Durdana Farid
Durdana.78@gmail.com
In ancient Sparta, whoever shouted the loudest, would be declared the most honest. However, in reality what shouting really did, was that it brainwashed the listener. They were in awe of the person who shouted the loudest. It was a display of power.
In Pakistan today, people are paid to shout the loudest on media, on a daily basis. Whoever shouts the loudest gets rewarded by the head of the criminal social media cell run bynone other than the daughter of the prime minister. I feel this to be one of the most disturbing facts of the Pakistani politics. The lies and treachery of the Prime Minister and his children in order to secure the loot and the theft done by them is one story but to have organizations that are run to destabilize the country is something extremely shocking. What I don’t understand is that how is this media cell not apprehended by the intelligence agencies. The mother of all ironies is, that this government has passed a cyber-crime bill and on the other hand the daughter of the Prime Minister runs campaigns against the military, the opposition, the intelligence agencies. The impact of this is grave. Our youth is already lacking the direction and by providing such wrongful influx of information, they are actually brainwashing a whole lot of them. This is outright criminal and a punishable offence.
In addition to the top leadership and their children, Pervaiz Rashid,Akram Khan Durrani, Rana Sanaullah, Khaja Asif, Saad Rafiq, Danial Aziz, TalatChowdry, Ahsan Iqbal, Abid Sher Ali, Hamza Shahbaz, Shahbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif… This is the face of Pakistan’s ruling political party. We have all seen all of these people, sitting in talk shows, defending corruption, defending mishaps, defending atrocities that should not even allowed to be defended. In a civil society, it is the moral obligation of a leader to keep their conduct transparent and clean. Only then one can be eligible to rule a whole nation. In Pakistan, what we see is that it is the rule of the rich. If you have the money, doesn’t matter where it came from, you will wipe off all your crimes with a few bills. You will buy support, you will buy loyalties and will create a ruckus that will destabilize the whole nation, and all this just so that you have enough time to rob the country dry! And this bought loyal squad will stop at nothing. They will malign women and children, they will kill innocents, they will lie and they will do all this with the confidence that will shame honesty. Immorality, unethical behavior stands head and shoulders above others. Stannding strong on the basis of the riches that are not even earned by a credible way. This is the shameful face of our society today.
The people who actually do right are punished. We see that happening every single day. Someone gets banned for telling the truth, someone gets jailed for unraveling the corrupt system. Others get murdered or decapitated for being on the right side.
I wonder how do these people go to sleep at night, but come to think of it, when you are in pursuit of the immoral it takes you away from God. It blinds you from the right and it glorifies the wrong. It makes you invulnerable to true regret. For an average person most pleasures are not worth forsaking your morality. An average person feels the stab of their conscience if they commit a moral crime or even a small mistake. Saying something in a wrong tone even can unsettle someone. It is nothing complex like religion or science. It is very simple basic human nature to do the right thing, to be conscientious. I am sure you would agree, that it is quite hard to do the wrong thing and be ok with it.
Following this simple logic, I get stunned and trumped each and every single day, when I look at the Pakistani Politics. I am isolating the politics from the rest of Pakistan, because a country is known by its leadership. Corruption and immorality in a society spread from the top. It definitely is not an excuse for the common person to do their part towards the society. However, it is hard to maintain the balance where everyone is corrupt. When you see something for a long time or hear something constantly, there is quite a big possibility that you start believing it. If you have no good example to follow, you will end up following the bad examples. Of course there are many exceptions to this rule, but generally, most people are of follower mindset and they end up following the most convincing or the most convenient path. And once you start following a bad example, it becomes extremely hard to break yourself from it. Hence it is the responsibility of the leader more than anyone else in a society to set the right path by leading an exemplary life.
By that accord, us Pakistanis have it spread extremely thin and the onus falls on us to choose the right from wrong despite the horrifying examples that are set in front of us. We as a nation have the potential to make it through this tough time and rise as a power to reckon with. We need to stop ignoring the voice of reason inside us and get up to do the right thing. Only then, we can break this vicious ring of the criminal mafia leading our beautiful country and nation.
