Forgotten promises: Tall claims, short attention spans for party manifestos

Largest political quarters have no mechanism for reviewing progress.

ISLAMABAD:

Millions of downtrodden Pakistanis attached high hopes when former premier Benazir Bhutto declared the five Es – employment, education, energy, environment and equality – as the priority of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

But Bhutto, the PPP’s chairperson, was killed during electioneering only two months after revealing her party’s new manifesto. Almost four years down the line, it seems as if the same has happened to her promise to the nation.

While the PPP won the election and formed the government, riding on the sympathy wave her death generated, little or almost nothing has been done to steer Pakistan out of the crises.

The unemployment rate has increased manifold as hundreds of industrial units, especially in the key textile sector, were closed due to a deepening energy crisis, rendering thousands jobless. The higher education sector faced a painful cut in funds and the energy crisis, which was inherited from the Musharraf regime, just worsened.

The incumbent PPP government, therefore, has failed to implement the manifesto presented to the nation by its slain leader.

Experts see in it a familiar pattern of failure that has always been part of Pakistani political parties without exception: the lack of a mechanism that ensures implementation of electoral manifestos.

“This is a universal problem. Once elected, parties never care about promises made to their voters, their constituents. They simply never bother,” said Irfan Shahzad, a political researcher at Islamabad’s Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

But political parties claim otherwise. They insist that their success and even survival is not possible without being cognisant of people who vote them into power. “This is a wrong perception … how can we go to them [our voters] again with the same request if we are unconcerned about promises made to them?” said Senator Jahangir Badar, the PPP’s general secretary.

But when asked why his party appeared to have failed to deliver on the manifesto unveiled by Bhutto, he did not have a convincing argument. “We did our best bet … circumstances were not favourable.” However, he claimed that the party continues to review progress on the implementation of its manifesto on various forums such as the core committee and the Central Executive Committee (CEC).

However, a PPP insider denied that, saying he could not recall any discussion on the implementation of the manifesto even once in four years.

Opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which rules Punjab, is not an exception either, though it has a functioning manifesto committee even after the elections.

Party officials said there had hardly been any discussion on what efforts should be made to implement the manifesto. But the head of party’s manifesto committee Sartaj Aziz insisted that progress is reviewed every now and then. “We had a mechanism in our previous governments back in the 90s,” he added, but did not have any explanation why that wasn’t the case now.

Surprisingly, religious groups appear smarter because they don’t make commitments such as energy and education to the people. They always promise intangible things such as implementation of Sharia and less American influence in Pakistan — slogans that are unlikely to be met.

“We are trying to implement Islam in Pakistan. That’s what our agenda and manifesto is,” said Mufti Kafayatullah, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F).

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2011.