Mohammad Jamil
FOR the last few months, efforts were being made by the opposition parties to convene All Parties Conference to chalk out a program to get rid of PTI government. Last year, PML-N and PPP had promised Maulana Fazlur Rahman chief of JUI-F to participate in Azadi March and Dharna, but they did nothing except lip service and issuing press statements. Maulana has many a time criticized PPP and the PML-N – major opposition parties – for not playing their role in the long march and dharna to the extent they should have done.
The fact of the matter is that Opposition has been a divided house since PTI came to power. The split within the opposition was also visible when the PPP refused to vote for PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif as a joint opposition candidate for the Prime Minister’s election. They also went separate ways to elect the President. Last week, PPP and the PML-N supported the two bills passed by Parliament. On Thursday, the Senate passed two important bills with some amendments in a move to fulfil the requirements of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to get Pakistan’s name off the grey list. Despite majority of the Opposition in the Senate, the house passed the bills with majority of votes while Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) was the only opposition party that opposed the proposed laws. Chairman of Senate Law Committee Senator Javed Abbasi, on the floor of the house, said that the Committee through amendments had removed some lacunae in the proposed laws to ensure that these were not misused against the citizens of Pakistan. It will strengthen the provisions to effectively implement the resolutions of UN Security Council imposing sanctions of assets freeze, arms embargo and travel ban on the entities and individuals.
Soon after passage of the bills, JUI-F Senator Moulana Attaur Rehman criticized the two major opposition parties, PPP and PML-N, in the house for supporting the government on the bills. “They have never sided with the opposition and gave way to the government to get the bills passed.” He said that these two opposition parties never tried to unite the opposition and added that JUI-F was not ready to move ahead along with them in future. But rhetoric and sloganeering by opposition parties will not promote the democracy project because it is sham democracy. The genuine democracy is all for people; but given majority of people living in the thralldom of sardars, waderas, some of them are pirs as well, and in cities clout of industrial tycoons and their nominees will have majority in National Assembly and the Senate.
Certainly the time has come when the political hierarchies ruling at the centre and in provinces must give a penetrating look to their act, for the causes they presently are championing so fervently and the fracas they are waging so stridently enthuse no one on the street. Issues of reforms in the NAB, electoral reforms, constitutional reforms, civil and military relations and 18th amendment etc., may be hogging heated controversies in political quarters, media studios, civil society offices, chattering classes and deluxe parlors. But none is seriously talking of peoples’ problems and woes. None is even taking a passing notice of them. But the street is thunderously silent; and if the political hierarchies are any real, they should get alarmed, as the street is likely to react over skyrocketing price rise, galloping unemployment and corruption, which could surge into a tidal storm.
This should make the political hierarchies sit up, for the people are angry not just with the political class; more alarmingly they are getting alienated with the very prevalent system. Not a real democracy though we are; whatever the sham democracy we have, that too is losing the people’s trust rapidly. They have to take serious notice of this public alienation and anger and set about earnestly to tackle the underlying causes of the public disgust and frustration effectively to the greater satisfaction of the mass of the people. It should be kept in mind that it is the kick on the stomach that hurts the people most. The issues of bread and butter come to the masses uppermost; and everything else is just secondary. If the ruling hierarchies are any wise, they must stand up firmly to go cracking on the runaway price rises and unemployment.
Instead of giving relief to the consumers, the electricity and gas tariff were revised upward by various governments including the incumbent one, as charges and various surcharges were imposed to make their lives miserable. What people are concerned with are ever-rising prices of food items and utilities, which takes the big chunk of their income, salaries and wages. Prices of almost all kinds of essential daily use items, such as wheat flour, vegetables and groceries, registered a manifold increase in open market during the last ten years or so. The high trend is also witnessed in the prices of pulses, as prices have registered an increase from 30 to 60 percent. It has to be said that wheat flour and pulses are the mainstay for the poor people, and it is difficult for the majority of the people to keep their body and soul together. It appears that people are not inclined to give another chance to PPP or PML-N due to allegations of corruption and money laundering against their leaders. Of course, PTI government can recount its successes in the realm of foreign policy and meticulous handling of Convid-19, but people are more concerned with ever-rising prices and dwindling job opportunities. The PTI government, therefore, must take measures to reduce the prices otherwise it will not have a chance to form the government after the next elections.
—The writer is a senior journalist based in Lahore.
