Come come now, you know that's NOT how it is.
Our greatest misery is that we DON'T choose our leaders, good *or* bad! The key players are NOT the electorate, but the Army, Western (UK and US separately) and Gulf leaders(Mostly KSA and UAE), each having it's own horse, and playing the game.
Army ensures that there will be no coup as long as their defence kitty is untouched, West insures there will aid for them to usurp, Gulf ensure the will kowtow the opposition with the threat of the Holy wrath, using the Islamic angle. (Also the Gulf and the West also play off the secular and the Islamic parties, while both make sure we don't jump in the China camp)
As long as these three parties are satisfied, you can stuff ballot boxes and carry on, sans consequence.
So you see, the West *is* an active party, not a passive party, merely dealing with the result of our elections. You help in the selection of our leaders, most recently in the previous election, where a *truce* was commissioned to write off all corruption cases against them, allowing them to run unimpeded. This is what allowed Benazir Bhutto to come back, not that it helped her much...
Please understand, I am not sprouting conspiracy theories, these are facts.
(BTW, what pisses me off is that when the West actually grows a spine and say, condemn a dictator, only to turn around and accept the same guy for selfish reason! Like Musharraf, condemned rightly for military coup, then suddenly accepted when 9/11 comes around, you got to admit that's hypocritical of the West)
Also, I know that revolution will not bring us change, but at least the *current* corrupt bastards will face a comeuppance. I mean, the French revolution wasn't exactly all milk and honey (horrendous excess were carried out by the revolutionaries too), but I don't think the French people will disagree that it was better than the alternative (letting the dynasty continue on unheeded).
In any case, I don't support revolution, (for once, just hold a fucking functional election, damn it!) but I strongly protest your statement that we should *not* criticise and demand the removal of our current leaders despite their excesses, simply because the *possible* alternative could be bad. We are already at rock bottom, the only way can go now is UP.
(Beside, we just had a mini revolution, you may have heard of it, that Canadian *moderate* Mullah Tahir-ul-Qadri leading it. People joined him because we had *severe* fuel crises, what does he do? Cuts a deal with the govt after a few days of protest, and goes away, people are left to manage the fuel crises on their own. Yeah, revolutions suck)
I have no delusions that corruption will end, but can we *at least* go back a bit in time and get some fuel? People don't care about corruption if they have electricity to run their welding machine and actually earn a living enough to pay for said corruption.
Also not mentioned in this rant is the constant threat of terrorism, as some one who has had people affected by this (policeman living two houses away died in terrorist attack, neighbour front door having to support all their extended family who fled the crises in Waziristan, my own sister's uni attacked by terrorist)You can't imagine just *how* bad things are.
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As for getting out of Dodge, well, have you got a spare bunk? ;p
Seriously though, things are not easy, we tried for my brother who is highly qualified, but no one abroad wants to give him a job visa, not that I blame them, I mean, would *you* call over some one from Pakistan? Our county's bad reputations means we are stuck.