Is Pakistan finally coming of age?

The clouds lift, methinks, to some degree and the Pakistani prospect looks brighter than it has done for a long time. All because Pakistan with its great capacity for not getting much right is getting this election season right.

The cynics are confounded, and praise Allah for that. The usual conspirators are out of work, a rest they richly deserve. And everything, almost everything, is working as it should, even the weather. Not as far as I can remember was there a balmier March, so pleasant. And it promises to be a bumper wheat crop this year.

And the clowns and shifty characters making up the PPP government are a fading memory. Gilani, Ashraf, and the other performers, where are they? Bilawal, reportedly unhappy with the state of affairs within the party whose head he is supposed to be, has gone, or rather escaped, to Dubai. If these reports are true, it shows that the lad has some spirit in him after all. Good for him.

This much should be clear. If the PPP has to have a further lease of life, a future better than its recent past, it has to be a future without Zardari. Under his banyan tree nothing can grow. Zardari and Pakistan, it has been a nightmare whose end is drawing near.

True, the fundamentals of the national situation haven’t changed. There is turmoil in Afghanistan. The Taliban continue to hold sway over the territories they control. Karachi is a running eyesore, Balochistan a troubled land, the economy poised on the edge of a precipice and the rupee close to being worthless paper. Yet, amazingly, things are looking up…only because the Republic is moving in the right direction, thereby for once proving the Doubting Thomases wrong.

Pakistan stands in need of no miracles. All it requires is the gift of normality. For too long its affairs have been at the mercy of unpredictability. For a change we could do with the boredom of predictable things.

Like it or not, and detractors will not like this, the heaviest responsibility rests on the shoulders of the N League. Circumstances have conspired to put it in a commanding position. See around you in Punjab and it becomes clear that, hostile winds notwithstanding, it leads the field. What have been those circumstances? The monumental ineptitude of the PPP and the distraction, or call it the half-cocked challenge, of Imran Khan. History has created this vacuum. History is pushing the League to fill it.

But elections are not journey’s end, only its beginning, first stop on a road stretching into the remote distance. What happens afterwards is more important. And for something to come out of that, the PML-N has to hit the ground running.

There will be no time for any kind of apprenticeship, for learning on the job. That luxury will just not be there. The briefs – regarding the economy, the fiscal situation, wages of extremism – which need to be mastered have to be mastered now. The homework has to begin so that as Lenin was able to say the moment the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, “We now begin the construction of the socialist order”…the PML-N is able to say, as soon as the elections are over and the euphoria subsides, we now begin the reconstruction of Pakistan.

No new republic has to be invented. It’s all there. It just has to be seen through fresh eyes. The past is the past and its battles, and the choices imposed by those battles, should be considered over. We have to move on if we are to catch up with the rest of the world. Who can make this break with the past? Who is in the best position to do so?

America’s opening to China came at the hands of someone whose anti-communist credentials were impeccable: Richard Nixon. As he went about courting the Middle Kingdom no high priest of Republicanism could point a finger at him. Who can enact the same role in our context? Who can take a stand against the forces of extremism without inviting a right-wing backlash or the charge of being anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan? I leave that to your imagination.

Imran Khan’s analysis of things is too simplistic. Anyone can rail against ‘corruption’. Pakistan’s problem is more complicated than that: a warping of the mind that has led to the making of fateful choices. We see the consequences of those choices around us. Nawaz Sharif has moved beyond his political origins. That is a measure of the distance he has travelled.

Imran Khan still sounds as if he is stuck in the simplicities of his ideological past. (Shouldn’t my friend Shafqat Mahmood be preparing a reading list for him? There’s Shireen Mazari too. Come on Shireen, now is the time to come to the aid of the party.)

Personally, I have a soft spot for the PTI. It has some things better than others, not least some of its bright spots like my friend Ayla Malik. Now there’s a theoretician any party would welcome.

The next six weeks are going to be exciting, the field more varied than in 2008. Then it was cut-and-dried, Musharraf and supporters on one side, votaries of democracy on the other. One of those votaries, the PPP namely, has cooked its goose with its performance. The PML-N has its sails lifted by favourable winds. At age 60-plus Imran is the new kid on the block. Baloch nationalists are also entering the fray. And the Taliban are threatening ruin and destruction.

In previous elections physical security used to be provided by the army. In these elections too physical security is coming from that quarter but psychological security is coming from an activist Supreme Court and an empowered Election Commission. This is the new element in these elections. Does it not signify that Pakistan is leaving its troubled past behind and, in some ways if not all, coming of age?

Who says the Chief Election Commissioner, Justice Fakhruddin Ebrahim, is old? I would give anything to have half his energy. I certainly can’t keep the long hours he does. As for the caretaker prime minister, Mir Hazar Khan Khoso, that’s another sprightly gentleman. I liked the way he was talking to the army chief: seemed very relaxed.

Andreas Papandreou, Greek prime minister once upon a time, married a bombshell of an air hostess at age 86, and looked every bit as if he was enjoying the experience. A former president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, married a striking blonde, 36, when he was 85. Rupert Murdoch’s second marriage came pretty late. The same was true of our late Pir of Pagaro. Clearly, there is much that relative greenhorns can learn from some of these old-timers.

Tailpiece: Now that we are saying goodbye to the past, will the caretaker prime minister kindly pay some attention to the YouTube ban which makes us look so silly as a nation? Imagine coming back from the campaign trail late at night and fumbling with one’s laptop and not being able to listen to one’s favourite songs? The PPP govt had not the guts to revoke this ban, despite my friend Rehman Malik’s loud boasts that it would be lifted in a week. But surely we can expect better from the caretaker prime minister.

Will he kindly look into the matter? And, using this opportunity, congratulations to Najam Sethi…super choice. We could do with more intelligent people in the right places. And Shafqat, please don’t forget the reading list, even if it’s a bit late in the day. It’s all for a good cause.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com