Pakistani Election Results

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Despite poor turn out, the election results are in! The Pakistan People's Party was the winner of the most seats, which in my opinion is an excellent thing, its just sad that Bhutto had an untimely death before her party succeeded-she will be missed.

What are everyone else's views on the outcome?

 

So who becomes the prime minister/leader? I heard something about her son leading the party, but I thought he was kind of young for rulership.

 

Not much of an issue really, as Musharraf stated after the election results that he will not resign as president. Since his current "mandate" is until 2012, he still rules the country. What I found laughable was his stated reason for refusing to resign is that he is needed in his post to "push the country into democracy". Says the man who took power in a coup and established himself as a tyrant.

 

Well, Bhutto's son has been elected leader of the PPP, but he under law, is too young, and plus, he wants to finish is education at Oxford before taking any control.

With both opposition parties holding more seats, I'm pretty sure they can push Musharraf out of control, if they work together and get a majority vote. Which would be not so difficult, considering that they hold way more seats.

 

I found the US response to the election telling. They violated Pakistani airspace and fired a missile at a 'target in Pakistani territory' - whatever that means on a scale from a donkey carrying a 'suspect' to a place where 'suspect insurgents' gather (read: family house, village). I do not think it made them any more friends in Pakistan, even with the so-called pro-western (read: pro-US) PPP. Certainly the Pakistani military must be pissed off, not to mention the people in the tribal areas who got this blessing from above.
I doubt it will make policy for the 'forces of change' any easier, and personally speaking, my enthusiasm about the PPP is limited. Democracy is all fine and well, but I'd be careful to compare the PPP with a western democratic party. Lower your expectations folks, the corruption charges against Bhutto and especially her hubby were real.

A great deal of US disenchantment is because of Musharaf putting severe limits on what the US is allowed to do in Pakistan, because of this ridiculous notion of what the Pakistanis call their 'national sovereignty'. Listen up you little @ۤ$%, you do what I tell you to do, got it? The Pakistanis have in the past not accepted that. Musharaf stands in the way of those in the US who can't wait to escalate the Afghanistan war into Pakistan.

It might well be that, US perception aside, it's probably the evil Musharaf who's the only 'friend' the US have in there anyway. His policies are largely dictated by the possible and I find it unpersuasive in the extreme that when the PPP comes in the bounds of reality will begin to morph into conformity with US wishes or wishful thinking, and the sun will shine at night, and everybody will be happy, especially the US who will suddenly get a free hand against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and will win the war, and as the PPP works their FREEDOM magic all Pakistanis will start to love the US fighting against fellow Muslims, and fellow Pakistanis, on Pakistani soil and they will merrily embrace a civil war. That's how it will be.

Everybody clap for Tinker Belle! If you clap hard enough she'll come back to life!

 

With or without the US that seems to be an ongoing problem with the Pakistanis. They have already started blowing up each other over their ideological differences, as I'm sure you are well aware. While you are condemning the US for its "tinkering" within the political system, don't forget to thank the blood-thristy mullahs for making it all possible by attacking anyone who will not fall flat on his/her face and kiss their feet.

 

So does this make it all more safe or less safe to play a game of cricket over there? And is it reasonable for a player to boycott a series over there based on political instability/unrest?

 

Chandos,
I have a problem with the line of argument that suggests that, as the Pakistanis fuelled by the bloodthirsty mullahs are at each other's throat anyway, US meddling will only add some extra flavour to the witches brew. It is much too lenient on the US, and a gross oversimplification as well.

The problems Pakistan faces in their tribal area, and that's where currently most of the trouble is, are not so much a purely domestic Pakistani problem but to a large extent 'spill-over' from the conflict in Pakistan that the US since their invasion tried and still try to steer in a direction that hurts Pakistan's national interests and the interests of many people living in Pakistan. That isn't my endorsement of Pakistan, it's just an observation.

The US have a hard time being neutral. They always pick favourites - the PPP over Musharaf, Kharzai over someone else - and thus become a party (and that inevitably makes them a target) in a local power struggle. That's also a simple observation. If you hurt people's interests, don't wonder when they don't cooperate, or even get hostile. That's a simple truth in life.

I don't want you to love the mullahs, bloodthirsty or not, but I ask you to be realistic about what goes and what goes on in Pakistan and what doesn't, and to ponder a little about whether, and if, to which extent, US goals in and perceptions about Pakistan are rooted in reality.

 

No, I completely agree with the notion of America's faulty perception and the reality of what's going on there. I'm not saying you are wrong about the US, Ragusa, but I don't understand your own perceptions of those tribal thugs. I'm not prepared to let the mullahs off the hook for their tyranny. Oh yes, please let's turn Pakinstan's sports stadiums into arenas for the public execution of gays and a fine place for them to flog their women in public. Yes, but that's OK because they are just gays and women anyway. If they were "enemy combatants" of the US and were being "ill treated" by the US, you would be falling all over yourself attacking the US for being mulit-national criminals. But if a woman looks at a man the wrong way and the Thought Control/Sex Police, Talbanese thug sees it, then, by all means, let's lash her half-to-death in public. And we can all say, at least the people of Pakistan are free of the US "Tinkerbells."

 

Now if that wasn't a quote deprived of it's context

My point is this Chandos:

I think that American and European liberals (and in that crowd I generously count in the neo-con Jacobins) are so sophisticated and 'de-tribalised' that they are unable to see what is going on in front of their eyes, and that they have forgotten their even recent history. History? Petty nationalism? We're sooooo past that, we have progressed! They may have, but they are not alone in this world. When I call the people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, and Serbia tribal in their world view that is purely descriptive - it would imo also apply to a good chunk of US conservatives. On this there are a few points to be made - and this is also important to the Kosovo thread (crosslink).

• I have seen that in respect to Serbia and Kosovo and the Albanians. The vague notion appears to be that the Serbs are irrational, evil and nationalistic (much unlike the Albanians). What is missed is something as simple as fundamental: It's about collective consciousness. The collective memory of a people is like a storehouse of power, a tool shed in which are kept the instruments of struggle, the weaponry stored up for use in expressing group will.
  In the collective memory and mind of the Serbian people they are a besieged Christian Orthodox people beset with enemies; Muslim Bozniaks, Catholic Croats, Albanians of all kinds. In their minds Serbia is eternal and Kosovo IS Serbia. Kosovo is where Serbia began. It is the heart of their national mythos. The issue of the numerical preponderance of the Albanian "trespasser" means nothing to the Serbs. In much the same way, the city of San Antonio IS Texas for most Texans because the Alamo is there.
  .
• It appears to me that in the view of exogenic oriented liberals the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, and Serbia would have gotten a clue by now, that their vision for the world is myopic, if not dead blind.
  As a result of that perception the people of these regions all receive the same generic treatment - tiresome if idealistic tirades and well meaning admonitions, and practical 'education' if found necessary by brute force - coupled to fantastic expectations of change. The idea is what? That given the opportunity, they will shed their historic identity and embrace the alien. It is more realistic to expect that tribes or nations in face of such threats to their collective consciousness and heritage unite and resist.
  .
• What liberals do miss is that the imposition of our western values is not simply alien or different, but is easily perceived as a hostile mortal threat. Not unlike the threat all liberal culture presents to traditional culture - that it dissolves the inherited family obligation tribal structure by presenting an alternative to it. From a tribal point of view resistance is not only rational and sensible but imperative: It is a zero sum game - their way of life against the Western or American way of life.
  As long as liberals (Western liberals in general) fool themselves with self-adulating delusions like that their opponents oppose them out of backwardness, primitive misogynism or misanthropy or malicious spitefulness - and not for rational reasons that are merely out of our own myopic grasp - the strategies they formulate will inevitably, predictably and repeatedly fail. That is not blaming the US or the West, but pointing out a chronic and fatal shortcoming of liberal modern world view.

Answer two questions for yourself: Would Texans, under the right imposition, willingly switch to Spanish, wear a sombrero, and embrace Mexican cultural and political life? Do you expect it to work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, and Serbia?

Chandos, I don't have a problem with you being liberal. I think you're great guy. My problem is that in my understanding ignoring the above points in formulating foreign policy or strategy makes almost inevitable future failure. It just don't work because they go past the collective psyche and tribal nature of the people living in the aforementioned places. That doesn't mean I like the other guys. But I'm perfectly willing to do nothing and to not meddle if it yields nothing but me feeling good and noble. I don't see that the destructive effect of such policies are the price of 'doing the right thing'. Rather they're the price of blundering along for the sake of doing at least something - for replacing reason with instinct.

 

Ragusa - I knew you enjoy your "quote." Let me give you another one from the opening of this thread.

So, people have an opportunity to vote and what happens? Do they elect "tribal" mullahs to run their country for them? One side chooses to express itself through the ballot box and elections; your collective "tribal" consciousness cronies send suicide bombers to attack the other side in Pakistan. Your medieval tribes do not constitute the will of the people, for whom you claim to have so much sympathy. In fact, they are so worried that the people of Pakistan will want to escape into the year 2008 that they would kill anyone who wants to update the calendar to the 21st Century.

Ragusa - I think you are a great guy as well and you raise interesting points about International Policy, but you fail to see, almost everytime, that there really are people who live in these places you mention, and they really might want to escape the ancient orthodoxies of the past. Think about it. Sometimes, even in tribal communties, there are people who want to change things. Sometimes.

 

Chandos

You don't speak of your experiences from being a teacher in Texas, do you?

 

"Texas?" You will see when you visit here.