Conservative Bourgeois & Smear Campaign Against Zardari

Zardari has become the President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, winning 481 electoral votes, baffled the bourgeois. He is no more an angle that one would go on eulogizing him, but the way anti Zardari smear campaign run by conservative bourgeois “drawing room gossipers” is a big turn off. I enjoy reading the critical columns of Nadeem Paracha, this weekend, he rightly points that “Right from the beginning, the overall political character of the Pakistani bourgeois and the petty bourgeois emerged as being conservative”. He argues that class that was angered by Zardari’s running for presidency is same who was enraged by ZA Bhutto’s populist political stunt of 70s and Benazir’s 1988 campaign. A majority of these people come from the same well to do urban middle class that has always been at the forefront of various maneuvers designed to defame any party or personality able to successfully engage with the masses. Lately, when I was at LUMS, range of anti Zardari sms, jokes, buffoonery dominated the talk of the well to do bourgeois students; even some of my enraged Karachites went to an extent that “Agar Zardari President Baan Gaya to Mein Yeh Country Choor Donga”. Middle class in Europe & else where play a leading economic , social and political role in an evolutionary struggle against hegemonic strains like feudalism, despotism but nothing that sort is seen here. Urban pseudo intellectuals love drawing gossip and do not want to play an active role, even most of them do not bother to cast their vote. They were the ones who carried social propaganda against the populist economic and political enforcement of Bhutto. They targeted Bhutto’s liking of Whisky, Women & Lack of Religion, they backed Zia’s onslaught against the democracy, and they supported Musharraf’s draconian attack on constitution. Various industrialist in late 80s spent money to run the propaganda campaign against Benazir Bhutto, it was an exaggerated propaganda. I am not a Zardari follower but why one neglect that he got overwhelming votes because of the party that is associated with the mass level politics. It is clear that mass level politics badly hurt or cancel out two the most i.e., politico-religious and the elite bourgeois. These elite bourgeois were stunned when PPP got sympathy votes, accordingly to drawing room gossipers, “Oh BB was unpopular”, “She is corrupt”, “She had terrible sense of dressing” and now they are reading about the mental health of Zardari, they say her hubby is “Mentally cookoo”. Lovely middle class intellectual discourse, they abhor the filthy uneducated masses…they go to an extent that, how could these filthy, uneducated can bring change through democracy…….this country needs DANDA to fix the filthy crowd.