As reports of successful negotiations between the government and opposition parties regarding the 20th Constitutional Amendment and the roadmap for the next general elections have started surfacing, the election season seems to have set in the country and with it the winds of change have also begun to blow. All the political parties have also started flexing their muscles and started demonstrating their public strength by organizing public meetings and rallies across Pakistan. The political situation is absolutely fluid and no political party, at the moment, knows about its ultimate running mates in the next elections.
The next general elections in the country will see strange permutations and combinations of political parties and groups. It will be around key political and economic issues around which political alliances are going to be organized and ideologies will have little role, if any, in these political marriages. The political process from now onwards in Pakistan would be guided by power politics where ideologies do not fit in. Can any one answer which side of the political divide the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the PML-Q, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP) are? Except for the PML-N, all the above-mentioned parties had leftist origins, but today they can no longer be termed as left-of-centre parties. They have become more reactionary and conservative in their approach and want to preserve the status quo rather that to bring about change. Ironically, the PML-N apparently has become more revolutionary and this can also be gauged from the oft-repeated uttering of Habib Jalib's poetical verses by Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif. The so-called religious political parties also are fully engaged in power politics or are serving as pressure groups while playing second fiddle to the country's establishment and advocating the promotion of the latter’s policy agenda.
The case of the emerging Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is greatly disappointing. No one, not even Imran Khan, could clearly expound upon the real ideology and philosophy of the PTI, despite the fact that the party presents itself as an alternative choice for the people to vote for.
Now, coming to the main political issues of the country, let us analyze which party has what stand on various problems. However, before pointing out the main issues of contemporary Pakistan, it must be stated that everyone might define the key issues of the country differently.
On the basis of their overall impact and magnitude in terms of affecting the largest number of people plus threatening the survivability of the state and society, the following can be termed the main problems of Pakistan:-
Institutional collapse; inter-provincial disharmony; religious extremism-terrorism; the Balochistan imbroglio; the civil-military relationship or policy divergence; the economic meltdown, including price-hike and unemployment; plummeting standards of education and health.
The present ruling coalition comprising the PPP, the PML-Q, the ANP and the MQM, have virtually failed to address any of these issues, at least to the stakeholders satisfaction. Only the PPP, or specifically President Asif Ali Zardari, could be credited for taking a principled stand, although shaky, on the issue of civil-military relations and emphasizing the supremacy of Parliament. However, none of these parties could come up with any viable strategy to deal with the issues of institutional collapse, inter-provincial disharmony; intra-provincial fighting; religious extremism-terrorism. Here the ANP could be given some credit for taking a bold stance against religious extremists and terrorism and in the process paying with the lives of 400 of its workers and leaders. Nevertheless, the party has not had any viable strategy or policy to root out religious fundamentalism from the areas under its influence, that is KP and FATA.
The PPP also completely failed to come up with any workable anti-terrorism and anti-fundamentalist policy and a strategy despite its chairperson, Benazir Bhutto's getting killed at the hands of religious bigots. In fact, the PPP, instead of addressing the key problems of the country, has been more interested in completing its tenure and thinking that the issues would get solved automatically considering ''democracy'' as being the panacea of all ills. However, the PPP leadership has failed to understand that democracy is not an entire culture or cure and that too through elections with only 30-40 per cent people voting. It is only a democratic culture if properly functional that can address social and state ills, and that does not exist in Pakistan.
Unfortunately, none of the ruling parties, rhetoric notwithstanding, have seriously addressed the issue of Balochistan, which poses an existential threat to the survival of Pakistan. Consequently the situation has gone from bad to worse there. Now it has reached a point in Balochistan that the state will have to give in to the demands of the Baloch nationalists, short of seccession, representing the sentiments of the Baloch nation; otherwise the ongoing bloodshed could have irretrievable consequences. On the economic meltdown issue, the parties of the ruling coalition leave a lot to be desired.
The PML-N cannot be credited for taking any worthwhile policy stand on any of the above-mentioned issues of contemporary Pakistan. In fact, the PML-N must accept its share of criticism for doing little to address these issues. Because, on the one hand, it has its government in the largest province. It is the party representing the Punjab and, therefore, it was its responsibility to take big strides without waiting for the federal government to do so, in dealing with the problems of inter-provincial disharmony. No doubt it took steps to solve the Balochistan conundrum but these efforts have been half-hearted, resulting in nothing.
The religious parties due to the poor quality of their leadership as well as its self-centeredness, do not consider any of the key issues of contemporary Pakistan as important and always come up with the simple logic that all these issues are because people do not vote them to power. Moreover, that all these problems are due to the country's following the agenda of the US and the West.
The PTI has some convincing arguments regarding how to address some, but not all, the key issues of Pakistan. It remains to be seen that how it effectuates these arguments into viable strategies. However, the silence of the PTI on the issue of Balochistan and its inane stand on other issues has raised many questions about whether the party really has a programme for Pakistan.