Protest country

It is also obvious that the PML-N government has not succeeded in building any degree of confidence among the people.

It has been just six months into the five-year tenure of the PML-N government — and already we have protest rallies staged in three out of four provinces, with opposition parties in agreement that things are not going well at all. In Punjab, the PTI, along with the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Awami Muslim League, lashed out against the federal government at a rally in Lahore, speaking about inflation, continued drone attacks, the energy crisis and other problems. In turn, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, usually seen as allied to the PTI, staged a protest against that party’s policies in the province, with Maulana Samiul Haq, whom Imran Khan had ironically recently met for a long discussion, speaking out about what he termed the failures of the PTI to offer the good governance it had promised in K-P.



In Sindh, the MQM staged its own protest against the provincial PPP government, criticising its plan for holding the local government polls under the current law in place on it in the province. The differences over this have, of course, been outstanding for some time. The accusations made in all these rallies show a country in a state of general disarray and with large chunks of the population discontent and disaffected. It is quite clear that the change in government has not brought a greater level of satisfaction with performance and this augurs rather badly for the country as a whole. It is obvious that cooperation is needed on various fronts if there is to be any progress and any real hope of solving the problems that the country currently faces, especially in the areas of economy, foreign policy and the state of the security situation. It is also obvious that the PML-N government, which had pledged that it would offer the leadership needed to solve problems has not succeeded in building any degree of confidence among the people. This is ominous. It is hard to see things getting markedly better from this point on or to suggest quite what should be done to make this happen, with acrimony between the ruling groups and the opposition clearly visible as protesters gathered in three provincial capitals of the country. Who knows how many more such gatherings lie ahead.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2013.

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