NFP (A pro-PPP armchair critic) writes well but as usu. takes a dig at Nawaz Sharif and his favourite punching bag these days, Imran Khan
Don’t entirely agree with his analysis. Has he actually travelled to Punjab and KP to find out from people on the street their views of PMLN and PTI?
I have always disagreed with IK’s TTP stance but at the same time I have met many people returning from KP who have told me that things are better under PTI than they were under the corrupt ANP government
Asif Ali Zardari (PPP), Altaf Hussain (MQM) and Asfandyar Wali (ANP) must often wonder, what is it that they did and men like Imran Khan (PTI) and Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) don’t (or they don’t and the latter two do), that makes the populist Urdu electronic media sound so kind and understanding towards the two men.
Though it has been just nine months after the PML-N formed a majority government at the centre and in the Punjab; and after the PTI took over the reins from the ANP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as far as the country’s and KP’s economy and law and order situations are concerned, these nine months have already been equal to at least two years (out of the five) of the former PPP-led coalition government.
The rapidly degrading economy and terrorist attacks by extremist outfits have worsened in the last nine months.
Of course, true to tradition, the current government blames the last government for handing them a country in shambles. Just like that government had blamed the government before it, and that government blamed the previous government and so on and so forth.
But the present government at the centre, headed by the PML-N and the one in the KP being led by the PTI have so far been rather lucky.
They have not been obsessively lambasted and ravaged by the electronic media, the judiciary and certain organs of the military establishment, as was the PPP-led coalition (not that the coalition was any more competent than the current PML-N and PTI set-ups).
While experiencing such good tidings from those who had become a migraine for the former PPP-ANP-MQM coalition, one would have expected the PMLN set-up at the centre and that of the PTI in the KP to be able to take some bold initiatives to give the economy at least a semblance of normality and also take firmer steps against extremist violence.
But that has not happened. Just like the KP province, the PTI government there and even the party itself have continued to spiral down towards chaos.
PTI had enjoyed a sudden rise and popularity (largely among the urban middle-classes in the Punjab and the KP) in 2011, and also managed to put up an impressive show during the May 2013 election.
Nine months later it looks fractured, bruised and all at sea as it tries to grapple (or even fully comprehend) its utter failure to pull back KP from the economic, social and political hell hole the province has been sliding into for over a decade now.
At the centre the PML-N government may be looking more serene but this apparent calm (compared to the PTI government in the KP), may as well be apathy with a dopy smile drawn over its face.
The PML-N government really doesn’t do much. In spite of the fact that it has a huge majority in the parliament, friendly influence in the judiciary and friendlier men in the electronic media, it hasn’t moved the way a government with so many friends in so many influential places is expected to move.
Interestingly, though both PML-N and PTI are centre-right parties and had offered almost similar solutions (during their respective election campaigns) to the main issues of terrorism and how this terrorism was further retarding the country’s economics, they can’t stand each other.
Both have also become prisoners of what they had so passionately promised before the election.
I don’t think they were expecting the already disastrous situation of the country to get even worse so quickly and dramatically like it has in the last nine months.
And this has happened in such a manner that it has left the narratives and solutions offered by both the parties, start to suddenly look and sound redundant.
A more visionary and dynamic government would have been able to urgently adjust its position, narrative and policy according to the rapidly changing scenario.
But instead, the changing scenario has left the PML-N government at the centre seeming shell-shocked and inanimate, whereas the same scenario has left the PTI (in the KP and as a whole), lash out at largely imaginary opponents (‘US lobby,’ ‘liberal fascists,’ et al), in the most contradictory and chaotic manner.
PTI chief Imran Khan has become so dramatically animated, disordered and verbose due to the way his party has been facing one policy failure after another in the KP, he has begun to lose a lot of friends that he had made in the media.
The media has begun to come down hard on him, even though recently an old friend of his (a well-known TV anchor), gave him an open platform to redeem himself.
But even there, Khan erred and misquoted former military chief, General Parvez Kayani, who soon issued an angry rebuttal, leaving Khan facing another barrage of criticism for ‘spreading wrong and pessimistic information about the army’s chances of handling a military operation against the extremists.’
Khan is not used to being criticised in the manner that he has started to be in the media, or, more ironically, the way he used to criticise the former government.
His response to this criticism has been largely unprofessional, incoherent and, at times it has only made him sound like an extremely frustrated politician who now believes the media is being paid Dollars by those who want to discredit him and stop him from opposing a military operation against the extremists ‘on the behest of the Americans.’
But the PML-N government is still enjoying an unprecedented show of good will from the electronic media, the judiciary and even the main opposition party, the PPP.
It still has a window of opportunity flung open for it to take some decisive (if not drastic) steps to at least begin to effectively rectify the country’s economic woes and push back the mad wave of extremist violence that has gripped the country.
I am sure the PML-N government understands that its main policy of reviving the country’s battered economy cannot move an inch without the government first willing to address the issue of extremist violence on a more firm footing.
With so many friends in so many important places, one wonders what exactly is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif waiting for?
There is a lot of truth in the suggestion that by announcing the highly dramatised and publicised peace talks with the extremists, the PM cleverly kicked the ball in Imran Khan’s court.
Khan fumbled with the ball and this fumbling took some vital sheen off his veneer and overall credibility.
With Khan, the loudest advocate of peace talks, now down, and his long-held ‘apologist’ thesis on the issue of extremist violence struggling to come to terms with the unprecedented rise of audacious terrorist attacks on soldiers, cops and civilians in the last nine months, the ball has bounced back in the PM’s court.
His leading nemesis has been neutralised. He is still enjoying good tidings from the media and most opposition parties.
But, at the same time, hope is rapidly running out for the state and the government to ever reach a workable arrangement with an enemy hell-bent on inflicting one grave wound after another on the body and soul of the already ravaged country.
The Prime Minister and his ruling party now have no other choice left but to override the party’s original line of appeasement and to also start to look beyond the electoral dynamics of its stronghold, the Punjab, and get sterner in its view and action against the terrorists.
Punjab is in Pakistan. Pakistan is not in Punjab. The PM is running out of choices. And the people of the three provinces most hit by extremist violence, KP, Sindh and Balochistan, have already run out of patience.