Daily Times

Till the publication of these lines, the Supreme Court of Pakistan may have decided if the Senate elections are to be conducted through open ballot or secret ballot. Basically this issue should be settled by politicians through mutual agreement but unfortunately it was taken to the SC. Now all politicians resort to point scoring, hurling accusations on each other and showing their gambit of horse trading.

One thing is sure that all political parties try to win the favor of rivals’ members. Money is used to buy votes. Each candidate spends money to make horses run. This time, the Senate elections have taken an interesting cash-and-carry deal. But money talks. If you can pay, the Germans will play. Unfortunately our political culture has paved such traditions that a poor man can’t contest elections. Rather his getting ticket of any party will be a snowball’s chance in hell.

Elections are being conducted on 48 Senate seats. No candidate of any party can be called a man on the street. Each one’s biography reveals the fact that each party wants to win the favour of affluent persons by awarding them party ticket. Party’s benefit is taken care of, because if party needs monetary assistance, such people can be relied upon.

Hopefully, now the matter is in the Supreme Court and it will be solved henceforth. Otherwise, these politicians remain at odds with one another. If yesterday, a party advocated for open balloting; now it is averse to it. If yesterday someone supported the idea of secret ballot, now it is calling for open ballot. Now the Chief Justice of the SC, Justice Gulzar Ahmad has said that if there is open ballot, still there is no guarantee of not selling and buying of votes or horse trading.

This time, PML N and PPP are arguing in the SC to oppose open balloting. Raza Rabbani is trying to move heaven and earth to rescind the idea of open balloting. Though in the past, these two parties agreed on open balloting in the Charter of Democracy that they, provided they had rule, would promulgate open balloting to end selling and buying of votes. That would, they claimed, end well-heeled people’s entry in the parliament with power of purse. Both of them signed the CoD, but now they are arguing against the same.

A video is on air which shows how politicians receive money. Senate tickets are awarded against money. Their promise of vote is obtained though they may be ignorant of ABC of politics. When political issues go in the courts, then the same political parties lament on the intervention of third power. But they forget that their own linen is soiled, why they are washing it in the SC.

Being a student of journalism and political worker, I must admit that it is a slap on the face of our political system. When so much has been exposed, still we are hell bent on harboring this dirty politics. We have buried political ethics in seeking political privilege. It is gross failure of our politics and politicians that common people are fed up with them. They are doubted and mistrusted. Then it is not fault of any institution or personality, but of political parties and their leaders. They adopted such behavior that only prosperous persons could come in political arena. Only they can get titles and positions. Remaining are political workers whose duty is only to raise slogans, feed on offerings and dance in front of leader’s vehicle. They have no worth than that.

Such workers are needed only to show count of participants in the jalsa to claim mass gathering. We look at the pathetic performance of elected governments and see the life of commoners going from bad to worse, while politicians are at each other’s throat. Nothing is going to change. Only leaders fill their purse. Unless our politics rises from grass root level, these political leaders will keep on amassing wealth while workers will raise petty slogans. Politics will remain a game of the rich, for the rich and to buy the rich.