EDITORIAL: That blame-game politics has become endemic in Pakistan is a fact. The committed and more often uncommitted actions on the part of political rivals are the routine juicy material for media.

The blame-game politics is not something new; it is, in fact, as old as the history of statecraft itself. But the currency it has gained in today’s Pakistan is simply mind-boggling. Its latest victim is Bushra Bibi, the wife of former prime minister Imran Khan.

There is a video — real or fabricated — that depicts the lady instructing the party’s social media focal person to run trends declaring people who oppose her husband as traitors. And the opponents insist more such leaks are on the way to media houses. Not many months ago, the handle to beat the opponents was in the hands of today’s opposition.

Then the PTI leaders would blame the opposition for all the ills of the country. It described the opposition’s leaderships as a bunch of cheats, thieves and plunderers. And quite often a proactive NAB (National Accountability Bureau) would graphically spell out how billions were siphoned out of Pakistan in the names of penniless peons.

There is no respect to one’s constitutionally granted privacy and jurisprudential dictate that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. One would dare say almost none of loudly voiced and extensively media reported cases of corruption against political opponents was, or will be, proved in the court of law.

Ironically, the blame-game politics has a place in democratic system. It is a situation in which different individuals and groups attempt to assign blame to each other for some problems or failures. It leads to debate both at the appropriate forums and on the street. And as the debate progresses a way out of the imbroglio comes into sight.

That happens in elected houses, media discourses and thus a consensual point of view begins to take shape. But that is not presently the case in Pakistan. No national issue generates a serious debate and the recent Budget Session was no exception either.

In fact the political leaderships on both sides of the aisle prefer to speak to media outside the assemblies, and as they do that their focus instantly shifts from the issues on the table in the house to blame-game politics.

This should stop. There can be no concrete proposal to turn the page on this dirty business, but a few suggestions are in order. First, the credibility of social media should be relegated to the position of heresy.

The mass media, particularly the broadcast media, should exercise restraint in reporting the unverified blames and counter blames as ‘Breaking News’. The same should be the case at TV talk shows. And, most importantly, the country’s political leaders must make efforts aimed at ushering in a new dawn for the people of Pakistan.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022