Running on HOPE

The stress of eight years had reached a crescendo after January 27, when Benazir Bhutto8212;Pakistan8217;s Mohtarma, as she is respectfully called, was assassinated in a confusing mix of bullets, bombs and a motor car8217;s sun-roof. Sitting in Benazir8217;s home in Bilawal House, Benazir8217;s personal aide Aizaz Durrani remembers, 8220;Grown-up men cried that day, not just because BB was killed but because our hopes of a better Pakistan had been snuffed out.8221;

The tension is palpable from the first person I talk to after landing in Lahore, within 48 hours of Benazir8217;s assassination. 8220;There is lot of stone-pelting, car-smashing going on throughout the city. This is the first trip I am making8230;what can I do, can8217;t sit at home, have to earn a living,8221; said Sagheer Ali, a taxi driver with City Radio cabs.

We pass by smashed cars, burly policemen, barricades and closed petrol pumps covered with shamianas, ironic reminders of happier times. Huge portraits of Benazir, Nawaz Sharif, Perveiz Elahi, waving at us, dot the city.
As I criss-crossed the streets of Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Karachi8212;in December-January and then in February8212;the cuss-words were all reserved for the ruling regime.

Everywhere I go, I am told about the rise in prices of ghee, aata, petrol and other basic items. One young man, Ashraf who is doing his Bsc from a Lahore college, asks me, 8220;What is the price of aata in India, how expensive is ghee there?8221; I tell him I have no idea and have to check. He replies, 8220;It has become very expensive here8230;have no option but to do odd-jobs like taking tuitions, but that doesn8217;t make up for the money I need8230;so I am here for the meeting, they said they will pay if I campaign for them.8221;
He is one of the young men in Sharif8217;s PML N local campaigning office in Guldasht town.

Fazal, a cleaner in the hotel, tells me, 8220;My wife in Peshawar told me there is shortage of flour in the village, so she had to buy rice8230;.it is very difficult to survive like this, my parents are not used to eating rice.8221;
As I file my reports in the hotel room, power cuts interrupt my work. The hotel reception says, 8220;There are eight-hour power cuts in the city8230;our back-up can8217;t handle the load beyond a point.8221;

A friend in a prominent newspaper in Lahore tells me that the country is facing a huge power crisis, with 20 per cent shortage of power. Only 9,000 MW of power are available in the country, as compared to a demand for 11,000 MW.
As I roam around Islamabad and Rawalpindi, from one party office to another, I meet mostly young men, with struggle writ large on their faces. I ask them what they do, apart from canvassing. All of them, barring one or two, have a regular job to depend on. Says Mansoor, a PPP party worker in Islamabad, who is in his 20s, 8220;We are all waiting for the new government to come8230;want the bomb blasts to stop, so that more and more companies can come and hire us.8221;

The unemployed youth sit around and chat in street corners, and arrange for the corner meetings of neighbourhood politicians. 8220;No big politician is having big meetings and rallies, everyone is scared of suicide bombers,8221; Mansoor says, showing me a rifle in his car, which he says is for his protection.
Aren8217;t the security forces checking everyone8217;s cars, I ask him and he replies, 8220;They see the car with the party flag and then they let us go, because they know we need the weapon for our safety.8221;

The fear of bombs is very much there in Lahore, when my friend gets a call on his cellphone from his daughter who is studying in an elite school. This is three days before the polls. Panic-stricken, my friend rushes to the school. It turns out to be a hoax, and later, we hear there were hoaxes in four such schools in Lahore. 8220;How can one live in peace, when such scares are a reality?8221; he says.

In such times, bomb scares are common and with even politicians seeking refuge under heavy security cover. Some are giving big public appearances, a norm before any election, a miss for fear of such incidents. Whether it is Benazir8217;s Bilawal House in Karachi8217;s Clifton area, Perveiz Elahi8217;s house in Lahore8217;s Gulberg or Nawaz Sharif8217;s Model Town home in Lahore, or Asif Ali Zardari8217;s house in Islamabad, these have walls that are 10 to 15 ft tall, and policemen check the ID cards and frisk people thoroughly before letting them in.

The security is such that there are restrictions to where visiting journalists go. My visa is stamped with 8220;cannot go to cantonment area8221;. What this means in Lahore is that technically I can8217;t step out of the airport since one has to cross the cantonment to enter the city.

In these times of tension, there is one good thing has happened to Pakistan8217;s people, at least those I met during my travel to urban Pakistan. After years of misrule, people are more aware, more conscious of their political rights. Says Munir Ahmed, who sells books on Islamabad8217;s streets, 8220;We don8217;t want just the rights to food and work, but the right to liberty, the right to life.8221;

Says Aftab, a hotel manager in Karachi, 8220;India is the role model for us when we talk about democracy. India can8217;t be cowed down by the Americans or the western powers because of a strong economy.8221; He adds, 8220;Pakistan is being dictated and bulldozed by the Americans and the western powers because of its weak economy.8221; Aftab is trying to pursue his PhD from Lahore Government College in Lahore, while he works at the hotel.

Architect Moinuddin Bhatt, who travels between Karachi and Lahore, is accompanying me on the day of elections, and tells me, 8220;All this talk of Musharraf8217;s liberal economic policies and a middle class emerging is hogwash, it benefits just 1 per cent of the Pakistan8217;s society. We either have rich or the poor, the rich who don8217;t vote, poor who are forced to vote in truck loads8230;.the rich send their kids to elite schools or abroad and the poor to local madarsas or schools with weak education infrastructure.8221;

8220;There is no attempt to make people aware of their political rights,8221; say Bhatt, who is in his 50s. 8220;None of Pakistan8217;s universities have students8217; unions and there is no political discourse, army men or retired generals are appointed as vice-chancellors who force restricted routines like in schools. So, with a political and social grooming like this, what future generation are we talking about?8221;

Despite so little political and social grooming, every person I spoke to on the streets of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad felt Lal Masjid was one example of innocents being killed. 8220;They were poor students who had come from far-flung areas and they were unfairly targeted,8221; Asghar, one of the many I spoke to, says. The truth remains buried adjacent to the Lal masjid complex, which is no longer red.

But people are afraid to speak against it, since they fear that 8220;agencies8221;8212;the ISI and Intelligence Bureau, in Pakistani lingo8212;are all over the place. As Bhatt says, 8220;People fear and it becomes a mass mindset, where they feel they are being tailed or observed, even though nobody is watching.8221;

IT is in this atmosphere of crisis, fear, suspicion, anger and angst, that the two former prime ministers, Benazir and Sharif, got a rousing reception on their return.

Old-timers say they had never seen such large gatherings to welcome political leaders8212;impromptu gatherings and hastily composed songs marked the heroes8217; welcomes. 8220;People tend to forget the duo8217;s transgressions, charges of corruption and they saw saviours in them,8221; says Ahmad Faraz Khan, a senior journalist with the Dawn newspaper.

And after Benazir8217;s assassination, a mass hysteria was created by a handful of English and Urdu TV channels. In parts of Sindh, for example, on the night before the elections, there were rumours that Benazir8217;s face could be seen on the moon. TV channels relayed the story over and over.

And now, with the euphoria of having voted in a new government, the common man feels he can make it. There is hope at the end of the tunnel. 8220;We can become like Indians, we need our economy to be strong,8221; says Zafar Mahmood, a government schoolteacher.

Pakistan now looks at India as its equal. 8220;Both of us have atom bombs8230;there can8217;t be any more wars, 8220; says Zafar.

On the tricky issue of Kashmir, Zafar whose family lives in the Valley, says, 8220;Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir is Azad Kashmir and people are free to live and work, there is no problem. When will Hindustan vacate and make Kashmir azad?8221;

Here again, people remember Benazir8217;s initiative, her peace moves with Rajiv Gandhi, Sharif8217;s handshakes with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and how things went awry afterwards.

But people want to bury the past animosity. Zafar Hilaly, a retired foreign policy expert with Benazir8217;s office, says, 8220;Pakistan8217;s foreign policy has been fixated with India. India still chose its priorities correctly, it8217;s time for Pakistan8217;s priorities to change.8221;

On the streets of Pakistan, people like Sagheer, Ashraf, Munir, Zafar, Moinuddin8212;having cast their ballots8212;want just one thing: prices to come down, a better life, freedom from bomb blasts and their children to be safe in schools.

At Lahore8217;s Feroz Son8217;s, as I ask for Stephen Cohen8217;s book on the Pakistan Army, a salesman says, 8220;Sir, that book has been out of stock for quite some time.8221; Bhatt says, 8220;We want more freedom of expression and this is an example of how people are denied the right to read what they want to.8221;

At the house of Aitzaz Ahsan, the lawyer of Pakistan8217;s Supreme Court who has been under house arrest for the last 100 days, his wife Bushra says, 8220;We need to breathe fresh air. I hope things will improve now.8221;

It is to fulfil these aspirations perhaps, says Faraz from the Dawn newspaper, that 8220;People in Pakistan8217;s urban elite and the intelligentsia who only debate in the drawing rooms came out to vote in this election. I haven8217;t seen queues like this in the defence areas of Lahore where they live.8221;

Outside Rawalpindi8217;s Liaquat Bagh, the man who was selling Benazir memorabilia, also says, 8220;BB is gone, but whoever comes must get us jobs.8221; He is selling CDs of Benazir8217;s last speeches for Rs 60, badges for Rs 20, posters for Rs 10, framed pictures for Rs 100, but he too is praying and hoping for a change.
Perhaps that8217;s why those young men had started celebrating at the Clifton seaside in Karachi even before polling had begun.
Some names have been changed to protect their identity