Politicians lament ‘limited space’

Panellists at Afkar-e-Taza Festival complain of accountability sans power

LAHORE:

Although politicians are “powerless in policymaking”, yet they are the ones who are held accountable for things that go wrong.

This was the consensus view of three senior political leaders, Malik Ahmad Khan and Miftah Ismail of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar (who has recently quit the PPP) which they expressed at a session titled, “Are Politicians the Real Problem of Pakistan” on the last day of the Afkar-e-Taza Festival (ThinkFest).

Initiating the debate, Malik Ahmad Khan said that politicians had to present themselves before their constituents to seek their votes and they got blamed for “non-deliverance”.

“However since the ‘real decision making institutions are invisible’, they stand vindicated,” said the PML-N leader.

Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, while recalling how power got shifted “from the hands of the politicians to a few institutions”, wondered how the country could be run under such contradictions and under which principles.

Khokhar, while drawing a comparison between the political evolution in India and that in Pakistan, said that it took the people of Pakistan 30 years after Independence to get the chance to exercise their right to adult franchise.

He said that by the year 1970, three parliaments had changed in India, and they had been preparing to vote for the fourth one.

“At least, let this country have a fair election,” he said.

Miftah Ismail, taking the debate forward, said that it was true that the politicians had not delivered up to the expectations of the people.

“But we need to evaluate their deliverance considering the space they were provided with,” he said.

They performed even in the bare minimum space they had been provided with, he said.

Malik Ahmad Khan referred to a recent judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan binding a member of parliament to vote only according to party policy.

Malik Ahmad Khan also talked about working of a journalist “under the dynamics of realpolitik”.

He said that it “compromised his everyday working” as he had “to submit to realpolitik challenges”.

“If I stand, I will face the consequences similar to the one that Mustafa Khokhar faced (he, apparently, was referring to Mustafa Khokhar’s raising his voice against “the ill-treatment” meted out to Azam Sawati, an act the PPP had reportedly termed against the party policy).

On a question if a truth and reconciliation commission could make some difference, Mustafa Khokhar said that it happened where the nations/countries paid a heavy price like South Africa, where society had broken down.

“We couldn’t even do truth and reconciliation about Bangladesh despite passing of many decades,” he said.

He said it looked as if “we were waiting for the breakdown of society”.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2023.