PPP needs rethinking, a fresh orientation and it needs to wake up to the ground realities
KARACHI: This is with reference to Senator Taj Haider’s letter “A rejoinder” (June 24) published in response to the article by Kamal Siddiqi, “A wider net” and the editorial on the PPP on June 22. The problem with our political parties has been to ignore any sane advice and instead start criticising those proffering it. If law-enforcement agencies (LEAs) have been provided with all the resources and rights by the state to give them legal cover for their actions, it was because they were trying to bring order to the disorderly state of affairs that the Sindh government was unable to control. The PPP leadership needs to understand that Pakistan’s once strongest party has been reduced to Sindh, where things are not shaping well due to poor governance and massive corruption. The party’s own minister has said that there has been massive corruption in 18 government departments in Sindh, including city government, health and education. The Rangers’ raid on the building control authority and the arrests of a few known corrupt officers unnerved the PPP’s high command. When Nine Zero was raided, the PPP stood by the Rangers and the government. Now, when there seems to be danger to its own party loyalists, the PPP terms the action by the Rangers a transgression of authority.
Senator Taj Haider wrote about the threat the PPP faced from militants prior to the 2013 elections. The PPP was not the only party threatened by militants; there were other parties that faced similar threats, like the MQM, the ANP and the JUI-F. It is unfair to accuse the media of being biased as the media shows the mirror to all and sundry, irrespective of the personalities involved. It is also incorrect to suggest that party leaders are much more informed than others. In fact, these days, in most cases, media reports are what thrust parties and governments into action. When the acts of political parties are glorified in the press, party members applaud the media for doing its duty. By the same token, when the media criticises and highlights the weaknesses of parties, the press is labelled dishonest. The raids in Karachi have nothing to do with any party’s vote bank; the crackdown is against criminals and no one is above the law. It would have been more appropriate to take the advice proffered to the PPP seriously. The fact remains that the PPP needs rethinking, a fresh orientation and it needs to wake up to the ground realities in order to correct its line of direction and regain its lost glory. Rhetoric, rest assured, does work, but not all the time.
Mukhtar Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, June 28th, 2015.
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