Daily Times

Ten years of democracy is all it has taken for Pakistan’s mainstream parties to adopt a lackadaisical approach to general elections. Indeed, with less than a month to go — each appears happy to wing it.

To date, party manifestos remain conspicuous by their absence. This has left the big players relying on their respective records over the last five years. Which may or may not be akin to shooting themselves in the collective foot.

After all, on the one hand, is Shehbaz Sharif. A man traditionally associated with the Punjab who now has Sindh in PMLN sights. Aside from promising to ‘make his home in Karachi’, he has pointed out how the megacity is in dire need of modern facilities, “even prior to Lahore”. What he therefore envisages is a cosmetic make-over of sorts; somewhere along the lines of those that helped him to transform Lahore into a Paris-like city. Well then.

On the PTI side, Imran Khan has demonstrated his failure in grasping the true meaning of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. For a dramatic cost-cutting exercise has seen him reducing his 11-point agenda to just one: defeating the PMLN. No matter the opportunity cost in terms of seat adjustments, say. As for the PPP, much has been made of the fact this will be the party’s 10th manifesto. Yet that is where the campaigning seemingly begins and ends. Though with this being scheduled for release later this week, Pakistanis will have to wait and see.

This nonchalant resting on political laurels is simply not good enough. Especially considering how radical elements of the religious right have been organising not so quietly behind-the-scenes. Khadim Rizvi’s Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) has emerged as an unexpected force. Indeed, last year it contested two by-elections. In Peshawar, the party secured 9,935 votes as compared to the 7,668 managed by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI); part of the then ruling coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, no less. Even more troublesome, perhaps, was the outcome of the Lahore by-poll that saw TLP walk away with 7,130 votes; an amount higher than both the JI and PPP. Or put another way, in Nawaz Sharif’s old constituency the TLP was recast as the third political force behind the PMLN and PTI. And then there is the not un-small matter of Hafiz Saeed’s Milli Muslim League (MML) contesting the elections, albeit under a different guise, as part of the military establishment’s militant mainstreaming project. Indeed, Sindh law enforcement agents last year raised red flags over what they believed to be the TLP’s rapid reinvention as a militant group. Thereby naturally raising questions as to just who may or may not be supporting Rizvi.

That Pakistan’s mainstream parties appear oblivious to the very real threat of a radical religious party as well as a militant organisation going ‘legit’ beggars belief. At the very least the custodians of democracy ought to have constituted some kind of common platform to denounce the legitimisation of such extremist groups. Instead, the PTI and PPP were eager to distance themselves from an elected government that was effectively held hostage by the TLP at the end of last year. Whereas one member of that same elected set-up went out of his way to woo Rizvi’s vote bank by way of delivering an anti-Ahmadi diatribe on the floor of the National Assembly.

All of which underscores the real political bankruptcy of this country’s leadership across the great divide. Where party chiefs are too preoccupied trying to seduce this or that electable to give a second thought to the direction in which Pakistan is heading. This is corruption by another name.  *

Published in Daily Times, June 28^th 2018.