EDITORIAL: Our political parties never tire of paying lip-service to democracy and yet disregard basic democratic values when it suits their purposes.
The other day, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) asked its Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar to resign his seat in the upper house after he took a strong position on the issue of a secretly filmed highly objectionable video of his Senate colleague from the PTI, Azam Swati. Which he “gladly agreed” to do, posting a picture on Twitter showing him smilingly handing his resignation to Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani. He let it be known the cause of his resignation saying “as a political worker I cherish my right to express my opinions on matters of public interest”.
Khokhar has been posting a series of tweets on issues pertaining to civil liberties for quite some time. What seems to have got someone’s goat, leading to his party leadership’s demand for resignation are his tweets in which he first termed the widely condemned video of Senator Swati, as “a slap on the face of Senate Chairman and all parliamentarians”, and then gave vent to his anger in this tweet: “I never thought that our intelligence people would be so disrespectful and would make mockery of our religious and social ethics in this way.
No one’s self-respect is safe. May God curse these people.” Although politicians across party lines have applauded Khokhar for taking a principled stand, some other PPP loyalists such as Aitzaz Ahsan, Farhatullah Babar and Latif Khosa, have also been voicing concern over some recent events — and sidelined by the party leadership for that — no one from the other parties has dared to openly question certain deeply disturbing incidents of intimidation, extra-judicial arrests and custodial torture.
Unfortunately, almost all political parties are run as family fiefdoms in which second-tier leaders can express difference of opinion at the risk of either ouster from the party or getting cast aside.
The party heads make decisions that are aimed at protecting and promoting their own interests rather than good of the people who they claim to represent. Little surprise then that public rhetoric of the ruling coalition leaders is all about purported victimisation by Imran Khan’s government; there is hardly any mention of what needs to be done for public welfare.
If Khan has gained as much popularity as he has after his ouster it is not because he has any great achievements to claim for his time in office, but because he tells the people who flock to his rallies that he is fighting for ‘their’ rights, such as equality before law, ridding the country of elites control over power, as well as national sovereignty. Be that as it may, the ever shaky democracy in this country needs more politicians having the courage to call out those walking rough shod on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens, including journalists and opposition politicians, to dignity and freedom of expression.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022