Pakistan's Elections--Slantwise

Time: 3:50 p.m., Islamabad.

News travels at light speed across the Internet.

While I have seen some indicators of violence in Dawn's headlines, nothing impossibly obscene--say news of a suicide bomb or of barricades and the clash of Kalashnikovs--seems yet to have happened, and it may not.

Why should it?

My bet: by day's end, the country will have succeeded, and this despite doubts about the integrity of inked ballots, computerized voter registration rosters, and reports of more brute manipulations, in somewhat prying off President Pervez Musharraf's perceived grip on the Pakistani future while proving to itself it has the ability to impart or revoke such power.

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With "Musharraf Shows His True Colors," Human Rights Watch straddles the line between reporting observation and spinning a decoupled ideology of its own.  In this clip, Musharraf says bluntly to HRW's director Kenneth Roth, "You try to impose your views on every environment . . . Now if somebody, if he's anybody, is trying to create such anarchy that maybe Pakistan integrity is at stake, maybe our economy will go down to a state where we will economically collapse, I don't consider any human rights in such situations . . . we will deal with it whatever it costs because Pakistan is more important than human rights . . .  human rights serves Pakistan, Pakistan does not serve human rights."

Here, I believe, Roth and Musharraf address two distinctly different evils: Roth seems to want to promote transparency in government and due process--good things, no question--in Pakistan in light of complaints ranging from missing persons to abuses of various sort ascribed to the policing powers of the state; Musharraf, perhaps wary of conditions in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere seems to be bidding for the survival of a politically coherent Pakistan first,  leaving gentility to well up out of that coming stability.

If there's an underlying thesis on the part of the New Old New Left that abuse and oppression summon revenge, it may be countered by the extraordinary and persistent mix of violence in the world's various hot conflict zones: brigands, mobs, warlords, and zealots produce violence behind a smorgassbord of leadership types who channel and goad that behavior in accord with their own and varied personal interests and array of vanities.

Doubtless, there are many things governments should not do to anyone and for any reason--may the same apply, however, to the state's enemies who detonate bombs unmindful of their immediate, true victims.

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1. Stratton, Allegra.  "Q&A: Pakistan Elections."  Guardian.co.uk, February 18, 2008.

2. "Musharraf Shows His True Colors."  Video clip from the World Economic Forum in Davos.  Referenced by Human Rights Watch, "Pakistan: Election Commission not Impartial: Electoral Machinery Controlled by Musharraf Appointees."  February 12, 2008.

3. Walsh, Declan, Sean Smith.  Pakistan Speaks.  Guardian Films, February 18, 2008.

4. "Pakistanis Go to the Polls."  Guardian.co.uk, February 18, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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