Daily Times

The one definite casualty of the political confrontation going on in Islamabad is civility. The political discourse has coarsened to the point where what used to be called parliamentary language has died a natural death. Proponents, opponents and all those in between now use terms that are derogatory in the extreme for those they disagree with. Politics has always been a harsh place and, in almost every culture, there is some element of personal attacks on political opponents. As a matter of fact, negative ads against opponents now form one of the more important types of advertisements that are seen in US elections.
One of my earliest memories as a child in Lahore is of street protests with the protesters shouting slogans like “Nehru kutta, hai, hai” (down with Nehru the dog). A decade later, during the 1964 presidential election with Fatima Jinnah opposing President Ayub Khan, the same slogan was often heard, with Ayub replacing Nehru. Of course, one of the reasons given for the 1958 martial law was political instability, the best-known example of which was that the Deputy Speaker of the East Pakistan Assembly was beaten to death with a loudspeaker during an Assembly session.
Even so, political discourse in the press and more recently on television has always been restrained. However, during the last few months we have seen politicians as well as the media going for broke. Terms like bozos, clowns, morons, idiots, traitors and the like have become commonplace. Much of this coarsening of political discourse is led by television talk shows that pit politician against politician and encourage excessive vituperation and denunciation of the other side. Frankly, I rarely watch Pakistani television talk shows anymore. There is little if any political analysis and a lot of shouting. For me, watching a Punjabi street drama on television is by far more entertaining as well as politically and socially informative.
Here, I must admit that I am all for the well-phrased political insult. Winston Churchill was a master of that sort of political putdown. Perhaps his most famous ‘insult’ was for Clement Attlee the Labour Prime Minister (PM) who succeeded him: “A modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about” (though Churchill denied saying that). Churchill also called his pet peeve, Aneurin Bevan, Labour politician, who was the father of the National Health Scheme in the UK, a “floater”. What he meant by a floater I leave to the vivid imagination of my readers.
One of my all time favourite political insults was delivered by Spiro T Agnew, a vice president under Richard Nixon. Agnew called liberals “nattering nabobs of negativism”. This phrase was included in a speech written by William Safire. Safire went on to become a columnist and word maven for The New York Times. Agnew went on to resign as vice president after being accused of corruption during his previous political career as a Maryland governor. Interestingly, if Agnew did not have to resign, he would have become president after Nixon resigned. And he would have become the first Greek US citizen to become US president.
Of the major political actors, three are most in the news: Tahirul Qadri, Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan. All three have been called many derogatory names in the press and also by each other. Perhaps Nawaz Sharif has been the most restrained of these three and Tahirul Qadri the most eloquent. But political surrogates have been relentless in demeaning their opponents. Here I would like to point out that neither of these three is an intellectual ‘lightweight’. Of course, Qadri is the most educated of the three but still, all three of them have attained much in their lives and, more importantly, all three have a major public following. That is especially true of our prime minister. You do not get to become PM of Pakistan for the third time by being a dummy.
Of course, the function of political oppositions is to oppose those who are in power. However, the old cliché needs to be repeated: oppose opinions but do not attack the person holding those opinions. As far as I am concerned, attacking the person you disagree with is a sign of intellectual deficiency. Also, elections are rarely won by opposing the ideas or actions of political opponents. Elections are won by presenting viable alternatives. However, it is important to iterate that politicians known to be corrupt should be exposed as such. Sadly, in the Pakistani context, corruption is something that almost every ‘successful’ Pakistani can be accused of.
It seems obvious that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government is responsible for its present misfortunes. They won the election in Punjab that also gave them a majority at the Centre by offering an alternative to the bad governance of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). However, so far, they have not offered any proof that they are any better. The reason why “go Nawaz go” is becoming a popular slogan has little to do with any personal faults that Nawaz Sharif might have or whether the 2013 elections were rigged; it has everything to do with the fact that the PML-N government has not been able to keep any of its major pre-election promises.
The question that comes to my mind is if we as a polity have reached a point from where we can ever return to a place where it is possible to concentrate on political performance and issues of governance rather than the personal weaknesses of political opponents. In my opinion, an overwhelming desire for power is not a character flaw in a politician. Without such a desire, nobody could achieve any success, especially in the political arena. Living in containers for many weeks on end is not something people like me would ever contemplate as a lifestyle choice. Which is why people like me become op-ed writers rather than politicians.

The writer has practiced and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com