Adil Najam

The next Punjab Governor – to replace Salman Taseer, who was brutally murdered earlier this week – is expected to be announced any time. Although many names – including a few refreshing surprises are still floating around, one hears that a consensus has already been achieved and former Attorney General Sardar Latif Khosa is already receiving congratulatory phone calls from colleagues on his impending appointment.

This being Pakistan, anything can still happen – and, maybe, we will hear a name that has not yet been even discussed. That being as it may, our interest is less in the precise name and more in the political consequences and messaging of whatever decision is made.

Mohammad Ayaz Abdal

It was in the wee hours of morning that the telephone rang. I am talking about the late 50s when having the landline telephone was a sign of luxury. My grandfather picked up the phone waking up from deep sleep and with a fear in his heart that something has gone wrong somewhere.

The voice on the other side pleaded to him, “Salam, for God’s sake bring him back from the lab. He is there for the past four days.”

Within five minutes, my grandfather was in his Morris Minor driving down to Karachi University. The person on the other line was the German wife of Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui. When all things fail, she used to call my grandfather to practice his fine arts of persuasion to bring Dr. Siddiqui out of his lab where he was totally immersed in his work and losing all context of time.

This story has been narrated to me by my late grandmother. I was just a twinkle in my father’s eyes.

I was reading an interview of Dr. Siddiqui where he mentioned the importance of hard work and research and narrated an event when one of the scientist was disheartened as he/she was doing research for over one year on a certain assignment which was not going anywhere. Dr. Siddiqui explained his own experience when he worked for years and finally found out his original premises was not correct. The job of the scientist, he argued, is to dedicate himself to pure research and hard work. Nobody can control the results.

His life was a true embodiment of this principle.

Tamashbeen

This post is based on an imaginary scenario.

Imagine Pakistan was a very different place. Imagine that it had politicians (not all, just a few, maybe one or two in government and one or two in opposition) who actually cared for Pakistan and made decisions based on what would be good for the country instead of just useful to their own hold on power.

I have probably already lost half of you, but let me keep going anyhow.

Imagine, what might happen in such a Pakistan in response to the brutal murder of Salman Taseer by the evil Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri?

What might the government do if it were really and truly serious about giving justice to Salman Taseer and rolling back the intolerance and extremism that gunned him down?

Let me suggest five things that would happen if Pakistan was, indeed, a functional state and society.