The flawed politician

We must stop acting like politicians are cartoon characters in a comic book, who exist only to be deified.

Hugo Chavez was never a subtle politician so it is unsurprising that the reaction surrounding his death has been so stark. For most commentators, he was either the voice of the poor and downtrodden, a socialist committed to empowering the disenfranchised and opposing worldwide imperialism or a coup leader with totalitarian instincts, who was instinctively drawn to other despots. Both interpretations of Chavez have the benefit of being factually correct but the drawback of being incomplete. Which side you fall on depends on ideology but any intellectually honest assessment of the man would acknowledge his opposing instincts.

This is not a problem that can solely be attributed to Chavez’s charisma (or his tendency to annoy, for those who are firmly in the anti-Chavez camp). All politicians, no matter how dull or grey they may be, tend to inspire extreme emotions in their supporters and opponents. This is to be expected of party members whose political power is dependent on fealty to the leader but needs to be avoided by journalists and analysts, for whom nuance and fairness should trump ideological considerations.

In Pakistan, as election season approaches, we will see this phenomenon — already so prevalent in our politics — magnify. The two worst offenders in this regard are supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The PPP’s fans have regularly come down with a bad case of idolatry. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, we are told by the jiyalas, is a man who led the first and only mass movement in the country’s history and ultimately fell victim to a military conspiracy. All this is certainly true but Bhutto also had dictatorial tendencies which, like Chavez, extended to jailing many who opposed him, passed the constitutional amendment that declared Ahmadis non-Muslims and was as bad on Balochistan as the army has ever been. None of these criticisms are meant to ignore Bhutto’s achievements but they are necessary to separate the myth from the fallible politician. The beatification of his daughter Benazir is similar in its adamant refusal to accept that she, too, was an immensely flawed politician.



The case of Imran Khan and the PTI is even more curious. Since he and his party have never actually been in power, they are a blank slate on which anything can be drawn. Once the politician has been cast as saviour, it gives his or her supporters carte blanche to mock and vilify those who dissent. Fans of the PTI have turned this into an art form. Simply saying that Imran Khan has some interesting ideas coupled with a lot of naïve ones is enough for one to be denounced as a sell-out (whom we are selling out to is never mentioned).

We need to reconceive how we see politicians. There is no one person so perfect that with the wave of a wand, all our problems will be wished away. Voting is an act of compromise; we should choose the candidate or party with whom we most agree or, as is often the case in Pakistan, disagree with the least and then hold our noses and cast our ballot. Politicians owe their careers to many different interests and will need to cater to other interests in order to stay in power. This necessarily makes them easy targets for criticism from their opponents while being used as excuses by their supporters. That is how politics works but we in the media should not be playing the same game.

It is time we stop acting like politicians are cartoon characters in a superhero comic book, who exist only to be deified or villainised. Advancing your own agenda and sacrificing complexity has never served anyone well.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2013.