Daily Times

Our senior-most leaders must at least learn to keep their political battles civil. And even if they must heap scorn on each other can they keep the debate confined to things they are really upset about and not, for the love of the country, drag India into everything and brand everybody they don’t like traitors, agents of enemies, and all that? Once again it is disappointing to see the government treat the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) protests as following Indian agenda. Surely the ruling party doesn’t really believe that everybody in the opposition has signed up to work for Indian intelligence agencies just to unseat the sitting government. So they must believe that all’s fair when the gloves come off.

But isn’t this precisely what all of us, government and opposition, accuse India of doing whenever the going gets tough at home? That New Delhi always drags Pakistan into the debate when the domestic temperature rises beyond a certain degree? We are always right in taking that position because that is exactly what successive Indian governments have got used to doing. And they’ve been so successful at it because the anti-Pakistan narrative still sells like hot cakes over there. So how good do we want to look in front of the whole world by lowering ourselves to the same level as those whose conduct we find unacceptable?

India is not very popular on the Pakistani street either so any party that associates its opponents with the enemy is sure to win some points, but it would still imply a shift in the kind of politics that parties have so far practiced in this Islamic republic. All things considered, there is an urgent need to shift the primacy of the political debate back to the people, who are and should be appreciated as the essence of democracy. It is one of the primary jobs of political parties to disagree with each other, sometimes quite aggressively, but only so long as they disagree about how to best serve the people and the state. Hopefully everybody will take a step back, even in this charged atmosphere, and be fairer in their attacks on others. Let Pakistanis solve Pakistan’s problems inside Pakistan. Please leave India out of it. *