Theatre of the absurd

EDITORIAL: Punjab’s politics has resembled a street circus for too long now. It’s up to the honourable court to order a final settlement, which is why it would be appreciated if it conducts daily hearings, because it’s clear that opposition allies PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) and PML-Q (Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid) will go to any length to disrupt the system just out of spite for losing the government themselves. This crisis goes back to early April, when the no-confidence motion against then PM Imran Khan sent shockwaves all the way to Punjab and dislodged the PTI government there as well.

Till then Punjab Assembly Speaker Pervaiz Elahi was the centre of all attention as he pendulumed between government and opposition on the matter of supporting the motion. But everything turned to dust as soon as he lent his weight to Imran Khan’s cause. Imran was constitutionally from the centre and Elahi was outsmarted in Punjab. Since then, they have made it their number-one priority to paralyse the Punjab government.

First, Imran sacked Governor Sarwar, then the new governor didn’t recognise the new government. That’s when the matter was first taken to court. Then former chief minister Usman Buzdar’s resignation was thrown into controversy by PTI itself. Then there was pandemonium and hooliganism in Punjab Assembly, which the press gallery dubbed the darkest day in the history of the august house.

Then Hamza Sharif had to take the oath of chief minister and also present the annual, crucial budget outside the Assembly. And now everybody is waiting for the legal solution to the logjam. Meantime, the most important province of the federation is unable to function. And it’s a shame that the opposition, for all intents and purposes, has no qualms about everybody in Punjab suffering just because it doesn’t like which way the province’s politics is swinging till the next election.

There’s more. This confrontation has now spilled out of mainstream politics and drowned much of civil society in its toxicity as well. For, there are reports aplenty of bitter arguments, even scuffles in public and private places about who is right and wrong in this grand argument about foreign conspiracies, imported governments, legislators for sale, and poor, suffering people who have nothing to do with any of it.

And even as the court will put everybody in their places soon enough, this ugly episode has done everybody in the country one big favour. It has exposed the political elite that lords over the people for what it’s really worth. Everybody knows now that they will stop at nothing to get the power and privilege that comes with the hot seat; even if it means rubbing the nose of the people in the ground out of outright neglect.

Let’s not forget that this is a country that’s barely hanging on by the skin of its teeth and the slightest misstep will compromise the IMF (International Monetary Fund) bailout programme and send us head-first into a very painful and traumatic default.

Yet here we stand, represented by lawmakers who are drenched in self- and party-interest and who cannot see beyond their own noses. That explains very well why the immediate future does not look very bright. Because even if the IMF resumes its aid, it will still extract a pound of flesh for it, and the common man’s life will not get better for a long time. Couple that with the theatre of the absurd that mainstream politics has become, especially in Punjab, and you have the perfect model of a state refusing to function just because it’s held back by the very people that fight tooth and nail for the responsibility to run it.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022