SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
Politics is a dirty business in Pakistan. A few weeks back, a man screamed on the Senate floor, almost in tears, saying he had to vote against his conscience for the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, leading to the formation of military courts and couple of days ago that person sworn in as chairman of the same Senate. This journey of a few weeks describes something that is utterly wrong with Pakistan. A “man of principle”, Mr Rabbani should have tendered his resignation to the chairman of Senate if he was to indulge in an act that he deemed incorrect. That would have been the right thing to do and that would have been taking responsibility and setting an example. However, what Mr Rabbani did was what we Pakistanis do best: a sermon aimed at attaining the moral high ground,making sure that everyone else in the Senate and in the political class looks like a lesser being than himself while he himself did exactly what everybody else did on the issue. He ended up retaining his seat and, not only that, his rhetoric glorified him further to the post of chairman of the Senate. It is this hypocrisy that mars Pakistan. Just when we are oblivious to its existence, the reality hits us and we realise that hypocrisy is the root of most of our miseries, 100 times more harmful than corruption or anything else. The dilemma of Pakistan is that you can be selling edibles that have toxins in them, you may be stashing taxes and robbing public money but as long as you can sermonise loudly on honesty, piety and merit, people will overlook the obvious.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
