The poverty of political thinking

Nobody is suffering for a cause, and those that turn up at mass rallies expect to be entertained and fed for doing so

The announcement that the PTI is sizing up its options in terms of the mobilisation of public support for its latest accountability movement generates little beyond a lengthy yawn. Or, if engaged in any kind of business in Lahore or anywhere else that the PTI decides to paralyse for however many days, considerable irritation if not anger. There is a growing sense that the day of the long march — a misnomer in the Pakistan context — is over. Very little actual marching is done. The weeks-long trudges over endless miles that characterised the struggle of the American civil rights movement is nowhere evident. Nobody is suffering for a cause, and those that do turn up at mass rallies expect to be entertained and fed for doing so. Nobody that is other than those who see loss of business, maximised inconvenience or pick up the bill for providing security and/or policing for these events.

All of the mass events organised by the PTI since the ‘dharna days’ in Islamabad in 2014 have been notable for one thing and one thing only — they achieved precisely nothing. They have got nowhere near unseating the prime minister and if anything have enhanced the obduracy of the sitting government. The wrangle over the terms of reference (ToR) relating to the commission of enquiry that is supposed to look into the Panama Papers affair drags on, unaffected or influenced by Container Politics. Now yet more civil disruption is to be foisted upon a weary public who may be less inclined to turn out than they were two years ago, the PTI star having lost some of its lustre. As noted previously in these columns, parliament is something of an irrelevance to the PTI (and other parties it must also be noted), and there is a lack of originality in political thinking at the national level that is akin to the parties having ‘special needs’ when seen through the prism of a human metaphor. The paralysis of Lahore extends both the metaphor and the sense of futility. Canoes, creeks and the absence of a paddle come to mind. Think again, Mr Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2016.

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