PDM -3 Vs and 3 Ys

Though the PPP Government elected in 2006 completed its 5-year term, the second half produced many calls for its exit. During Nawaz Sharif’s third Government, the Panama Papers ensured that he also achieved a hat-trick of his own ousters. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi helped complete the 5-year PML-N term. But loud attempts were made, especially by PTI, to prematurely end the regime. So with PTI taking over in 2018, the PDM drama is simply deja vu --- all over again!

It is clear that the actual words and implications of PDM merely represent --- “Political Disruption Movement”.

Voters seem to prefer leaders and parties that mirror their own impatience but also add large doses of fury and frenzy. Is there something in our people’s psyche whose capacity for political patience is thinner than the skin? Though in other respects, the same people have extraordinary reserves of tolerance for primitive social practices, for economic inequity, for lack of access to basic services. Or is the laughably predictable behaviour of most political parties purely the product of the leaders’ own haste to make waste of their opponents?

The second feature of PDM is vacuitY. Whether it is the 24-point list or even the 12-points announced on 17th November as the basis for a new Charter for Pakistan --- there is no new conceptual or radical or innovative approach defined. Apart from the charges levelled against the PTI in the first list, most of the rest are simply reproductions of the parts of the Constitution which encode Fundamental Rights and Principles of Policy. Except one. In the GoP dozen, the demand to end the role of intelligence agencies in politics is relatively fresh, though it has frequently, and increasingly, been referred to over the past 3 decades. And it is a valid concern that should be addressed and ended soonest.

However, PDM’s vacuity tries to conceal hypocrisy as well. If the allegation of the 2018 polls being wholly rigged be taken as true, was the PPP’s victory in Sindh also the result of fabrication? Or was the rigging itself as “selected “as the PDM alleges the PM is? Indeed, one wonders why the PTI did not immediately, on being accused of being “selected”, acknowledge that, yes, it was certainly selected --- in two ways. . First: selected by the majority of voters in preference to two parties that had already been tried, tested and rejected. Second: selected again by the majority of voters on the condition that PTI’s performance would first be monitored in Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar before also, next time perhaps, being given Karachi and Quetta as well. Almost ditto about the GB poll results. The voters there have obviously also selected PTI over the other tried-and-rejected parties because they want to benefit from the Islamabad connection. And to give a chance to the new entrant. Yet here too an ingenuous PDM response is that the result is actually a shameful defeat for PTI --- because, despite alleged rigging, it could not win a majority. So is there some Grand Design crafted by the selectors to favour PTI but still keep it insecure? The wonders of PDM theory never cease.

There is no priority in PDM texts and rhetoric for the basic challenges that face Pakistan: the millions of children out-of-school; the repression of the rights of women and girl-children; family planning and female reproductive health-care; malnutrition and stunting; the need to bring millions of eligibles into the direct tax net; the violence-oriented extremism of religion-linked groups and parties, which represent a minor part of the population, being allowed to bully both political parties and the state through shows of street power that should be exposed for their superficiality; and the need for internal solidarity on Kashmir instead of accusing PTI of selling out to India, et al.

Crowds and processions, be they for PDM or for PTI, for JI or for PSP, can be misleading. A crowd of 10,000 can radiate the impression of being 30,000. If it took 11 PDM parties to fill Bagh-i-Jinnah, Karachi on 24th October, PSP on its own did the same in November. In any case, of every 100 people who attend jalsas, it is fairly accurate to estimate that less than 50 are members of the host party. The rest comprise supporters rounded up just for the event and many who are there for the transient sensation. While big numbers should be duly noted, they should also be placed within the large picture. In a population of 220 million even a crowd of 50,000 or 100,000 is a fraction of a fraction.

In at least 3 respects, the irresponsibility of PDM is contemptible. First: total disregard for the alarming upsurge of Covid-19 in a ominous second wave which endangers human life. Second: self-centered indifference to the damage being done to institutional continuity by ensuring that, for the first time, a third elected Government completes its term. Third: apathy to the uncertainty inflicted on speedy economic recovery made the more difficult by the pandemic.

PTI deserves credit for helping create the PDM. The Prime Minister’s dis-interest in regular attendance of Parliament and non-fulfillment of the pledge to offer a weekly PM’s Question Hour; harsh diatribes by the PM and his colleagues hurling invectives every day at the Opposition; a mysterious failure to meticulously track the supply chain for wheat, sugar, vegetables and other essentials to identify the precise points at which price distortions and increases are made and to inform the people about the responsibility of the Provincial Governments to control prices at the supply and retail levels, among others. Some of the genuinely positive steps taken by PTI have been obscured by such gross lapses.

As we continue to hope that better sense prevails both in PTI and PDM, it is clear that the actual words and implications of PDM merely represent --- “Political Disruption Movement”.