PRIME Minister Imran Khan has said that he did not enter into politics to keep a lid on the prices of potatoes and tomatoes but decided to become a politician to make a great nation.
Addressing a public meeting at Hafizabad, he also expressed the view that it was the responsibility of the state to stop horse-trading, which he claimed was going on in relation to the on-going politics around the move for vote of no-confidence against the Prime Minister.
The ruling party is organizing public meetings in different parts of the country as part of its strategy to convey an impression that it was still popular with the masses.
No doubt, Imran Khan is a crowd-puller and this has been confirmed by the number of people attending his recent public meetings.
But, strangely enough, the Prime Minister, who is an elected representative, told the common man, whose biggest concern these days is the unprecedented inflation, that the number one problem of the people has no priority with him.
Resolution of fundamental and day-to-day problems of the people is supposed to be the foremost responsibility of any government, not to speak of a government that is sent to the corridors of power by the masses.
How can a leader build a strong nation if people are not satisfied? The level of the strength of a nation is directly in proportion to the level of satisfaction and prosperity that people of a country enjoy.
Similarly, national reconciliation is the key to the building of a strong nation but in our case we are highly polarized and divided on different lines including political affiliations and ideologies.
No one can deny the fact that the opposition too has a massive following in the length and breadth of the country and therefore, it deserves a better treatment by the government.
As against this, we have observed throughout the tenure of the present government that the opposition leaders are not only being targeted through National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the pretext of one-sided accountability but also made targets of scathing verbal attacks.
There is also a tendency on the part of the politicians to call names and in this backdrop one appreciates that the Prime Minister did not use derogatory titles for the opposition leaders during his Sunday’s address to the public meeting in Hafizabad.
Our politicians are also in the habit of calling others traitors, agents of some foreign powers, thieves and dacoits, a tendency that fuels the process of polarization and division in the society.
All political parties are stakeholders in the system and they should be treated as such and not as personal adversaries.
Why did the Government not initiate the grand national dialogue for which demands were repeatedly made by saner elements during the last several years?
It is because of the bitterness in national politics that no government is allowed to work on its agenda for betterment of the people as the opposition remains continuously engaged in a process of leg pulling.
One must appreciate the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan to make a strong nation but it is quite obvious he could not move towards this direction satisfactorily mainly because of political and other controversies.
Today, he is facing the challenge of no-confidence and tomorrow someone else will have to brace up similar challenges and as a result there is diversion from the path of progress and development that could make a country strong in the real sense of the word.
The country would become strong if we get rid of foreign loans that come with humiliating conditions and focus on industry and agriculture.
It is because of this that there have been consistent demands for a Charter of Economy so that the country moves ahead on the path of stability and economic sovereignty irrespective of who is in power.
As for the responsibility of the state to prevent horse-trading, it was a curse in the past, is a curse today and would remain so in the future as well.
So far, hardly any politician has shown his preference for clean politics as all of them depend heavily on turncoats to advance their narrow political objectives.
Politicians must also inculcate the habit of accepting the mandate of others, realizing that broad-based power structure improves the chances for stability of the system.
