IN a tweet on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has rightly stated that the service delivery alone should govern competition for public office, regretting that our politics suffers from a structural flaw as it has unfortunately been reduced to shorthand for grandstanding and meaningless rhetoric. And in a related development, while chairing a meeting, the Prime Minister said the Government was taking all possible measures to reduce per acre cost for farmers and also directed the Power Division to keep the power load-shedding to a minimum level in summer.
What the Prime Minister said about competition for public office is the essence of democracy and parliamentary politics. It has rightly been pointed out by political analysts that regular as well as truly free and fair elections have the potential to bring those into power who really believed in serving the masses. The PPP Government formed after the 2008 general election is credited with empowering parliament/provinces and the system through measures like 18th Constitutional Amendment but its service delivery was not satisfactory and therefore, it suffered hugely in 2013 elections, which brought PML(N) to power. The then PML(N) Government worked hard to get rid of the menace of load-shedding, launched/completed numerous infrastructure projects and won hearts of the people by its people-friendly policies. It was, therefore, widely believed that the party would win 2018 elections but it was denied power through political engineering. The PTI too could not make an impact as far as service delivery is concerned and judging the mood of the public opinion, even its own members were reported to be in contact with PML(N) to get the party ticket for 2023 elections. The PTI was removed from power through vote of no-confidence and a coalition government formed but the ground realities did not allow the new government to take popular measures and it suffered in almost all by-elections. Unfortunately, some parties focus more on exploiting the sentiments of the people through social media gimmicks and do not care much about actual performance on the ground whereas focus on service delivery can bring about a pleasant revolution in our politics. As for reduction of per acre cost is concerned, the Prime Minister has a point but regrettably the Government is pursuing the beaten path of increasing the procurement price of crops instead of bringing down the cost of input for the farmer. It is also perturbing that things in the energy sector have gone so wrong that the Prime Minister is no longer talking in terms of eliminating the load-shedding and seems to be content on minimizing its duration. This is good neither for the ordinary consumer nor the ailing national economy.
