The status quo and conciliation policies, spearheaded by the PPP co-chair and our President, have been astonishingly successful in stretching the coalition rule to the full five-year term. The shrewd tactician has chosen to knit a mysterious web around him by making few public appearances and even fewer television interviews. He plays his hand keeping the cards close to his chest, pulling the strings of the puppets and letting the chatter of speculators reach their peak. Then down he comes with his tried and tested recipe - surrender. Be magnanimous. If you can’t beat the agitators, give them a run for their money and finally give in to their demands with the little grace still in store. Principles and ideologies do not figure anywhere. Live and let live is the name of the game.
Look what happened with Dr Tahirul Qadri. Was he a pawn advanced by someone or is he another emerging player in the game of chess being played with the nation’s future? By gathering a crowd of tens of thousands of men, women, children and infants in near zero temperatures of a wet and cloudy Islamabad, an expense of millions, crashing the stock market by a few hundred points and striking a further blow to the struggling economy, Dr Qadri accomplished his mission.
The government played to its usual script - brought the situation to a boil and then a bizarre display of total submission by the entire government of the day, almost comically. A small wonder why the nation was put on the edge of a sword for several weeks, if all demands were to be met anyway. Perhaps, a virtual non-entity, an absentee from the national scene for several years was meant to be transformed into larger than life in the process. Another wonder; how the most powerful politicians ate their words in full glare of television cameras without feeling any embarrassment.
The master of suspense has the date of the next general elections, shape of the caretaker governments and the appointment of impartial Provincial Governors tucked up in his sleeve. The delimitation of Karachi, verification of voter’s lists and powers of the Election Commission still linger on, shrouded in uncertainties.
Meanwhile, unnecessary controversies like the creation of a new province of ‘Bahawalpur Janoobi Punjab’, imposition of Governor’s Rule and the chaos in Balochistan Assembly are sprung as deviations that are clear exercises in futility and too late in the day.
Towards the end of its tenure, the focus of the ruling parties’ undivided attention should have been to anticipate and resolve the issues of impending transition. They should have been revising their manifestos to sell to their voters what they learnt from their experience and how they propose to evolve a more stable and progressive next five-year term. But in vain and, thus, the incumbents will be remembered for what they left behind. Further, turmoil and polarisation should have been the last thing on their legacy.
Credit is, however, due to the government for pushing enough legislation through consensus to great political acclaim during the current term, for which the present set of parliamentarians have reason to be proud of. But the public is left wondering what did it all achieve for them?
A ruined economy, disastrous foreign relations, unending extremism, suicide attacks, free for all law and order, electricity and gas loadshedding, inflation that will not go away, dollar parity down to near one hundred, unprecedented corruption at higher levels and no let-up in their miseries from the clutches of the lower level servants of the government.
The significance of the constitutional amendments is lost on the impoverished and deprived ordinary people, who have been kept perpetually entangled in finding ways to feed and keep their families alive and healthy.
The general elections of summer 2013 are likely to be fought on grassroots issues and not on the constitutional amendments. The new crop of youth of the internet and mobile phone age will figure prominently. This new breed does not carry the baggage of the old political and social orders, a reality that most of the traditional old guard has not even begun to comprehend. Their behaviour patterns and mindsets are still undetermined and will set the trend for the future. No doubt, emphasis of all contestants will be to court this lot that may have a significant impact on the election results.
The young resent our leaders riding in monstrous vehicles cordoned off by hordes of gun-toting security personnel, while they feel unsafe in their own homes and on the roads. They resent their leaders fly tottering around the globe on inconsequential costly jaunts, delivering lectures to unresponsive and apprehensive audience, while overseas travel for average Pakistanis has become a hazard and humiliation, right from the time of applying for a visa to arriving at the foreign immigration counters.
The soft image of our country lies buried somewhere that no one feels compelled to put on show for the world to see. We have not even tried to effectively project the extent of our human sacrifices rendered for a futile war the Americans are waging to satisfy their ego that has brought extremism and instability to our country.
Notwithstanding the good that the independence of media has done, it must share its responsibility for its penchant for negativity that has driven the public to perceive all roads leading to a dead end. The public now considers the political parties (most of which have a stake in the government one way or the other) to be in collusion with the administration in rampant corruption. The politicians hardly help themselves when they indulge in point-scoring by fanning divisions on ethnic, linguistic, sectarian and regional lines. No institution or individual (except Jinnah and Iqbal) is held sacred or trustworthy. Unfounded insinuations and indecent insults are regularly hurled shamelessly against each other.
The biggest failure of our democracy of the last five years has been its inability to inculcate a sense of participation, hope and pride in the nation. In such an environment of distrust, acrimony and non-performance, the general elections do not inspire much confidence of a better future in our young generation that lies helplessly on the sidelines - or to the downtrodden waiting to be freed from the shackles of feudal, tribal and capitalist dominations.
The biggest failure of the nation has been the indifference and apathy with which social and political evils have been allowed to continue in the guise of saving democracy and conciliation. Democracy will succeed only if the people utilise the electoral process to throw out the corrupt and the incompetent, and learn to confront their representatives to seek resolution of their problems. Democracy will succeed only if the politicians indulge sincerely in self-correction and weed out the evil from their own ranks.
The writer is an engineer and an entrepreneur. Email: k.a.k786@hotmail.com