Daily Times

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s heavy-hearted reminder to the political leadership to add “meaning” to the constitutionally mandated transfer of power could not have come on a better day.

With heavyweights trying their best to make the most appealing case now that elections can literally be heard making a grand entrance, it is extremely disheartening to see the campaigns be reduced to a concoction of chest-thumping and political jibes. While television screens are frantically trying to fit in visuals of “historic” jalsas of leading parties (at times, multiple leaders from one party), the bottom line can easily be copy-pasted across all windows: “I’m good, you’re bad.”

If an exercise costing a fortune to a country (living from hands to mouth) is unable to restore normalcy and provide a clear way forward, the entire mandate of the election commission and the aspirations of the ruling elite become a moot point. It is necessary to filter out the noise and start focusing on quantifiable goals. Mariyam Nawaz of PML(N) recently pointed to a roaring Orange Line Train while declaring her party’s manifesto.

The cost/benefit analysis of that project might come as a surprise to her. These exorbitantly-priced projects arising out of politically-motivated designs and the crutches of foreign loans have done nothing but push us deeper into the debt quagmire. Reality checks aside, we cannot pin the future on what happened in the past.

The ordinary men and women of Pakistan deserve to know why they should stamp on any symbol on February 8 because whatsoever these parties do afterwards would have the greatest impact on their lives. Similarly, looking at the fine print on the handouts for doubled incomes, and free electricity, one can’t help but wonder where the money for these grand schemes would flow from.

None of the revolutionary speeches and headline-worthy tweets acknowledge the dire challenges that lie ahead. These political parties may return to power–by hook or by crook–but there’s still no telling what and how they plan on running things henceforth. *