Tag: Pakistan

Can we bury the politicians?

Sohaib Athar1 Comment

<RANDOM_THOUGHT> 

I am neither a linguist, nor do I care much for politics, but when ever I think about the events scheduled for this nation in January, the term 'selection' rather than 'election' comes to my mind. Infact, I don't get democracy (as practiced in Pakistan) at all. Whoever devised the whole democracy/voting process probably wasn't an internet user (umm.. yea… hmmm).

As far as I'm concerned, if I am provided with a set of choices, and have to select the one I hate the least, I'd rather opt out of the whole fiasco by NOT voting for anyone. That's a 0 vote… for each such 0 vote, there will probably be two +1 votes. So if 90% of the nation doesn't like any of the candidates, the worst that they can do (besides turning into a candidate) is to NOT vote.

I wish the concept of 'democracy' had a negative vote, so I had the option of a +1 vote to 'dig' or a -1 vote to 'bury' whichever 'candidate' I disliked the least/most respectively. It would have been a big motivation for a lazy  person like me (and others as well, I hope) to go out and (un)vote the most likely winner. It would have been fun to learn that the MNA in my area was selected by getting -5 votes.

</RANDOM_THOUGHT>

Pakistani Leader or Pakistani Ruler?

Sohaib Athar5 Comments

A leader leads, serves and guides, while a ruler governs and rules – people follow a leader, they are dragged and ruled by a ruler.

It never ceases to amaze me when the media refers to our ruler as a 'leader'. Do a google search for 'pakisani ruler' (557 results today) and another one for 'pakistani leader' (124,000 results today). While its true that there have been many real Pakistani leaders that those thousands of websites refer to, why do only 557 (Five hundred and fifty seven only) websites exist that acknowledge that some such thing as a "Pakistani ruler" actually exists?

Pakistani bloggers, please be a bit honest and at least use the correct term in your posts – unless, of course, you think you are being 'led'.

I just changed the wikipedia entry text from 'leader of Pakistan' to 'ruler of Pakistan' in the text:

"After the coup of Pervez Musharraf in 1999, Musharraf assumed the role of Chief Executive, and was the sole ruler of Pakistan."

on the page Prime_Minister_of_Pakistan as the first step. Lets see if it stays that way. Maybe one of you can edit Musharraf's page now.

B(ack)log Links – Part One

Sohaib Athar

I just took a look at my 'FOR BLOG' bookmarks folder and was amazed to see the number of pages (66) I have bookmarked during August, with the intention to write about them here, but never got the chance. So, in an attempt to cross that task from my TODO list, I'm posting some of them here (minus the planned commentary/discussion/blogging) and deleting the rest. They should have converted into 66 posts, but oh well!

I need a break from all the copy/pasting now, and will have to split this post in two parts. So these are the things that have been using up my brain cycles this month. If you find any of the above things useful/fun/entertaining/offensive, do leave a comment so that I can justify spending the last hour or so on this.