Pakistan: Time For Political Change – OpEd
With nearly one and half year in power, the ruling illegitimate coalition in Pakistan has failed to deliver things successfully.
This is not the first time that the county is being run with political illegitimacy, historically Pakistan has been governed by political, military and bureaucratic nexus which has been more inclined in projecting self-interest rather than advancing national interest.
Without losing their hold over politics, the nexus under Pakistan’s deep-state patronage, which views controlling Pakistan’s political discourse as its divine duty, has never lost a moment and opportunity in manipulating and rigging national elections for maximizing their political and economic leverage.
Keeping the growing illegitimate and unconstitutional tactics in practice, the dream of a prosperous and democratic Pakistan, which the founding fathers of Pakistan had aspired, has long been drained away. And, today all core issues like social, political and economic remain persisted and unchanged. Now, before delving into strategies for instituting a broader political change in Pakistan, it is pertinent to raise the following certain critical questions casting a shadow over the sheer failure of the decades old exclusionary political system in power:
- Is there any indicator left working well for the prosperity of public?
- Has Pakistan’s economy not been functioning under boom-and-bust cycle?
- Has Pakistan’s foreign policy not been under great dilemmas when it comes of maintaining its relations with neighbors and great powers?
- Has Pakistan national sovereignty not been breached time and again?
- Has our national security not been lapsed amid internal and external threats despite allocating lion’s share of GDP for defense expenditure?
- Have secessionist tendencies not been intensified in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhuwa and in southern Balochistan?
- Have judiciary’s independent wings not been clipped under 26th constitutional amendment?
- Has Media’s freedom not been smothered under an amended PECA Act?
- Have all the principles of Charter of Democracy signed in London not been violated by parties’ signatories to it?
- Above all, why has Pakistani nation, which reached to a resentful peak of no return, failed to resist the faded exclusive governing body with an organized and powerful street demonstration replacing it with a public friendly set up enjoying public mandate?
Having been stuck in all these structural flaws, the Pakistani nation, particularly its aggrieved youth, needs to draw insightful lessons from the pages of history that shows when a ruling political structure fails to deliver, it is the sole responsibility of a victim nation to rise and demand change.
If this is the case, why then is this factor missing in Pakistan? Is a forced regime-change, brought about by a young educated force in Bangladesh last year, not providing a lesson to the educated urban class of Pakistan? Are we really waiting for a divine message to raise against the corrupt and aristocratic ruling elite?
The only viable solution to this lies in a coherent, united and organized social and political backlash against the status quo. This would require the nation, living in different parts of the country, to think beyond their reginal and provincial boundaries, ethnic and ideological identities and their political affiliations for a collective and undefeatable resistance against the entrenched hybrid regime. Furthermore, how can such a widespread movement be translated into strong action? The answer to this question lies in undertaking the following indispensable steps.
First, all those political leaders who truly desire a genuine political change and view themselves as the great proponent of true democratic rules based on constitutional supremacy must begin a national grand campaign for uniting prominent stakeholders from Pakistan’s civil society, including lawyers, journalists, business community, university top notch professors, intellectual, writers, and social activists for a broader political change in the country.
Second, after diverse segment of Pakistani civil society being informed of its ultimate objective of a political transition, leading political leaders should assign them a task to develop a narrative building political change that would appeal to people’s emotions and needs. They should set up certain committees of these stakeholders for organizing seminars and conferences at all top national universities of Pakistan preparing the educated urban middle class youth mentally and encouraging them to back a national march for instituting a change in the political structure of the country.
Finally, when all sort of campaigns are accomplished, an organized and powerful call for national march should be given towards state machinery Islamabad for pressuring and demanding the resignation of the failed status quo. Unless their demand of illegitimate government’s resignation is met, the front-line leaders of this peaceful demonstration should keep maintaining their national protest. This is the only panacea for doing away with the current failed system and restoring political legitimacy in Pakistan.
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