Leaders Wanted: Soap Stars Need Not Apply

Last Saturday saw the release of the country's most comprehensive investigation into the attitudes and needs of Pakistani youth. Entitled "Pakistan: the Next Generation," and commissioned by the British Council, the report bases its findings of interviews with 1,200 Pakistanis between the ages of 18 and 29 who hail from a cross-section of society. An alarming wakeup call: the report highlights the "demographic disaster" facing Pakistan in the next 20 years. A population that has already trebled in the last 50 years to 180 million is set to swell by a further 85 million in the next 20 years -- the equivalent of five cities the size of Karachi. I urge you to read the full report at www.britishcouncil.org/pakistan.htm. Be warned, it is sombre reading,

In order to meet the demands of this population explosion, our economy needs to grow by six percent a year and create 36 million new jobs in the next 10 years. In contrast, our GDP is expected to increase by two percent in 2009, and we are growing only about one million jobs a year. At the same time, high food and energy prices have pushed inflation up 23 percent a year. Let's not even discuss the strain on our natural resources, especially water and energy, and the increasing problems of climate change that this population upsurge will have on Pakistan.

With this kind of inheritance, our youth is unsurprisingly despondent about the future. Of those interviewed, 80 percent believe their country is heading in the "wrong direction." More worryingly, only one-third believe democracy to be the best system of government; one-third want sharia law and seven percent want dictatorship. Sixty percent of Pakistani youth have faith in the military compared with only ten percent who voted for the current government.

The statistics on education are truly horrifying. Only half go to primary school, a quarter to secondary school, and just five percent receive any higher education.

There are some positive elements within the report. The youth displayed a civic-mindedness and patriotism which, if harnessed correctly, could pay enormous dividends for Pakistan. But presently, that's a big "if."

Overall, one comes away from this report feeling that this confused, inconsistent, poorly-educated, unemployed, cynical youth, abandoned by successive governments and pessimistic about its future, is a ticking time bomb ready to explode.

This report should have seriously alarmed us all. But what was our reaction to this most sobering, most prophetic of reports? Did our leaders deliver urgent press conferences to address its findings? Did they hold an emergency cabinet meeting? No, our politicians snoozed, and we let them. Instead, we all continued to watch our favourite soap opera.

Yes, the most popular soap opera in Pakistan isn't the one on the (illegal) Indian channel called "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi." It's the one on all the Pakistani channels called "Kyunki Government Bhi Kabhi Opposition Thi." Every night the musical chairs of government keep the population glued to our favourite channels. What are the latest plot developments? Will Zardari get pushed out? Who's on the NRO list? Who's going to court? Tune in to "Capital Talk," "Live with Talat" or "Dr Shahid Masood" to find out. Let's discuss the latest gossip whilst ignoring policies and the actual issues of government.

Our political system even has a cast of characters that could have been drawn from the mind of the most imaginative scriptwriter. No boring, turbaned, bearded, academic economists for us, thank you very much. Instead, we have a grinning widower, who appears never to have held a proper job in his life, yet whose source of income cannot be "lawfully explained and accounted for," if I may quote Aitzaz Ahsan from a New York Times story last year, Then there is his son and the co-chairman of our governing party, who, without a trace of irony, claims democracy to be the best revenge, despite having never stood for public office in his life. These are our leaders -- people, who couldn't run a bath, let alone a country.

And we – the citizens and the media -- not only lap it up but aide and abet this charade. So last Saturday, instead of running with the British Council report and its dire warnings, the media ran with the press conference of Minister of State for Law and Justice Afzal Sindhu, in which he revealed the list containing the names of the beneficiaries of the NRO. It was just the latest plot twist in our ongoing political drama. As we revel in the drama of it all, we forget that this is real life and these people should be governing, or opposing, not partaking in a vast soap opera.

But this is what our political and military classes want. Like the waderas whose ghost schools keep the feudal serfs servile and stupid, our political classes hope that by focusing on the micro over the macro, the short term over the long term, personality over policy, the superficial over the substantial, we'll forget that the government (and bureaucracy) isn't actually governing the country or addressing our needs. When did you last hear one of our leaders talk about their manifesto policies?

But it will no longer do. We can no longer tolerate our passivity in this criminal farce. With this new report's finding ringing sharply in our ears, we must be reminded that this country urgently needs strong leaders and a new political class if we are realistically to address the long-term problems facing Pakistan. Besides being discredited, our current crops of leaders neither have the ability nor the inclination to lead this country. Instead, they dangerously distract us from the business of government.

If our youth is to fulfil its potential it mustn't wait for help from the present political establishment. Instead, it must rise up and fill the vacuum present in our corrupt political and military class. Either that, or we can just wait for the ticking demographic time bomb in 20 years to explode. And that will be one bomb blast Pakistan will not recover from.