Pakistan election 2013 result

The Pakistan general elections 2013 were held on May 11, 2013. The voter turnout was 60%,  - an unprecedented number that had never been seen before for any elections that had been held previously. This huge turnout can largely be attributed to the massive passion that was found in the youth who voted for the very first time. It is no coincidence that the Imran Khan phenomenon played a huge role in  getting the youth excited enough to go out and engage in this political process.

Despite a high party following in the educated, urbanized middle class, Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf was not able to perform as well as people had hoped. It was able to take 34 seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where it emerged as the single largest party. In the federal showing however it was only able to take 28 seats, which are less even than PPP. The PML - N however was the overall winner with an overwhelming majority at 126 national assembly seats.

There has been documented poll rigging in 49 polling stations across the country. The biggest poll rigging took place in Karachi (for national assembly seat 250) where MQM supporters tore up opposing parties ballots and held the polling station staff hostage while they stamped and filled up ballot boxes. The Election Commission of Pakistan recognizing gross misconduct has announced that reelection for Karachi will be held within 10 days. Below is a summary chart showing the positions of all national parties in the National Assembly so far.

Dear God, please don't let this be a Muslim

Security officers on site leapt to the aid of those injured

Dear America,

You're smarting from a great tragedy. A terrible, terrible event happened in Boston. A joyous occasion was brutally crucified to make way for pain, blood and agony. Innocents were hurt. Innocents perished. The cowards who did this did not have the guts to own up to it. They deserve to rot in an open square with people ogling at them, taking cognizance of the abomination that these barbarians are.

As news reeled in off those who were killed, and those who were injured one prayer leapt to my lips:

Please dear God, don't let this be a Muslim. Don't let this be a Pakistani. Please dear God. Don't let this be.

But I see I was late in my prayer. You see a Fox News employee had already sent out a tweet condemning me to death. He also condemned the 1.6 billion other followers of Islam to death by saying "let's kill them all".

When I read that tweet I realized something. I realized how broken we all were. How disoriented, how unattached from one another. We're all humans yet we've demonized each other beyond reproach. To some all brown people appear as worthy of death. To some all white appear as worthy of death. We can't stop ripping each other a new one all the time. In all this madness people like me, those trying to keep sane amidst the insanity are crushed brutally.

Today I thought back to Pakistan. I thought about the 20 or so people who die there everyday. Then i came across this Facebook status from a friend:

Watching all the media about the Boston bombings, can't help but wonder if this is how the people of Pakistan feel all the time

So I wondered do we feel this way all the time? When a drone fires a Hellfire and kills innocent school children. When the terrorists bomb a market. When sectarian groups engage in systematically wiping out those who are opposed to them. Doesn't our heart weep when we hear about how another bystander was lost? About how a kid lost his parents? About how that poor woman lost her legs? What do we feel if not but pain? What do we do if not cry tears of blood day in and day out, over and over again?

My thoughts went out to the 50,000 innocent Pakistani lives lost in this craze. And then I realized how emotionally detached I was from my own people's suffering. The Boston Marathon explosions had left me shaking, but the 20 people who die in Pakistan everyday simply does not affect me at all. I was ashamed of myself. I was so very ashamed of my insensitivity. Did I think an American life was worth more than the life of my fallen Pakistani fellow? Did the Pakistani life just equal a nameless statistic forever confined to the annals of history to be used in pie charts, or bar charts to explain the year on year increase in casualties?

And then I realized, my desensitization was a defense mechanism.

If we Pakistanis started to give a shit about all those we lose every single day, we would go insane

I feel the same pain, but I refuse to acknowledge its existence. Because acknowledging its existence would mean I have to deal with it, and I can't. None of us can. It's easier to ignore and carry on than to deal with the great tragedy that takes place day in and day out.

Dear America the pain you feel today, I have felt for 11 years now. Every single day like a searing white hot pin piercing my heart. Dear America, when you accuse us of being responsible for all the ills plaguing the world we look at each other, we look at the 50,000 graves we have dug and we weep for the men, women and children we buried who can find no peace even in death. Dear America we die everyday only to find a thankless world tell us we're rogue terrorists who deserve to be locked up and wiped off the face of the earth. Our children's cries do not equal the cries of your children; the weight of our dead bodies does not equal the weight of your dead bodies. Our sacrifices do not exist, because you never see them. Our efforts go in vain because we've been demonized so much.

Dear America we've been so traumatized that now we are scared of saying we're Muslims, we're ashamed of our brownness and we feel deeply uncomfortable and guilty for belonging to the countries which you largely equate with the devil's personal backyard.

Dear America what you feel today is what millions of people living in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have felt for many years now. I do not even for an instant suggest that you forgive those who have threatened you. I just request that when you send out a prayer for the victims of the Boston Marathon explosions that you remember the 37 Iraqis who were killed yesterday. I request you send out a quiet prayer for the 30 guests at a wedding which was "accidentally" bombed by a US bomber in Afghanistan. I request that you send out a quiet prayer for the 50,000 innocent men, women and children who have paid the ultimate price for a war that they were thrust in for no fault of their own except for having been born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dear America you see what it has come to now? You see how terrorized, demonized and scared we feel?

Dear God, please, don't let this be a Muslim.

Endorsing Imran Khan

The True Perspective endorses Imran Khan for the 2013 elections

Over the course of this blog, I've raised several objections to Imran Khan's methods, his philosophy and his convictions. Despite my criticisms however, a part of me has always wanted to see him succeed. You see it's either him or them. Them includes morons, inept, uneducated, selfish, arrogant slime ball pricks who think they inherited Pakistan as dowry. Yes I'm talking about you PPP, PML-N, JI, MQM (who actually does not think Pakistan is its fiefdom, but Karachi definitely is), PML-Q, JUI-F and ANP.

Recently I read this great article in the newspaper that stated that newspapers need to endorse parties who align with their ideologies. Well today The True Perspective is taking that step by endorsing Imran Khan.

The recent intra-party elections within PTI and the emphasis on education are something that I believe need to be accepted and replicated by all parties aiming for the Parliament of Pakistan. With certain parties (ahem*PPP and PML-N*ahem) operating more like family heirlooms than national political organizations, PTI's election mandate comes as a breath of fresh air.

Even though PTI's manifesto has set some enormously ambitious goals (ending corruption, holding local government elections, all within 90 days, and imposition of a range of new taxes -- agriculture included), it is worth noting that for now we really have no reason to not believe that they cannot be achieved. If the PPP and PML-N make similar claims then you know they're lying because we've seen them in power 3 times each in the last 25 years and each time has been worse than before.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs that our decisions today are being decided not on merit of solidity of what these political entities can offer (or can't offer for that matter), but on the basis of how much we hate those who have taken this country right to the edge. Here's to hoping that the next five years will ensure we are put back on the right tracks.

Musharraf's wealth explained

Pervez Musharraf

65 crores. That's the value of assets declared by Pervez Musharraf in his nomination papers submitted to the election commission of Pakistan. He also has not paid any tax in the last 3 years to the government of Pakistan. Several questions have been raised about the source of Musharraf's funds (which he did not mention) and why he did not pay any taxes.

Let's discuss those questions.

How did Musharraf end up making so much money when he was in fact a government subordinate and retired with not much (relatively) money? The answer to that would be that since his self imposed exile, Musharraf has gone on various international lecture series and tours. The average compensation for one lecture is $100,000 (that's almost 1 crore rupees, give or take). Now in the past 4 years if Musharraf has even done 25 lectures, that means he's earned 25 crores. Assuming he is an educated man and is not overly stupid, he must have (and he did indeed) made a lot of investments which have returned handsome profits to him. So where he got his money should be clear for all to see.

Now the second question, why didn't he pay any taxes? Well according to the Pakistan tax rules, residents of Pakistan earning income abroad are not liable to pay taxes on that income within Pakistan. The Pakistani tax rules assume that because Pakistanis send valuable foreign exchange to Pakistan, it is more than enough to not double charge them (unlike the United States of America, where foreign income is tax deductible). Hence, Musharraf did not pay any income taxes for the last three years he was not in Pakistan. The pension he gets already is tax deducted (income tax is deducted at source) and while we do not know why he did not pay any property taxes (maybe the properties are not in his name? Maybe he did pay the taxes through a proxy that don't appear in his name? Maybe he is indeed, a tax defaulter?) we can be reasonably sure that the money he did make is indeed legitimate.

And finally there's the biggest question of them all, one that doesn't even concern Musharraf. What about the other so called "sadiq" and "ameen" (pious and pure) politicians of Pakistan? The one's who are known to be inherently corrupt? For example Nawaz Sharif says he owns only 1.5 crore rupees in assets (maybe he forgot the 600 crore Raiwind estate he lives in is not his own?) while Zardari says he only owns 1.8 crore rupees (of course he also forgot he owns palaces in France, Dubai and God knows where else). And then there's the cherry on top of the cake, Hamza Shahbaz Sharif who says that he doesn't even own a Suzuki Mehran.

Let's take a moment to reflect on this. These gentlemen who claim that they have next to nothing travel in cars that cost around 6 - 7 crore each. They live in palaces that cost hundreds of crores. And they live a lifestyle that is simply not possible on the meager "incomes" that they declare. So my question is this, do you finger pointers not think before you open your mouths to make allegations?

Once upon a time in Larkana

Zordari

Once upon a time in a land far far away in Larkana, there lived a thug. The thug belonged to the Chaprasi community native to Larkana and so he was called Chaprasi. Chaprasi was a handsome thug. He had left many girls swooning over his naughty boy antics and naughty boy looks. Once he was caught by the village elders for making the kissy kissy faces at smitten dames of Larkana, but what do you know, as soon as they yelled Chaprasi, Chaprasi was gone leaving in his wake sparkly clean houses and streets. Bedazzled by the sudden cleanliness of their city, the city elders sat down in awe and proclaimed that from now on Chaprasi would no longer be a slur. It would be an honor of the highest merit. Unbeknown to the poor innocent Larkana-ians, Chaprasi had taken all their belongings. But that was all fine because the villagers were busy aww-ing over their Chaprasi. And so begins the story of Chaprasi.

Legend has it that Chaprasi disappeared of the radar forever and was never heard of again after looting his village. However, the occasional odd rumor of some handsome thug smiting a dame continued to reach the Larakana-ians for many years. After a few years a new man claiming to be a native of Larkana emerged; he called himself Zordari and he proclaimed that Chaprasi was his ancestor. Zordari thought that because people considered Chaprasi to be a hero, he would be welcomed back with open arms and would be declared King of all Larkana. But the village elders were smart. They asked Zordari to prove that Chaprasi was his ancestor. And so Zordari told them:

I am an only child of my mother. When my mother was young, she fell in love with a thug. He also claimed to love my mother, but then she found out that he had gone and married someone else. He had 19 kids from that marriage. In the meanwhile, my mother gave birth to me. But she was banished from the village because she wasn't married when she gave birth. So as you can imagine, it is quite easy to comprehend where I came from. 

When the people heard this, they also used their genius minds to conclude that Zordari might indeed be the ill-begotten child of Chaprasi, and so they named his Chaprasi Junior because it rhymed with Zordari. Now since Zordari had the genes of Chaprasi, it only took him a short while to become the King of Larkana. However, he had none of Chaprasi's acumen, nor his good lucks. Despite that, because Chaprasi blood ran in his veins, he never stopped hitting on women left, right and center. And his lucky stars did indeed prove to be lucky because one day, out of nowhere, a girl from the Bhutto family fell for him. That day, Zordari started believing in Cupid, while Larkana stopped believing in it.

Now Zordari was a Khandani boy with Khandani values, despite the fact that he was a bastard and his morals weren't exactly, you know, impeccable. And so he asked his mother to go to the Bhutto House and ask for their daughter's hand in marriage. His mother tried reasoning with him but Zordari, with Chaprasi blood coursing in his veins, was adamant that he will marry the girl who has the largest land in the whole of Sindh province in her name. And so he did marry her and boy, what a marriage it was. While Zordari busied himself with making large amounts of cash, all people who could possibly inherit even a sliver of the Bhutto fortune kept dying in mysterious circumstances. People kept whispering the Chaprasi is at work but no one ever dared say it to Zordari's face. Alas, just like the rest, the handsome girl from the Bhutto family also died in mysterious circumstances, handing everything that she had on a silver platter to the increasingly greedy Chaprasi, I mean Zordari.

But the little kids in Zordari's class threw a tantrum and proclaimed it was unfair that he should get the whole cake. They demanded a piece of the booty too. But Zordari was too busy swooning over Sarah Palin to really care for what was happening around him. Soon Cupid had struck a second arrow into Zordari's heart but before a new baby could be born out of wedlock, Zordari's pet doggies intervened and stopped him from committing the same sins that his alleged father had committed. Zordari was furious for not getting his way and vowed vengeance from the people of Pakistan.

And so he acts like a sly fox whenever the people of Pakistan are struck with calamities, and he points and laughs at them all the while sending graces to the heavens for giving him an alleged ancestor known as the Chaprasi.

(All characters depicted in this fictional story are fictional and any resemblance to any character living or dead, is only co-incidental.)