It has become a customary in Pakistan to ‘blame the president’ for all the wrongdoings. No matter, if it is raining outside and you want to visit your parents’ home. No matter, if TV anchors are boring you with the same never ending debate. No matter, if your baby is crying for milk late at night. You can curse the president as it is the easiest job these days.
From the past two days, when everybody is talking about the state of aviation sector in the country, micro-blogging social networking website, Twitter, is showing ‘#BlameThePresident’ as the most popular phrase or hash-tag in social media junkies’ language.
Though, due to space constraints and other obvious reasons, we cannot reproduce the complete Twitter timeline, but a chunk of micro-bloggers’ tweets reproduced here shows, “#BlameThePresident why? Blame yourself for electing him!!!; Rehman Malik has the Doctorate Award #BlameThePresident; Veena Malik’s photo shoot #BlameThePresident; Gol Gappon may pudeena kam hai #BlameThePresident; #BlameThePresident cuz there’s nothing else we can do; There’s no water #BlameThePresident; #IAmAzad so I can #BlameThePresident for everything; My twitter dm’s are acting strange #BlameThePresident; Men on the road stare at me #BlameThePresident; I only have 4% battery remaining in my phone and can’t see a charger anywhere close #BlameThePresident; #Blamethepresident & what has been zardari’s manifesto – other than to print money and then eat it all up?; I can’t find Milo at the store near my house #BlameThePresident; Lota prices have hiked up to Rs50. I wonder what will be the politicians’ rates at the moment. #BlameThePresident for inflation; Gud one! PTI unable to Produce Realistic Manifesto #Blamethepresident :); Meera’s English is pathetic. #BlameThePresident; Faisalabad utility stores malazam sasta rashan shops walon ko sale kar detay hain aur aam shehri khali hath jata hay #BlameThePresident; You can now remove @CMShehbaz’s logo from Laptop #BlameThePresident; and the timeline goes on and on…
Jokes apart, micro-bloggers reaction on a most serious incident, in which some 127 people lost their lives in an air crash, shows a big warning sign. It seems that people are fed up of the routine behaviour of state machinery. They understand that commissions or committees will never give them justice. Or it seems that they have recognised that Pakistan is not a wax-nose that can be moulded by anyone.
Media and researchers point out that the recent ‘Arab Spring’ in Tunisia, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East heavily relied on the social networking technologies, like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Some studies also allege that the CIA remained in dark about the Egypt uprising by failing to follow developments on Twitter.
Pakistan’s official statistics indicate that the country has around 18-20 million internet users, out of which over 60 per cent represents youth. And one could expect the circumstance in countries like Pakistan where state institutes are decades behind in technological advancements if some movement begins on these social networking portals.
The most responsible man!
