It seems the election is not over in the US. It seems over for Mike Pompeo, the United States secretary of state, who says that the State Department is being readied for a second Trump term. And it is over for Trump himself, who firmly believes he has won. Joe Biden also thinks it is over, only he thinks he has won. Of course, that is what the rest of the world thinks. Some world leaders have congratulated Biden. Others have maintained a stony silence. No one has yet congratulated Trump on being successfully re-elected. Not even Pakistan or Qatar. It might be remembered that these were the only two countries to have recognised the Taliban government of Afghanistan when it replaced… well, a vacuum, really. But this time, even they are staying quiet. It seems that they are not so enthusiastic about lost causes.
Trump’s re-election does seem about as lost a cause as they come. It is probably fitting that he has a certain regard for the Confederacy, which was about as lost a cause as they come. But the continued glorification of the Confederacy, especially in its stronghold of the South, and in the US military naming so many of its bases after Confederate military men, shows that lost causes have an attraction for Americans. Does that have anything to do with Georgia being the state where Trump lost? Its recount was crucial to his hopes of being declared elected, but its recount shows he still lost.
I suspect the flaw is that he is claiming there was rigging. Without Biden or Kamala Harris having been seen firing in the air, how do we know they won? There has been no victory procession, with party workers led by a dhol wala doing an indeterminate sort of dance, loosely called a bhangra. On the other hand, Trump has not let off any bursts, or rater brusts, of his trusty KK. Nor has he been seen doing what he calls a luddi, nor has he let off any babblis, or executed any barhaks, which would tell opponents to stay at home. Actually, he would only be thought to win if he chopped off his enemy’s leg. And it should not be forgotten that elections are a potent cause of violence in Pakistan, along with honour and cattle- stealing, any of which can give rise to something described coyly in FIRS as an ‘old enmity’.
We are having a minor cause of bad blood over here, in the shape of elections in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is expected to win. If it did not, then the Kashmir Affairs Minister, these days Ali Amin Gandapur of the flowing locks, deserved to be sacked. The campaign there was perhaps fiercer than usual, perhaps because the polls came in the middle of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) campaign to dislodge the government. Otherwise, the GB polls are like by-elections in other provinces. The government is supposed to win.
It was in the middle of this election’s campaign that the Pakistan Army chose to issue its report on the Karachi incident, when ‘certain officers’ apparently kidnapped the Sindh inspector general of police (IGP) so that he would register a case against Nawaz Shairf’s son-in-law. Mian Nawaz dismissed the report as a cover-up, while Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari welcomed it as showing the military’s self-accountability mechanism. Of course, Bilawal was not really aware of how sensitive a father-in-law has to be when a son-in-law is involved. Maybe Imran tried sending the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) after Captain (r) Safdar Awan, he would get the results he did not get when he sent it after Nawaz himself.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 is rearing it head. Peshawar High Court (PHC) Chief Justice Waqar Seth has passed away. General (r) Pervez Musharraf, whom he sentenced to hanging in D Chowk Islamabad, even if it was only his corpse, has made no comment. The passing of a PPP Sindh MPA, Jam Madad Ali, reveals a danger not normally realised. Jam Madad Ali had beaten off the coronavirus, and actually tested negative. But he had beaten rendered so sick, that the remaining complications did for him.
Footnote to these notes: Hopefully, the winter rains, which started on Sunday morning, will dispel the smog which seems to have made the pandemic worse. My grouse is that it has given us all colds, not to mention that faint taste of burning plastics seems its hallmark. But make no mistake the virus has not been beaten.
