The exciting art of boredom

It’s like Pakistan crossed the finished line in a blaze of glory, and then collapsed in a heap.

Remember the roller-coaster events of the five years? Remember the magnificent ups of adrenaline-pumping dharnas, the head-spinning downs of political humiliations, the heart-pumping partisan duelling of the Panama leaks and the edge-of-the-seat court hearings deciding the fates of our titans? Remember the high-octane drama of the judicial decapitation of a prime minister, the knife’s edge survival of the government till its term-end, the grandiose ushering in of the caretakers, the sinister chop, chop, chop of the PML-N, the ever-present fear of a system re-boot, and the steroid-injected campaign of the PTI? Remember the mayhem after the legally-feeble judgment of the Accountability Court hurled down like a bolt of lightning from Mount Olympus? Remember the anxiety over the return of Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz from London and the crowds on the streets of Lahore? Remember the thrill of Election Day, the suspense of the results, the confusion over the RTS breakdown and the eventual victory of Imran Khan after a night that would never end? Then remember the rush of government formation, the breathless speculation over appointments and the skyrocketing anticipation about the dawn of a new era?

And then — the great underwhelming happened.

You will not be faulted for wondering if this is the same country. All of a sudden there seems to be a whole lot of nothing being paraded as something pretending to be anything. All those lofty words describing noble intents aimed at sweeping actions were supposed to result in this whimper?

For in the Shakespearean sweep of its rhetoric, whimper is what the PTI government has produced so far. If the sum total of five weeks of governance is encapsulated in reduced protocol, potpourri of task forces, Governor’s Houses flung open, a near-farcical vehicular auction at the PM House and a mini-budget that prostrates at the feet of auto industry and property dons, then the underwhelming is overwhelming in its impact.

Apologists for the PTI’s insipid performance continue to parrot the line adopted by many in the party leadership: give us three months. Three months for what? To deliver what? When rhetoric is replaced by the requirement of action, vague promises need to be replaced by quantitative and measurable targets. But forget this even. Five weeks are more than enough for any government to provide a sense of direction about its policies and priorities; it is enough time for a leader to outline his strategic vision that goes beyond the optics of austerity stunts. Five weeks in fact is more than enough time for the newly-elected leader to lay out the broad contours of his strategy to tackle the most pressing, and most difficult, issues facing the country.

Unless, of course, such a strategy does not exist.

So far everything suggests that the PTI has come into office rather unprepared for office. There seems to be a sense of wonderment across the PTI leadership, almost as if they still cannot believe they are in power. When ministers are not gleefully posting their photos sitting on ministerial desks, they are gloating over shunning protocol and standing in lines at airports. One minister has even had himself photographed sitting on a plastic chair on a roadside ensuring the police do not bother commuters at checkpoints. Really? Noble as his intentions might be, the approach is rather infantile. And that seems to summarise the problem with the PTI in power: its inability to graduate to a mature level of governance that at least suggests that the party now fully grasps the enormity of the task at hand and has a basic plan that goes beyond the vagueness of ‘tabdeeli’.

Coolness can only go so far in governance.

And if the PTI has underwhelmed Pakistan since coming into power, the PML-N has not stayed far behind. As the main opposition party, it has sunk to new lows of sluggishness. The party whose leadership was breathing fire and brimstone till only a few months ago has, since the elections, displayed a performance that is drab, dull, dreary and dismal. Lacking direction, lacking strategy, lacking tact and lacking the essential fire in the belly, the PML-N has in the last few weeks been a shadow of its former self. It seems to have accepted that it is defeated, demoralised and diminished. This makes for a rather underwhelming presence on the national landscape.

The MQM? Sulking somewhere. The PPP? Wallowing in its own legendary incompetence. The JUI? Maulana appears to have gone missing. The ANP? Sullen and silent in its provincial corner. It’s like a blanket of boredom has descended from the skies and wrapped up our loquacious leaders in its embrace. Nobody is doing anything. Everybody is doing nothing.

Can somebody wake these guys up? There’s a country to run. There’s a democracy to nourish.

The sense of being underwhelmed is overpowering. From the Centre to the provinces, drabness is raining down. What else did we expect? In Punjab, Shehbaz Sharif has been replaced by whatshisname. In Khyber- Pukhtunkhwa, Pervez Khattak has been replaced by whatshisname. In Balochistan, whatshisname has been replaced by another whatshisname while in Sindh Murad Ali Shah is living up to the PPP’s low standards. The entire business of performance seems to suddenly have been dumbed down.

With Nawaz and Maryam out on bail, will things charge up? With Imran having done his Saudi yatra, will coffers fill up? With Asad Umar having thrown the budget gauntlet, will the specifics of the plan bubble up? If only hope were a plan of action.

How do we stifle our collective yawn?

Published in The Express Tribune, September 23^rd, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.