avam ka naya naara(amitabh ke andaaz mein)“haanh! mujhe bai-ghairat kahobai-ghairat kahobai-ghairat kaho”

Well, the kid gloves are finally off. The smiley mask, too, is slowly being dissolved by the vitriol oozing out of dilated facial pores. Dear Leader San, sans Chaplinesque mustache, stands before us in all his pint-sized totalitarian glory. A strongman-the-laaltein for our weird and wonderful times. A Sodomise-’em Hussein in the making. Der Führer Redux in khaki, whom we should face with right arms raised in reverent salutes, chanting Sieg Heil (or else crawl back into our little foxholes and go back to sleep).

A telling facet of Act Sixty-One of the melodrama that is Pakistan is that (almost on cue) everyone’s started pointing fingers accusingly at those individuals, groups, peoples who are despised, without anyone in any way being concerned about a viable long-term solution to yet another fine mess we find ourselves in. This is certainly not News. In fact, spouting knee-jerk accusations when frustrated is an intergral part of our national character (insofar as we as a nation have any character to boast of).

Let me say, right now, that I’m not in favour of modern Western-style democracy being thrust, willy-nilly, upon us. Democracy is not a result which can be achieved by the application of precise mathematical formulae. It is not an exact science. And equitable democracy can only be achieved by the development of theories and philosophies which are relevant to the particular set of socio-cultural circumstances which define us -- now and in the future.

Nevertheless, I believe that only a democratic form of government can, in the long run, bring about a society which provides liberty, justice and (pardon the cliche) human rights for all. The tragedy is that we have not developed a single philosophy which addresses the issue of democratic government for us. This is partly because we have precious few philosophers, and partly because we are too lazy to do anything other than apply to ourselves political philosophies which are either foreign to our nature, or which end up benefitting only a small segment of society.

(Then again, perhaps we are too bai-ghairat to ever struggle hard enough to achieve it.)

On the other hand, while I am horrified (eek, a mouse!) by the draconian steps taken by Der Führer and his cabal of shadowy henchmen, perhaps this is the kind of electric-shock-therapy-up-the-backside we need to jolt us into unified action (and I don’t mean of the ARD/MRD/IJI/MMA/PNA alliance of the cut-throat vagabond variety). For, until we as a people shed our apathy in the face of rampant kleptocratic cronyism, we deserve to be crapped upon like this. Again and again and again.