Democracy from within

At least as far as internal democracy is concerned, the PTI has turned out to be something of a chocolate bicycle — or cricket bat — melting when the heat is on. Few party leaders in modern times have had as much to say about democracy as has its leader, Imran Khan. There were promises of intra-party elections for positions of power and authority, and once again these promises are shown not to be worth the paper they are so faintly printed upon. For two years, there have been internal struggles within the party which is made up of fugitives and renegades from just about every other political party currently in play. Whilst Imran Khan may have had the purest of intent all along, the same cannot be said for all of his fellow politicians who are genetically predisposed to the same backstabbing and power wrangling as the parties they have their origins in.

Thus it is that democracy has been stuffed in a cupboard somewhere in the political outhouse of the PTI, and Shah Mehmood Qureshi has been appointed a vice-chairman of the party and Jahangir Khan Tareen its general secretary, and both without a ballot-box anywhere in sight. The intra-party elections that were scheduled for April and May never happened, and according to a party spokesperson, they are now not to be held in the foreseeable future as the PTI will be concentrating instead on cooking the goose of the prime minister in the oven of the Panama Papers. As recently reported, the prime minister and his party seem to have decided to do nothing in response to the PTI calls for their downfall, and sit it out until the PTI and the rest of the opposition run out of steam. As strategies go, it is hardly innovative, but likely effective. There is more chance of the PTI bleeding out than there is of the PML-N being toppled. For the PTI, it is time to put up or shut up. So what is it then — democracy or not?

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2016.

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