By Mustansar Klasra
Democracy is considered and appreciated to be one of the highly accepted mode of governance across the globe. Despite the fact that currently several governance models exist in the world for example Kingdoms, Presidential setups, Parliamentary set ups, Democracy, Capitalism, Communism, even sometimes dictatorships also rule over some of the countries.
Among all of the mode of governance, Democratic set up is cherished and appreciated everywhere after all Democracy is termed as Government of the people, by the people and for the people. I personally do prefer and support the democratic setup but in my point of view it has few drawbacks as well.
One of the most significant drawback what I understand is that a candidate contesting election try his/her level best to malign the credibility of the opponent by personal attacks without having proofs and fact. Isn’t that unfair to the person that is being maligned by the opponent? Rather It would be much better to gain votes on performance, not by maligning the opponent, sometimes even by fake arguments as well.
During the age of 5th generation warfare and emergence of social media, disinformation campaigns against the people having clash of interests in political domains have also become an active tool. Fake narrative building is being propagated against the individuals and even institutions. Although FIA and many other concerned institutions are trying their level best to address this issue.
Sometimes disinformation campaigns are run against even these institutions for maligning their credibility. On a larger national interest, this needs to be dealt with iron hands. One needs to keep in mind whenever institutions or individuals fight for the dominance over each other, national interest remains far behind. States are governed smoothly only when institutions and individuals synchronize with each other constructively.
Keeping in view of the current politically immature tug of war between the politicians and blaming of leaders will create more troubles in terms of inflation, unemployment, poverty for the general public.
This is unfortunate that after the creation of Pakistan, not even a single leader could create a sense of trust, unity and cohesiveness among the people and even institutions of Pakistan. Here every institution consider itself superior on the other. Mature institutions do not behave like that in any state. If we take the current discussions floating across Pakistan regarding regime change as per the allegations of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Government of Pakistan led by Shahbaz Sharif should do clear investigation and fair debates in order to address the claims of previous Government as it is a matter of security, credibility and sovereignty of the state.
It was highly disappointing that general public of the country is facing poverty, unemployment, inflation etc and the top political brass is playing a game of political tug of war. Here everyone wants to come in power, but nobody either wants to deliver or does not have the capability to run the government.
Mustansar Klasra
Elitism is also one the major obstacle for bringing prosperity in the country.
Here in Pakistan, nobody is the political savior. Everyone has their own agendas and interests to serve. In my point of view, the only solution of all the prevailing troubles of Pakistan is to sit together and discuss the core issues of the country concerning general public of the country.
Blaming each other won’t bring change in this country. State institutes are major and one of the most important pillars of every country. No country can progress and excel without the cooperation of any department of the state. The primary objective of state institutions is to work tirelessly for the development of the country.
Pakistan is currently facing economic lapse.
Foreign direct reserves are declining day by day. The country is striving for the independent sovereign policy. Recently 50% HEC’s budget was cut down by the government. Education and Health budgets are below the required level. All such indicators already show that Pakistan is facing lots of uncertainty and vision. All such poor indicators can be reversed or at least can be addressed properly by bringing political stability in the country.
This is unfortunate that not even a single Prime Minister has completed its constitutional tenure in the history of Pakistan. This develops a lack of trust among the foreign investors inside Pakistan. For the time being, if we agree that Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Government was not performing well, it does not mean that opposition should come over and take over the Government.
Infect in my views, Government led by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif put itself into a trouble in many ways for example, Firstly, they will pay their political cost in the election, secondly, in a larger picture opposition did damage to the smooth political process that does not favour any of the politician irrespective of the party.
Current Government is facing the same difficulties and challenges that Khan’s Government was facing. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Government was also engaged with the IMF; Shahbaz Government did the same. Imran Khan’s Government was gradually increasing Petrol prices; Shahbaz Government also did the same by increasing 30 Rs per liter. Inflation rate was gradually becoming High in Imran Khan’s Govt, Shahbaz Govt is also dealing with the high inflation.
The question is what Shahbaz Government did so far for the public after coming into the power corridor, that Imran Khan’s Govt could not do so? In a nut shell, what I perceive that there was not any agenda of PML N Coalition Government to give relief to public. Infect they all did this political maneuvering mere to fulfill the wish of becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan. A dilemma of this country is that people of Pakistan facing extreme leadership crisis. Till now no one should expect anything fruitful by these current political elite. Let’s be optimistic but so far, it looks like we are far from development, stability and prosperity. May God bless our beloved Pakistan.
The writer is Ph.D scholar at Quaid-I-Azam University Islamabad and visiting lecturer at Department of International Relations at University of Chakwal.
