Two questions:
- What is the general thinking among the people of Pakistan with regard to their future?
- What is the General thinking about his country, its people, and the U.S? The answers are simple:
- The General, like generals in trouble before him, has fallen back on falsehoods that bring him comfort. He has declared more than once that the people stand in support of him [i.e in support of his army]; he is certain that he was the best thing that ever happened to Pakistan; and that his proven loyalty will compel the U.S to move to his aid i.e lend him money.
He has been able to maintain and constantly reinforce these positions because of two alliances. His first ally is a deluded mind, and his second is the bevy of bedecked generals who surround him, and are committed not to disabuse him of the fantasies.
- To know where he stands in the affections of the people, all he has to do is to allow due cognizance to the fact that those judges who are derailing his best laid plans, are daily emerging as unlikely heroes in the thinking of the people of Pakistan for the first time in our history. And if he won’t allow even this much honesty to disturb his torpor, let him take a fifteen-minute walk in full regalia in Raja Bazaar. If he returns to the resplendence of his office in anything more than the emperor’s new clothes, I will readily concede that he had good grounds for his optimism.
In better days the U.S. may have thrown some loose change his way, but with the Ukraine disaster threatening full explosion, and having to fund the genocide in Gaza, little is likely to come his way. And besides, masters do not happily fund slaves who are plodding on paths of disaster.
More than the U.S. he ought to be thinking about China. A world power seething around the corner is least likely to walk away from sixty billion dollars invested in Pakistan.
Given all of the above, if he allows a small ray of honesty to penetrate his thinking, he might conclude that elections reeking with dishonesty is the worst thing he could do for Pakistan under the circumstances. This will take Pakistan to a disaster like 1971. The only difference will be that in 1971, the generals made and then blundered into the situation drunk, while the General and his Johnnies will be doing it sober. And some feats, like destroying one’s country, he may find, are much better done, drunk!
Even now, when honesty may be lying far forgotten, it would be worth retrieving it and opting for the fairest elections possible. It may be worth falling back on patriotism once more. If he resorts to it, he may find that patriotism was still the best refuge for a scoundrel.