An all too temporary goodbye I hope because anything on permanent lines, as I told my masters in Dawn, would break my heart. For most of my adult life I have been associated with Dawn, starting when the full glory of General Ziaul Haq’s benign rule was upon this unfortunate land. Now it is the twilight of another patriarchate and because I have chosen to take part in this charade of a general election, meant not to secure popular sovereignty but give a further extension to a discredited authoritarian set-up, hesitantly and reluctantly I must confess, that the higher principles of journalistic integrity dictate that I flee the haven that has been my refuge these past 24 years.

So journalism and popular politics do not mix although they are bread and butter to each other. I am not a politician who has come to journalism but a journalist who has occasionally dabbled in politics — not drawing-room politics, for which I have not much talent, but constituency politics. Simply because I have a constituency to run from, those coming before me having carved out a space for themselves in local politics.

One or two journalists in recent times have made their mark in diplomacy, none more so than our distinguished high commissioner in London. A few have clambered up politics’ backstairs, through the Senate or by attaining party rank, friend Mushahid coming to mind in this respect. None, in my reckoning, has contested a general election in the last 50 years.Which is not to say that contesting a general election deserves some kind of endurance prize. Mountain-climbing is tougher and no doubt more fun. But that is not the point. I find it baffling that journalism should be considered at odds with popular politics. As I say, there is not much danger of too many journalists taking this road, everyone not having a constituency to run from. Holding a party office, on the other hand, is something else because political parties being the family fiefdoms that they mostly are, holding a party office really means being a factotum of someone or the other.

But it is hard to quarrel with drawing-room wisdom which all too often gives the impression of being the most powerful intellectual force in this country. The great Habib Jalib stood for a provincial seat in the 1970 elections and although the electors of Lahore showed that they had more respect for his poetry than his politics, giving him short shrift in that affair, his entering that election did not make him a lesser poet. Gore Vidal once stood for Congress, and did not make it. When times are harsh even good men see virtue in compromise. In occupied France during the Second World War not everyone was in the resistance. Many good people collaborated with the Germans or temporised with necessity. So too in Pakistan where temporising with necessity has become greatest survival tool of all.

But I stray from the road. Contesting these elections, I am informed, spells the end of my long association with this newspaper. If it is to continue it will have to be in some other form. A harsh price to pay and, as I said, my heart is torn.

Ayaz, a columnist for Dawn, writes for THT from Islamabad