The victory of Zohran Mamdani — the youngest South Asian socialist elected as New York mayor amid a capitalist, xenophobic wave backed by Trump and his billionaire supporters — is a triumph worth celebrating. It marks a milestone for the people of New York and humanists across the globe, and it remains deeply relevant to societies striving for the ideals Mamdani's success embodies. Similarly, the New York public's vote, which defeated all state-sponsored odds, offers a clear lesson to rulers elsewhere who deprive their subjects of a good life: they should pause and introspect — a concept utterly alien to Pakistan's rulers.

Predictably, Pakistan's ruling elite seized this momentous occasion in a self-serving way. Having consistently failed their people for decades, the rulers from across the country wasted no time in claiming Mamdani as their lost avatar and his success as the personification of their ideologies. They shared calculated messages aimed at leveraging and affecting both the world and their........

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