In the landscape of accrued turbulence in this country, the victories are often more celebrated with greater fervor, yet those ravishing triumphs barely yield any protracted perquisites for the stakeholders of this country. The façade of those victories has seen many grandiose outcomes. Whether it’s the tussle of the game of thrones, the riveting political rivalries followed by the sequel of political victimization or the impotent decisions of policy making sponsoring the makeshift benefits, the quest of “victories” illuminates more about the obduracy to win at every cost and less about maintaining the sacrosanctity of the constitutional means. But how good the glory of these victories would be defined when the cauldron of political instability is yet to be buffered. What is actually won when the exorbitant price of those victories is unwittingly paid by the country itself both politically and economically.
Amid the labyrinth of hybrid governance in Pakistan, the government under the auspices of establishment has been picturing its destiny with the euphoria of hollow wins, even the productive part of which could only be epitomized by face losing for them. The state though in its oblivious power politics show has emulated itself as megalomaniac, tending to be the civilian government cut from the same cloth as of as dictators, but the formula is fatuous, which keeps on the impression that the glass is half empty. The succession of events with the victories in political spectrum of Pakistan makes the beneficiaries forget the shifting sands in politics, that the hunter never gets hunted. But when you pay for hunt, the cost is to get hunted.
“Pakistan’s aggravating political saga is a stark reminder to the stakeholders of this country, that the obstinacy for pyrrhic victories would quench their thirst of power, but the cost is the erosion of public trust, constitution of this country, and its very foundation, i.e., the democracy.”
PMLN marked the vague start of its first shallow victory of sitting on the musical chair, with the stature of being the junior civilian face, under the wheeling & dealing of establishment. Barring the anecdotes that the party being the face of military establishment purportedly faced a debacle of his lifetime, the script having their effulgent names, still had made to the government setup. In the lens of the mayhem before the elections of 2024 in Pakistan, the conduction of early elections was seen as a herald of solution and the mitigation of political commotion. But the triumph always has a cost and at this very time, it was the intransigence to be the victor at every cost. Hence to be the victor, the gerrymandering reached its zenith, but the nation witnessed the seeds of internecine strife, being ploughed in the democratic fabric of this country. Thus, the much jeering victory came, a victory of a true ostentatious nature, but eventually, a victory for survival could be the better essence of it. The elections didn’t unravel the answers and the obstinacy of pyrrhic victories found more ways.
Thus, the frailty of hybrid setup when needed more victories to really bolster their standing in the government, concomitantly weeding out the populous opposition, the untouchables sought the strategy of legislative controlling to shore the government up. The 26th constitutional amendment which was lauded as another constitutional jubilation, was the triumph that demolished the actual foundation of constitution which endorsed the trichotomy of power. The stalwart supporters of democracy also pontificated this amendment as a pledge made in the charter of democracy in 2006. The attempt was nothing less than a curb to the functioning of independent judiciary. Following the constitutional amendment which it declared as supremacy of parliament, the executive has placed judiciary in a quagmire, with the establishment of constitutional benches, which hints at more explicit means of political engineering now. The win may have bestowed the government to breathe a little more by establishing a give & take rapport with the judiciary, but this hand-picked judiciary will only provide leeway to the hands of extra-constitutional powers to be, scheming the time for the next hunted in the list. And just because their time isn’t now, there’s time to celebrate…. another Cadmean win.
The contumacy only leads to destructive series of victories. The government also has cherished another great achievement of their power show, when they succeeded in driving out the rampaging crowd of PTI’s protestors, with the vehement usage of force. The event happened on the night of 26th November, when the PTI protestors weren’t allowed to hold a rally in the capital. The victory for the government came eventually, but it turned out to be of macabre nature, when the claims were made about several death casualty resulting from the gunshots being fired by the security forces. Though, the government has been in the phase of denial, but the evidence substantiates the killings, with the exact figure yet to be illuminated. Not only this, even the government launched a malicious and scurrilous propaganda against PTI on electronic media, declaring them as a terrorist organization. Indubitably, nobody is to condone PTI’s confrontationist politics, storming the capital by every now & then, without a definite leadership and a strategy. But the government if finds, a victory in straitjacketing the democratic rights of its citizen involving the killings, the opprobrium rests on the government for the clampdown on fundamental rights of its citizens.
Perhaps, the government might see these victories as the optics of one step forward to their ambitions, but actually they are heading two steps back. These victories might grant them the latitude to survive, but they have buried their heads in the sand, thinking that these victories are backed by the solution of actual issues the country is going through. These myopic triumphs could serve as a stopgap measure to quell instability, but the cost when paid by the country, fissures the widening gap between the rulers and the ruled. There’s instability, there’s economic malaise, there’s despair, there’s feeble democracy, but there’s no surreptitious leadership. The policy of hammering the nail to be the winner needs a true recalibration. The victories must come at the cost of prosperity of the nation of Pakistan. Pakistan’s aggravating political saga is a stark reminder to the stakeholders of this country, that the obstinacy for pyrrhic victories would quench their thirst of power, but the cost is the erosion of public trust, constitution of this country, and its very foundation, i.e., the democracy.
