NARRATIVE VERSUS PERFORMANCE!

The buzz around the political events in the recent time in Pakistan has been tumultuous for quite a long duration. With the harbingers of the elections’ crescent being myopic, there’s no halt to these frenzied happenings in the coming time as well. By the look of the things, elections in Pakistan have always been the pinnacle of public participation, hustings of political parties and political engineering of the stakeholders. Perhaps, strategically the kernel of every democratic state, but second after the appointment of heads of the establishment, in a hybrid regime state as Pakistan.

Portending the caveats of the impending elections, the question of the next plausible government flashes quickly into mind. The shifting sands in Pakistan’s politics doesn’t favor anyone to foresee the sitting compass. While brooding, just thinking! What makes a political party win an election in a democratic state?

“This demise of democracy our country has witnessed today has been a repercussion of this vindicated political engineering, the facilitators of which are no other than our politicians, who plant their fidelity to the establishment every time it dethrones a civilian government, confiscating the people of their fundamental right.”

Mayhap, the answer would be a “narrative for the people” which makes a government incumbent to “perform”, to translate their mouthing platitudes to actions with reforms and organized movements. This is how democracy paves the way for development of the people. But this pattern doesn’t reverberate in Pakistan and of course this hasn’t been the inculcated course of elections throughout our history. The moot point could be Pakistan’s true existence as a democratic state and hence it possibly could annul the election mnemonics iterated in other democratic states. Just as In Pakistan, elections are a circuitous route that a political party takes to fob off the people, ostensibly, though the picture accentuates the people’s choice, but all of this happens under the aegis of military establishment having the staunchness of political leaders.

The fact that our political leaders have been cut from the same cloth as are the elites in our society, why would the desideratum be filled with the “narrative” and “performance” for the people to be elected in the government. The election narrative of our political parties if somehow illustrates the people, our politicians always draw the longbow and just because the lacuna is there between the people’s expectations from politicians and what actually happens in our politics, their hollow solemn are often bought from the desperate people, being sanguine.

The phony narrative of setting this country to straight has always fluffed where the rubber couldn’t meet the road in our dilapidated history. From the pipe dreams of “Vote Ko Izzat Do” to “Naya Pakistan”, every pledge has been reneged from our leaders and simultaneously another covenant has been sworn at another shot. This is how the ruse of election has been scripted for the pliant people. But the impunity from the politician’s impotence comes at the cost of rendering the services to the elites of the society, the extravagance of which has made the elections marred. This demise of democracy our country has witnessed today has been a repercussion of this vindicated political engineering, the facilitators of which are no other than our politicians, who plant their fidelity to the establishment every time it dethrones a civilian government, confiscating the people of their fundamental right.

There’s no blinking the fact that power politics shorn of public purpose doesn’t hold the ultra vires to unravel the much-wanted answers to this country’s surging problems. Political parties bereft of ideologies and reforms need dazzling money and helping hands from the military establishment to enshroud their inefficacy in the election campaign and later to disentangle this country’s agglomerated maladies. This is the reason why our election campaign is the folklore of elongating foibles and peccadillos of the rival parties instead of their own spiffing performance (as there isn’t any), perhaps the sole purpose of why funds and money had been introduced in the election campaigns.

When people see the tangled web of politics as the power politics brimmed with vested interests of the stakeholders, the veracity of the elites comes under scrutiny. Though minimal, but the elections are the limelight as long as people yearn the politicians to be their last hope. When the time goes, nothing settles back. It is now the call for the stakeholders to calculate their instincts. The challenges have already straitjacketed this country. The inflation has ruffled people’s feather, the economic crisis demands the extirpation of our lackluster strategies to devise some reforms, so that this country could finally linger on a place, where they don’t have to choose between democracy or development, it has to be a democracy that brings development.