CHITRAL: Pakistan has won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics and more so broken the existing world record in the feat. The Javelin athlete Arshad Nadeem deserves all due accolade for achieving this title. Having said that. do we not feel that we have gone way overboard in advertising and projecting this one event. President, Prime Minister, Chief ministers and even the Army Chief are showering gifts and goodies on the distinguished sports man -all at the expense of the public exchequer.
The phenomenon of personality worship is very strong in Pakistan. People are always looking up to someone to ‘worship’, whether it be a sportsman, a politician or a spiritual peer. Even in religious demonstrations personalities are the main focus, not the teachings.
The obsession with personalities has done great harm to Pakistan when seen in retrospect. Starting with Bhutto, Zia, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir, Zardai, Imran Khan, Pakistan has always been known abroad by the name of it’s ‘leader’ instead of it’s geographical entity. In developed western countries e.g Switzerland, 80 percent of the population don’t know the name of their prime minister, nor do they care about it. The system is what they are interested in and that runs near to perfection, regardless the Prime Minister keeps regularly changing in rotation from among the council of ministers.
The cult of personality worship/hatred in Pakistan dissuades the people from problems on the ground. People are kept busy loving/hating individuals instead of looking towards real issues. .. CN report, 16 Aug 2024
3 thoughts on “The ‘Arshad Nadeem phenomenon’ in Pakistan”
Are those giving financial awards to the champion giving from their personal money or the government money. If it is government money then all such and other discretionary authority should be withdrawn from rulers, because here even if it is used genuinely, most of the time it is used unjustly and cause a drain on the exchequer.
The way forward for Pakistan is to come out of personality obsessions and attend the ground realities and issues affecting people’s everyday lives. The example of Switzerland given in the post is a good example to learn from.
The USA has won 126 gold medals and China has won 96 gold medals besides other countries winning dozens of gold medals, some breaking previous world records. There is no hyperventilation there. They take sport as a sport and nothing more. In Pakistan we are hyper ventilating as if we have conquered the world. This is the difference between an emotionally stable country and an emotionally volatile country.