Music and dancing are back as a poll landslide for secular parties brings a vibrant change to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier. Jason Burke in The Observer.
Sinking back in his armchair, Maulana Shuja ul-Mulk strokes his thick beard with one hand and the fluffy tail of a small toy dalmatian with the other. ‘We were surprised by the results,’ he admits from a supporter’s home in the small rural western Pakistani town of Mardan, ‘but we believe in democracy.’
Whether the claim is true or not, the hard political reality is that Mulk and his hardline religious party are now out of power. In the 2002 election, he and scores of other ultra-conservative clerics swept into government in Pakistan’s turbulent North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on a tide of anti-Americanism and resurgent religious enthusiasm, vowing to impose Islamic law. But in last week’s national and provincial polls, voters backed secular and liberal candidates and evicted the ruling alliance of religious parties.
Running on hope
Employment, security and freedom are what the common man in Pakistan dreams of. Travelling through Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Karachi — first after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and then for the election — Subhajit Roy of Indian Express pieces together Pakistan’s story of despair and dreams.
It’s the night of Sunday, February 17, the night before Pakistan goes for the “mother of all elections”, and in posh seaside Clifton area in Karachi, a group of about 150 young men in 15 cars and tempos and a dozen bikes are dancing to the tune of a Benazir Bhutto song in full volume. Waving the Pakistan People’s Party banners and flags, these young men are dancing, clapping, shouting, laughing.
That is the first sight of pure relief and happiness in Pakistan that I see in the past two months of my fly-in-fly-out visits to the country, after what can be described as a ‘stressful’ period in the country’s history. After eight years of military rule, people don’t know whether it’s over yet. And after months of collective depression, it is as if these young men-most of them studying or unemployed-have sniffed victory in Karachi’s cool sea-breeze nine hours before the country goes to the polls.
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