JACOBABAD: Since the inception of Pakistan, politics has been the exclusive preserve of a select few, ranging from feudal lords to industrialists to opportunistic political leaders and charlatans. Not to speak of being given a considerable share in the governance of the state, even contesting an election on the part of an enlightened well-read middle class citizen in the face of a dynastically influential politician amounts to ‘building castles in the air’ and all this culminates in the sheer exploitation of society at the hands of a certain class of visionless, unskilled and inept people, most of whom tend to be devoid of the prerequisites and the decorum of being politicians.
Democracy in Pakistan has met debacle and derailment on and off, preponderantly because it has never been let out into the motion straightaway in the true context, neither does there seem any prospect of it flourishing until and unless ordinary citizens — who are capable and qualified — are entitled to participate fully in the political life by contesting elections and sitting in the assemblies.
The educated middle class should make the most of their skills and expertise for the betterment of the state, otherwise democracy, as professed today — resting on the custom of politics as the prerogative of those having resources — should not be tagged as democracy. Rather it should be called an oligarchy or something even worse.
Farrukh Aziz
Published in The Express Tribune, July 3rd, 2014.
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