisance. Of course the school mushroomed into an after-school tuition centre, a thriving business, turning the life of homeowners around a “nightmare” from morning till late at night. The judge, now deceased, obviously went back on his promise.

End of story.

At an electronics shop in F-10, I ask the technician/owner who he will vote for. “Imran is our choice. The future of our children is at stake. His party alone can save Pakistan. Five years ago when PPP came to power, we paid Rs 35,000 monthly rental for this shop, today we pay Rs 150,000. With an anemic economy, business here is moribund. Ask anyone around how they are coping and you will get horror stories from them.” Reflexively, he points to a poster of a mustachioed man standing for NA-48. “In 2008 elections this man got a party ticket in return for a Mercedes which he presented to the PML-N top man. This time, we are told you have to cough up Rs 20 million for a ticket.”

End of searching for more answers.

Hanging to their dear lives are tattered cloth posters of PPP and PML-N candidates for NA-48. The former is a guesthouse owner who, I’m told, has an open house for the jiyalas including the president on special occasions. The latter (mentioned above) was a sitting MNA in 2011 when he was charged with Rs 6 billion land fraud. According to a report in this newspaper dated December 15, 2011, the PML-N legislator was deemed ‘innocent’ based on the “interim fact sheet prepared by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).” The case has been reopened but like the past suo mottos the past, the candidate may once again slip through the cracks.

End of investigation.

While the PML-N candidate escaped being thrown in the cage and openly boasts of returning to the parliament, who will facilitate the escape of thousands of sparrows smothered in small cages sitting in the sun on the burning ground near the party banners? The mercilessness meted to these birds packed to capacity fluttering around helplessly looking to escape is one of the cruelest acts humans are capable of.

Why do you keep these birds imprisoned? I ask the soulless jailer who sits by the roadside attracting buyers in cars who drive past. “People buy them and then free them as a sadqa (to please God)”, he tells me. Okay, how much will you charge to free all these miserable birds? I ask. “Give me Rs 150 for each”, pat comes his reply. Unable to bear the birds’ agony anymore, I agree. The shoddy little cage door is opened. In a second all the birds fly out and go perch atop a tree. Three remain behind. They sit stunned in the cage not knowing what to do. Get them out, I say.

Soon, three more men with hundreds of caged birds come running my way. They too want to sell the birds. “We have baby parrots for sale”, they declare. “They are only two days old.” This is a racket where one can spend thousands to free the birds and yet more and more are produced.

There’s a wholesale market in Raja Bazaar Rawalpindi that only deals in bird trade. The birds are sold to vendors on credit. Trapped and netted at farms outside Pindi, transported to Raja Bazaar and later brought to Islamabad’s posh areas for sale appears to be a thriving business. “We earn around Rs 500 a day”, the men tell me. “We are very poor and can’t find any other source of livelihood except sell these birds, even their babies.”

Feryal Ali Gauhar wrote an open letter to Justice (retired) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, Chief Election Commissioner in Dawn’s Op-Ed page dated April 23 drawing his attention towards cruelty to animals (big cats like lions, tigers and cheetahs) being paraded around for political purposes. We all know that Noon League’s election symbol is the lion.

“I raise my voice today because amongst the din and clamour of electioneering, deal-making, reality-fixing, spin-doctoring and promise-making, I stand firm in my belief that the civilising signifier of a nation is in how that nation treats the powerless, the voiceless”, writes Gauhar.

As we enter the final week of the battle for the throne in Islamabad, let the victor and the future prime minister with the help of the National Assembly pass a bill, making bird trade illegal. Anyone caught selling or buying caged sparrows should be severely penalised.

You may argue why worry about birds when humans are being starved and killed, Faiz’s verse comes to mind: laut jatee hai udhar ko bhee nazar, kya kijiye

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com